6:18 p.m.: This story has been updated throughout to reflect Tuesday evening’s debate on the legislation.
A bill that educators say would have a chilling effect on Texas classrooms and efforts to have honest conversations about race is barreling ahead in the Legislature.
The House voted 79-65 Tuesday to pass to a bill that its supporters painted as an effort to keep “critical race theory” from being taught in schools.
It’s a political move that would bring Texas’ Republican-controlled Legislature in line with some other conservative states. And for hours on Monday and Tuesday, House Democrats tried to derail the bill with pointed questions about the legislation’s intent and potential harm.
Dozens of groups decried the bill — and its Senate companion, which already cleared that chamber — as an infringement on speech and existing education standards, saying it would weaken attempts to prepare students to be informed, active citizens.
During heated exchanges on the House floor, Democrats also labeled the legislation “Orwellian,” calling it a way of whitewashing the country’s painful history of slavery.
The idea of keeping classrooms free of “critical race theory” — an academic framework that, among other things, probes the ways in which government policies uphold systemic racism — has become a conservative rallying cry, while the meaning of it has become twisted. The backlash comes as schools across the country consider steps to boost diversity and inclusion, including bringing on diversity officers, seeking unconscious bias training for staff and examining their curriculums through a racial equity lens.
Texas’ legislation would prohibit teachers from receiving training that “presents any form of race or sex stereotyping or blame.” And it would ban them from teaching that “an individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously” or that someone should feel “guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” due to their race.
Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, initially introduced the bill by asking: “Do you want our Texas kids to be taught that the system of government in Texas and the United States is nothing but a cover-up for white supremacy?”
Rep. Mary González, D-El Paso, pushed back, noting she earned her doctorate in part by doing academic research using critical race theory texts. The ideas “healed” her, she said, and helped her understand society. She repeatedly pressed Toth to share how many critical race theory books he’s read — cover to cover — to inform his legislation. He responded by saying he’s read papers.
“So you want to ban a whole subject of theory because you have read a couple of white papers?” she retorted. González later said people should only vote on the legislation if they’ve read critical race theory texts for themselves.
Her line of questioning set the tone for hours of heated debate that stretched from Monday night into early Tuesday morning, as lawmakers went back and forth over more than two dozen amendments. When the bill came up for final approval Tuesday evening, she and House Democrats once again tried to halt it.
“Who are we? Are we a body that trusts and supports our teachers?” González said. “Are we a body that wants to ensure the next generation of Texans are prepared to engage in our local communities and support the growth of our state? Are we a body that makes informed and independent decisions regardless of what outside groups are encouraging us to do?”
The House vote came after days of fierce mobilization among groups that stand against the legislation.
Dallas school trustees voted Monday to urge legislators to oppose the bill. As part of a broad racial equity effort in DISD, every employee is going through training on unconscious bias and dismantling racism. The administration has, for example, pledged to tackle the reasons why Black students have been overrepresented in discipline statistics and underrepresented in gifted and talented programs.
Superintendent Michael Hinojosa said the legislation could “gut many of the items that we care about.”
In a series of tweets earlier this month, Toth grouped his bill with red-meat legislation that would impact voting and abortion rights, saying that Republicans are finally “getting some big wins for the base.” Arguments in support of his bill echo former President Donald Trump, who created the since-dismantled 1776 Commission to promote “patriotic education.”
It came after The New York Times published an award-winning series of articles, the 1619 Project, that sought to reframe American history around slavery’s consequences and the contributions of Black people.
While the Texas bills don’t explicitly mention critical race theory, powerful Republicans tie the legislation to it and it was the subject of much of the House debate. When the Senate version passed that chamber, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick cast it as a win for stopping “Critical Race Theory & 1619 Myths in Texas Schools.”
“When Texan parents send their children to school, they expect their students to learn to think critically without being forced to consume misinformation about our country’s founding and the biases of advocacy groups that seek to belittle our democracy and divide us,” he said in a statement.
Education, civics and business groups quickly mobilized to oppose the bills. Superintendents and chambers of commerce have come out against them as have some state school board members.
“This unnecessary bill — like others introduced across the country — prevents schools from proactively addressing harmful acts of discrimination, ties the hands of teachers rather than supporting them, and seeks to hold students back from grappling with and helping to solve real challenges facing our society,” said Jonathan Feinstein, Texas director of The Education Trust.
Opponents pointed to several aspects of the bill that they say would send social studies education backwards and encroach on local control.
The legislation originally stated that teachers must not be required to teach current events or discuss controversial issues, alarming educators.
“We need to create spaces with our students to engage students on these issues,” said Lilliana Saldaña, a professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio. “We need to give students the language to talk about it. How do we even teach about civic engagement if not through real life efforts?”
Toth amended the bill to say teachers can’t be compelled to discuss “a particular current event or widely debated and currently controversial issue.” If discussed, a teacher must explore those topics from diverse and contending viewpoints “without giving deference to any one perspective,” the bill states.
Rep. Diego Bernal, D-San Antonio, questioned how a teacher, then, should have discussed what happened during the deadly riot in Charlottesville, Va., when white men marched and chanted, “Jews will not replace us.” Trump later said there were “very fine people, on both sides” of the clash.
“It means I have to send my Mexican American, Jewish daughter to school and have her teacher equivocate on what it means to have grown men saying that, ‘Jews will not replace us,’” Bernal said.
Toth also passed an amendment specifically related to the 1619 Project, which won a Pulitzer Prize last year. His amendment states that teachers can’t require an understanding of the New York Times essays or that “slavery and racism are anything other than deviations from … the authentic founding principles of the United States, which include liberty and equality.”
That’s a whitewashing of history, Democratic lawmakers argued. Several Founding Fathers owned slaves.
“The founding principles considered me to be three-fifths of a person,” said Rep. Nicole Collier, D-Fort Worth, who is Black. “History didn’t have equality for all. It was only equality for white men.”
Toth’s legislation would also prohibit teachers from giving assignments that involve lobbying or political activism for course credit or extra credit. Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, who sponsored the sister legislation, said that provision is intended to keep students from being encouraged to lobby, strike or protest.
But educators say that would take away a learning tool that helps students connect what they’re taught in the classroom to the real world. Hands-on projects, they say, allow children to feel a part of the democratic process.
Other successful amendments expanded the list of documents highlighted in the bill as “the founding documents of the United States” to include more diverse texts, including writings from Frederick Douglass’ newspaper.
The majority of the state’s public school students are children of color.
The issue of whether critical race theory has a place in schools — or even if it’s taught in schools — has roiled parents and school boards in recent months. In the Southlake Carroll trustee race, the pair of winning candidates were painted as the “anti-critical race theory” choices. At a recent Plano ISD board meeting, dozens of parents showed up in protest against efforts to bring “CRT” to schools, despite administrators repeatedly insisting it wasn’t on the agenda or included in the curriculum.
Rep. Jarvis Johnson, D-Houston, seized onto this idea on the House floor, shortly before lawmakers gave the bill initial approval around 1:30 a.m. Tuesday.
”There is not one agency in this state that has compelled a teacher to teach critical race theory,” Johnson said. “This author is literally legislating nothing. An overreach of power.”
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