What Inclusionists Need to Know About the Anti-CRT Movement ~ 914

Tim Villegas:
Hi, I’m Tim Villegas and you are listening to a special bonus edition of the Think Inclusive Podcast presented by MCIE. In the early hours one June morning in 2021, I sat down to drink my coffee and scroll through my various news feeds—nothing particularly interesting until…

Cherokee Tribune Podcast:
This is your news minute on the Cherokee Tribune-Ledger podcast brought to you by Credit Union of Georgia. Today is Thursday, June the third, and I’m JP Edwards. Cecilia Lewis, the Maryland school principal who was hired to focus on diversity at Cherokee County School District, stepped away from the position after receiving a strong message from residents that she is not welcome. She said, quote, “The message I received from the Cherokee County community who had never met me or tried to get to know me, not the position, is we do not want you here. You don’t belong here and you’re not welcome here. Highlighting the fact that the work of celebrating and appreciating diversity instead of denying or judging it is much needed in the district.” End quote. Rumors had circulated on social media connecting the hiring of Ms. Lewis to critical race theory, an academic framework that assumes race is a social construct and that racism is embedded in legal systems and policies.

Tim Villegas:
I thought, wait one second. I know this person, the Maryland school principal, and the news story worked for one of MCIE’s partners. And I had recently interviewed her about what it was like to be at a school that was going through inclusive systems change.

Cecelia Lewis:
Hi, good afternoon.

Tim Villegas:
Hello Cecilia.

Cecelia Lewis:
That is me.

Tim Villegas:
Excellent. Excellent. Thanks for taking some time out.

Tim Villegas:
She mentioned during our meeting that she and her husband were looking to move to Georgia to be closer to family. So light bulbs are going off in my head and I’m like, oh no. What a shame that Cecilia is being demonized by people that don’t even know her about something that is so misunderstood. I mean, she is one of the good ones. If we can’t have people like her who believe in equity for all students, including those with disabilities, in leadership positions, it doesn’t bode well to make change, especially here in the South. And that is when it hit me. All of this critical race theory backlash is going to hurt our overall goal of including students with complex support needs in general education. I mean, listen to what Cecilia says about the difference including a student with significant behavioral support needs made for them in the school community.

Cecelia Lewis:
So we have a student who happens to be in the behavioral development program. And the majority of that student’s time initially was in the behavioral development program, but we recognized that many of the supports that were identified for that student were not tied to any type of academic challenges. However, it did not justify that student being segregated. And so we phased in class by class. So it started with one class. And today that student is fully included in every single course. It really is about if you don’t believe in it, then I would not recommend anyone spinning their wheels going through the motions, but I can tell you that when you do believe in it, and you do invest in it becoming a priority, then you will begin to see, and I’m not talking about slow shifts. I’m talking about quick shifts because our kids can’t afford to wait.

Tim Villegas:
This is all fine, Tim, but what does CRT or the backlash have to do with any of it? Briefly stated, the anti-CRT movement is taking down in its wake any initiatives that focus on educational equity. This includes any progress that we have made toward inclusive systems change in public schools, because advocates like you and me have been trying to connect the dots from disability rights to educational equity for quite some time now. And if you don’t think this is a problem, PEN America is keeping track of over 100 bills from across the country proposing to keep teachers from talking about divisive subjects or subjects that cause students to feel discomfort. Some of them explicitly mention critical race theory or LGBTQIA+ issues. So as we were producing this episode, I knew that I didn’t know enough about this topic. So I called in a few people to help. King Williams.

King Williams:
I am a journalist and a filmmaker in Atlanta, Georgia.

Tim Villegas:
Alida Miranda-Wolff from the diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging sector.

Alida Miranda-Wolff:
I’m the CEO and founder of Ethos.

Tim Villegas:
Eddie Fergus at Temple University.

Eddie Fergus:
I’m a professor of urban education policy.

Tim Villegas:
And my old friend, high school educator and doc student in Colorado, Pete Newlove.

Pete Newlove:
I am a doctoral student at the University of Colorado, Denver.

Tim Villegas:
To see if we could find out more about critical race theory and what we as advocates for inclusive education should know about it. To get us started, here is Eddie Fergus.

