To what extent, if at all, is CRT being taught or promoted in America's pre-tertiary public schools? @epkaufm and I recently conducted a nationally representative survey of 18-20 year-olds to find out.
The 'CRT is a legal theory taught only in univ. law programs' retort from the Left is a semantic distraction.
After all, if systemic racism, white privilege, and other concepts central to CRT are being taught in classrooms as settled truths, what difference does it make if students are not receiving an academic treatment thereof?
The chart below summarizes the distribution of taught and taught/heard responses across all 8 of the above concepts. Strikingly, 93% reported being taught and/or hearing about at least 1/8
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Majorities in both groups say they were taught disparities=discrimination, while nearly identical if comparatively lower shares reported being taught that there are ‘many genders’.
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We find that the volume of CRT-related classroom exposure robustly predicts blaming white people for racial inequality, viewing white people as 'racist and mean', and support for 'equity-oriented' policies like affirmative action.
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Importantly, all of these results obtain across racial/ethnic groups. However, one relationship is necessarily exclusive to whites--that between exposure and 'white guilt'.
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If such concepts were merely being presented as perspectives among competing others, these results might be less of a concern. However, the majority (68%) of respondents who reported being taught at least 1 concept indicated they were not told about 'respectable' counter-arguments.
If this isn't indoctrination, then what is?
We argue that schools and/or educators that want to teach such concepts should be given the choice of either teaching the diversity of thought surrounding them or being barred from teaching them altogether. 'Full stop'.