After Jewish lawmaker’s impassioned speech, Wyoming’s conservative legislature rejects critical race theory ban
It seemed a slam dunk: The popular conservative cause of banning “critical race theory” in schools, being taken up for a vote in one of the country’s most lopsidedly conservative legislatures.
Then a Democrat, one of just seven in the 60-member Wyoming legislature, stood up Thursday and said he could not support the bill because he was Jewish.
“In this bill, page 9, line 19 states, ‘The teaching of history must be neutral, without judgment,'” state Rep. Andy Schwartz said during debate. “Now, how can that be possible? If I were a Native American, I doubt I could accept the neutral, judgment-free approach about the relocation, the decimation of the Indigenous population. If I were a Black American, I doubt I could accept a neutral, judgment-free approach on the enslavement of millions of Americans.
“But I’m Jewish, and I cannot accept a neutral judgment-free approach on the murder of 6 million Jews in World War Two.”
Schwartz, whose Teton County district includes the city of Jackson, said that, to understand the depth of depraved actions, one must be discomfited by them.
“Going to page 8, lines 19 and 20, it says ‘no one should feel discomfort or distress,'” he said. “But in learning about the Holocaust, I have suffered a lifetime of discomfort and distress, and it’s essential that as students learn about this dark time in our history, they to feel discomfort in distress.”