The Trials of Critical Race Theory | CBS Reports

americans are in the streets tonight demanding justice after the death of george floyd in minneapolis students across the country are continuing to call for reform in their education system 2020 reignited the push to change how schools teach america's youth about race when you bring in different perspectives and different people's stories and experience it enriches education it expands all children's learning they want entire schools turned over to that sort of teaching being the center of all curricula that's not an education that is an academy of anti-racism rumblings of resistance turned into a full-blown backlash the way diversity was being practiced at riverdale was diminishing people when you hear them talk about the sin of whiteness what you're watching is the death of our future as a country protests against so-called critical race theory turn political and are putting targets on teachers backs the sullivan county teacher is a step closer to being fired by the school district we've discussed things like covid metoo climate change have you ever received complaints about any of the other issues no never just on race just on race now sweeping bands are also setting their sights on subjects well beyond race crt is the catch phrase what is actually happening in this bill is that you're not allowed to talk about racism you're not allowed to talk about sexism you're not allowed to talk about sexual orientation and it has had a chilling effect the intention is really to put us in this war against each other [Music] [Applause] [Music] so good afternoon thank you for joining us today last fall i pulled my kids from riverdale country school what schools like riverdale are doing to our children in the name of anti-racism is in fact teaching them racism in 2021 investor and entrepreneur brian barton launched fair which stands for foundation against intolerance and racism he says fair is a response to the diversity and inclusion efforts at his kid's private school which he believes are exacerbating the problem they were created to solve so tell me about fair what is the organization about what what are your aims fair is committed to advancing civil rights and liberties and a common culture of fairness understanding and humanity we're specifically focused on educating people about what i call an intolerant orthodoxy we're not just defining ourselves by what we're against right being anti-racist but we're also defining ourselves by what we're for which is bringing people together and recognizing our our shared humanity bartending is one of a handful of parents who have gotten attention for their opposition to anti-racism efforts in new york city private schools we have made the decision to not re-enroll our daughter for next year this is really this critical race theory is really a cancer in our schools and in our society i read this that you took your kids out of the school in new york and i have been hearing anecdotally very much the same thing from many parents when we looked at riverdale it felt perfect it was really everything that we wanted in a school it was not a hard decision martinique's children ages 8 and 11 attended riverdale country school which cost nearly 60 000 per year per student and since it's a private institution it has more freedom over its curriculum than public schools i think where things changed dramatically is uh is over the summer of 2020. americans are in the streets tonight demanding justice after the death of george floyd in minneapolis thousands filling the streets from new york to los angeles the school started sending out memos about a new approach a new curriculum and i wasn't sure how to interpret those but there was a lot of language that i was unfamiliar with references to anti-racism that as somebody who has always been deeply opposed to racism and myself the the product of a marriage between two people from different racial backgrounds i kept an open mind one moment that they gave me pause was when the head of the lower school sent a memo that told us as parents it was our responsibility to teach our children to focus on racial differences and that's the antithesis of what i believe and what i know to be true it was teaching them to see each other as defined by their skin color and to see each other as inherently different based on that skin color as a black woman i see things through color i mean i race is a lens for me and it's a lens that might my children experience as well and i think for someone to say well you know i don't see skin color i just see who you are i think you're leaving out a really big part of who i am you're leaving out my cultural capital in 2009 gina parker collins who has one riverdale country school graduate and another still in attendance founded an organization to promote greater diversity in private schools you founded rise what is rise and what what do you aim to do with this organization so rise stands for resources in independent school education and goal simply is to make sure that independent schools are building stronger bridges with families of color and culturally relevant ways we aim to attract families of color black and brown families who value and are willing to invest in independent school education it seems as though it's become this sort of big bad boogeyman that many parents and organizations are alarmed that you know students as young as let's say you know elementary school students are becoming preoccupied with race with their skin color what do you say to that i feel empathy for parents who are so worried about the idea that their children are feeling shamed or that there's just too much focus on skin color that's a privilege that you have when in fact you're part of a which you might consider a