As Indiana’s AG Todd Rokita doesn’t determine policy. His latest action is to join 20 other state AGs “calling on the Biden administration to reconsider proposals aimed at imposing critical race theory into American history and civics curriculum.”

“Critical race theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. The core idea is that racism is a social construct, and that it is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.” Ed. Week, 5/18/21.

Schools should teach the truth about history and civics. After slavery festered in this country from 1619, The Constitution protected it. No law could restrict “Migration or Importation” of slaves until 1808. Art. I, § 9. Abolition was not mentioned, because slaves meant money.

About 20 delegates to the Convention were slaveholders. In 1860, 39% of the population of the States that would secede was comprised of slaves. Slaves had no rights, but were counted as 3/5 of a person for Congressional apportionment. (Indigenous people aren’t mentioned.)

If people have price tags, and in 1860's slave markets they did, slaves were the most valuable category of property and accounted for at least 25% of the South’s wealth. The Civil War and its freeing of slaves was not a panacea for the problems of slavery.

If the economy of the South, circa 1865, is viewed as a person who weighs 200 pounds, slavery was a tumor that comprised at least 50 pounds. Even a benign tumor of that size, when removed, significantly alters the patient’s metabolism.

In 1865 the South was in ruins. Former slaves, many of whom had been forbidden by law from learning arithmetic or how to read and write, had rights equal to their white neighbors. To paraphrase Orwell, some people are more equal than others.

Jim Crow laws, lynchings, and discrimination in voting, education and housing, followed. In Indiana, D.C. Stephenson led the KKK and bragged that he had picked this State’s governor. The struggle for civil rights had to be fought in the South and here in Indiana.

From 1619 to 1865, slavery was legal and protected here. Even Rokita should know that 246 is more 156. Our political structures, courts, and schools have all been vehicles of prejudice. To ignore this history simply condemns us to repetition.

Race riots did not suddenly occur in the 1960s. There were slave uprisings before 1776. Black people are murdered. If nothing happens, then critical race theory is validated. Rokita, when he postures against critical race theory, panders to racists. We need to out-vote racists.