Welcome back to another week of fact-checking Show Mo Facts readers! We here at Truman were on midterm break last week and we are excited to be back to keep holding politicians accountable.
Today we are going to be fact-checking an ad put out by current state senator and nominee for Missouri’s 7th congressional district, Eric Burlison. This district covers southwest Missouri, including the cities of Springfield and Joplin. In this ad, Burlison is posed with a flamethrower. He then makes several claims about socialism and critical race theory, which he calls “zombie ideas”. Lastly, he burns with the flamethrower an effigy of critical race theory and “wokeness”.
Claim: Critical race theory is a brainless and old idea.
Fact: Conservatives like Burlison have used critical race theory as a boogeyman in the past couple of years. Yet Burlison’s claim that critical race theory is “brainless” and is being taught in our schools is not true. Let's first examine what CRT actually is as an academic theory and then let’s examine if it is actually being taught in Missouri schools.
Firstly, what is critical race theory? CRT, as an academic theory, was first created by legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado, among others in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The most basic idea of CRT is that race is a societal construct and that racism is embedded in the policies and legal system of our society and is not only the product of the biases of individuals. Kimberlé Crenshaw one of the originators of CRT as a theory described it this way to the New York Times, “It is a way of seeing, attending to, accounting for, tracing and analyzing the ways that race is produced the ways that racial inequality is facilitated, and the ways that our history has created these inequalities that now can be almost effortlessly reproduced unless we attend to the existence of these inequalities”.
Some conservatives have claimed that CRT teaches racism against white people. This is also untrue. CRT does not attribute racism to white people as individuals or even as a race of people. It also does not argue that white people living today are responsible for the actions of white persons in the past. Instead, it argues that white people today have an obligation to understand how racism still impacts our daily lives and to try to lessen the effects of racism for future generations.
Burlison also claims that CRT is being widely taught in schools. This is untrue. According to PBS, there is little to no evidence that critical race theory, as an academic theory, is being taught in schools. Some teachers have tried to incorporate ideas like the lingering effects of slavery into their curriculum, but no child is being “indoctrinated” with “woke” and “anti-white ideas”.
Burlison is attempting to frame the issue of education in a way that is favorable to Republicans. He is doing this because for a long time the Democratic party has been the party that was trusted more by voters on educational issues but now Republicans are gaining ground on the issue of education. Burlison is trying to turn an issue that used to be a net negative for Republicans into one that is a net positive.
This claim by Burlison might seem like just another political ploy to get voters, but this crusade against CRT and attacks on schools by Republicans has severe consequences. America is in a severe teacher shortage right now. Currently, one in four Missouri school districts only holds classes four days a week due to staff shortages. According to a National Education Association survey, the largest reason teachers quit is because of "dissatisfaction" with the job (see graph below). One teacher summed up her reason for leaving the profession by saying, “Politics about CRT (critical race theory) and posting lessons. I have been struggling so much with my mental health that it has become the final straw”. If Burlison and other conservatives continue to push this false narrative about CRT it could have even worse consequences for schools.
Due to Burlison’s misrepresentation of what CRT actually is and his untruthfulness over how widely it is taught in schools, as well as the effect this rhetoric can have on teachers and can contribute to the shortage of teachers we rate this ad as EXTREME on our Pants on Fire O-Meter. Missouri voters deserve to be told the truth about what is actually being taught in schools and Missouri teachers deserve the support of elected officials.
Thank you for reading Show Mo Facts! Be sure to follow us on Twitter as well as like and comment on this post. Also, send us any ads that you see and would like us to cover through our Contact page. If you’d like to check out another blog from our class, we recommend Gateway To Facts. They are fact-checking the MO DNC. Find them here!
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