A teacher in Daphne has added their name to a national pledge organized by the Zinn Education Project, committing to continue teaching Critical Race Theory in the classroom despite a wave of state-level pushback against the concept nationwide. The signature, logged in the week ending Jan. 15, brought the running total of Daphne-area teachers who have signed the pledge to one, after no new signatures were recorded from the area the week before.
In signing on, the Daphne teacher wrote simply: “We can’t erase the truth!” The Zinn Education Project’s pledge has drawn thousands of signatures from teachers across the country who say they intend to keep teaching about the role racism has played in American history and institutions, regardless of new restrictions some states have placed on the topic.
Critical Race Theory is an academic framework, first developed in legal scholarship in the late 1970s, that examines how racism has been embedded in laws, policies and institutions over time. For decades it remained largely confined to law schools and graduate programs, but the term exploded into mainstream political debate over the past two years, becoming a flashpoint in school board meetings, state legislatures and local elections across the country — including in Alabama.
The pledge Daphne’s newest signer joined is, in part, a response to a growing list of state laws restricting how race and racism can be discussed in K-12 classrooms. Arizona, Idaho, Iowa, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas have all passed legislation limiting or banning instruction that frames the United States as inherently racist. Other states, including Montana and South Dakota, have formally denounced the teachings through resolutions or guidance without enacting specific statutory bans.
The debate has sharply divided commentators and advocacy groups. In an interview with the Washington Free Beacon, Ashley Varner of the Freedom Foundation criticized the Zinn Education Project’s pledge campaign, accusing the organization of providing what she called “left-leaning propaganda to teachers.” Supporters of the pledge counter that removing discussion of systemic racism from history and social studies instruction amounts to whitewashing the historical record.
Alabama has not passed a statewide law explicitly banning Critical Race Theory instruction, though lawmakers in Montgomery have introduced bills targeting how race-related concepts can be taught in public schools, mirroring similar legislative pushes in neighboring states. That leaves individual teachers, principals and local school boards — including those overseeing Baldwin County’s public schools — to navigate the debate largely on their own, weighing curriculum decisions against a politically charged national conversation that shows little sign of cooling off.
For a single-district count like Daphne’s, one additional pledge may seem like a small data point. But taken alongside similar tallies compiling nationwide, it reflects how a once-obscure academic term has trickled down to individual classroom decisions in communities across South Alabama, with teachers, parents and administrators all weighing in on where the line should be drawn between teaching history and what critics call ideological instruction.