Our movements are strong and we are winning. In response, the Right is expanding racist strategies – and their latest tactic is attacking Critical Race Theory (CRT). With CRT as their latest dog whistle, the Right-wing media is going so far as to blame CRT for a host of things like last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, diversity and equity trainings in companies, and LGBT clubs in schools.
As of today, 26 states have either passed or have pending legislation to ban talking about systemic racism in the classroom. Educators, especially Black educators, are being threatened or fired for teaching about our country’s racist history.
The Right is looking to mobilize their base to turn out for the 2022 midterm elections using CRT as a hook. Along the way, they will also develop new leaders and elect new Right-wing, anti-public-school officials to local school boards and state legislators.
In the face of these attacks, education and racial justice organizations such as the African American Policy Forum, The Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS), BlackLivesMatter in Schools, and SURJ members have been organizing locally and nationally to say no to such flagrant white nationalism, efforts to obscure our country’s true history, and building alternatives for racial justice in education.
In this webinar we’ll hear from Zakiyah Ansari, Advocacy Director at the Alliance for Quality Education, Barbara Gross from EJ-ROC at the NYU Metro Center, Scot Nakagawa from Change Lab, and SURJ chapter members who are leading fights in their communities.
We’ll learn about the Right’s strategy with these attacks as well as how we can effectively organize to bring more white people into anti-racism and counter the far right’s white nationalist recruitment through organizing for racial justice in education. Let’s make it clear that the truth about our history and ongoing systemic racism and white supremacy hurts us all.
We’re witnessing something very dangerous. The GOP is facilitating a merger between the far-right and the near right and that, I probably don’t need to tell you, is a very bad development.
Scot Nakagawa, panelist for our webinar on 7/27