monolith so we don't have to talk about that we can talk about other things and that makes folks feel uncomfortable but this is this is coming from a place of love when i think of the work that ryze does when i think of the the how i feel as a mom of two black children um it's centered around love and empathy one of the things that um some of the parents that we've spoken to that are involved with fair say is a lot of these lessons and conversations around race are are welcome but we're going too far and we're starting too young what does too far look like and what does too young look like when we know that the challenges of structural racism is a public health crisis the american medical association has proclaimed that the cdc has proclaimed that so to act as if racism doesn't exist and conversations around healing and belonging don't need to happen i just don't know where they're stuck at anti-racism and diversity equity inclusion efforts in schools have recently become fused with a decades-old academic legal concept known as critical race theory or crt which acknowledges racial disparities that have persisted in u.s history and offers a framework to understand how racism is enforced in u.s law and culture there's no evidence crt is taught in k-12 schools but some initiatives at the k-12 level are inspired by its tenets one problem with crt is that it reinforces racism in that it implies that black people are in a permanently down condition or we're in a down condition that can only change with some revolution in the way people think that deep down we know is never actually going to happen also crt has an implication that only so much can be expected of black people until this revolutionary change happens john mcwhorter teaches linguistics at columbia university and is a board member of fair surely though you agree with some of the goals perhaps not the tactics but some of the goals that that these people have and and what are they oh of course power relations are important that a great many people get the short end of the stick in society and really can barely change it we do need to seek justice we are an imperfect nation in a great many ways we always have been and we will be for a long time however i contest the idea that these things are not taught already certainly people need to learn about slavery and not just a little people need to learn what racism is and that it's not just calling somebody the n word or burning across on someone's lawn all of that's very important but that's not what the new crt crowd want what they think about most is don't be a racist don't be a racist but what they want is for battling power differentials to be the focus of everything and i think most of us know we'd like to battle power differentials but it's not going to be the main meal a few of the parents that we've spoken to who are critical of dei or of critical race theories say you know there's an over emphasis on race by so explicitly pointing out what my color is what your color is that we're really only reinforcing racism the structure of our society is built on race some of us see it and feel it every day of our lives like i did at the school where where i was one of two or three other black people we can ignore that but what would that what would the point be is that a great education when you bring in different perspectives and different people's stories and experience it enriches education it expands all children's learning now have you seen bad implementations of this of course right that's like asking have i seen a bad math lesson right like yes teachers are humans especially as we're trying to figure out how to teach about race and racism how do you address parents who are not comfortable with with their kids being introduced to these concepts i take a deep breath i figure out what i ask what's making you uncomfortable talk to me because often parents have these ideas that you're teaching my child about race as if children don't already have their own ideas about race right as if children because they're observers of the world and they learn by taking in information they recognize what they see they see that there are different skin colors they've already absorbed messages about race without anyone planning for that [Music] in the spring of 2021 concerns about crt continued to escalate and started becoming a flashpoint at public schools across the country a sullivan county teacher is a step closer to being fired by the school district the sullivan county board of education tonight confirmed charges of dismissal against contemporary issues teacher and baseball coach matthew hahn i love teaching this class to these students because i was that student you know i grew up k through 12. you know we didn't talk about right i mean like sullivan county is 100 or 94 white matt hahn has been a teacher in the tennessee public school system for 16 years and for the last 10 has taught a contemporary issues class at sullivan central high school where he and his students discussed news events and other conversations happening in the u.s and abroad teaching this class and teaching this material is very very important to me not only to me personally but the kids want to learn it too my students want to learn this stuff you know they see what's happening in the news they see george floyd and brianna taylor and jacob blake and they they see all these things and they want to know what is the environment surrounding this you know what is the history behind what's happening in the united states with regards to race so how did you lose your drone well this goes back to the fall of 2020. it was the the jacob blake and the kyle rittenhouse situation in kenosha wisconsin protests over the police shooting of jacob blake continued for a fifth day blake