Critical Race Theory, CRT, revolve around assertions in the "1619 Project," a controversial piece that argues the institution of slavery was the nation's true founding. According to its author, it also casts doubt on how U.S. history has traditionally been taught by emphasizing slavery's influence on American society.
Arguments about CRT in history tend to revolve around assertions in the "1619 Project," a controversial piece that argues the institution of slavery was the nation's true founding. According to its author Nikole Hannah, it also casts doubt on how U.S. history has traditionally been taught by emphasizing slavery's influence on American society.
CRT emphasizes racial differences and portrays straight white men as oppressors who should be re-educated, deprogrammed and put in their place. A divisive theory which has been widely condemned as poisonous and cause of racial tension in society.
During a meeting Thursday, black mother Quisha King told Florida Board of Education that CRT teaches hate, and is ruining the "greatest country in the world."
"Just coming off of May 31, marking the 100 years [since] the Tulsa riots, it is sad that we are even contemplating something like critical race theory, where children will be separated by their skin color and deemed permanently oppressors or oppressed in 2021," she said.
King went on to dispute the idea that CRT was "racial sensitivity or simply teaching unfavorable American history or teaching Jim Crow history."
"CRT," she said, "is deeper and more dangerous than that. CRT and its outworking today is a teaching that there's a hierarchy in society where White male, heterosexual, able-bodied people are deemed the oppressor and anyone else outside of that status is oppressed."
"That's why we see corporations like Coca-Cola asking their employees to be less White, which is ridiculous. I don't know about you, but telling my child or any child that they are in a permanent oppressed status in America because they are Black is racist – and saying that White people are automatically above me, my children, or any child is racist as well. This is not something that we can stand for in our country."
Florida governor Ron DeSantis had asked the school board to pass a rule banning the teaching of CRT in schools.
The board on Thursday, approved DeSantis' rule. It reads: "Instruction on the required topics must be factual and objective and may not suppress or distort significant historical events, such as the Holocaust, and may not define American history as something other than the creation of a new nation based largely on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence."
The rule came as part of a broader push by conservative Republicans to eliminate manifestations of critical race theory in school curricula.
WATCH full clip of Quisha King's comments.