Flint Township View

Letter-writer supports stand against CRT


I am pleased that school board member, Matthew Smith, stood against Critical Race Theory at the last meeting of the school board and that it will not be a part of the school’s curriculum.

From what I can understand of the theory is that it wants to emphasize and exaggerate the differences that race makes in our lives. It wants to base all decisions on the differences of race. To me it seems to be the exact opposite of what we should be working toward in our schools and our society.

Our country inherited slavery from England, and we have spent most of our national life addressing that fact:

• How to handle slavery was built into our constitution.

• We fought a civil war to eliminate slavery.

• Three civil rights amendments to the constitution were enacted as a direct result of the civil war, the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth. Roughly stated: the thirteenth freed the slaves; the fourteenth made them citizens; and the fifteenth gave them the right to vote.

• After the war, we had a period of reconstruction of the South.

• After Reconstruction was terminated at the end of the U. S. Grant administration, we entered the era of, “Jim Crow.”

• The Jim Crow era was ended with the civil rights movement of the later half of the 20th century.

• Starting with the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision in 1954 and culminating in the voting rights act of 1965, we as a nation have been dismantling systemic racial discrimination with the goal of ensuring the equal protection of the laws for all Americans, regardless of race, as guaranteed by the fourteenth amendment.

The goal of our past progress is to erase or lessen the barrier of race. To me, it seems that Critical Race Theory wants to raise the barriers of race differences; it wants to widen the chasm between the races rather than fill it in. As such, it has no place in our society. — Paul Hammond, Davison