Eddie Fergus:
So what’s interesting is I’m a professor of urban education and policy, and I actually teach a critical race theory class for doctoral students. I start there because part of what we have to understand is that critical race theory is just like many sets of theories that are taught at a graduate level and maybe even at an undergraduate level. It is part of the academic training that individuals are receiving within a particular discipline. It’s like you learn about a range of theories—critical race theory is one of them. The idea of critical race theory came out of a response to the ways in which legal theory was articulating and trying to make sense of what’s happening to a variety of marginalized populations who are interacting with the legal system. Critical race theorists like Derrick Bell and others really started to push the idea and reconcile: how do legal structures make sense of a racial life history of a society? For example, if we’re going to think about housing discrimination or housing inequalities, then we have to look at it alongside a history of Jim Crow laws that operated in such a way that encouraged segregation. We can’t treat the idea of “everybody has an opportunity to live wherever they want” without looking at housing inequality within a historical context.

Tim Villegas:
For more on the historical context of CRT, here is King Williams.

King Williams:
Critical race theory comes out of a very important time in U.S. history—the end of the civil rights movement and the tail end of the Black Power movement. We’re talking about the 1970s, when scholars like Derrick Bell started to develop these ideas. Many of these scholars were among the first African Americans allowed into law schools after segregation. They began analyzing legal frameworks that had been used to disenfranchise African Americans, particularly between Reconstruction (1865–1877) and the Jim Crow era (1877–1950s and 1960s).

King Williams:
As much as we think maybe Martin Luther King had a dream and everything was over with, in reality, that’s not what happened at all. You had this first wave of people going to law schools and universities, especially public ones, and this brought backlash. These Black students were challenging the notion that the law is always moral and right. This is important as we talk through the rest of this conversation. Two cases often come up: Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson. These are examples of things that were legal but not necessarily moral.

In the case of Dred Scott, the 1857 decision said that if you were born a slave, you remained a slave regardless of being in free territory. Critical race theory analyzes that decision and how it influenced policies over time. There’s an entire discourse on that case in law schools. The other case is Plessy v. Ferguson.

Tim Villegas:
Okay, in case you missed this in your history class, here is some information about Plessy v. Ferguson. In 1890, a law was passed in Louisiana providing for separate railway carriages for the white and colored races. It stated that all passenger railways had to provide these separate cars, which should be equal in facilities. Homer Plessy, who was mixed race, agreed to be the plaintiff to test the law’s constitutionality. On June 7, 1892, Plessy bought a ticket on a train from New Orleans to Covington, Louisiana, and sat in a White-only car. After refusing to leave, he was arrested and jailed. He filed a petition claiming the law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. On May 18, 1896, the Supreme Court delivered its verdict in Plessy v. Ferguson, declaring separate but equal facilities constitutional on intrastate railroads.

The Court ruled that the protections of the 14th Amendment applied only to political and civil rights like voting and jury service, not social rights like sitting in the railroad car of your choice. Justice Henry Brown wrote that if segregation stamped the colored race with a badge of inferiority, it was because the colored race chose to put that construction upon it. If you are a disability rights advocate, doesn’t this sound familiar? For example, special education classrooms. Big props to history.com for the assist. Here is more about the implications of Plessy v. Ferguson from Eddie Fergus.

Eddie Fergus:
If we think about the Plessy v. Ferguson case, the premise was that Plessy was trying to activate their whiteness, but it wasn’t enough because they also had a drop of Black blood. Whiteness as property developed over time as a way to mechanize the idea that the greatest property value lives within whiteness. You could use whiteness to get homes where you wanted, to get jobs, or at least avoid competing with people of color.

Tim Villegas:
But what about the tenets of CRT? I think this is where a lot of us are confused. Here is Alida Miranda-Wolff explaining the tenets of critical race theory.

Alida Miranda-Wolff:
Very simply, critical race theory is a theory developed in the 1970s to examine and challenge the relationship between law, race, and racial inequity. It was part of a larger critical studies movement. The term “critical” refers to critical thinking, not being critical of a social group. The first tenet is that race is not biological; it’s a social construct. We’ve seen changes in how people are perceived in terms of race historically. The second tenet is that racism isn’t an outlier; it’s the norm in the U.S. Our institutions—criminal justice, education, legal systems—are designed to act in the interest of racist ideologies. The third tenet is the importance of storytelling and counter-storytelling, focusing on who gets to talk about race and their lived experiences. The last tenet rejects the idea that meritocracy and colorblindness are the right approaches to racism. Instead, scholars argue that these approaches hide how public policy and law legislate inequality on the basis of race.

Alida Miranda-Wolff:
Legal circles developed CRT, and the principles are useful and do get taught in a variety of contexts, but that’s what it is as a whole.

