Kentucky should not cover up its past racial wrongs with legislation like SB 138

As a professor of history and African American studies, I remind my students that the history of nations is built on myths and that promoting national myths becomes dangerous when it conveniently takes history and facts out of context. Here are some of the myths about the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT), the subject of Senate Bill 138 currently in front of the Kentucky legislature. Myth #1: CRT promotes the idea that all white people are bad. Myth #2: CRT teaches anti-Americanism. Myth #3: CRT holds that all whites are implicitly guilty and born racist.

The historical context is much more sobering. The false claims made by Moms for Liberty share the same rhetoric with white backlash groups who promoted racial segregation in public schools in the 1940s and 1950s. Just a few years after the 1954 Brown v Board of Education decision, antidemocratic organizations like the White Citizens Council claimed that racial integration would lead to racial hatred. In 2022, Moms for Liberty say that Critical Race Theory promotes anti-white bigotry and anti-Americanism. The fundamental problem with their argument is that Critical Race Theory is not taught in Kentucky’s public schools.

But, under the influence of Moms for Liberty and the outrage machine at Fox News, Kentucky lawmakers have proposed Senate Bill 138, which would ban the teaching of “critical social justice” and “revisionist history of America’s founding.” For some of Kentucky’s legislators, it makes no difference that Critical Race Theory is taught almost exclusively in law schools. What are these proposed bans on Critical Race Theory actually trying to accomplish then? I believe that they seek to make the subject of systemic racism in Kentucky’s history of slavery and racial segregation off-limits, claiming that any discussion of racism makes school-age children uncomfortable. By invoking discomfort, the public schools would have a reason not to teach these subjects.

For example, Senate Bill 138 explains that there certain documents should be taught in social studies classes in Kentucky’s schools, including the Emancipation Proclamation, Frederick Douglass’s speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July,” and Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington. However, the same bill explicitly bans any discussion of social justice and why these declarations were necessary to affirm equality in Kentucky. In 1904, the infamous Day law in Kentucky uniformly mandated racial segregation across all Kentucky schools, public and private. In 1921, a Kentucky statute demanded that white and black children use separate textbooks. In 1957, three years after the 1954 Brown decision, another Kentucky law reaffirmed racial segregation of public schools. Senate Bill 138 wants to have it both ways — it celebrates the efforts of Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr. and it prohibits deep discussion of Kentucky’s history of slavery and Jim Crow.

Thus, the Senate Bill 138 banning Critical Race Theory is not about Critical Race Theory. It is part of a larger campaign to attack democracy and critical thinking, by ramping up the outrage machine and distract Americans from considering the implications of systemic racism in their own lives. These bills seek to replace honest discussion about the history of slavery and Jim Crow in Kentucky with empty myths of bootstrapping and exceptionalism.

To be sure, Senate Bill 138 also advocates for teaching hard work, objectivity, and rational thinking in Kentucky’s social studies curricula. Yet, Senate Bill 138 would also ban using those skills to examine the recent summers of of racial reckoning, including the murder of Ahmad Arbery and George Floyd and the police killing of Breonna Taylor. Senate Bill 138 would misdirect students who seek to gain a better historical understanding of racial inequality in incarceration, law enforcement, education, voting, home ownership.

The job of the student of history is to shatter the national myths of innocence. Kentucky’s struggle with systemic racism needs to be taught in schools, openly and honestly, and with recognition that Kentucky has evolved. Senate Bill 138 threatens to drag Kentucky back to its bad old days of covering up its racial wrongs with broken, unenlightened history.

Nikki Brown teaches History and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky.

This story was originally published March 29, 2022 at 9:14 AM.