Shortly after scholar Nikole Hannah-Jones’s “1619 Project” was launched in 2019, the Pulitzer Center announced that it was partnering with the project to create curricular materials for public school use. The initial response was nearly completely positive, with more than 3,500 classrooms in all fifty states opting to use the lessons.
As the momentum built, the right took notice, and conservative historians and organizations like the Heritage Foundation and the Manhattan Institute set out to stop schoolhouse discussions of race, racism, and the ongoing impact of chattel slavery. A few months later, in early 2020, Arizona’s Republican Senator, Tom Cotton, sprang into action, introducing the Saving American History Act to curtail federal funding to all public schools that used resources from the 1619 Project.
The Big Lie About Race in America's Schools
Edited by Royel M. Johnson and Shaun R. Harper
Harvard Education Press, 248 pages
Release date: July 2024
Then, in February 2020, Ahmaud Arbery was murdered by white racists while jogging. This incident was followed by the police murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. Suddenly, tens of thousands of people were in the streets to say “ENOUGH,” and for a brief moment, it appeared that a racial reckoning was about to unfold.
Christopher F. Rufo, a filmmaker and writer affiliated with the far-right Manhattan Institute, was horrified by this spike in progressive activism and jumped into the fray, appearing on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program that fall. His appearance brought the phrase Critical Race Theory (CRT) to viewers and, virtually overnight, it was picked up by both mainstream and conservative media. By January 2021, Rufo’s national campaign, amplified by astroturf groups like Moms for Liberty, persuaded lawmakers in eighteen states to impose educational gag orders to stop teachers from discussing slavery or anything deemed “divisive,” charging that these topics caused white students to feel relentless guilt and shame over something they had no hand in creating. The right described these campaigns as “reverse racism.” In some states, this restriction extended from publicly-funded pre-K programs to colleges and universities.
But who, you might wonder, was teaching these classes?
Turns out, almost no one. This truth is the focus of The Big Lie About Race in America’s Schools, an incisive anthology of thirteen essays that deconstruct the distortions and factual manipulations promoted by the right. It’s an important, powerful, and enlightening read.
In an essay entitled “Ten Truths and One Very Big Lie About Racial Realities in K-12 Schools and Higher Education Institutions,” co-editor Shaun R. Harper reports that nearly 80 percent of all public school teachers are white and 77 percent are female. “Where is the evidence that a lot of woke white women are teaching racist concepts to preschool, elementary, middle, and high school students?” he asks.
Moreover, the majority of administrators at public colleges and universities are white, pushing Harper to once more question the conservative assertion that admissions officers and deans favor students of color over white students or that course after course teaches CRT.
Take the curricula used to train aspiring educators. Harper and his colleagues at the Race and Equity Center at the University of Southern California analyzed the syllabi used in an array of teacher education programs. What they found was startling: “Few courses explicitly about race and racism exist in university-based teacher preparation programs,” he writes. “One obligatory ‘multicultural education’ course that includes a week or two on race is much more common.”
But truth and facts don’t seem to matter to the right. Book bans to keep texts dealing with race out of students’ hands—later extended to include books addressing homophobia, transphobia, and progressive movement building—took off. As John Pascarella III writes in “Why Book Bans Are Occurring in Schools and What is Being Done to Stop Them,” during the first six months of the 2022-2023 academic year, 4,003 bans were introduced in twenty-one states.
But as grim as these facts are, The Big Lie’s contributors stress that personal and political changes are possible, if teachers and school staff are willing to join others and organize to alter the status quo. It’s as simple as plugging into a group to discuss what’s happening and strategizing to change it.
Erica S. Silva’s essay, “Teachers as Leaders for Racial Equity,” asks white educators to seek out race-conscious professional development. While this is admittedly a tall order for overwhelmed teachers, she stresses that organizing and learning can energize and empower them. “The truth about teaching in a politically divisive and dangerous time is that the work of advancing racial justice and equity cannot be done in isolation,” she writes. She further advises school staff to pay attention to racial dynamics and “disrupt race-neutral beliefs and language” that ignore the impact of racial differences on students and faculty.
Other essays situate the attacks on CRT and liberatory reading materials in a broader context, linking them to the right’s promotion of high-stakes testing and voucher programs meant to undermine public education. In addition, the book endorses an agenda that brings stakeholders together around issues including state funding, curricular requirements, teacher diversity initiatives, elimination of discriminatory school discipline policies, and removal of police from school buildings.
The fact that it calls out the right's agenda makes The Big Lie essential reading. Its passionate affirmation of the value of truth-telling about slavery and oppression in U.S. history, and its support for the overall value of public education itself, provide a clear rebuttal to the rightwing blather we’ve heard over the past five years. It deserves a wide audience.