Tim Villegas:
The other thing I wanted to understand is how this backlash against CRT was affecting educators. So I asked my friend and current high school English teacher, Pete Newlove.

Pete Newlove:
I’m a doctoral student at the University of Colorado Denver, finishing my dissertation on the motivations and negotiations classroom teachers have when trying to enact anti-racist practices. I’m also a high school English teacher in the local area. I want to state upfront my relationship to CRT. CRT has informed my work as a teacher and researcher. It’s been part of the analytical lens that helps me understand how racism manifests in schools, how it operates in society and specifically in schools. But as a white male, my relationship to CRT is from an outsider’s perspective.

What the loudest opponents of critical race theory are saying about CRT is not CRT. To be clear, most people yelling about critical race theory don’t know anything about it. What they really dislike is anti-racism and the shifting of power dynamics that create more space for oppressed people to have access. When people who have had privilege and power feel like they’re starting to lose it, they lash out historically. The current moment is related to the summer of 2020, to racial justice protests and uprisings.

Some people call it a reckoning. Some people reckoned; a lot of corporations apparently reckoned too and put out statements. School districts put out statements. The extent to which they really reckoned varies widely. The moment we’re in now is a backlash and response to that time when, at least briefly, there were more conversations about racism all around us—police brutality, racial profiling, inequities in schooling. In a couple of Colorado school districts, school board elections were backed by groups behind anti-CRT fervor and book banning.

There was a district just south of Denver in Douglas County where the superintendent was removed because a new four-person majority on a seven-person school board—backed by one of these groups—voted to remove the superintendent. There’s likely a lawsuit coming. Before they voted to remove the superintendent, the superintendent had helped roll out a new equity policy to look at inequities across the district. The new majority stripped that policy, and their next move was to remove the superintendent. In Colorado we have localized places where people are loudly opposing equity-based, racial justice, and other initiatives where they feel the privilege and power they have had are being stripped away.

Tim Villegas:
We will definitely link to that story from Douglas County in the show notes. Another question I had, I posed to King Williams: how did we even get to the point where there is a concerted effort to ban CRT in schools?

King Williams:
The direct reason we’re talking about this now is that in late August and early September of 2020, the Trump administration banned the teaching of critical race theory and anti-racist theory. Because 2020 had a new episode every day, it got lost in the shuffle. It came back over the last few weeks as more people adjusted to life and began challenging notions of race and America. A lot of things get lumped into critical race theory, and more specifically this came out of backlash to one particular journalist and university professor, Nikole Hannah-Jones.

A lot of her writing isn’t CRT by definition, but she gets grouped into it because of the 1619 Project. This also gets into an overall critique of Black scholarship. There are two things to know about African American Studies, part of broader Africana Studies: it’s meant to be challenging and it’s meant to be corrective. In most academic discourse, we take something the teacher tells us and we don’t talk back. In Africana Studies, you’re meant to learn and then challenge. It’s one of the few disciplines that requires a certain level of challenge and discipline.

Tim Villegas:
I think I’m starting to get it. As I was talking to Eddie Fergus, I realized CRT is not being taught in public schools. In fact, it’s not a curriculum at all.

Eddie Fergus:
Right. Exactly.

Tim Villegas:
It’s not like there are CRT-approved texts you must use to indoctrinate students.

Eddie Fergus:
Exactly.

Tim Villegas:
It’s a framework, a way of thinking intended to inform your actions, whether you’re a policymaker or a researcher. Theoretically, a teacher could use this framework to inform their teaching, but not in the way it’s being characterized. As you’ve been talking about CRT, what are examples of how it’s been distorted and used as a weapon against educators and schools?

Eddie Fergus:
It’s being weaponized as a cultural wedge to bring a voting constituency into a political camp, arming them with disinformation. It taps into an individualism value—the idea that nobody teaches my children anything unless I teach it to them, nobody is going to indoctrinate them. There’s something about “I’m the main driver of what’s happening to my children and my family” that’s being leveraged.

We have to understand the desire among parts of our community for a sense of American exceptionalism, individualism, and patriotism—which is being wrapped together. People feel these are being demonized or challenged over the last six or seven years. It’s emerging as a response to Black Lives Matter and other social movements we’ve been attentive to, including #MeToo. These movements represent exhaustion among communities who have continuously experienced marginalization; they’re speaking up loudly about what’s happening to them.

