Regarding recent news stories about Gov. Glenn Youngkin's executive order to ban "inherently divisive concepts" from schools, including critical race theory, I must assert: like hobgoblins and bogeymen, critical race theory in public schools does not exist.
Back in my teaching days, I did what history teachers do: I connected dots and showed relationships between different historical events. The year 1619 provided an excellent opportunity to show such relationships.
Two significant events happened in Virginia that year: the arrival of enslaved people from Africa and the first meeting of the House of Burgesses. The former event marked the beginning of slavery in America, and the latter started democracy for a slaveholding elite, which ultimately became the model of democracy for all of us today.
As Virginia's lawmaking body, this House of Burgesses created slave laws that became the model for other states to copy. Those laws later became the basis for the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws that followed the Civil War.
One might say I taught critical race theory, but I did not. I taught history. Herein lies the danger of Youngkin's order (and other efforts against critical race theory): It carries the potential for partisan censorship.
Steve Bailey.
Richmond.