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Opinion: Banning the teaching of critical race theory in Arizona schools is a slippery slope. What does Gov. Doug Ducey fear?

Joseph Russomanno| opinion contributor

What is Critical Race Theory?

CRT examines systemic racism as a part of American life and institutions and how it can give white people an advantage.

Erin Davoran and Dwight Adams, Wochit

When a government prohibits a specific message, thats censorship. Its also anti-democratic, despotic and disrespectful of its citizens, suggesting they are not equipped to handle the truth or even to consider alternate views.

Its also the sign of a weak government, one that fears new ideas that may challenge the status quo and expose existing myths. Controlling those ideas is mistakenly viewed as the best response.

When Gov. Doug Ducey signed legislation forbidding the teaching of critical race theory in Arizona schools, he checked all of these boxes and joined the truth deniers.

Another view: Sorry, Gov. Ducey, but you did NOT ban CRT

Truth doesnt magically appear. It comes from hard work that includes the serious consideration, discussion and debate of various ideas.

That discussion is not only protected by the First Amendment. Its also a primary reason our founders safeguarded speech and press from government interference with the First Amendment.

Exchanging ideas is the best path to truth discovery. Its an ongoing process with the possibility that what is regarded as truthful may be modified later when better evidence is discovered and considered. Limiting speech is an affront to truth discovery.

This loop of reconsideration is vital. Certainty is a trap. As the great jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes noted, Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.

Existing beliefs need to be tested. The United States has committed itself to the idea of uninhibited, robust and wide open debate on public issues, at the same time recognizing that those discussions may be caustic. Both teachers and learners go to sleep at their post as soon as there is no enemy in the field, wrote philosopher John Stuart Mill.

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By closing discussion on an issue, one short-circuits the truth, becomes complicit in its cover-up and denies learning opportunities.

No issue merits more analysis than Americas tumultuous history with race. The new Arizona law, however, suppresses that effort, apparently steeped in misunderstanding of critical race theoryand the belief that it makes some people uncomfortable.

Guess what? Sometimes discovering the truth is uncomfortable.

In what has become a beacon for the exchange of ideas in schools, a University of Chicago report concluded that education should not be intended to make people comfortable, it is meant to make them think.

No venue is more appropriate to conduct the exchange of ideas so cherished by our founders than our schools. Reminders surface frequently, a notable example stemming recently from Chapel Hill, N.C.,and the botched hiring of Nikole Hannah-Jones, the chief architect of the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project. The classroom is ideal for considering ideas, including that white supremacy is far more ingrained in our culture than many believe.

This law banning teaching critical race theory is not only unconstitutional, but its supporters step onto a very slippery slope. If critical race theoryis off limits today, then what topics become inappropriate in the future? Climate change? Voting rights?

What happens to books on these topics, including those on CRT itself? Are book bans on the horizon, too? It seems that 1984was not in the past. Oceania beckons.

It is important to remember that critical race theory, though based in fact, is just that a theory subject to examination.

But theories are often the seeds of truth. Imagine if other theories had been banned from schools or general discussion over history: Newtons gravity, Galileos Heliocentric model of the solar system or Einsteins theory of relativity. These were thought to be heretical in some circles, yet today we think of those opposition views as backward and ignorant.

How will our descendants view the July 2021 version of us?

Joseph Russomanno is an expert on First Amendment law and theory and a professor at ASU's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Reach him at russo@asu.edu.

Link:
If critical race theory is off limits in Arizona schools today, what's next? - The Arizona Republic