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Opinion: A History Lesson In A Critical Race Theory-Free America

The year is 2033. A Donald Trump hologram is president. The Republicans are in control of Congress and the White House. The Supreme Court has just two liberal votes. And it’s now illegal to make a white person feel even slightly uncomfortable.

After we exhausted the Greek alphabet for new COVID-19 variants, a new pandemic dubbed COVID-26 has killed scores of people around the globe. Frustrated that Black people can technically still vote (even though it has become nearly impossible), thousands of white people stormed the U.S. Capitol to demand martial law — but only in cities that did not vote for Hologram Trump. The military obliged. The campaign to discredit any teachers who spoke about racism was wildly successful and actual history has been banned from all schools in the United States under the auspices of removing critical race theory. The following is an excerpt from an educator’s brief overview of a U.S. history class in our now-CRT-free America.

I am happy to announce, on behalf of nice white parents everywhere, that education in this country is finally back on track. After completely giving up on trying to mitigate COVID-26, teachers and staffers alike are so grateful to be together, all 62 students per teacher, in cozy classrooms unmasked and unbothered.

You may have some burning questions such as what is critical race theory? And how exactly was it previously being taught to our country’s kindergarteners? While those are important questions, we’re not going to address them.

What we will address is that all across the country, white third graders were being taught to hate themselves because of slavery even though it was so long ago that literally no one is affected by it today.

But don’t worry: After Republican governors in Florida and Virginia banned critical race theory from ever being taught in our schools in 2022, it caught on nationwide and now no child anywhere will even have to learn about the transatlantic slave trade. In fact, we can’t even call it a slave trade, so from here on out, they will be referred to as “low-skilled laborers with dark skin.”

How did we get here, you ask? Back in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and officer-involved killings had certain people convinced that America was a racist country. They taught children that the policies and laws undergirding our society were based on racist ideals. Shocking, right? White people, even the ones who didn’t cause any killings, felt personally attacked — so they fought back. They united in their efforts to ban books and fire any educator who dared to try and tarnish America’s good name.

Well, now we finally have people like Vice President Marjorie Taylor Greene and Sen. Candace Owens (their interracial friendship proves that racism hardly exists) to set the record straight and get our children back on track. Racism is rare, brief and never systematic; you can’t prove it because you can never know what’s truly in a man’s heart.

Before the crackdown on critical race theory, you may have heard that the founding of this country was not on the up and up. Those people, however, only wanted to make white people feel bad. The truth is the Founding Fathers — who are infallible, by the way — wrote a perfect document. You may be wondering why it has so many amendments if it’s so perfect. And to that I say, that wasn’t a very patriotic question.

Who cares if sla — er, I mean low-skilled laborers were only three-fifths of a person? What matters is that was a very long time ago and their descendants are five-fifths now.

The country only descended into a civil war in 1861 because southern states were worried about their economy. You see, those low-skilled laborers were very helpful when it came to making white people richer. And they were fighting for states’ rights! But it all worked out in the end because the South lost the war. There certainly wasn’t a campaign to violently overthrow any state governments that attempted to build a multiracial democracy in the aftermath. And there definitely weren’t any laws or policies created to prevent the low-skilled laborers from living as free people and gaining access to land ownership or quality education.

In fact, nobody is really sure how things got to be so unequal. It certainly wasn’t because of white supremacist policies or racial segregation — that would imply something divisive or uncomfortable. So we’ll just say those descendants did it to themselves.

OK, maybe there was a tiny bit of racism. But this part of history has a happy ending! Perhaps you’ve heard of the civil rights movement? In the 1960s, the descendants of those low-skilled laborers were upset that they didn’t seem to have the same rights as their fair-skinned counterparts. They participated in marches and protests, but really, everyone — especially moderate white people — were on their side.

The most important takeaway from this obviously brief and unfortunate period of racism is that it’s over. Martin Luther King Jr., who coincidentally died young but definitely not because of his skin color or his beliefs, gave a beautiful speech at the Washington Monument. He had a dream that your kids would stop being judged for the crime of being white.

Isn’t that beautiful? That one speech singularly ended the very brief racism the United States experienced.

We’ve been living in racial harmony ever since. It’s just a coincidence that as soon as a Black person was elected president of the United States way back in 2008, your dear old Uncle Mitchell — who was never really interested in politics — started watching Fox News every night and complaining about the Blacks. After all, Barack Obama was only interested in dividing our country.

And that time your Black co-worker was late to work because they had to drive 50 miles away from home just to cast a ballot on Election Day? Well, that was just poor planning on their part. Maybe they should’ve lived in a different neighborhood. And shouldn’t they have been more grateful that legally they can still vote? It probably won’t stay that way for much longer.

I know the latest insurrection at the Capitol was perhaps a little bit violent, but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they were fighting for states’ rights. Or maybe it was just economic anxiety.

The takeaway from this lesson is that nothing that’s happened in the past is relevant to today. I only talk about history so you can see how far we’ve come as a country. All of the problems those bad teachers were telling kids about — privilege, racism, inequality — that was just an attempt to brainwash our children.

How can white people have privilege if I’ve seen a homeless white person before and Black celebrities have millions of dollars? They claim racism, and yet every February, we allow each corporation to pander to Black people about how racism is actually over.

(By the way, if you hear any teachers use the word “racism” or “privilege,” be sure to call the National Combating Critical Race Theory tip line. Please do NOT spam it with prank calls.)

The most important thing we want to factor in when teaching our children about American history is the comfort of white people. Before our new leaders took over, teachers could say abhorrent things about this country like “it’s a racist dumpster fire” or “it’s a musty place that not even aliens would invade.” But now, thanks to the God-fearing, country-loving Republicans, our children can remain safe and warm in their cocoons — never forced to challenge their worldview or even consider for a moment that America isn’t a sparkling democracy. White parents can sleep soundly at night knowing their children will never experience the pain of finding out about topics that may make them slightly uncomfortable.

When Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of an America, this is clearly what he imagined.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.