Utah lawmakers grapple with critical race theory amid conservative outcry
Burgess Owens, Republican candidate in Utah's 4th Congressional District, speaks with the North Sanpete High School football and basketball teams during a campaign stop Friday, Oct. 30, 2020, in Mount Pleasant, Utah. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
Burgess Owens, Republican candidate in Utah's 4th Congressional District, speaks with the North Sanpete High School football and basketball teams during a campaign stop Friday, Oct. 30, 2020, in Mount Pleasant.
Gov. Spencer Cox speaks at a briefing on COVID-19 at the Capitol in Salt Lake City on Thursday, May 13, 2021.
Utah lawmakers at both the federal and state levels are grappling with how to address critical race theory in schools and government amid conservative outcry alleging that the scholarly theory is racist and divisive.
Critical race theory, which was developed in the 1970s and is not currently taught in Utah schools, combines “progressive political struggles for racial justice with critiques of the conventional legal and scholarly norms which are themselves viewed as part of the illegitimate hierarchies that need to be changed,” according to Harvard Law School.
Harvard Law School further notes that most critical race theory scholars are persons of color who “challenge the ways that race and racial power are constructed by law and culture” and that “one key focus of critical race theorists is a regime of white supremacy and privilege maintained despite the rule of law and the constitutional guarantee of equal protection of the laws.”
In recent months, the phrase has become a rallying cry for many conservatives. It was mentioned 552 times in 11 months on Fox News, as reported by Media Matters, and multiple Utah County residents brought it up during a Spanish Fork town hall held by U.S. Rep. John Curtis, R-Utah, earlier this month.
“I would like to know what you have done or plan to do to stop the spread of critical race theory, which is currently permeating our schools, our military, corporations, and is replacing the American heritage or individual rights and responsibilities with group identification and group guilt,” one woman said at the May 4 town hall.
On Friday, U.S. Rep. Burgess Owens, R-Utah, announced he had introduced two pieces of federal legislation to address critical race theory.
“It’s divisive, it divides us. It’s racist,” Owens, who is Black, said in a video posted on Twitter. “And I’ve seen this before; I grew up in the deep south. We cannot allow this type of curriculum to spread throughout our country and taint the minds of our children.”
First is a bill that would reinstate former President Donald Trump’s executive order banning critical race theory in the federal government, which President Joe Biden rescinded in January.
“Critical Race Theory is, at its core, un-American, discriminatory, and based on Marxist ideology,” the bill reads, adding that the theory “relies on a Marxist analytical framework, viewing society in terms of oppressed and oppressor, and instills a defeatist mentality in those it casts as the oppressed.”
Critical race theory’s objective, the bill further states, “is the destruction and replacement of Western Enlightenment Liberalism with a Marxist influenced government.” Additionally, it “intentionally seeks to undermine capitalism and western values, such as property rights, free speech, and the very concept of Lockean natural rights.”
The bill has over two dozen Republican co-sponsors, including Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah.
Owens is also sponsoring a resolution “expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that Critical Race Theory serves as a prejudicial ideological tool, rather than an educational tool, and should not be taught in K-12 classrooms as a way to teach students to judge individuals based on sex, race, ethnicity, and national origin.”
The resolution goes on to state that critical race theory “has increasingly infiltrated our Nation’s elementary and secondary school classrooms in recent years” and “serves to resegregate institutions of education and balkanize students into groups by race and ethnicity.”
Many residents have called on the Utah State Legislature to address critical race theory at the state level.
On Monday, Gov. Spencer Cox announced that lawmakers will not consider the issue during a special session that begins on Wednesday.
In a letter to legislative leadership, Cox wrote that the “hot-button” issue “would benefit from more time, thought, dialogue and input.” He added that “it’s not that I disagree with the desire to act, but doing it the right way — and at the right time — will lead to better legislation.”
“Although Critical Race Theory has been around for decades, it has gained recent notoriety,” wrote the governor. “I have spent several weeks studying and talking to parents, teachers and education officials about this issue. I am on record saying that CRT has no place in our curriculum.”
Cox continued, “The difficulty, however, comes in defining terms and making sure that we are never stifling thought or expression — and that we make sure our children learn both the best of our past as well as our mistakes so we don’t repeat them. We must also make it abundantly clear that Utah is a place that welcomes everyone regardless of race, ethnicity, religion or any other background. It is who we are, and it may be easy to lose sight of that during a knee-jerk debate.”
Cox said he has had “very productive conversations” about critical race theory with the State Board of Education and noted that “they have asked that we delay any action on this issue until the general session so they have an opportunity to fulfill their constitutional role and work with educators and parents to get it right.”
“I believe they deserve that opportunity and will likely craft a better solution than we could in such a short time,” he said.