is still recovering from multiple gunshot wounds kyle rittenhouse the teenager charged with killing two people during tuesday night's protest is appearing before a judge this morning and i said well i have to talk about this in my contemporary issues class and so i did and i made the statement that white privilege is a fact and i asked my students what are we going to do to help or contribute to ending racism in the united states after the january the 6th insurrection i assigned an article by tanacy coates called the first white president we were going to look at the 2016 election we were going to look at social media and trump being a good businessman all the things that the students brought up and it had some language in it and a parent complained and i received a reprimand from the central office saying that i was not giving varying viewpoints to my students and that the language in the article was inappropriate for high school students fast forward to the derrick chauvin trial one of my students in in the class in response to one of my questions brought up white privilege and i said well what is that and so we started to research white privilege and then we watched a poem by kyla gene lacey entitled white privilege and there is some language in that this european history being taught as a major and african is an elective it is learning about my people only 28 days like i'm not black every second we discussed it had a really good discussion about it i think some parents heard about the lesson they complained and i was given dismissal papers on may the 5th han says he was fired for being insubordinate and unprofessional but was taken aback because he's been exploring social issues like these for nearly a decade you know we've discussed things like coven metoo race in the united states climate change those are all hot button issues right have you ever received complaints about any of the other issues no never can you understand or do you understand that white people particularly white males may feel as though the conversations are are sort of putting them against the ropes that the conversation has sort of changed and now they suddenly feel like they're on the defensive and every conversation we have around race pits pits white males particularly as the bad guys the oppressor the problem yeah i can understand that um but you know the way that i frame that to my students is continuing to live here in the united states and not do anything about racial oppression is a contribution to it and you can make that choice the increased scrutiny of han's lessons aligned with a shift in the national conversation about critical race theory in part fueled by conservatives working to politicize the term as conservative journalist chris ruffo suggested in his tweet in march of 2021 now no one has done more in this country than chris ruffo to expose so-called critical race theory for what it really is we've woken up millions of parents to the dangers of critical race theory they're now starting to take action in school boards across the country here you are you want to teach them about equity in the months that followed critical race theory became a household name and videos of parents and teachers denouncing crt at school board meetings around the country flooded social media feeds groups like moms for liberty have protested nationwide the nonprofit was founded in 2021 and quickly ballooned to over 60 000 members in 33 states i see you you just get started yeah this is his first real season oh wow robin steeman is the chair of the moms for liberty chapter in williamson county tennessee you know given the uh given the environment that we're in right now we're talking about racial injustice and injustice in general what do you make of the future for your children i'm worried that we are creating racial divides that we can't recover from it really kind of dead ends in division and that's what worries me you say that that starts in the classroom i don't think it has any place in the classroom if parents want to teach their children about social justice if they want to teach them about critical race theory or racial injustice they're free to teach that in their home it's their child it's not really the public education system's job to raise your children hey sweet pea steinman's moms for liberty chapters gaining influence amassing over 3 000 group members on their private facebook group and she says their goal is to prevent students from being introduced to certain ideas and imagery can you walk me through some of what you took issue with right so here's uh martin luther king and the march on washington story that should be told it's an example of how the curriculum chooses to teach the history is you've got this photo of the firemen spraying the black children and it's a different voices exercise and it goes through three points of view the first point of view that you um have highlighted here the issue is this is this is violence and it's just not appropriate for second graders right and the second pov you have highlighted we have to protect our citizens our white citizens that is what's the issue there well it's highlighting racism you know that a police officer would discriminate based on skin color most kids would have no idea that a police officer could or would do that right you know and then you're teaching that that this policeman is and has no problem with violence against children so is this a simple objection based on age-appropriateness yes so could a sixth grader read this i i i'm not sure where the line is but yeah an older child absolutely could so this is highlighted yeah they took issue with that because it's saying that black and white people are still not treated equally there's been no slavery for a long time but does that mean