This anti-CRT response operates as a cultural wedge to give a group something they presume they’re losing—this narrative of American exceptionalism, individualism, and patriotism that they feel is being challenged. For example, I was reading the Texas bill and it said children need to be taught the founding documents to understand how great our country is. That sentiment is perceived as being challenged by these social movements. What’s misunderstood is you can be great and still have flaws. These movements say, let’s be mindful that greatness has not been great for everyone. Let’s be better about achieving that level of greatness. They’re pointing out shortcomings that some experience as a loss of identity.

Tim Villegas:
Before you say, “Tim, you’ve lost the plot,” let’s bring it back to why we wanted to produce this episode. It has a lot to do with what Eddie is talking about—the rise of social justice movements. Embedded in those movements is the disability rights movement and the progress we’ve made for inclusive education for all students. When we talk about inclusion for all students, we don’t just mean students with disabilities. We mean any student historically marginalized—students of color, LGBTQIA+ students, students experiencing poverty and homelessness, and English language learners. The rise of the anti-CRT movement will crush the progress we’ve made with educational equity.

Eddie Fergus:
There are elements of our society that have historically privileged certain identities: white, male, heterosexual, able-bodied. These privileges are deeply ingrained. Social movements highlight that privileging is problematic and needs to be dismantled. The reaction is often, “I disagree that these things are privileged,” which is fascinating because there’s overwhelming evidence they are. Think about ADA compliance. We still struggle with it because of ability privilege. Something as simple as ensuring accessible entrances or handicapped parking spots shows how privilege persists.

The pushback often comes from a place of guilt or fear of blame: “I didn’t do anything; that was my ancestors.” People don’t want to feel shame or guilt. This disrupts the narrative of American exceptionalism, individualism, and patriotism. They don’t want to lose that identity. I’ve compared this pushback to the civil rights era backlash. In the 1960s, some appropriated civil rights language with slogans like “White Rights.” Today, I’ve seen signs at board meetings saying, “What about the rights for white people?” It’s the same strategy—framing equity as a threat.

We need to develop a curriculum for how to get along. After the civil rights movement, we implemented affirmative action and other opportunities, but we didn’t teach people how to coexist equitably. Now, some white communities are responding with racial apathy: “I’m tired of trying to work on this stuff.” There was even a social media movement called “It’s okay to be white,” reflecting that apathy.

Tim Villegas:
A quick reminder: if you’re feeling stressed, take a few deep breaths and listen to some relaxing music before we get into the second half of the episode.

Tim Villegas:
What about the over 100 bills against teaching CRT or divisive topics across the country? Here’s King Williams. I want to read you something from a resolution dated June 3, 2021. The first point says: “We, the State Board of Education for the State of Georgia, believe the United States is not a racist country and that the State of Georgia is not a racist state.” This resolution is sending a message. But does it have any impact beyond that?

King Williams:
It’s a warning shot to teachers who want to teach outside the provided curriculum, especially in K–12 schools. I went to a Black school where teachers taught us real history beyond the textbook. This resolution is a warning to teachers like them. It’s meant to reinforce the status quo and enshrine a century of carefully constructed narratives.

Specifically in Georgia, Governor Brian Kemp signed a law preventing the removal or defacement of Confederate monuments without legal consequences. If removed, they must be relocated to a place of equal prominence. This ties into education because groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy and earlier memorial societies actively changed the narrative of history. They influenced textbooks, promoting myths like the “Lost Cause,” the “happy loyal slave,” and even terms like “War of Northern Aggression.” These myths shaped education for decades.

Memorial Day, for example, was originally observed in 1865 by formerly enslaved people and Union soldiers. The Confederacy later reframed it as a day to honor Confederate dead. This also coincided with the rise of Confederate monuments and the Confederate battle flag. These are all aspects of education—not CRT per se, but part of the historical narrative battle. When I went to school in Georgia, none of this was covered. The Confederate flag still flew at schools. This is why identity politics and education are so intertwined.

King Williams:
Identity politics requires construction, and this relates to critical race theory because one of its early tenets is that race is a construct. That’s hard for some people to believe, but CRT argues that race is socially constructed. For the last 500 years, we’ve been living within that construct, and CRT challenges us to think critically about it.

Tim Villegas:
With everything we’ve learned about CRT—that it’s not being taught in K–12 schools and that the anti-CRT movement is hurting strides toward educational equity—I asked Alida Miranda-Wolff: is there anything we can learn from CRT?

Alida Miranda-Wolff:
Most diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) educators—and most educators in your space—aren’t using CRT at all, especially because it’s focused on public policy. DEIB came out of organizational and corporate workplaces, so it’s practical, whereas CRT is a legal and racial theory rooted in scholarship. A first-grade teacher isn’t teaching students about desegregation cases. CRT as a concept isn’t showing up in classrooms.

