Statement: HB 187 an Anti-Critical Race Theory Bill

HB 187 is essentially an Anti-Critical Race Theory (CRT) bill that creates the harmful assumption that teachers promote beliefs through their teaching that would cause one race to hate another.

​It is great that the Republicans now care about the education of North Carolina children. The education of our children, especially those living in rural communities experiencing generational poverty, is extremely important. Education is our children’s ticket to a better future and their ability to access opportunities.

However, in March, the NC Supreme Court’s Republican majority voted 5-2 to reinstate a lower court’s order blocking Superior Judge David Lee’s ruling in November that ordered the state to spend millions of dollars to implement the first two years of an eight-year school improvement plan. It was a plan arising out of a three-decade-old case that held that under the NC Constitution, every child has a right to a sound and basic education, this includes children in lower-wealth communities and school districts.

On March 23, HB 187 passed the House and was sent to the Senate Rules Committee. We must pay attention to what this bill would do instead of being deceived by its title, “Equality in Education.” In fact, this bill would do the direct opposite of its title. It seeks to preserve the exclusionary and mostly white history that has been taught in our schools for decades, and it seeks to deny all our children an opportunity to learn about different races and sexes. American history is the history of all of us, not just some of us.

Further, HB 187 is essentially an Anti-Critical Race Theory (CRT) bill, which is a manufactured issue in North Carolina. It creates the harmful assumption that our underpaid and hardworking teachers promote beliefs through their teaching that would cause one race to hate another. This is an insult to our teachers who show up every day for all our children. Critical Race Theory isn’t being taught in our K-12 school system. Critical Race Theory critically analyzes how laws and policies impact opportunities along racial lines in this country due to historic discrimination. Critical Race Theory, or CRT, is typically a scholarship offered in a law school or policy school. Therefore, CRT is not something a K-12 teacher would even be expected to teach or even trained to teach. Again, HB 187 is a manufactured issue. If passed, HB 187 would have the following harmful effects:

• The learning and education of our children would be seized by legislators who, at a whim, could demand that teachers, administrators, and their staff be taken away from the task of educating our children to respond to an information request on trainings, workshops and speakers meant to support the school’s learning environment. 
• Upon a request, HB 187 would require schools to provide detailed information on its website and to notify the NC Department of Public Instruction if they hire speakers or conduct workshops or trainings on any topics that the Republicans believe “promote the belief that any individual by virtue of his or her race should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress.”  This could defer schools from bringing in diverse perspectives or teachers who may want to share their history or stories of struggles. This will also deter any training involving diversity, equity, and inclusion.
• HB 187 could target schools that have simply sought to create an environment that values inclusivity, respect, and diversity by highlighting more diverse voices and family representations.
• HB 187 ignores that our current history and social study books promote inequality and the superiority of one race because these books do not lift the stories and experiences of diverse people and diverse perspectives. HB 187 seeks to dismiss the diversity of our history in our children’s learning, which could have the unintended impact of making BIPOC children feel discomfort if the only stories they see and hear portray them as enslaved people or people serving in servitude. It could also make white kids feel guilty or even superior. 
• HB 187 also has the intent to ban books. In other states like Florida, we see this strategy resulting in the banning of books that even speak about the Holocaust. In fact, the banning of books, through burning them, was the way the Nazis dealt with any opposition against them. Our students should access books from diverse authors on the subject matters that they are learning about in our schools.

HB 187 is essentially a distraction by the Republican legislators of their failure to provide a sound and basic education for all children, which would provide the real equality in education that this bill pretends to seek.