HOW CRT = POLICE ARE RACIST
COMMON IN ROCKWOOD: RACIST POLICE
Law enforcement/police are often referenced in Critical Race Theory as an example of a racist institution in our country.
They are also referenced, regularly, in Rockwood. Negative portrayals of police have been found in district library books and class assignments (some of which, district administrators say, they removed or changed after parent complaints).
Parents say those portrayals have also been one-sided.
THE MISSING CONTEXT
For ELA English language arts classes, students have read fictional accounts of white police officers shooting Black teens.
Because there wasn't context to provide balance with the issue, (such as crime data, or that only a fraction of a percentage of police interactions turn violent, or that police have also shot White teens and Hispanic teens), the concept of White police shooting Black teens was presented as the "norm."
This is despite the fact that data shows 78% of the victims in police shootings are NOT Black.
You can see the data, that isn't shown to students, here: Washington Post database of fatal police shootings
In that data, you'll see police have fatally shot 7,349 individuals in our country over the last 7 years. (This is out of hundreds of millions of police interactions. Example: 61 million people had at least one interaction with police in a recent year.)
Before the update April 28, 2022, approximately 25% of the victims were Black.
It has now dropped to 21.7% are Black.
Fatal police shootings database, Washington Post |
This type of context has not been used in Rockwood class assignments or discussions on this topic, according to assignments that were listed on Canvas (Rockwood's online learning platform), as well as student and parent descriptions.
It is often stated on news and social media that Black individuals are disproportionately affected by police shootings (more likely to be shot and killed by police), compared to their small percentage of our population (about 13%). Statistically, that is true.
Statistically, it is also true that Black individuals are arrested for about 50% of the murders and robberies in this country, despite being 13% of the population. That is seen here, in the most recent FBI statistics available.
That context is also not found in Rockwood books and assignments.
Note: None of this is said to minimize any events that have happened. Instead, it illustrates the one-sided accounts of the issue, which parents say tells kids what to think instead of how to think.
For more on beliefs associated with CRT and how they are connected to our classrooms, see "Quick Glance."
Also note: None of what's written on this site is meant to be an exhaustive explanation of Critical Race Theory or a claim that the writers of this blog are experts in this area. We have simply read a lot about it and have seen the connections between beliefs associated with CRT and what students and teachers are reading and doing in Rockwood.