The manufactured public outcry against Critical Race Theory (CRT) and ensuant anti-CRT legislation are gravely impacting public school educators. In the interview below, Renee Moore, an award-winning Mississippi public school educator for over three decades, offers her expert analysis on the present moment, its historical context, and hopes for a possible way forward. Renee, now retired, supports numerous teachers as they navigate the difficulty of the current season. May her reflections provide wisdom and encouragement to educators and various community members as we continue to fight for quality education for every child. 

Cami King, Director of Advocacy & Training
The Expectations Project / Truth Matters for Students Coordinating Team

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Talk to us about the political moment in which we find ourselves. You’ve spoken previously about the legislation being passed in various states regarding CRT bans, suggesting that, if we pay close attention, we will notice trends in the legislation that betray a specific political agenda. Tell us more about what’s going on politically. 

I have watched the development of these laws and policies across the nation with great interest. There was clearly a template that had been put forward, and supporters of that agenda in many cases simply copied the template as legislation in their various states, districts, or areas. That’s what happened here in Mississippi, the sponsor of the anti-CRT legislation here admitted he did not understand what CRT is, could not find any evidence of it being taught in Mississippi’s K12 schools, yet he and the governor made this a major item on the state legislative agenda. 

Mississippi, like many other places, used an old rhetorical/political ploy to promote this legislation publicly: the strawman fallacy. The straw-man fallacy is the creation of a deliberate misrepresentation of an issue [like a scarecrow], then attacking that misrepresentation as if it were the true issue. The phrase CRT sounds scary to those who don’t know what it is, so it makes a great PR handle to say it is a dangerous concept that shouldn’t be taught to children. 

But if we drill down into the fine print of these acts and policies, we find what they really are aimed at preventing is an acknowledgment of the existence, degree, and lasting effects of racism and white supremacy in this country. Teaching those truths runs the very real risk of motivating people towards repentance, remedies, reparations, and reconciliation. Those redemptive possibilities truly frighten those who benefit from the status quo.

You have a long history as an outstanding educator and engaged community member. Talk to us about organizing from that perspective – what have you seen and experienced? How does being an educator and organizer inform your engagement in our current moment? 

Much of my community organizing work has been around education issues. Most of these issues touch more than just one group of people. For example, the current push to limit or ignore historical facts affects not only Black children and their families but all children and educators. I mean, who doesn’t need truth when we know that truth sets us free?  When the different groups affected realize they have common interests, they can stand together to make lasting change.

As an educator, particularly after I began to build connections and respect within the community, parents would look to me [as they had traditionally looked to Black teachers] to help them navigate the world of schooling for their children. They expect us to have the children’s best interests at heart; to treat them as if they were our own; and to help parents and students make wise choices about academic concerns. 

It has been my experience that students themselves are often the best catalysts for change; this has been proven many times. When I was in high school [this was the early 70s], we shut our high school down over the racist textbooks we were forced to use (and that a white teacher was openly selling hard drugs in the school). When the school and district officials moved to punish us, the parents rallied with us, as did many of the teachers. That coalition is very effective. I’ve seen that pattern work time and again. One of my happiest moments as a teacher was watching students I had been teaching over several years on how to think critically, solve problems collectively and creatively, and take on the school district over issues of inequity and mistreatment of Black teachers. They took time to explain to their parents and win their support for their demands. Their activism was well-planned, and executed with discipline and respect. 

In addition to being an educator, author, and community organizer, you are also an ordained elder in the Baptist church. How does faith impact your organizing work and the community work in which you are so regularly engaged? 

Like many social justice activists before me, everything I do is guided and motivated by my faith. It is my faith in God that requires me to stand with the poor, against every form of oppression, and always in defense of the truth. As Rev. Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. taught us, “To cooperate passively with an unjust system makes the oppressed as evil as the oppressor.”

The Scripture is very clear about how God feels about lies; lying is the language of the devil. Saying something that is not true is lying, but so is refusing to tell the “whole truth.” The Gospel of John clearly tells us that Jesus was light, but people rejected the Light in favor of remaining in darkness “because their deeds were evil.”  What is stunning to me is how more people who claim to love God and God’s Word aren’t more actively fighting for truth and holding all these liars accountable. 

In fact, it is my standing in the community as an educator of excellence and as a woman of faith that gives me the leverage to do organizing work. My husband, who is a pastor, is also a long-time activist. This is the role the church and people of faith have played in our communities since we arrived in this country. And, as Dr. King so often reminded us, this is the type of work the larger faith community should be doing consistently if we are to be true to our beliefs.

In the Black community, our churches have always been involved in the fight for education. Black churches were our first schoolhouses. Many of our existing schools and colleges began in church sanctuaries and basements. Black churches were where the Freedom Schools met, and where the first HeadStart programs organized by Black mothers met. Both physically and spiritually, Black churches have sheltered and nurtured our fight for education through the generations. 

Many attribute the manufactured public outcry against Critical Race Theory in public schools to a calculated backlash to the racial reckoning in the summer of 2020 and the demand for justice and equity following the murder of George Floyd. Reflecting on this in the summer of 2021, legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw reminded us that, “Every effort made to make good on the promise of equality has been met by backlash.” We often refer to this as two steps forward, one step back. 

