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Some politicians and activists of late have made accusations that teaching about race and inclusion in school is divisive, or a way to indoctrinate students.
However, the growing threat of white supremacist extremism in the U.S. has left education advocates increasingly worried about those Republican-led efforts.
Now, a mass shooting allegedly by a self-proclaimed white supremacist targeting a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, has sparked fears about banning race education in schools, advocates who spoke with ABC News said.
Research shows that children become aware of race and racial inequality at a young age and may develop racial biases by ages 3 to 5.
Studies, including those from award-winning social-developmental psychologist Phyllis A. Katz, have long shown that children engaged in honest and frequent conversations about race, racial inequity, and racism, lead to lower levels of bias in young children.
Children take cues from what they see around them, so avoiding conversations about race and inequality only allows for “prevalent stereotypes [to] remain unchanged,” Katz's research states.
Katheleen Belew, a historian who specializes in the white power movement, testified before Congress in 2019 to recommend education as a solution to acknowledging extremism as a nation.
"Truly grappling with white power violence would involve a long look at the racial inequality foundational to many American communities," said Belew.
Experts on radicalism in the U.S., like Michael Edison Hayden, a senior investigative reporter at the Southern Poverty Law Center, suggest that education can be an essential tool against racism in different ways.
"Every person needs to be aware of these huge racial injustices that have existed throughout American history," Hayden said. "You cannot possibly understand what the people in Buffalo feel right now -- Black people in general -- feel without understanding the history of racist violence in this country."
However, Hayden warns that only portraying white people as antagonists could "keep this cycle [of division] going in our culture."
Primarily, he recommends federal agencies fund programs that support the early intervention of radicalization and inoculate communities against extremism, by promoting media literacy, mental health resources and other such programs.
"You have people pushing back against education at this very moment when it's needed more than ever before," he said............
The anti-race education movement has been firing up school board meetings, midterm primary races and conservative media most intensely within the last two years. It's led to heated debates about whether children are being taught about the long history of racial oppression and the fight for equality in schools.
However, critical race theorists, educators and some parents say that opponents are actively distorting what the theory is in order to reverse progress made in diversity and racial equity.
"The whitewashing of history, the banning of books, the silencing of diverse voices do everything to rob students of the truth of our history, and do everything to plant the seeds of white supremacy," Kim Anderson, executive director of the National Education Association, told ABC News............
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