BY HARVEY J. GRAFF
In my new Journal of Academic Freedom article, “The Nondebate about Critical Race Theory and Our American Moment,” I discuss battles over the past in the context of the US reckoning with truth, reconciliation, collective knowledge, and the pursuit of an inclusive, equitable democracy. These battles at the intersection of past, present, and future figured in recent elections—at least since 2016—and will no doubt play a role in 2024.
The fictitious debate (or nondebate) about teaching critical race theory in US elementary and secondary schools, promoted by partisan politicians in extreme and dishonest ways, is what I call “the second big lie.” As a battle over basic facts in clashes about understanding race in the United States, it bleeds into and overlaps with nondebates about the US Constitution, voting rights, abortion and LGBTQ rights, history, and book banning.
Today’s conflicts are not without precedent, but they are unusual. Developing piecemeal from the end of World War II, they accelerated after 2000 and much more after 2012. More recently, they result from a nationally organized, well-funded, disinformation campaign by right-wing activists, propagandists, and their supporters. Some claim historical grounding, others assert their basis in Christian doctrine, and yet others simply propagate fabrications.
Teachers, scholars, and other education advocates refute these lies professionally and responsibly, sometimes fearing reprisals. Educational associations speak out, invoking First Amendment free speech rights to counteract censorship and protect academic integrity and students’ social and intellectual growth. Nonetheless, many educators are leaving the profession altogether, partly because of this hostile climate.
At the same time, the “legitimate media” fail to conduct basic fact-checking of the propagandists’ assertions. National newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post publish more opinion essays about “critical race theory” than news reports, rarely investigating questionable claims.
Over the past two years, the pendulum swings from claims about US history and critical race theory to book banning and attacks on affirmative action, but “race” and “gender” are the ever-present “wild cards.”
Schools and education have been points of conflict throughout US history. Battles accelerated after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling that “separate is not equal” and increased in the 1970s and 1980s. Conflicts over race and class grew along with efforts both inside and outside the courts to maintain or reestablish restrictions and advance novel forms of segregation.
The past is always a battleground. History is, in part, a contest to control the present and alternative visions of the future. But the current contest between fact and truth, and between fiction and fabrication, is unique.
The false competition over the “origins” of the American experience—as if there were a single point of origin—between the award-winning 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones and colleagues and “patriotic” education projects that invoke 1620, 1776, or 1836 encapsulates today’s nondebate.
Note the declarations of “project.” The 1619 Project is a specific proposal to reorient American history by systematically including peoples of color whose enslaved forebears arrived in Virginia that year. Unlike their pseudo-patriotic competitors, the project’s creators readily admitted to errors when presented with credible evidence and arguments correcting them.
The 1619 Project never claimed to date all of American history from 1619. It underscored that singularly important symbolic date for understanding US history. The project is subjected to often unwarranted scrutiny, including trivial “fact-checking.” Critics call it “racist” and “un-American,” when its foundations are the opposite.
Each rival “projects” claims the status of gospel, presuming to account for all of American history while almost completely excluding racial and minority groups, most immigrants, and women. None admit to the need for correction.
Understanding today means seeing the paths from the post–World War II emergence of civil rights movements and the Brown v. Board of Education decision. The white counter-reaction accelerated after the passage of mid-1960s civil and voting rights legislation, galvanizing nationally organized, right-wing activist resistance movements of the 1990s and 2010s that exploded in late 2020 and 2021. The “history wars” of the third quarter of the twentieth century pale in comparison to what I call the “new white fright and flight.”
Deeply rooted in a complex of fears and anxieties, today’s conflicts are easily manipulated. Political subterfuge sparks fears and resentments that developed over the previous half century and longer.
Conflicts over zoning, including redlining and its patchwork retraction, opportunity zones, and fair and alternative housing, undergird today’s fears and actions. They are also at the core of the structural injustice critical race theory addresses.
From the 1960s and increasingly after, fear of desegregation, suburban and exurban flight, and fights over changing communities filled court dockets, state legislative agendas, and state and local school board sessions and elections. Battles over “forced” busing were the impetus for the historic shift toward “school choice” workarounds—including voucher programs, magnet and charter schools, and gatekeeping entrance exams for selective public schools. Opinion polls report popular support for advancing historically disadvantaged minority populations and fears of promoting reverse discrimination through affirmative action. Minority gains, exaggerated and fleeting, are taken illogically and inaccurately as white “losses.”
For those who respect facts and logical arguments, the conversation must change. Historians are poor futurologists, but we know that understanding the past is the best path forward, even if we know better than to expect unanimity.
My greatest concerns rest with the young, who are our best hope for an inclusive, democratic future. Our goal must be free and fair education that prepares and empowers everyone equally.
Harvey J. Graff is professor emeritus of English and history at the Ohio State University and inaugural Ohio Eminent Scholar in Literacy Studies. He is the author of Searching for Literacy: The Social and Intellectual Origins of Literacy Studies and the forthcoming My Life with Literacy: The Continuing Education of a Historian.
Read the complete volume of the 2022 Journal of Academic Freedom here.