That said, I do use some CRT principles in my work. The most helpful is focusing on systems rather than bad apples. Instead of blaming individuals, we look at how systems distribute power and access. This is central to consulting with organizations to make workplaces more equitable. When I introduce CRT principles in adult learning settings, people are less resistant because we emphasize: you’re not a bad person because you’re white. You live in a society that distributes power based on race, but you’re not personally responsible for that. There are things you can do to make changes.

Intersectionality is another concept I rely on. People hold multiple identities—race, gender, nationality, body type—and these intersect to shape experiences. Teachers who understand this can better meet students’ needs. Even if they’re not teaching intersectionality, they can recognize that two students won’t need the same thing because social factors matter.

What frustrates me is when people try to tear down CRT with “feelings versus facts” arguments. Storytelling is a core principle of CRT, and it matters because lived experiences are data. For example, when people share the first time they experienced racism, those stories reveal patterns. Yet some dismiss them as “not facts.” Meanwhile, many leaders say they want employees to bring their whole selves to work. How can that happen if people can’t share their stories?

In K–12, teachers might mention racial disparities in incarceration rates, but the main argument isn’t against CRT—it’s against social justice. I wish we’d name it that because it would make the discussion clearer.

Tim Villegas:
Alida said we’re missing each other. So I asked Pete Newlove: is this just one big misunderstanding, or is something else going on?

Pete Newlove:
It’s both. It’s a misunderstanding, and it’s also a placeholder for racist, classist, and ableist anxieties. People with privilege are dumping those anxieties into this debate.

Tim Villegas:
As a Latinx person, I know I can be racist. Awareness doesn’t mean I can’t do something about it. It’s not binary—you’re not either racist or not racist forever. At any point, you can be. There shouldn’t be shame in acknowledging that. But instead of examining structures, some people say, “Everything’s fine. We don’t want our kids to feel bad.”

Pete Newlove:
Exactly. Shame is a big part of this. White parents worry their kids will feel shame if they learn about racism. But shame is already weaponized to uphold privilege. From a young age, kids learn slurs and stereotypes to maintain social hierarchies. White households teach kids to mark differences—Chinese, Black, Latino—and reinforce stereotypes. Shame is used to stop kids from questioning inequality. A child asking, “Why do they speak Spanish?” is natural, but many parents respond with shame instead of explaining. That reinforces the idea that difference is shameful.

Pete Newlove:
Think about when kids see someone using a wheelchair. They might ask, “What happened to them?” That’s a natural question. But adults often respond with, “Don’t say that,” which teaches kids that difference is shameful. Instead, we should answer honestly: “They use a wheelchair to get around.” When we shut down those questions, we reinforce stigma.

Tim Villegas:
Exactly. By saying, “We don’t talk about that,” we teach that difference is something to hide.

Pete Newlove:
Absolutely.

Tim Villegas:
You might be thinking, “Tim, we’ve made so much progress with racism and ableism. Isn’t it getting better?” Here’s Eddie Fergus.

Eddie Fergus:
The idea that things are getting better needs context. Progress has happened in spurts, not steadily. Take school desegregation: it peaked in the 1980s, then declined. The 2007 Supreme Court case Parents Involved v. Seattle limited the use of race in creating diverse schools. Socioeconomic status can be used, but only to a point. We’ve lost momentum on integration.

Some states have been in court for 15–20 years over equitable school funding. We’re still fighting for baseline resources and integrated schools. Until we have consistent progress, we can’t say things are truly better. Many struggles from Brown v. Board remain.

Tim Villegas:
Why does it feel like we’ve come farther than we have? Why do some educators think, “We’ve made so much progress”?

Eddie Fergus:
Because their comparison point is the pre-1960s era of legal segregation—separate water fountains, exclusion from schools. Compared to that, yes, things look better. But that doesn’t mean schools today are free of bias. Over-identification of students of color in special education persists, rooted in stereotypes about intelligence. In surveys I conduct, 15–20% of educators agree that racial differences in test performance are due to genetics. That shows racial hierarchy thinking still exists. So yes, we’ve made progress socially, but systemic bias remains.

Tim Villegas:
And I keep coming back to disability and ableism. Before 1975, kids with disabilities weren’t even allowed in school. Now they are, so people think, “We’ve done enough.”

