‘Last Week Tonight’: John Oliver Slams Conservative Efforts To Ban Teaching Of Critical Race Theory
deadline.comComing off a three-month break, Last Week Tonight host John Oliver wasted no breath in his ninth season opener and devoted almost a half-hour to one of the most controversial topics swirling around schools today: the education of critical race theory.For the uninitiated, critical race theory (CRT) refers to a body of legal scholarship that attempts to understand why racism and inequality have persisted after the Civil Rights movement.
The core tenet is that racism is not the product of individual bias or prejudice, but rather structurally embedded in our justice, education, labor, housing and healthcare systems.Opponents of CRT have claimed the framework unfairly admonishes white students and teaches kids to be ashamed of their born skin color.Though opponents of the theory aren’t entirely correct, even Oliver admits the theory is intricate and that broaching the topic in an elementary school setting would be difficult.“To be clear, CRT is graduate-level legal theory.
Unless your five-year-old is currently pursuing a law degree, they’re not reading Kimberlé Crenshaw,” Oliver said.Oliver claims schools aren’t teaching CRT and says conservatives have been labeling any lessons regarding race under this banner to galvanize political action to implement school choice, a controversial policy in which students are given the choice to attend a school other than their district’s public school.
Critics of school choice say the program siphons dollars away from the already-depleted budgets of public schools.Though the legal theory isn’t being dissected in classrooms nationwide, some schools have gone ahead and attempted to educate kids on race and privilege, sometimes in cringe-inducing manner.
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