#TeachTruth Media Guide

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

The following FAQs can be used to prepare for interviews and to inform your talking points, content, and conversations regarding the #TeachTruth campaign.

Based on interviews to date, the questions may address critical race theory (CRT), the language of the bills, LGBTQ+ identity, school curriculum, book bans, and more. We provide suggested responses and strategies to help you keep the focus on your teaching and why it matters. 

Reporters may want to focus on critical race theory; Amanda Marcotte explains in Salon why the right wing has latched on to that term:

It is important to note that the fabricated fury over “critical race theory” is a cleverly constructed right-wing troll. Liberals who want to respond with a quick, easily digested rebuttal are instead boxed into a frustrating corner. Because pointing out that critical race theory is not being taught in public schools is a trap, as it could be construed to imply that there’s something wrong with critical race theory. And any straightforward defense of critical race theory implies that schoolchildren are somehow expected to understand graduate school-level academic theories. But in fact, the real issue at hand is that conservatives don’t want white kids to learn even the most basic truths about American history.  

When reporters come out of the gate with critical race theory, it’s playing the opposition’s game, which we don’t have to do. We recommend that when possible, pivot away from the question as it obscures what is at the heart of the legislation being introduced.

In order to pivot, you can say things like, “I am happy to discuss that with you but first let me address why we are protesting this legislation.” If people are intent on you specifically providing an answer to the question on CRT, you can pull from our examples below. You can also ask the reporter how they define critical race theory.

For each of the responses, we provide a short answer for a quick statement and a more detailed response for longer interviews.

QUESTION: Is critical race theory currently being taught in schools? 

ONE SENTENCE: Critical race theory is an anti-racist approach to understanding the legal system that most people won’t encounter until college, but schools can and should teach students to be critical of racism in history and today — and to question the roots of the profound racial inequality in our society.

-or-

Use this line from the New York Times: “While few K–12 educators use the term “critical race theory,” discussions of systemic racism have become more common in American schools in recent years. . .”

MORE DETAILS: If some teachers and schools incorporate the insights of critical race theory into their curriculum and practice, that is a victory in the struggle for more equitable schools. All of us can and should teach students to critically analyze racism in history and today. Teachers have to address racism and systemic racial structures when teaching about the history of the United States and current events. To not do so is a disservice to our students and a violation of our professional responsibility. 

Two examples where the insights of critical race theory might show up in a K–12 classroom are the struggle for voting rights and educational justice. 

• • Voting rights: Students learn that laws can be racially discriminatory even if they appear racially neutral. For example, voting restrictions that require a state-issued ID or limit the number of polling places or days of early voting may seem on their face neutral, but they primarily disenfranchise poor, Black, Brown, disabled, and rural voters. Students learn that voter suppression has a long, ongoing history due to a well-funded, white supremacist effort to undermine democracy. By studying that history, they can better recognize the threats and advocate for contemporary voting rights.
  • Education: Students learn that schools today are more segregated than they were 50 years ago. In order to understand why, students study the limitations of Brown v. Board of Education and the persistence of other challenges to educational equality. 

QUESTION: Why are Republicans and the right wing media so focused on critical race theory right now?

Remember to pivot to the responses you want to give.

ONE SENTENCE: “Critical race theory” is a term inaccurately thrown around now as a confusing catch-all for anything the right wing doesn’t like, and it’s used in this way to stop students from asking questions about inequality and racism and to stop teachers from teaching a fuller, race-conscious history of the United States. 

MORE DETAILS: Lawmakers have referenced critical race theory — and conflated it with any kind of anti-racist teaching, such as the New York Times 1619 Project or Black Lives Matter in Schools — in connection with any lesson or training that acknowledges the existence and persistence of racism. Since it is an unfamiliar term to many people, the right wing is using it as an ambiguous container that has little to do with what educators are actually doing each day in schools across the country: trying to teach students how we got to where we are so that they are clear-eyed about how we might move forward.

QUESTION: Doesn’t teaching about racism undermine national unity? 