they're treated equally no and we feel that that's just that's too heavy you know for a second grader and we don't want them to i don't want them to see racism yet to to engage in it to learn racism i mean they can learn history but let's not teach racism right but i mean this is okay so it's it's now it is 1963 there has been no slavery for a long time so what we're talking about is 1963. whether it's 1963 or 2021 it actually really doesn't matter right because racism still does exist but in this lesson now it is 1963 there has been no slavery for a long time you have no problems with but are black people and white people treat it equally no so yeah well you're right when it's when it's pulled up yeah i see that again this is one of our parents that highlighted this overall the book we don't take a lot of issue with but it's just when you start adding in this stuff and you're going to teach them to read and write you know with just kind of graphic material it's it's overkill it's unnecessary okay but just to circle back to this for the la for one last time though the it's okay for children to understand that slavery existed at some point doesn't exist now but the idea that blacks and whites are not treated equally whether it's now or 1963 you don't want a second grader to be exposed to that there's a lot of it's a delicate issue historically in the u.s if we're going to talk about racism we have to talk about black people and white people right so how do you get around that i've had that conversation with my kindergartner actually so it's martin luther king day and i showed her his speech you know and she saw the footage of it of the march on washington and i said you know in the past this country has done some things the wrong way you know people were separated by their skin color and it wasn't fair and and i asked him like do you think that's a right thing to do and she says no i'm like that's correct that that is wrong it was wrong since then our country has done much to learn about learn its lesson and did away with the old way of doing things and i found that to be an age appropriate way you know to bring it up to my six-year-old so i think you can you know bring it up in a and teach it in a loving way that's not vindictive that's not going to make her feel guilty or shame shamed for you know the sins of you know people white people who were racists in the past on july 1st 2021 a new law in tennessee went into effect that is being called a ban on critical race theory but is far more sweeping in addition to prohibiting lessons that anyone of any race or sex is inherently privileged or oppressive either consciously or subconsciously it also bans teaching any concepts that would make someone feel discomfort guilt anguish or distress solely because of the individual's race or sex crt is the catch phrase that was used for this bill what is actually happening in this bill is that we're and these are the points of the bill that are very disconcerting and actually impacting things is that you're not allowed to talk about racism you're not allowed to talk about sexism you're not allowed to talk about sexual orientation that is not really crt so really what it's about is is watering down our educational system so that we can encourage our children to um to listen to the narrative that they're being given heidi campbell is a democratic state senator in tennessee and was one of the few legislators who voted against the bill which was sponsored and passed by the republican majority state legislature you know this issue came up sort of out of nowhere we did not have an issue with what was being taught in our schools and i think that this issue was generated for the purposes of you know motivating people politically and it has had a chilling effect on our schools and it's it's kind of complicated too because i think people don't necessarily know what they're allowed to teach and that's really problematic so was critical race 3 actually taught in tennessee public schools no so how do you ban something that doesn't exist it's a very good question you really can't ban something that doesn't exist but what the message that people are taking from this is is that they should not teach about the history of racism sexism sexism doesn't get talked about a lot but that's a big part of it and oppression of minorities in the history of our country and that makes all kinds of books that we read very very hard to teach because it's really a part of our history are there specific examples that you can point to that the the the people who sponsored or supported this bill took issue with that was being taught so there was a story that we heard in the legislature about a young white girl who lived in a nearby county who came home and was very hurt because she felt that people were saying she was racist lest you think we don't have this problem in tennessee listen to the following quotes from an email forwarded to me concerning a seven-year-old girl in williamson county the little girl told her mother i'm ashamed that i'm white the daughter then asked her mother is there something wrong with me why am i hated so much but we never saw this girl and we never really got to the root of that story but this was kind of the story that was used in the legislature to you know pitch this bill and and to justify this bill which i think is very hard for our african-american population to hear when they have spent years dealing with racism and segregation and desegregation and all of the issues that they've had to deal with to have the whole thing based upon the um the the pain the extensible pain of one little white girl we have a choice we can either pretend like that's not happening and push it under the carpet and flip off the switch and say no we're not racist