UCLA Creates a Database to Track Attacks on Critical Race Theory

The University of California Los Angeles School of Law has created a database that identifies and records efforts to stop critical race theory being taught in schools throughout the United States.

The database, called the CRT Forward Tracking Project, allows users to “track attacks on critical race theory” and filter the information as part of an effort to “support anti-racist education, training and research,” according to the school.

The project was created by UCLA’s Critical Race Studies Program, founded in 2000 as the first law school program in the nation dedicated to critical race theory.

CRT is, as the school explains, “the study and application of systemic racism in policy, law and society” and suggests that efforts must be made to correct these supposed injustices.

Parents concerned about Critical Race Theory took home these buttons from a school board activist training Jan. 19, 2022 in Sarasota, Florida. (Alexis Spiegelman)

Critics claim that CRT promotes a Marxist worldview, which views all aspects of human life using a racial lens rather than the idea of class struggle.

UCLA Law earlier in the month announced that it will track anti-CRT activities through the national database. This includes all levels of government.

” The project was designed to make people aware of the extent of attacks against the freedom to talk truthfully about race through campaigns against CRT,” stated Taifha Natalee Alexander (project director at CRT Forward) in a statement.

The database analyses these activities to identify where they are occurring and what opponents are doing, including protesting school boards curriculum.

The type of restricted CRT content, like a course taught in a public school or a group targeted, and the enforcement mechanisms used to regulate it, are also included.

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For example, in April the Placentia Yorba Linda School Board passed a ban on the use of CRT classrooms. This ended months of deliberation in Orange County.

Fans of the ban claimed that CRT was a divisive ideology and pushes an ideological narrative. The narrow vote by 3-2 votes was a result. According to public comments, other trustees claimed that such attempts amounted tocensorship at the April 5th school board meeting.

The UCLA program claims that many of those who are against these concepts being taught in K-12 schools are using the term CRT “incorrectly,” and have “affected plans to include ethnic studies more broadly for students before they get to college.”

Chinese-American parents in California rally against Assembly Bill 101, which was later signed into law to make ethnic studies a high school graduation requirement, in Los Angeles on April 26, 2020. Linda Jiang/The Epoch Times

In 2021, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation making ethnic studies a statewide requirement for high school graduation starting in the 2029-30 school year, amid debate among parents and teachers about whether ethnic studies curriculum includes elements of CRT.

Tracking Results

As of Aug. 2, the UCLA database has screened nearly 24,000 media articles and identified 479 instances of anti-CRT activity since August 2021.

The database team found anti-CRT activity is “much more pervasive and extensive than generally reported,” according to the school, with such policies either proposed or enacted in 49 states.

The project also found that most anti-CRT proposals have occurred in Florida, Virginia, Missouri, and the U.S. Congress, while local school board measures make up more than 20 percent of the activity in the database.

Signs against critical race theory in front of the Loudoun County School Administration building in Virginia on Nov. 9, 2021. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times

Most of these measures have been brought to the school board level in California, North Carolina and Florida. Californians also enacted five of eight measures.

The school also discovered that the best anti-CRT enforcement actions include issuing fines or withholding funds to teachers, administrators and schools for “prohibited behavior.”

CRT Controversy

Noah Zatz is the faculty director at UCLA Law’s Critical Race Studies Program. He spearheads the project. CRT Forward staff includes law librarians as well as undergraduate and law school research associates.

” We need to use critical race theory in order to comprehend this attack on racial injustice, where even the naming of structural racism is portrayed unfairly to whites. We need CRT for legal theories of education, free speech and anti-racism that do not just blunt these attacks but also place them at the heart of democratic societies,” Zatz stated in a statement.

Opponents argue that CRT does not need to be taught and that it doesn’t teach hard history. Instead, they claim that it is a way to analyze history in order to demolish modern systems which proponents say are white supremacist.

A man holds up a sign against Critical Race Theory during a protest outside a Washoe County School District board meeting in Reno, Nev., on May 25, 2021. (Andy Barron/Reno Gazette-Journal via AP)

” Those who are concerned about CRT bans in schools were misled into believing that states which have prohibited CRT will not teach Jim Crow Laws or the displacement of Native Americans. This is simply not true,” according to a CRT guide written by former California teacher Kali Fontanilla. Banning CRT would eliminate dangerous twisting of American history , according to Kali Fontanilla’s guide.

The UCLA project is funded by a $400,000 grant from the Lumina Foundation, a private, Indianapolis-based foundation with about $1.4 billion in assets, according to the nonprofit’s website.

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