ONE SENTENCE: No — racism is what prevents unity, so teaching about racism is simply teaching the truth about our society and giving young people the tools to create a more just future. 

MORE DETAILS: We cannot cure a disease we have not properly diagnosed. Helping students understand the history and the reality of the world they live in will help them understand how to make it better. Here are some examples of ways racism shows up in U.S. society:

• • For decades, policies have kept Black Americans from building generational wealth. The average net worth of a white family is at least greater eight times than a Black family.   
  • A Black woman ismore than twice as likely to die from pregnancy- or childbirth-related causes than a white woman.
  • Black students aremore than  three times more likely to be suspended from school than white students.
  • Anti-Asian hate crimes have surged more than 170 percent so far this year.
  • Antisemitism and Islamophobia are also rising across the United States. They are the direct sources of mass violence and domestic terrorism.

Teaching about racism is an effective way for students to learn the rights that should be shared by all citizens and residents of the United States. To deny those rights for any reason whatsoever is an assault on human rights.

To teach the history of racism in the United States is also an opportunity to teach the history of resistance. These movements have always been multiracial, multiethnic, and built across lines of gender and class. Understanding this can be an important source of hope and unity for all students. 

QUESTION: Isn’t teaching about systemic racism divisive? 

ONE SENTENCE: No — racism is divisive, but understanding racism involves learning about movements and people of every race and ethnicity that came together to challenge racism, and that kind of education promotes unity for a more equitable world.

MORE DETAILS: Racism is one of the most tried and true methods that those in power have used to divide and conquer. Many of the most important changes in U.S. law came about through criticism of the practices that were part of law at one time — and challenging these practices. Remember, the entire Underground Railroad was an illegal movement. Movements for justice often had to break the existing laws to fight for the things that have contributed to greater freedom and justice in the United States. Indeed, without criticism and activism, slavery would not be outlawed, women would not have the right to vote, interracial marriage and gay marriage would still be illegal, labor laws would not have been enacted — the list is endless. We cannot allow the right wing to hide the truth from students about these facts to satisfy their narrow definition of “patriotic education.”

QUESTION:  Shouldn’t we keep politics out of public education and prohibit teachers from indoctrinating students with their personal views?

ONE SENTENCE: Helping students think critically about how racism and other forms of oppression have worked in our society over time is not indoctrination, it’s education.

MORE DETAILS: The truth is, students are discussing issues about race and racism all the time. They are talking about their experience of segregation in schools, or the latest viral video of racist violence. They talk about these things in the hallways, on the playground, or on the school bus. The question we have to answer is: Are we going to allow educators to help provide context and a safe space for these conversations? Or are we going to make education irrelevant to our students by ignoring some of the most important issues facing our society? 

Teachers have to be free to teach about the “Trail of Tears,” Chinese Exclusion, the Tulsa Massacre, or the internment of Japanese Americans without worrying that they will be attacked for being political. 

States and school districts seeking to ban students from learning about systemic racism or sexism in an age-appropriate way do a disservice to them by censoring the very conversations students are eager to engage in, and underestimating students’ ability to develop analytic tools that embrace nuance and complexity. These laws infantilize our youth and render them less prepared to help build a more just and inclusive society.  

QUESTION: Are you teaching that all white people are racist or trying to make white students feel guilty?

ONE SENTENCE: No — we are teaching students history so they can better understand the present and how we can move together into a better future. 

MORE DETAILS: We need to remember that although individuals can espouse racist ideas, the most damaging effects of racism come from institutions and structures. Not all white people say or do racist things — but they do live in a society with structures and institutions that grant privileges to them because of their race. To deny students knowledge of this simple fact is a to miseducate them. 

Students should be taught that inequality is systemic so that individuals recognize that they alone cannot fix it, nor are they alone responsible, but that we need to build multiracial solidarity to create system-wide change.

An honest account of the past teaches about white people who advocated for racial justice, and who can serve as models for white children.

By learning the history of how these inequalities were created and opposed, students see that what was built can be taken apart. 

