Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has voiced her support of legislation banning the teaching of critical race theory (CRT) in schools.
Rice made history as the first Black woman to head the State Department.
In August, the Alabama State Board of Education adopted a resolution that bans teaching concepts like critical race theory in the state’s public K-12 schools. During a guest host appearance on ABC’s “The View,” Rice offered her take on the controversial measure.
“I’m not certain seven-year-olds need to learn it,” Rice said after Whoopi Goldberg questioned just how much of influence parents should have in the education of their children.
“If they are adamant and they don’t want you to teach what is going to be taught, period, they’re going to have to homeschool their kids because this is not going to wash,” she said. “Well, they’re actually homeschooling them in increasing numbers and I think that’s a signal. First of all, parents ought to be involved in their children’s education. I think parents ought to have a say. We used to have parent-teacher conferences. We used to have PTAs. There are lots of ways for parents to be involved, and they should be,” Rice continued.
Alabama is one of around two dozen states contemplating limits to how teachers discuss so-called divisive ideas in the classroom.
“My parents never thought I was going to grow up in a world without prejudice, but they also told me, ‘That’s somebody else’s problem, not yours. You’re going to overcome it and you are going to be anything you want to be,'” Rice said. “That’s the message that I think we ought to be sending to kids.”
“One of the worries that I have about the way that we’re talking about race is that it either seems so big that somehow white people now have to feel guilty for everything that happened in the past – I don’t think that’s very productive – or Black people have to feel disempowered by race,” she added. “I would like Black kids to be completely empowered, to know that they are beautiful in their Blackness, but in order to do that I don’t have to make white kids feel bad for being white.”