and we're all great people or we can actually start to do the really really hard work of addressing it and it is painful and it is uncomfortable and those conversations are tough to have but i can tell you right now that putting it under the carpet and flipping off the switch is just going to make it much much worse so what are some examples of things that have been taught have been taught for years that teachers are now unable to do under this law so we're in the state of tennessee state of tennessee is a slave holding state in fact we're doing this interview right now um on the former campus of a historically black college that burned twice mysteriously in 1905. that conversation even though it is a marker attached to the building that we're that we're talking in might not be taught if it then goes into exploring why um that college burned or how this was in response to black people in tennessee taking the onus to educate themselves when the state wasn't going to or the fact that this is also land that were occupied by native american peoples who were forced out by andrew jackson who is president who lived at the hermitage not too far from here so those type of types of lessons both in the content how they're discussed how they're critiqued perspectives that are introduced all of those could be problematic under the new law [Music] hey something's on my head you know a lot's changed since you since you lost your job in terms of the law if you managed to get reinstated in this state how would you do the job that you've been doing that you've been dedicated to in this new environment i can't i won't sullivan county has removed contemporary issues from its program of study from what i understand i'll be teaching personal finance and economics in personal finance i don't know of any ways to introduce material like that during this time i'm considered suspended without pay you know i'm a type one diabetic my sisters had to start a gofundme you know just in case i don't get my job back and to help me pay bills while i'm i'm not being paid i mean i'll have went may to october without a paycheck we're certainly super proud of you yeah i mean i i think it's unfortunate that it's seen as anything other than you trying to just show a different viewpoint of the world you know not saying this is the only way or what i mean this is this is just truth that people live so we've only learned one side even when we were growing up you know and then now we're finally getting to hear the other side well thank you that means a lot of course we're here to have family tennessee's code of ethics for teachers mandates that students not be denied varying points of view a criticism that came up repeatedly during han's reinstatement hearing appropriate discussions around concepts like white privilege remain perfectly appropriate for a high school class like contemporary issues these charges of dismissal about mr horn refusing to provide his students with access to varying points of view which is required under tennessee law do you think that part of what is rubbing people the wrong way is that we've had a certain curriculum in this environment that we're in right now right where we're talking about race in very different ways um is the antidote to what has been taught historically or is the counter to what's been taught so yeah i think to me the varying viewpoint is kyla janet lacey and is tahasi coates those are perspectives that my students aren't exposed to on a daily basis because you know we live in that white dominant evangelical environment the law is written as kind of difficult because it appears very neutral and very benign in its language however when you peel this back and understand that the enforcement or the intent of the law is to discourage any sort of teachings in the schools that might discuss race and that's the intent sharon roberson is president and ceo of the ywca of nashville and middle tennessee which issued a letter to the state's department of education denouncing the new law for what they say will have harmful effects on students you mentioned that one of the keys to understanding how all this will unfold and what the ramifications are is going to be how this is enforced what does that mean what it means is that you have a principle this is an example let's say you have a principal and that principle has a bias against any sort of teachings about race let's say there's a teacher that actually has been taught true history of this country at some point in their educational process and determine what wait a minute it's a little different let me teach this history to the kids in my classrooms and they do their job because the principal doesn't like it and let's say they get a parent that says susie came home and she says i don't want to be white anymore because of what i learned in school the parent complains that teacher gets written up principals have a lot of authority over who's in that classroom the teacher loses their job but you could have some principles that don't look at things that way some parents may say i want this for my children so the enforcement is going to be so individualized that i'm saying it will have a chilling effect and teachers will not want to teach this and what is taught in one district in one city could be wildly different than what's taught somewhere else in the state and how it's taught how critical is this moment i mean if if you if you look at the arc of history what is this moment going to be judged by i think that later years down the road in generations people will look back who supported this law and they'll be embarrassed they'll be upset it will take generations maybe but they'll say well no that was just what people thought we were just afraid and they'll be ashamed because i do think