For more on the shame lie, see this Why the narrative that critical race theory ‘makes white kids feel guilty’ is a lie article by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca and Christie Nold in the Hechinger Report, and listen to Jesse Hagopian address the topic on Taking Back Our History, Starting with the Schools on the Nicole Sandler Show.

QUESTION: Isn’t a racially diverse curriculum unnecessary for white students?

ONE SENTENCE: No — we all live in a multicultural society; teaching white students about racism and anti-racism is essential because it helps them make sense of the world around them and collaborate across racial lines for a better future.

MORE DETAILS: Right-wing forces have long worked to minimize the importance of racially diverse curriculum to all students. They now spread the outrageous claim that teaching white students the history of racism actually makes these students feel shame or guilt about their own identities and the state of the world. In fact, it’s just the opposite. When white children don’t learn why racism exists — that it is structural, that it can be embedded in institutions regardless of the values and viewpoints of the people in those institutions — they often end up blaming themselves. They can become paralyzed with misplaced guilt for the racism they see around them. The people who want to ban teaching about structural racism are shaming white students and using them as props to maintain a discriminatory status quo. 

Social justice educators teach a racially diverse curriculum to empower all of their students with a better understanding of how society works. When teaching about racism throughout history, they also teach about anti-racist traditions that have existed among white people and within multiracial coalitions. They teach about how structural racism works, and how to help undo it. This is what the right wing fears — it’s why they spread this lie about shaming white students, and why they impose curricular gag rules. They know that young people have a choice to make between going along with the status quo or joining in struggles for justice today. They want to take that choice away from students.

For more on the shame lie, see this Why the narrative that critical race theory ‘makes white kids feel guilty’ is a lie article by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca and Christie Nold in the Hechinger Report, and listen to Jesse Hagopian address the topic on Taking Back Our History, Starting with the Schools on the Nicole Sandler Show.

QUESTION: What will be the impact on teaching if these laws pass? Do teachers have to abide by them while they are being litigated? 

ONE SENTENCE: The objective of these proposed laws is to create a chilling effect so that, whether they pass or not in a particular state, teachers everywhere will fear teaching the truth about racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other forms of oppression throughout U.S. history.

MORE DETAILS: In states where the laws have already passed, there are an increasing number of teachers who pledge to follow their conscience and teach the truth about racism while lawsuits challenging these laws make their way through the courts. See this Tennessee example, and one from Oklahoma.

QUESTION: Is the movement for anti-racist education opposed to “parents’ rights?”

ONE SENTENCE: No — educators have long believed that education is strengthened by partnership with the community, including parents and other caregivers collaborating to support all students, but the right wing’s “parents’ rights” movement is about mobilizing a small minority of parents behind book bans and educational gag orders.

MORE DETAILS: In much the way the right wing has long used a claim to “states’ rights” as a euphemism for maintaining laws and policies that maintain segregation or restrict democracy, they are claiming the mantle “parents’ rights” as a way to restrict educational freedom. The extreme right-wing zealots who are promoting the “parents’ rights” talking points from billionaire-funded think tanks aren’t interested in empowering parents — they are using this language as a euphemisms to justify book bans and otherwise restrict which parts of U.S. history teachers can discuss with students.

Black parents who want their family’s story of resistance to enslavement and segregation more fully explored in the classroom are quite clearly not included under the parent’s rights rubric. (Read The Missing Voices in the Panic Over Critical Race Theory.) LGBTQ parents, or parents of LGBTQ children are also excluded from the right’s narrow definition of parents. We need an approach to education that affirms the value of every student and brings parents and educators together in the movement for human rights.

QUESTION: Why do you say that following the prohibitions made in these bills would require teachers not to tell the truth about U.S. history?

ONE SENTENCE: The truth is that racism, genocide, and the destruction of nature played fundamental roles in our nation’s history, so if you can’t teach that, you can’t teach the truth about U.S. history.

