Republican lawmakers in West Virginia have introduced a bill modeled after a revoked Trump-era order to purge elements of critical race theory from the state’s workforce and schools.
The bill would also ban schools from using any curriculum that promotes “divisive acts,” and block state funding from going into agencies promoting those concepts, including the idea that the United States is “fundamentally racist or sexist,” that an individual, by virtue of race or sex, is “inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously,” and that any individual should “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” on the basis of race or sex.
President Joe Biden, in one of his first executive actions in White House, rescinded Trump’s ban of critical race theory in federal workplaces. In place of the Trump order, Biden issued an executive order of his own, stating that it is now the policy of the federal government to pursue “a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all,” and that federal agencies should revise any steps taken in accord with the previous order within 60 days.
The West Virginia bill came amid a heated debate over critical race theory and its role in America’s social, cultural, and economic institutions. An outgrowth of the European Marxist school of critical theory, critical race theory interprets the American system through a lens of power struggle between the race of the oppressor and that of the oppressed. As a result, according to the theory, the very foundations of the American social and political life—such as rationalism, constitutional law, and legal reasoning—are considered to be tools of racial oppression.
