None of These Republicans Trying To Ban 'Critical Race Theory' Seem To Actually Be Able To Define It

Unfortunately, I am here to once again update you on the absurdity of the ongoing legislative battles over teaching “critical race theory” to children—something that doesn’t actually happen!

One of the latest bills in what I’m calling the “wholly unjustified white outrage” category of legislation was introduced by Alabama state rep. Chris Pringle, who–big shocker—wants to make it illegal to teach “critical race theory” in Alabama. Although the 2021 Alabama legislative session ended in May, Pringle decided to pre-file his bill almost a full eight months before the next session is scheduled to start. His commitment to racist dog-whistling might be impressive if it wasn’t also such a transparently desperate grab for political attention!

In actuality, critical race theory is an academic framework that examines the role that the social construct of racism plays in shaping our political and legal institutions. But in practice, Republican legislators appear to be using “critical race theory” as a stand-in for “literally any discussion of racism in the U.S.” One of the central issues with this proposed legislation is the fact that critical race theory is typically taught in graduate-level courses, and occasionally undergraduate courses—which means it actually isn’t present in the curriculum of any K-12 public school in Alabama, or anywhere in the U.S. for that matter. And yet that piece of factual information hasn’t stopped Republicans from beating the issue they manufactured into the ground. According to Media Matters, Fox News has mentioned “critical race theory” nearly 1,300 times since March, which isn’t totally absurd at all!

So, a columnist for AL.com decided to call up Rep. Pringle to ask him what exactly he believes this piece of anti-“critical race theory” legislation would do.

In response to a question about how his bill would define critical race theory, Pringle said “it basically teaches that certain children are inherently bad people because of the color of their skin, period.”

Well, that’s not even a little bit true! This man clearly hasn’t even read the “critical race theory” Wikipedia summary, let alone done actual research.

When asked for examples of some of the critical race theorists who have supposedly dedicated their entire academic careers to being mean to children, Pringle couldn’t name a single one. “Yeah, uh, well — I can assure you — I’ll have to read a lot more,” he said to AL.com.

The only “example” Pringle could offer of “critical race theory” being put into practice during the interview was largely incoherent and clearly bullshit.

“These people, when they were doing the training programs — and the government — if you didn’t buy into what they taught you a hundred percent, they sent you away to a reeducation camp.

…

The white male executives are sent to a three-day re-education camp, where they were told that their white male culture wasn’t their —”

Pringle reportedly blustered a bit about a supposed article he’d read about this phenomenon of white male executives being sent to these “reeducation camps” that sound like harmless diversity seminars, but he couldn’t seem to find the article to send to the AL.com columnist. Bummer! But I’m sure it’s definitely real!

“I introduced a very brief version of the bill to start the conversation, but it’s very difficult in this cancel society to have a frank discussion about racism in this country and this country’s history,” Pringle said. “I mean, history is being rewritten and I’m not exactly sure of the accuracy of what’s there now and what they’re trying to change it into.”

Welp, the truth comes out! All this propagandized panic is really just stemming from a fear that kids will learn a version of U.S. history that might actually acknowledge this country’s horrific history of violent racism.

“This is still the greatest country that’s ever, ever been in the history of the world,” he said. “And the radical left is trying to destroy that and tear us apart and divide this country based on race and class, which is exactly what they do in communist countries.”

Rep. Pringle must be getting his definition of communism from the same non-existent dictionary where he found his definition for critical race theory!