that morality always wins and i think that it will in this case and people would be very ashamed that they did not want their kids to understand this [Music] kami long's daughter just started the fifth grade she's worried the new law will prevent her daughter from being exposed to what she says are important ideas and conversations lies my teacher told me everything your american history textbook got wrong and we have the children's version too really where's that that one what do you make of this anti-crt bill that's been passed into law my opinion spans from looking at history and looking at the civil rights era movements that happened in the 60s during desegregation and everything and the same talking points that are being used to oppose crt are the same talking points that were used to oppose integration and everything else the kkk was created um i think it's like an hour and a half away from here in pulaski tennessee and i think when you know things like that and you understand especially in tennessee you know mlk was shot here just hours away in memphis i think that when you start really looking at those things you can understand why it's necessary to have that education and i think that in a very broad general sense if you don't talk about something it doesn't go away are you taking history class now i am in history yes yeah where do you so you just started the school year so what like what are you learning about now i'm currently just native americans that used to live in like natural area and places like that have you learned about what happened to them um we are starting to learn about what has happened to those tribes like maybe settlers had come and taken their spots brought sicknesses to them they went to war or something like that that's what we've been learning about today actually um uh that's about it but it's slightly intense yeah it is american history is intense some might object to that yeah right i mean some might say look this is this is not making america look good yeah um this might make someone uncomfortable yeah like this might make a white person uncomfortable yeah if if there's a lesson that says that people entire peoples were exterminated because of white settlers yes absolutely most of the backlash and legislation has been spearheaded by adults but to understand the impact for students particularly for students of color we spoke with high school students in nashville do you guys feel like racism is alive and well on campuses yes i do believe it's very alive and well on campus and i think that implicit racial bias is especially implemented race is talked about and discussed at hillsboro but it's downplayed a lot and diluted and very whitewashed especially when it comes to history class where you are supposed to talk about race relations but it's very much oh here's a lot about european history but we're only going to talk about race relations when it's in the context of enslavement and that's frustrating for a lot of people because it's like okay let's talk about the generational trauma this inflicted and then there were some kids who would um like if like i would be called inward a lot and i'm not even that dark i'm mixed i'm white black and filipino sometimes we learn about our history but we don't learn about the cause and effect of history we might learn about you know slavery but we don't learn about how that slavery has systemically hurt a certain minority and something that no matter how much you talk about race if you don't also talk about that cause and effect how does our history also influence in our day to day what do you guys make of um you know what's happened in the tennessee state legislature your leaders have determined that these conversations around race don't belong in k through 12. i think that if you're not gonna teach it k through 12 when are we ever going to talk about it are we going to talk about it in college probably not i feel like it's an uncomfortable subject i mean a whole race of people got alienated and put into enslavement but i feel like it's something we've got to talk about because a it's a major part of our history and b it's one thing that is affecting us to this day and it's been hurting uh black people and other races ever since so if we don't teach anyone how to handle that or even what that is and i feel like you would go into the world a bit lost and that's not that's not something school should just let slide [Music] you know it strikes me walking onto a public school campus that something like this a celebration of of one particular group of people in this moment in time and in this place something like this could be highly controversial why did people move from farms to cities during this time kevin they were looking for dolphins absolutely now let's talk about up the sinclair in the meatpacking industry i want to hear you all moshida pettis teaches history at a charter school that serves predominantly students of color this is the first school year teachers have to follow the new anti-crt law yesterday we talked about women in factories and what their lives were like today we're going to talk about child labor okay how does this new law impact you in terms of instruction in classroom but also you know students a lot a lot of times have questions like how do you how do you interact with them well the first thing is to make them aware of what the laws are so that they get an understanding of why we are approaching things the way that we are and i'm a history teacher so i approach things from a historical point of view so there's facts and then i can deliver the facts to you and you can determine how you want to interpret those facts you know in history is you know it's very ugly right there been a lot of atrocities committed towards different groups