MORE DETAILS: Systemic racism and sexism are not hypothetical; they are facts. The United States grew as it did when white people seized Indigenous peoples’ land, expelled them and enslaved Africans. When this country was founded, political and legal rights were limited to white male landowners. White and male elites extended rights  to women, people of color, and people of all income levels only in response to concerted organizing efforts that continue to this day. These are historical facts. Teaching them is teaching truth. Knowing the truth about the past can help create a more just future.

These bills — and similar measures on the local level —  prohibit teachers from helping students understand the causes of the massive inequalities we see today. There is no way to explain the enormous racial wealth gap without explaining redlining, and there is no way to explain redlining without explaining Jim Crow, and there is no way to explain Jim Crow without explaining Reconstruction. There is no way to explain Reconstruction without explaining the Civil War and Emancipation. There is no way to explain Emancipation without explaining slavery and white supremacy. Helping students see those connections across time — the systematic nature of racism — is imperative to understanding our history and  the world today. 

QUESTION: Will these laws impact the ability for teachers to use resources from the Zinn Education Project or Black Lives Matter at School if they work in states where there aren’t bills to ban them?

ONE SENTENCE: These proposed laws are intended to have a chilling effect — so whether they pass or not in a particular state, teachers everywhere will  fear teaching the truth about racism and any other topic the proponents don’t like, whether it is women’s rights, climate change, or any other substantial social issues. 

MORE DETAILS: The Zinn Education Project and efforts like Black Lives Matter at School support educators so they don’t feel intimidated or alone in teaching the truth.

Even in places where there are no new laws, these attacks affect educators who have to spend time defending what they’re teaching once parents and others have been misinformed or scared into  thinking that what teachers are teaching is divisive. Most parents, when informed, support critical teaching about important social issues and see how engaged their children are when they study these topics. See this Oregon example.

QUESTION: Should schools be allowed to teach students about LGBTQ+ identity?  

ONE SENTENCE: LGBTQ+ rights are human rights — the reality is that LGBTQ+ staff and students are in every school and they deserve to not only be safe, but welcomed, supported, and have their identities reflected in the curriculum.

MORE DETAILS: More than 80% of LGBTQ+ students who attended in-person school at some point in 2020-21 experienced harassment or assault, less than 30% reported that their classes include any LGBTQ-related topics, and only 8% said their schools had policies supporting transgender and nonbinary students. (Source: Chalkbeat)

Six states in the country have passed laws to censor discussions of LGBTQ+ people or issues in school and eighteen states have bans on transgender students participating in sports consistent with their gender identity. These attacks are hurting LGBTQ+ students and teachers. One school in Wisconsin banned students from singing the Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton song “Rainbowland” at a school concert and fired a teacher who defended the students’ right to sing.

As Jesse Hagopian points out: In Florida, Gov. DeSantis’s so-called “Parental Rights in Education” bill — better known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill — prohibits classroom instruction related to gay, lesbian, or transgender issues, and sexuality or gender identity more broadly. Florida is one of six states that censor discussions of LGBTQ+ people or issues in school, and one of eighteen that bans transgender students from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity.

We have seen this before.

Just as the Red Scare and Lavender scare were used to purge teachers and prohibit any discussion of social and racial justice in school during late 1940s and 50s, the attacks on what history deniers have labeled “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” are being used today to fire educators and exclude discussions about structural racism, sexism, transphobia and homophobia.

We refuse to return to the hysteria and paranoia of the McCarthy era, and we won’t let them use race, gender, and sexuality to divide and conquer us.

QUESTION: Doesn’t the participation of trans athletes hurt cis female student athletes? 

ONE SENTENCE: Including trans athletes will benefit everyone.

MORE DETAILS: Many who oppose the inclusion of trans athletes erroneously claim that allowing trans athletes to compete will harm cisgender women. This divide and conquer tactic gets it exactly wrong. Excluding women who are trans hurts all women. It invites gender policing that could subject any woman to invasive tests or accusations of being “too masculine” or “too good” at their sport to be a “real” woman. In Idaho, the ACLU represents two young women, one trans and one cis, both of whom are hurt by the law that was passed targeting trans athletes.

