To the editor:

This stuff about teaching “critical race theory” is alike to banning likenesses of Muhammad. What I draw becomes Muhammad only when I say so.

Whatever we call it, is it propaganda to teach a social theory that infers American institutions have engaged in systemic racial prejudice? Only if history can be studied without interpretation. If you don’t like my theory, tell me why I’m wrong –dispute my facts.

Or is it too divisive to acknowledge that virtually every African American who came to this country before 1865 came in bondage as a slave? Dispute that slaves were denied the power of literacy. Or deny that Black families were frequently, if not typically, torn apart in commercial transactions. That slaves were denied the fruits of their own labor seems definitional. Is it divisive to observe that slaves could be raped, beaten and killed at a whim?

Can’t we concede that the promises of emancipation and citizenship were canceled by Jim Crow? Is it too painful to name the thousands of Black lives extinguished without legal recourse, let alone recognition? How should we dispute that the children of the children of the children of the children of Black Americans have been given restricted access to the fruits of the American cornucopia?

Distressful certainly, but they’re just facts. They distress us because we are not proud of them. What name would you give it? We reason we cannot be rid of destructive habits that we won’t face. Disagree? Let’s talk about it.

William Skepnek,

Lawrence