Thread by @tweetraychang

This is the outcome of the CRT mania. A CRT mania that began with people (including many Christians) misrepresenting what CRT is to the public and seeking to discredit it because it sought to distract people away from actually addressing racism.

Our education is truncated: 🧵

https://twitter.com/rcallahanwaco/status/1538162005026168834

My younger school years, we didn’t really talk about histories that didn’t make America sound like a perfect country. Our bipartisan governmental system was propped up as a perfect system where I was led to believe that every person had a voice that was heard.

I pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and felt weird about it, but didn’t have a conceptual framework for knowing why.

Little did I know that “one nation under God” was added later - & signaled a type of Christian nationalism.

religionnews.com/2021/07/02/pat…

Even in high school, I was led to believe that the Civil Rights movement helped us to finally get rid of racism & racial injustice in America and that if people were poor, it was because they were lazy or stupid. I was taught that everyone got what they deserved.

Martin Luther King Jr. was hailed for his commitment to non-violence, and very little addressed the reasons he and so many other Black people faced violence. His assassination was hailed as a “sacrifice” that healed the nation. Once King was killed, we were apparently postracial.

I was taught that Malcolm X was the bad Black man who wanted to destroy America and King was the good Black man who was willing to work with the existing systems. I was never told that they worked with each other even at the end. I was only told they were opposed to each other.

I was taught that Pilgrims brought good will to the Americas and that they tried to be friends with the “Indians.” I was told that the “Indians” had poor immune systems and that Europeans had stronger ones - signaling a superior race through strength.

I never hear much about Latin@s and Asians. I only remember a short lesson on the Chinese Exclusion act and Japanese Incarceration, but it was never taught in a way that illuminated the racism driving those acts.

The way I was taught Asian American history, I saw fellow Asians as ‘yellow peril’ & thought the US did right by closing borders & protecting America from potential threats. I remember thinking how it all made sense. I didn’t ask why they didn’t do the same with German Americans.

I was also never taught about how racism rears it’s ugly head in contemporary society. All my education felt like it existed to make me believe that everything was good as long as I worked hard and took care of myself and my family. Little did I know…

It wasn’t until after college where I started to learn much of what I know now. Seeing things more completely - celebrating the good and grieving over the evil.

So much has yet to be done.

At the @NMAAHC museum yesterday, I ran into a 71 year old black woman who said, “I realized years ago that I needed to channel my anger into action. When I get angry, I work to mobilize and act. This is why I’m here in DC today for the #PoorPeoplesCampaign.” She is Christian.

If we fail to education our children about the whole truth about anything - both good and bad, we will find ourselves in a society where people are disillusioned by half-truths and offer half-measures as solutions that will ultimately fall short.

If you are going to critique CRT, go ahead and do it. Just don’t do it in a way where you are creating a straw man that is easy to topple and misleading people with faulty assumptions.

But let’s be clear, no child I know is being taught CRT in schools.