President Joe Biden on Monday criticized Republican efforts to limit how educators discuss race and systemic discrimination in schools, arguing that teaching the topic is not about “waking up” but about acknowledging history.
Speaking at the Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast. National Action Network Day in Washington, DC, the president highlighted some of the administration’s recent achievements including establishing Juneteenth as a federal holiday – which was met with opposition from some Republicans who denounced the effort as “identity. politics.”
“The idea that we should remain silent about past abuses, as if they never happened? It’s not resurrected, to be honest,” said Biden. “It’s talking about history.”
Biden’s remarks come amid recent efforts by some Republicans to ban “critical race theory” in schools. Critical race theory is an academic discipline that studies how race affects social, legal and political structures, but the term has been used by Republicans in recent years as a blanket indictment of discussions of systemic racism or discrimination. Across the country, Republican lawmakers have pushed bills to restrict how the topic is taught in public schools, including banning the book.
Most recently, newly inaugurated Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) signed an executive order banning “critical race indoctrination and theories” in public classrooms. Sanders, who previously served as President Donald Trump’s former press secretary, defended the ban on Sunday on Fox News, arguing that teachers “should not be teaching our children and students to hate this country.”
And in Florida, Republican governor Ron DeSantis is looking to overhaul public universities, starting with the historically progressive New College in Sarasota where he recently appointed six conservative trustees to the board.
“We need to ensure that institutions of higher learning focus on academic excellence and the pursuit of truth, not trendy ideological implications,” DeSantis, who is widely expected to run for president in 2024, said during his inaugural address this month. .