BY JONATHAN FEINGOLD

Earlier this month, President Biden delivered the COVID-19 speech we needed. As the Delta variant surges, Biden offered concrete policy and commanding leadership. He announced wide-ranging initiatives to maximize vaccinations, curb transmission, and protect our kids. He was also unifying but blunt, calling out “elected officials actively working to undermine the fight against COVID-19.”

Importantly, Biden noted COVID-19’s disparate impact on communities of color and pledged to center “equity” in his response. This gesture to racial inequality matters, but it only goes so far. For any chance against racism, Biden must summon the same urgency and resolve he is bringing to the fight against COVID-19.

Where to begin? To start, Biden can return to the place he outlined his new pandemic response: the presidential podium. And fortunately for Biden, he can recycle much of his COVID-19 speech. The same special interests, tactics, and money driving anti-mask and anti-vax campaigns also fuel efforts to undermine the fight against racism. To get things moving, I have tweaked the intro of Biden’s speech—tweaks that shift the focus from our national COVID-19 response to our national racism crisis. (To guide the reader, my edits are bolded):

Good evening, my fellow Americans. I want to talk to you about where we are in the battle against racism—the progress we’ve made and the work we have left to do, and it starts with understanding this: Even as a highly coordinated and well-financed campaign against our schools, the truth, and justice has been hitting this country hard, we have the tools to combat this anti-American crusade, if we can come together as a country and use those tools. If we are honest with our children, protect our teachers and others who teach the truth and expand our arsenal of tools to identify and remedy sources of racial inequality, we can and we will turn the tide on racism in America.

It will take a lot of hard work, and it’s going to take some time. Many of us are frustrated with the special interests spinning lies to defuse a long-overdue racial reckoning, even after George Floyd’s murder ignited a national reawakening. You might be confused about what is true and what is false about the source of this backlash and concepts like critical race theory. So, before I outline the new steps to fight racism that I’m going to be announcing tonight, let me give you some clear information about where we stand.

Where to go from here? Again, Biden can follow his own script. It starts with the facts.

For nearly a year, and beginning with then-President Trump’s attempt to ban antiracist efforts across the federal government, the Right has waged a war against public education and the truth. This well-financed and highly coordinated campaign, a backlash to last summer’s global demands for racial justice, has metastasized into a near-nationwide effort to muzzle, intimidate, and punish truth tellers.

The fallout is real and ongoing. But, critically, so is the resistance. Thousands of courageous teachers have pledged to #teachtruth—even in the face of virulent harassment and threats of violence. Undaunted students have closed ranks around beloved teachers and condemned book bans. Parents too, who overwhelmingly want their kids to learn about racism, are rallying behind culturally responsive and antiracist education in their schools.

In a sense, the thousands of students, teachers, and parents fighting for the basic right to confront racism are answering Biden’s call to “out-organize” the opposition. What they need now is “air support” from the president. What might that entail? The choice is Biden’s. Here’s a top-10 list of measures the president, or his administration, could undertake tomorrow:

1. Require federal agencies and federally run schools to reinstate (or implement) instruction that focuses on systemic racism.
2. Condition federal funding, including relevant grants, on states and localities permitting, if not requiring, instruction on systemic racism.
3. Affirmatively champion critical race theory, the 1619 Project, and other antiracist projects as part of an American civil rights tradition inseparable from icons like Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks.
4. Challenge the legality of state laws designed to chill classroom conversations about systemic racism.
5. Use federal funds to repay, and offer legal support for, any teacher, school official, or school district who loses pay or funding for teaching the truth about race, racism, or other “divisive concepts.”
6. Prosecute or otherwise hold to account individuals and entities that harass, intimidate, or threaten teachers for pledging to teach the truth.
7. Support lawsuits that leverage “divisive concepts” bills to sue schools and districts that omit or prohibit instruction on systemic racism.
8. Clarify that Title VI obligations, including the mandate that schools avoid racially hostile learning environments, often (a) require instruction on systemic racism and American history and (b) benefit from comprehensive approaches that include insight from sources such as critical race theory and the 1619 Project.
9. Establish a taskforce—perhaps called the “Uncovering Buried Truths Commission”—that produces age-appropriate educational content on key, but often overlooked, moments in American history.
10. Remind the nation that today’s anti-antiracist efforts are not new, but rather a reenergized front to stymie the fight for equality and justice.

This list is illustrative and incomplete. But that’s the point. The Right is waging a war against public education. It’s time for Biden to enter the fight and join those on the frontlines who dare to teach the truth.

Jonathan Feingold is associate professor of law at Boston University School of Law.