Wisconsin Legislature approves ban on requiring college, tech students to adopt critical race theory tenets

Originally Published on WisPolitics.com

The Legislature voted Tuesday along party lines to ban the UW or tech college systems from requiring students to “affirm, adopt, or adhere to” tenets of critical race theory.

The bill is a watered-down version of what was first introduced. SB 409 originally sought to ban teaching things such as that one race or sex is superior to another; someone by virtue of their race is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive; and an individual’s moral character is determined by a person’s race or sex. Backers argued that it would ban the teaching of critical race theory.

Gov. Tony Evers has already vetoed a bill to ban teaching such concepts at the K-12 level.

Sen. Lena Taylor, D-Milwaukee, said the bill is part of a larger GOP effort nationally to prevent the teaching of history and avoid uncomfortable questions about the nation’s past. She chided her GOP colleagues for frequently quoting Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech in which he hoped some day his children would be judged by their character and not the color of their skin. Taylor, who’s Black, reminded her colleagues that King also wrote about institutional racism and the need for “radical change….