What Should Children Be Taught About Racism in the United States?

DESPITE THE FACT that critical race theory (CRT) is a complicated academic theory that some scholars use to examine disproportionate outcomes in the criminal justice system, school board meetings across the U.S. have erupted in passionate debates with parents demanding it be banned.

Ironically, CRT cannot be taught to children because it is not age appropriate for K-12—just as we would not teach advanced nuclear physics to schoolchildren. Yet the strategic placement by far-right activists of a narrative that CRT has crept into K-12 education is causing dramatic outbursts of racial anxiety. All this passion could be rerouted to address an important question that everyone cares about: What should children be taught about race and racism in the United States? This conversation, if done well, could actually move our society toward much-needed racial healing.

What can you do to promote racial healing amid the current anti-CRT mania? We say, flip the script. Do something unexpected with the energy.

In our years of instructing in civic dialogue and working in public schools, we’ve found three steps to help people get started: common ground, honesty, and civil discourse. First, find and speak about common ground. For example, anti-CRT advocates make three basic claims where we can find common ground: 1) we don’t want our children hating themselves because of their skin color; 2) we don’t want children holding shame about things they themselves had nothing to do with (inheriting racism from the past); and 3) we don’t want children hating the United States because it was founded using slave labor. (None of us living today made that decision.) Starting with an assertion of common ground can shift the negative energy of public meetings and will give you more credibility with school board members.

The second step is to be honest about how negative stereotypes about people of color and white-superiority thinking sometimes creep into our own minds. Remember that time we locked our doors because we saw a lot of Black people gathered on a corner or when we assumed the Latino man at our child’s school was the janitor instead of a classmate’s parent? Every one of us—even people of color—have had a moment of this type of bias against historically disadvantaged groups. It is ubiquitous. And yet, we don’t talk about it. We pretendthat having these thoughts makes us monsters. In reality, having these thoughts means we have spent time in the U.S., where systemic racism exists.

The third step is to call on our public officials to encourage civil public discourse on this topic: “What should we teach children in public schools about racism?” Doing this flips the script from one focused on “banning CRT” to a much-needed conversation about race and racism. It is a myth that talking about race makes racism worse. These public dialogues could bring American communities closer to a healthier democracy wherewe explore collectively what anti-BIPOC biases we have absorbed, how we can change the narratives in our heads, and how we can become more aware of these biases so we can stop contributing to cycles that cause harm to people of color.

If we lean into working out what and how to teach our children about race and racism in the U.S., then we can teach children that our ancestors—people of all colors—fought to end racism and to advance freedom in our country for all people. And that’s something that can make us all proud.