22 February article “Film produced by lawmaker targets CRT” about Identity Marxism: The Rise of Critical Race Theory. Article states, “The history of this nation is being challenged and prosecuted for being systematically racist.” It expresses a concern about CRT singling out white people as racial oppressors is seeping into the school curriculum. “Our schools should be safe places for learning not battlegrounds for divisive tribal warfare. Instead of looking at kids for the content of their character, we judge based on other characteristics, namely if you’re an oppressor or oppressed and I just don’t think that’s right. This is about power, it isn’t about making us better as a society,” Utah Senator John Johnson says.

Senator Johnson is right that it is about power. Power to create a block of single issue voters as he pits parents against schools by chasing after nonexistent conspiracy theories that call into question the professional integrity of our dedicated educators. What has changed in the Utah educational curriculum lately other than Republicans’ distorted view of CRT? Their idea of fixing a nonexistent problem is to ban the teaching of U.S history so that people do not feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or distress.

They object to any teaching that shows racism is or has ever been a real thing. Combine that willful denial of the racial reality of this country’s past and present with a party dedicated to racist dog whistles and serving the bigotry of a significant part of its base, and you have this onslaught of laws silencing and threatening teachers and outright making it illegal to teach an accurate version of history. Saying to its white base to not teach the young about the sins of their forefathers is akin to a felon wanting to hide his arrest records.

When was learning and growing as a person ever comfortable? You can’t share the pain of someone else nor the culpability of someone else in the past. The Prophet Joseph Smith said, “We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression” (Articles of Faith 1:2).

Richard Keckler

North Ogden

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