By David Beard, The Dominion Post
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Legislators visited the controversial topic of critical race theory on Tuesday, with three presenters giving the joint Education Committee an overview of the topic and whether it’s present in West Virginia schools.
Tuesday was the third day of September interim meetings. Education Committee Counsel Melissa White provided the overview. She said 26 states are looking at bills or other means – such as school board policies – to ban any teaching connected with CRT; 12 legislatures have passed bans; there is no federal law on the topic.
White read at length from a Wikipedia article on the subject, but most newspapers, including The Dominion Post, do not use Wikipedia as source material so we’ve complied a limited overview from various sources.
The left-leaning Brookings Institute gives a favorable but concise summary: “Critical race theory states that U.S. social institutions (e.g., the criminal justice system, education system, labor market, housing market, and healthcare system) are laced with racism embedded in laws, regulations, rules, and procedures that lead to differential outcomes by race. Sociologists and other scholars have long noted that racism can exist without racists. However, many Americans are not able to separate their individual identity as an American from the social institutions that govern us—these people perceive themselves as the system. Consequently, they interpret calling social institutions racist as calling them racist personally.” …