towards women how do you get around that in history i don't think you really necessarily get around it i know that there are going to be uncomfortable conversations but outside of just the critical race theory history is uncomfortable in every aspect and i think that you have to just present the facts to people you can't deny the facts you can't deny what's in the history book in texas a law targeting critical race theory that requires teaching varying viewpoints on lessons taught or discussed has caused controversy a texas school district at the center of a firestorm over diversity and inclusion efforts audio leaked in october 2021 of a texas school district's training session on which books teachers can have in library classrooms indicates teachers and administrators are struggling to navigate the new rules if you have a book on the holocaust that you have one that has a posing that has evidence in addition to texas lawmakers in seven other states have passed laws that effectively ban crt in schools and legislation has been introduced or is pending in several others i think ultimately when there are schools and educators that want to bring issues of race and racism and historical injustices into the classroom there aren't a lot of options available and we think that there is a need there is a demand for curriculum that offers a pro-human message a pro-human approach [Music] the frightening thing about this going unabated is that this crt ideology despite being couched as something sophisticated teaches people not how to think but how not to think the idea is that the way you analyze a text is to find evidence of oppression in it that's what you're supposed to do there's so many other ways of looking at a piece of text that we think of as the soul of an education to learn about but with crt everything is supposed to be about oppression i think that there's structural racism and i think that structural racism has allowed race to be weaponized to be marginalizing but the flip side of that is that race could be used as as an armor and as a way of building community because we're learning from one another and i think that folks are nervous about that kids really are color blind and when you send them to school and they lose that and suddenly they're looking around and judging each other by skin color that is a travesty critical race theory isn't so much about rooting out systemic racism it is about dividing a culture and i am 100 against that i want true unity i want diversity without being forced i want equality in all things if you look at the intention as a pure intention the idea that we don't want our children coming home from school feeling bad about themselves seems like something worthy of of striving for but at what cost well the thing about it that is not really the intention the intention is really to put us in this war against each other for people to say that if you discuss these issues this is going to cause harm to children whereas teachers are trained to teach and if you really want your students to have the advantage of a global society that we're in they're going to have to know their history that would be sort of if we were in germany i was actually born in germany from a military family and very proud of that in germany they teach about hitler because they want people to understand this was a very difficult aspect a horrible part of their history but you need to understand that because if you love your country you want your country to be the best that it can be so they teach those things now some people don't like it but it doesn't make germans not like germany it makes them proud that their country has overcome that and become the country it is today what's happening where are you going on october 22nd 2021 matt received the final word that he was officially fired and would not be reinstated these conversations were filmed in september while he was still awaiting the administration's decision well thanks for being there oh you're welcome i'll always be there always and anxious to not know that your child may be unemployed for a very long time and i know that's tough but good i think we translate pretty well i think so we'll be on the right side of history you know looking back five years from now you know you either you're gonna say that you had regrets doing what i'm doing and i mean i don't think that i will i don't think you will but i think if i had resigned at that point well i'd be sitting here wondering [Music] you know wondering what what i could have done i guess you know like i would have been sitting here wondering well you know what would happen if i chose to fight this you know what good could i have done why put yourself out there like this you know i wouldn't be doing my job if i didn't i think these conversations are very important for our students to understand you know like i asked my students you know what are we going to do about racism in the united states like it is a very very important topic and our students want to you know they have that same question like what are we going to do about racism in the united states and you know like i wouldn't be um you know i wouldn't be doing my job if i didn't talk about these issues [Music] hey thanks for checking out cbs cbsn originals on youtube you want to watch more documentaries download the free cbs news app on your phone tablet smart tv or any streaming device you can also subscribe to our youtube channel by clicking down here thanks for watching

Channel: CBS News

Views: 166,165

Keywords: CBSN Originals, Documentary, systemic racism, critical race theory, backlash, Conservatives, Activists, education, students, teachers, crt, cbs news

Id: WOqxuVVbTrQ

Length: 47min 24sec (2844 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 04 2021