A measure is up for Senate approval in Wisconsin, which would essentially ban public schools from teaching critical race theory.
The Republican bill the state Senate is poised to send to Gov. Tony Evers, the Associated Press reports. Despite the bill lacking any Democratic co-sponsors, the party does have the votes to stop it in the Legislature. Evers is expected to veto the measure.
This comes days after Black lawmakers walked out in protest and withheld their votes as the Mississippi Senate passed a bill prohibiting schools from teaching critical race theory.
Republicans insist that the theory teaches “victimhood.”
The bill states no school, community college or university could teach that any “sex, race, ethnicity, religion or national origin is inherently superior or inferior.”
There is currently nationwide debate over critical race theory, which asserts that racism is structural and entrenched in education to health care institutions.
Democratic Sen. John Horhn of Jackson challenged whether the bill could prevent schools from teaching about the late U.S. Sen. James O. Eastland of Mississippi. Jackson led an effort to block anti-lynching legislation in 1948.
“The whole situation of it is based on the founding of this country and some of the precepts that we, as a country, implicitly or explicitly accepted — chief among which we justified slavery because powers that be judged Black people to be racially inferior,” Horhn said. “And a lot of our laws, a lot of our systems, a lot of our customs, a lot of our practices have been impacted by that.″