There is a temptation to forget that much of what we’re seeing and experiencing at this moment is not new. As you yourself said previously – “We’ve been here before and we’ve resisted before.” Flesh that out for us and talk more about the historical patterns of backlash and resistance. 

The examples of this battle between progress and backlash are almost too numerous to detail. Even a skim-through look at this nation’s history reveals this. The first anti-literacy laws against Black people in this country [we are the only group on these shores for whom literacy has been forbidden by law] were a response to Black folks reading the Bible and taking it literally that we are created in God’s image, leading to some of the earliest recorded slave rebellions.

The great opportunity that was Reconstruction was aborted and pushed back by lynching campaigns and the establishment of Jim Crow segregation. Black schools were burned down; teachers were killed or threatened into hiding. The Brown vs. Board decision of 1955 was followed by over 20 years of reactionary violence, stalling tactics, and legal maneuvers that led to the decimation of the Black teaching force in this country–from which we have yet to recover. 

Yet through it all, we kept struggling, and we kept teaching our children the truth. 

The summer of 2020 was especially striking because it has been many decades since we’ve seen such a broad cross-section of activism. Thus, there has been a particular effort to re-create as much division as possible in what could once again become a history-changing coalition. 

You were a public school educator for over three decades and are still in contact with some of your former students, many of whom are now educators themselves experiencing the strain of these ever-developing restrictions and censorship. Talk to us about what teachers are up against. What do you want to say to current educators?

Today’s Black educators are up against many obstacles. Yet, as I said earlier, this is not a new position for us as a group. I had to go dumpster-diving at the white high school across town to get usable English books for my classroom. I saw one of my mentor Black teachers get verbally assaulted by a white District administrator in front of her Black students for “teaching them too much.”

What I want today’s teachers to know is that this is just the latest battle in a long war. We have an amazing legacy of Black educators going back before slavery, before the slave trade, and certainly ever since those points in our history. These educators risked their lives for the education of Black children. They taught and set up schools in fields, bushes, cabins, churches, porches, and streets…anywhere, using whatever materials they could. 

Later, Black educators would create their own curriculum to liberate the minds of Black children, which they often had to share covertly to protect themselves and their students. These educators had a highly developed system of mentoring new teachers and of ongoing professional development that stretched across the nation. This important history of Black educators and the struggle for quality education is part of what the revisers of history also tried to erase. Thankfully, their/our story is being revealed by dedicated scholars [Vanessa Siddle Walker, Jarvis Givens, Melanie Acosta, and others]. 

The stories and struggles of our predecessors should inspire us and motivate us to continue the fight to teach truth and to teach it well. We should also learn from their example about the importance of networking and supporting each other – teachers and administrators. 

Many folks – educators, parents, students, and concerned community members – feel overwhelmed, scared, and even alone in the fight for truth and an equitable, quality education for all students given the tension of our current political climate. Will you offer a word of encouragement in the face of those anxieties and fears?

That there is such virulent opposition to equality and quality in education for all children shows just how important it is for us to continue to fight for what rightfully belongs to every child. Individual students, parents, or teachers may feel alone in their local situation, but in the larger picture, we are many. This is a time for networking, connecting, and supporting each other. 

Again, looking to Dr. King, who reminds us, “Fear is mastered through faith.” My faith teaches me that “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of love, and of power, and of a sound mind.” Lies and injustice cannot stand; truth will prevail. 

At TEP, we believe the equitable and just future we all deserve begins today as we dream and imagine together a better tomorrow. With this in mind, I want to end with a question about dreaming. In the midst of everything going on right now and in light of all you’ve shared here today, what are you hoping and dreaming for communities? 

My mother’s family is from a village in Ontario, Canada that was one of the early settlements established prior to the U.S. Civil War by formerly enslaved people, many of them arriving via the Underground Railroad. One of the first things these liberated people did was build a school. The school became so renowned for the quality of its educational program, that area white families began sending their children there, even voting to close their own district school. 

My dream for our communities today is that we would work together to create community schools, which serve as hubs/resource centers for the teaching and learning that takes place throughout the community. And, that these schools/hubs would be of such quality that all the people want their children to be there, to be part of a diverse, intellectually stimulating, mutually respectful, learning process. 

We can do that if we will.

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Renee Moore is a member of the Truth Matters for Students Coordinating Team as an EduColor partner. Renee was a public school teacher for over three decades and received numerous awards, accolades, and grants during her outstanding tenure. Renee’s writings are published in numerous books, professional journals, and blogs and her record of impactful activism is well-documented. Find out more about Renee’s work and accomplishments here and here. Renee and her husband have raised 11 children, all of whom attended public school.

Truth Matters for Students is a collaboration of The Expectations Project and EduColor in response to the manufactured public outcry against Critical Race Theory. Find out more about the Truth Matters for Students campaign and join the movement to support students and educators and secure quality education for every child at www.truthmattersforstudents.com.