Senator Barbara Blackmon, D-Canton, speaks at the well in the Mississippi Senate Chamber in Jackson on Thursday. Blackmon was among the Black lawmakers who walked out of the Senate Chamber in protest on Friday.
Rogelio V. Solis / AP
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Rogelio V. Solis / AP
Senator Barbara Blackmon, D-Canton, speaks at the well in the Mississippi Senate Chamber in Jackson on Thursday. Blackmon was among the Black lawmakers who walked out of the Senate Chamber in protest on Friday.
Rogelio V. Solis / AP
JACKSON, ma’am. – Black lawmakers went out to protest Friday and withheld their votes as the Mississippi Senate passed a bill banning schools from teaching critical racial theory.
The state’s director of education said the critical race theory isn’t taught in Mississippi schools, and lawmakers have presented no evidence that it’s true.
Republicans say the theory teaches “victims,” while Democrats say the ban could derail discussion of Mississippi’s racist history.
“This bill is not morally correct,” Democratic Senator Barbara Blackmon of Canton, who is black, said during the debate.
The bill’s lead sponsor, Republican Sen. Michael McLendon of Hernando, who is white, said hundreds of voters told him they’d heard about the theory in the national news and they didn’t. want it to be taught to their children.
McLendon was struggling to identify the key race theory when he was asked about it. But he said: “Our children should not be taught systemic racism.”
Racism theory is an academic framework that examines how racism has shaped public policy and institutions such as the legal system, and how it has maintained white supremacy in society. how social.
Republicans around the country have been raising money for months by saying critical race theory is a threat and that many Republican-led states have banned or restricted its teaching important racial theories or similar concepts through law or administrative action.
Republicans control the Mississippi House and Senate. Governor Tate Reeves and Speaker of the House Philip Gunn are among the GOP leaders who have publicly said that critical racial theory is harmful.
Black senators walk out of the Mississippi Senate chamber before voting on Senate Bill 2113. It passed 32-2, with the only votes against the bill coming from white Democrats.
The bill will go to the Home for more work.
The bill does not identify key race theory
“Critical racial theory” is included in the bill’s title, but the bill’s main body does not identify the phrase. The bill says that no school, community college or university can teach that any “gender, race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin is superior or inferior. “
“I’m trying to find mischief in this language, and I don’t see it,” said Republican Sen. Chris McDaniel of Ellisville, who is white.
McDaniel said the bill would be considered “the most dynamic piece of civil rights law in the history of this state” had it been introduced in the 1950s. At the time, schools were segregated, the Legislature Authority said. state law was all white and blacks faced violent consequences for trying to vote.
Democratic Senator John Horhn of Jackson, who is black, questioned whether the bill could stop schools from teaching about the late US Senator James O. Eastland of Mississippi, who led the effort. blocked the 1948 anti-decentralization law, or Sovereignty. The Commission, a state spy agency created in 1956 to support a system of white supremacy. The commission went bankrupt in 1977.
Horhn said race theory is important looking at how race and laws impact the economy.
“Its whole situation is based on the founding of this country and certain precepts that we, as a nation, implicitly or explicitly accept – mainly that we justify slavery because the powers that be judged blacks as racially inferior,” Horhn said. “And a lot of our laws, a lot of our systems, a lot of our customs, a lot of our practices have been influenced by that.”
Jackson’s Democratic Senator David Blount, who is white and voted against the bill, asked McLendon if Mississippi should ban other things schools don’t teach, such as whether the sun orbits the Earth. land or not.
“We trust our teachers to teach,” says Blount. “And we don’t need to pass legislation to ban what’s not to be done.”
