From school boards to state legislatures, a battle is raging over how public schools should teach students about race and racism in the United States. Much of the debate has centered around opposition to “critical race theory,” which many have pointed out is based on a body of legal scholarship that is rarely, if ever, actually taught at the K-12 level.
Yet the focus on the term often obscures more than it illuminates. What’s driving concern about what’s being taught to schoolchildren is a new racialism that directly challenges the colorblind approach that has been hegemonic in public schools since the civil rights movement.
Under the colorblind approach, we were taught to view people as individuals, to emphasize our common humanity, and to avoid racial or ethnic generalizations. Under the new racialism, we are told that it is naïve to believe that transcending race is possible in a society where every institution is shaped by past and present racism; therefore, we need to acknowledge, emphasize, and place value on racial categories.
If you want to know how this new racialism manifests in the real world, look no further than Oregon’s Kindergarten 2021 Social Science Standards, which have been updated to integrate “ethnic studies.” Standards like this one lay out the knowledge, skills, and understandings that educators are expected to impart to their students, and teachers use them as a rough guide for composing their lessons for the year. Although Oregon schools are not required to implement these new standards until 2026, they have been approved for classroom use as of March of this year.