Critical race theory roils Kansas and Missouri politics. Here’s what it is and is not

This summer, public school students in Kansas City will begin learning from a curriculum based on The New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project, an examination of slavery, anti-Black racism and its far-reaching impact on American society.

They’ll be doing so amid increased GOP scrutiny.

In Missouri, Kansas and across the nation, Republican politicians are digging in against the 1619 curriculum, which draws from a 40-year-old body of scholarship that was, until recently, little-known outside of academic journals and upper-level college and law courses. Now, it is one of the hottest fronts in the culture war: Critical Race Theory (CRT).

Last week, Kansas and Missouri Attorneys General Derek Schmidt and Eric Schmitt joined 18 other state attorneys general in calling on President Biden to halt efforts to bring more diverse perspectives to civics and history education. They described it as “a thinly veiled attempt” to introduce CRT.

Schmidt and Schmitt, running for Kansas governor and a Missouri seat in the U.S. Senate respectively, wrote that critical race theory would lead to “racial and ethnic division and indeed more discrimination.”

In a video launching his campaign for U.S. Senate last week, attorney Mark McCloskey, famously photographed with his wife pointing guns at Black Lives Matter protesters from their St. Louis lawn, assailed “cancel culture, the poison of critical race theory, the lie of systemic racism” as ideologies “intentionally designed to destroy all we hold near and dear.”

At the heart of the opposition is the conservative claim that curricula examining the role of racism in American history are revisionist and being used to turn students against the country.

The Kansas City Public School’s program was itself at risk of being banned by Missouri lawmakers, who earlier this year pursued legislation to curb the teaching of the 1619 Project.

“What is more important than what is being taught to our kids?” said Missouri Rep. Brian Seitz, a Branson Republican who sponsored a measure in April to ban race-related teachings from schools, during a House debate. “Will they grow up to hate America or will they grow up to applaud American exceptionalism?”

Experts say critical race theory has been misunderstood — or distorted for political purposes — and that it is not being taught in K-12 classrooms. In some cases, they say, critics brand as CRT any attempt by educators to provide more context for aspects of American history traditionally glossed over in the classroom — like slavery, forced displacement of Native Americans and Japanese internment camps.

The Kansas City Public Schools district says lawmakers are missing the point.

“We’ve provided context for the legislature throughout the spring, relaying the injustice, short-sightedness and unworthy attempt to squash diverse and inclusive conversation and learning,” district spokeswoman Kelly Wachel said in an email.

What is Critical Race Theory?

Critical Race Theory is an academic concept that has been around since the late 1970s.

Scholars who study it say it is not a specific curriculum or ideology but a lens for examining how race and inequality impact criminal justice, law, health care, housing and other essential American institutions.

“Critical race studies has been used to try to explain discrepancies, particularly where people of color are on the end of some scale,” said Stacie DeFrietas, professor of psychology at University of Houston Downtown and co-author of “Critical Race Studies Across Disciplines.”

“Because of the way our nation was founded there’s structures set up inherently where the people in power work to maintain that power and push policies and agendas to maintain that.”

Antonio Byrd, an English professor at UMKC who studies Black literacy, described critical race theory as a way to illuminate the role of racism in a society that doesn’t tend to think racism is a major problem. By considering the impact of racism, Byrd said, steps can be taken to fix it.

It isn’t about assigning blame or deeming any person or group of people as racist, Byrd said. Instead, it is about evaluating societal assumptions about race and the impact they have.

“What it’s trying to do is try to bring about a better understanding of people who are different from them. A better understanding of what it’s like to cross over into someone else’s world,” he said.

How does it apply in schools?

Kansas and Missouri schools do not teach critical race theory. But parents have been quick to denounce efforts they perceive as touching on it.

In Manhattan, parents flooded a school board meeting concerned about diversity training the district planned for staff. That was before they learned that funding wasn’t available.

Outcry over curricula or trainings that include discussions of racism also have spilled into public meetings in Springfield and the St. Louis suburbs.

The Missouri General Assembly responded, pushing Seitz’s bill to restrict such materials from being taught in schools. The measure was ultimately tabled in the House, but not before it sparked an acrimonious 90-minute debate on race and privilege.

The bill said any teaching that involved “immutable, inherited, or objective characteristics such as race, income, appearance, family of origin, or sexual orientation” for the purpose of “defining a person’s ‘identity,’” or “assigning blame to categories of persons” was prohibited. Teaching materials that identified “people, entities, or institutions as inherently, immutably, or systemically sexist, racist, biased, privileged, or oppressed” would also have been forbidden.

It also specifically banned curricula adapted from The 1619 Project, a New York Times Magazine longform journalism project that argued slavery played a central role in the nation’s founding. The project was launched in 2019, 400 years after the first slaves from Africa set foot on American soil. It frames the country’s founding around that date.

O’Fallon Republican Nick Schroer, attached the 1619 provision to an education bill granting students leniency on their grades during the COVID-19 pandemic. He and other supporters said the project was “revisionist history”— parts of it have been disputed by five high-profile historians.

Democrats, particularly Black lawmakers, called the measure divisive and said it amounted to censorship, while several white Republicans charged they had been unfairly maligned as racist.

“I feel insulted when [another representative] says that I’m a privileged white guy. There’s nothing privileged about me,” said Washington Republican John Simmons. “They’re not teaching history, they’re teaching hate.”

“I wonder who started teaching [hatred],” said St. Louis Democrat LaKeysha Bosley. “It wasn’t people who look like me.”

But DeFreitas said the bill misdefined critical race theory. CRT, she said, is too high-level a concept to be taught in a middle or high school classroom and is commonly introduced to students at the college level. What’s interpreted at CRT, she said, is often more detailed teachings of slavery and segregation or diversity initiatives.

Ideas from critical race theory, however, can supplement traditional curricula, Byrd said, with literature and texts by people of color and others who have been marginalized.

“Students can read these stories from other Black and brown authors and discuss how they challenge assumptions about race and racism in the United States,” Byrd said.

Classes on the 1619 project, Black history and Latinx history in Kansas City schools will focus on the experiences of Black and Latinx Americans.

“Unpacking the struggle and resistance to oppressive factors in our nation’s history can produce a more honest and empowering view of Latinx and African American individuals,” Wachel, the KCPS spokeswoman, said.

David Muhammed, a former Shawnee Mission East social studies teacher, said the outrage over critical race theory was a response to a problem that didn’t exist, but that real change was needed in how history is taught in America.

“When you don’t teach the full history of this country then you’re going to create a generation of youth that are not really living up to what America claims to want to be. We’ve been sugarcoating the entire story for my entire life,” Muhammed said.

“We want to teach about how we were the good guys and there’s no doubt that we have history to be proud of but there’s also history that we need to examine and people who are still suffering as a result of that.”