Thread by @lesliemb

People are trying to get me fired for this tweet. I encourage everyone to look at how the legislature defines critical race theory in HB 377, then explain how my ideas or behavior in the classroom align with any of what is forbidden under the law. legislature.idaho.gov/wp-content/upl…

https://twitter.com/lesliemb/status/1466632809850675209

The HB 377 doesn't ban the teaching of CRT. What it does is set up a straw man version of CRT. And of course I don't do any of the things that caricature of CRT includes.

Do I compel students to "compel students to personally affirm, adopt, or adhere to any" of the tenets named in the law? No.

Do I myself agree that the behaviors and beliefs named in the law are anathema? Yes. I don't believe anyone is superior or inferior because of a protected identity.

I don't believe anyone should be treated adversely because of their sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin. Nor their sexuality, socioeconomic class, gender identity, veteran status, ability or disability, etc.

I don't believe/ask others to believe "that individuals, by virtue of sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin, are inherently responsible for actions committed in the past by other members of the same sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin."

I'm an historian. I know how time works, as well as causality. I mean, my 5th great grandfather was among Austin's 300 and killed indigenous people. Am I responsible for his behavior?

Of course not! But do I think it's good for me to reflect on that history and trace how his actions resonate through more recent generations? Yes!

Do I think I should feel bad that he did those things just because I'm his 5th great granddaugher? No!

Am I personally interested in learning more about that history and remediating any remaining harm, based on my own resources and capacity? Yes.

Would I expect everyone to react the same way to some horror in their family history? No.

I have observed that when someone has been educated from sources whose authors are relatively homogeneous in voice and identity, the introduction of new voices can feel challenging.

And because there's limited space in a semester, adding new voices does mean eliminating some other ones.

That doesn't mean that I think the people whose voices and experiences are represented in the sources I have selected for a course are superior to the people whose voices have, at least in the past, been more commonly represented.

It means that I want to fill gaps in students' understanding of the past. In my experience—and in Idaho K-12 education in particular—there are a lot of voices that get silenced. And so I try to put them back into the narrative.

The inclusion of those sources makes the course *more* objective, not less. In fact, much of what I include might be beloved by libertarians because the narratives are often cautionary tales of government oppression and overreach.

Think about Manzanar and Japanese-American incarceration, for example. Or Navy sailors attacking Chican@s in the "Zoot Suit riots" (which were actually largely incidents of military misconduct). Or the stealing of land from indigenous peoples.

But I also include the quieter voices that get drowned out. The LDS mother, for example—where is she in traditional history texts?

Similarly, I want to tell the story of the Black Panthers' free breakfast program. That's a tale of private citizens stepping in to help one another. That food came from private sources, not the federal government. Isn't that the kind of effort conservatives want to see taught?

However, in my experience, some white people feel threatened at first when they learn about the history of BIPOC people in the U.S. The same holds true for men learning the history of women and nonbinary folks.

But once they start reading and connecting with the experiences of people in the course materials, students get really interested in that history—and they get upset they haven't heard this stuff until they're 22 or 35 or 57 years old.

The principle that including the perspectives of people with as many different identities as possible actually allows for a *more* objective history because it's more likely to catch biases—that's called standpoint theory.

I think most people, no matter where they land on the political spectrum, would agree that it's a sound principle.

It comes from critical race theory.

When I say my class will engage with critical race theory, that's what I'm talking about: representing *more* voices, not fewer. And learning how U.S. Americans' different identities, especially when layered atop one another in a single individual, is really, really complex.

CRT is not *at all* the bogeyman that the IFF and others would have you believe it is. It's not about discrimination. It's about being *more* expansive and *more* welcoming, not less.

Those of you who want to continue to imagine CRT is a bogeyman can cc Idaho AG @lawrencewasden and @GovernorLittle all you wish. But I know they're smart enough to see the value in my approach to history. And I trust they see the difference between the CRT of HB 377 & real CRT.

Minor correction: In this thread, I used “standpoint theory” when I meant “strong objectivity,” a concept that is itself built on standpoint theory. To learn more about those concepts, see the work of Patricia Hill Collins, Sandra Harding, and Donna Haraway.