Eddie Fergus:
Right. But inclusion is still resisted. Parents say, “Kids with IEPs distract from learning.” They feel equity takes something away from their child. There’s a quote I love: “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equity feels like oppression.” People think they’re losing something when systems are rebalanced, but really, it’s about creating fairness.

Tim Villegas:
So what can educators do? Here’s Alida Miranda-Wolff.

Alida Miranda-Wolff:
Twenty-six states have proposed legislation or executive actions limiting or banning CRT in classrooms. These laws are vague and often unrelated to CRT. They’re more about nationalism and backlash to projects like 1619. Teachers feel like they could be fined or fired for saying anything. The Onion even joked, “School calendar jumps to March 1 after CRT ban prohibits February,” which is Black History Month. Teachers laughed to keep from crying because it felt true.

Here’s what educators can do (and I’m not a lawyer):

1. Know your state laws. Look up what legislation exists.
2. Bring proposed content to school leadership. Check if it aligns with commitments.
3. Present information without indoctrination. In Iowa, for example, you can teach about racism and white supremacy—you just can’t tell students what to believe.
4. Advocate for clear social media policies. Teachers fear being punished for posts because rules are vague. Schools need clear guidelines.

Tim Villegas:
I’m so thankful you made it this far. Before we wrap up with some final thoughts from Eddie Fergus, if you loved this episode, let us know by emailing us at podcast@thinkinclusive.us, or message us on social media. You can also become a patron—visit patreon.com/thinkinclusivepodcast. I’ll be posting the unedited versions of all of our interviews. In the one with King Williams, we have a great discussion about Confederate monuments and memorials, including Stone Mountain in Georgia, the largest Confederate memorial in the world. Check it out. Okay, here is Eddie Fergus to close us out.

Eddie Fergus:
We made a mistake and overprivileged you in this particular dynamic, and now we need to rectify the field. That means we’re going to have to do more for groups who’ve been without for a long time in order to reconcile the damage and the overprivileging. We damaged one group and overprivileged another. I keep coming back to that as this pushback happens. You’ve been so accustomed to a level of privilege that equity feels like oppression—the idea of, “Now I have to learn about other people? I have to take a course on this?” In Connecticut, they passed a law offering African American and Puerto Rican/Latinx history courses at the high school level. There’s angst around it—“I was never trained on this. My kids have to learn more history? That’s too much.” The reality is your identity was being overly privileged by being the centerpiece of everything.

As a former social studies teacher, I had to supplement the stories of everyone else to help create a fuller historical understanding, especially in U.S. history, so kids wouldn’t walk away thinking all they needed to know about Mexicans was the Alamo and that the U.S. took land via the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, or only learn about things like the Tulsa massacre in fragments. I had to supplement so students had a robust, complete historical picture, not a myopic curriculum of “we’re so exceptional, we did everything great.” That kind of narrow curriculum creates analytical shortcomings for our kids. We need an abundance of work now to achieve the level of equity that’s necessary.

Tim Villegas:
I can hear some critics: “CRT is teaching kids to hate America.” No—it’s teaching kids to understand America better.

Eddie Fergus:
Yes. That’s a great way to say it—to understand America better. A lot of people don’t realize textbooks are written by publishing companies but approved by state boards. Those boards decide what’s in them. For example, McGraw Hill published a Texas geography textbook in 2015. A page with a map of slave states had a caption that said thousands of workers were brought from Africa to the United States. Not “slaves”—workers. The Texas State Board approved that. They determined that framing. These are the touchpoints that shape how we understand that historical moment. So yes—this is about helping our kids understand America better.

Tim Villegas:
That will do it for this episode of the Think Inclusive Podcast. Special thanks to King Williams, Eddie Fergus, Alida Miranda-Wolff, and Pete Newlove for taking time to speak with me about CRT. Thanks to BG Ad Group for giving us permission to repost the Cherokee Tribune–Ledger podcast. Thanks to Kayla Kingston for her note-taking and editing powers—we couldn’t produce the show without you. Thank you to patrons Veronica E., Sonya A., Pamela P., Mark C., Kathy B., Kathleen T., and Jarett T. for their continued support of the podcast.

This podcast is a production of MCIE, where we envision a society where neighborhood schools welcome all learners and create the foundation for inclusive communities. Learn more at mcie.org. We’ll be back with another Think Inclusive episode in a couple weeks—look out for more editions of the Weeklyish and bonus episodes in the meantime. Thanks for your time, attention, and for listening. Until next time, remember: Inclusion always works.