Dear Editor,

On Thursday, our Attorney General Todd Rokita, Congressman Jim Banks and many other Republicans spoke out against Critical Race Theory and made several disparaging remarks about slavery.

For those who do not know, Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a body of legal scholarship and an academic movement of civil-rights scholars and activists in the United States that seeks to critically examine U.S. law as it intersects with issues of race in the U.S. and to challenge mainstream American liberal approaches to racial justice.

Republicans have strongly opposed teaching CRT by creating laws preventing it from being taught and making statewide tours to speak out against it. This is yet again another example of the GOP openly dog-whistling to a base that they continue to drive towards racist and hateful beliefs.

Republicans want to hide over 200 years of oppression and racism by removing it from our education system or rephrasing it in terms more appealing to their base, much as they did with the Tulsa race massacre. This recasting of the endemic racism evident in America’s history was shown today by our very own AG Todd Rokita as he said that “the enslavement of black people in US History is inaccurate.”

What makes this even more disgusting is that CRT is not being taught in schools throughout Indiana. Instead, the GOP has sought to turn an academic issue that is not applicable in public schools into a rallying cry to energize their far-right base. But the truth, despite what the GOP may believe, is that America was a land stolen from Native Americans and then worked by slaves taken from Africa. Yet even after being freed, laws were enacted in this country to continue to oppress all people who did not have white skin color.

I urge you to call and tell your elected officials to stop the rhetoric and to educate themselves. In a modern society where information is literally available to one at their fingertips, it is unacceptable that easily disproven lies are still the main talking points for our elected officials in their pursuit of power and higher office.”

Sincerely,

Xeryus Johnson
Fort Wayne