A recently passed Texas bill was trending on Twitter Tuesday afternoon (July 20) as critics reacted to legislation that would limit education about race and American history. The bill, which was passed in Texas’s State Senate on Friday (July 16), removes several curriculum requirements in school, including teaching students that the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacy are “morally wrong.”
The bill also removes writings by civil rights activist Cesar Chavez and suffragette Susan B. Anthony; lessons about Native American history; Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and more from required curriculum. The bill means students would no longer be required to learn about the “history of white supremacy, including but not limited to the institution of slavery, the eugenics movement and the Ku Klux Klan and the ways in which it is morally wrong.”
“[Texas Gov.] Greg Abbott [is] trying to erase MLK Jr., César Chávez and Susan B. Anthony from the Texas curriculum and recast the KKK as the good guys,” one person reacted to the bill on Twitter. “This is an assault on history and it must be stopped.”
“When Jim Crow was first established, the process was slow, one outrage at a time. The state laws were systematically altered over a decade. I’m sure some ppl thought, ‘Look at that, another crazy thing’ and went on with their lives,” another tweeted. “DON’T REPEAT HISTORY.”
Democrats in Texas’ House of Representatives are currently in Washington, D.C.; where they traveled in hopes of blocking a restrictive voting bill in the state. While the new education bill has been passed in Senate, it won’t have a chance to become law until Democrats return and the House votes puts it to a vote.
The bill was authored by Republican State Sen. Bryan Hughes, who argued it would combat the “pernicious, wrong [and] harmful” effects of critical race theory, which is not currently taught in Texas public schools.
See reactions to the bill on Twitter below.