Further, this myth reinforces stereotypes that women are weak and in need of protection. Politicians have used the “protection” trope time and time again, including in 2016 when they tried banning trans people from public restrooms by creating the debunked “bathroom predator” myth. The real motive is never about protection — it’s about excluding trans people from yet another public space. The arena of sports is no different.

On the other hand, including trans athletes will promote values of non-discrimination and inclusion among all student athletes. As longtime coach and sports policy expert Helen Carroll explains, efforts to exclude subsets of girls from sports, “can undermine team unity and also encourage divisiveness by policing who is ‘really’ a girl.” Dr. Mary Fry adds that youth derive the most benefits from athletics when they are exposed to caring environments where teammates are supported by each other and by coaches. Banning some girls from athletics because they are transgender undermines this cohesion and compromises the wide-ranging benefits that youth get from sports. [This response is taken in full from Four Myths About Trans Athletes, Debunked by Chase Strangio and Gabriel Arkles via ACLU.]

QUESTION: Isn’t sex defined at birth and identifiable through singular biological characteristics?

ONE SENTENCE: Trans girls are girls.

MORE DETAILS: Girls who are trans are told repeatedly that they are not “real” girls and boys who are trans are told they are not “real” boys. Non-binary people are told that their gender is not real and that they must be either boys or girls. None of these statements are true. Trans people are exactly who we say we are.

There is no one way for women’s bodies to be. Women, including women who are transgender, intersex, or disabled, have a range of different physical characteristics.

“A person’s sex is made up of multiple biological characteristics and they may not all align as typically male or female in a given person,” says Dr. Safer. Further, many people who are not trans can have hormones levels outside of the range considered typical of a cis person of their assigned sex.

When a person does not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth, they must be able to transition socially — and that includes participating in sports consistent with their gender identity. According to Dr. Deanna Adkins, excluding trans athletes can be deeply harmful and disruptive to treatment. “I know from experience with my patients that it can be extremely harmful for a transgender young person to be excluded from the team consistent with their gender identity.” [This response is taken in full from Four Myths About Trans Athletes, Debunked by Chase Strangio and Gabriel Arkles via ACLU.]

QUESTION: If you don’t live in a state with a bill that’s pending or passed, what can you do to support those who do?

ONE SENTENCE: Speak out publicly about the danger of these laws and how they have a chilling effect nationally.

MORE DETAILS: Teachers can pledge their support for teaching the truth at the Zinn Education Project website. Get involved with your local school board to help prevent the spread of these laws to your state.

QUESTION: What is critical race theory?

ONE SENTENCE: Critical race theory is a field of legal study that explores the way race is socially constructed and has been used over time to maintain white supremacy.

MORE DETAILS: Critical Race Theory (CRT) was developed by legal scholars in the 1970s and 80s (by Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and others) to analyze racism in the legal system.  

CRT has a few major themes that it applies to legal studies:

1. 1. 1. First, that race is a social construct that doesn’t have anything to do with biological differences among people.  
      2. Second, while race is not a biological reality, white supremacy exists in our society and part of the way it maintains power is through the legal system — even when that system purports to be colorblind . 
      3. Third, white supremacy can be challenged and a society without racism in its laws and structures is possible. 
      4. Read more.

QUESTION: Why should anyone care, if they live in states where these bills have not been introduced?

ONE SENTENCE: The objective of these proposed laws is to create a chilling effect so that, whether they pass or not in a particular locale, teachers everywhere will be fearful of teaching the truth about racism, gender, and sexuality.

MORE DETAILS: In 2023, there is no corner of the country left untouched by the authoritarian political project to undermine anti-racist and LGBTQ- affirming education. Even in “blue” states, educators are facing attacks on their curriculum and class libraries at the local and district level. All it takes is one right-wing activist mobilizing buzzwords — “CRT,” “groomer,” “parents rights” — to disrupt teaching and learning, and to fuel the Right’s narrative that public schools are not to be trusted. It is important to understand that these attacks are not anomalous, but part of a larger far-right, white supremacist political project predicated on racist voter suppression, transphobia, censorship, and the privatization of public goods.