With a public education system ranking #49 near-the-bottom of achievement standards can Arizona and The Nation expect anything more from Mr.Biggs? Arizona is down there with The State of Mississippi. . Neither state can be proud of their history of systemic racism.
The Miseducation of White Children
The attacks on critical race theory are just another attempt to prevent this country from reckoning with its racist past and present—by keeping white kids ignorant.
(Image credit: US Representative Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) speaking at a press conference about banning federal funding for the teaching of critical race theory. 
(Michael Brochstein / Sipa USA via AP Images)
"President Joe Biden went to Tulsa, Okla., this week to honor the victims of the 1921 massacre on “Black Wall Street” and, as important, to acknowledge that it happened. It was a nice presidential visit (albeit one devoid of any policy proposals for redress of the wrongs committed) that fulfilled what should be a bare minimum requirement in a country able to tell the truth about itself . . .The reason most people didn’t know about the massacre is because they don’t teach about this history in schools.
The United States doesn’t rely only on Hollywood or the media to tell the story of white people in the New World. This country also employs a different institution, the public school system, to spread the myth of white exceptionalism and to whitewash the episodes of white terrorism against others.
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INSERT Uploaded by Breitbart to YouTube on May 12, 2021
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An essential project of that education system is to absolve present-day white people of any need to reckon with the horrors that made their world possible—and still make their world possible—by assuring them that whatever sins this country committed were redeemed or corrected by the efforts of previous Americans.
As often as not, those sins and horrors are covered up to protect young white minds from ever knowing the truth about our country. This project is designed to leave white Americans feeling that they have nothing to atone for, so they can blithely continue doing the work of white supremacy and reaping the rewards of white privilege with a clear conscience. All historical tragedies, the ones that are mentioned at least, are framed through the eyes of some American (usually white) who fought against evil forces. Children are supposed to believe, as most kids are inclined to do anyway, that the forces of good eventually triumphed. . .
> The founding of the country, for instance, is taught through the eyes of Thomas Jefferson, not Sally Hemmings.
> The fight for women’s rights is introduced only through the efforts of noted suffragist and racist Susan B. Anthony, not Sojourner Truth or Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.
> Westward expansion is explored purely as the story of Lewis and Clark—and their helpful assistant Sacagawea.
> Slavery is addressed primarily through the redeeming narrative of “the Great Emancipator,” Abraham Lincoln.
> And, of course, students learn that any issue of racial oppression that Lincoln didn’t quite get around to solving was “fixed” by Martin Luther King Jr. and the anodyne, docile caricature of nonviolence white people have created around him.
To be educated in American schools is to be taught that this country has been on some kind of linear journey toward justice and equality, culminating in the nation the (brutal slaver and colonist) founders always really wanted us to be.How quickly and how completely one rejects this false historiography of America is, as much as anything, the dividing line between white conservatives and white liberals.
We more or less agree that those inequities exist and are, in fact, problems
Of course, conservative forces are never satisfied with merely promoting the white narrative of US history. They also feel the need to attack other narratives that take a less forgiving view of white contributions to the continents bizarrely named for people who got lost. And that is why conservative white people have lately descended upon “critical race theory” as their new casus belli.
But it works as a wedge issue for Republicans because teaching anybody, anywhere, that white people might still be complicit in the ongoing acts of violence and oppression against others goes against the conservative orthodoxy that white people are the best people and any mistakes committed were either benevolent, justified, or corrected long ago.
KEEPING WHITE KIDS DUMB IS AS AMERICAN AS APPLE PIE 
KEEPING NON-WHITE KIDS DUMB is also something conservatives are always trying to accomplish, but most parents of color know that going in. Every person of color from this country has at least been exposed—by a parent, elder, or the community writ large—to an extracurricular crash course on what America is really about. . The author of this article taken from The Nation understands why white ignorance makes the conservative political project easier. It is, for instance, a lot easier to get white people to vote for continued housing discrimination if they don’t even understand how housing discrimination works.
Hobbling your own children with ignorance to maintain cultural dominance is a hell of a choice.
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RELATED CONTENT (Vanity Fair 06.04.2021)
Republican lawmakers in state after state are trying to crack down on teaching systemic racism, a culture war issue that fits right into the GOP's 2022 Midterm Elections Strategy.
" In recent months Republican lawmakers in close to a dozen states have aggressively made legislative advances against the GOP’s latest culture war target: “critical race theory.”
Idaho governor Brad Little last month signed a bill supposedly designed to bar state-funded schools and universities from “indoctrinating” students into the view that “any sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin is inherently superior or inferior.” While Idaho’s law, which is the first of its kind, may not sound disagreeable in theory, it is a different story in action, as the legislation could ostensibly ban educators from teaching that present-day financial inequality is linked to America’s history of systemic racism.
Critics of the legislation have also warned that it will stifle the First Amendment rights of teachers.
ARIZONA ...
Oklahoma, Georgia, Louisiana, Florida, Missouri, West Virginia, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Rhode Island have all introduced similar bills or amendments, or have proposed state mandates that would have a similar impact on schools.
. . .The ACLU has condemned the new batch of legislation and questioned if the proposals violate the free speech rights of educators and students. “A nationwide attempt to censor discussions of race in the classroom is underway,” the free speech advocacy group wrote in a statement.
“These bills don’t just set back progress in addressing systemic issues, they also rob young people of an inclusive education and blatantly suppress speech about race.… It’s up to state governors across the country to veto these harmful bills.”
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