TN House Bill 2670

 Earlier this month, the Tennessee state legislature introduced house bill 2670 for consideration. TN HB2670 prohibits public higher education institutions from taking certain actions regarding divisive topics as well as requiring these institutions to collect and publish data from their students and employees on whether they feel comfortable being able to discuss a wide range of topics openly on their campus. This bill is one of many that are being discussed around the country surrounding the hot topic issue of Critical Race Theory, or CRT. The importance and controversy of these bills fall within the topics that a stated to be divisive, and therefore prohibited, many of which revolve around power structures that are present within our society in regards to race, sex, class, and other aspects of personal identity. Many people fear that without these bills, students will be made to feel guilty about the innate privilege or oppression that certain groups have been labeled within our culture while others fear that these bills aim to quiet the very discussions that break down these power structures and that the outrage that these proposed bills create further proves the need for these types of conversations rather than legislature that limits them.

The Tennessee General Assembly
meeting to discuss a bill

These bills have been brought up in a few of my classes such as Educational Psychology and CSE 300 specifically because of the implications of this bill and how they could possibly affect these classes. In my Educational Psychology class we have discussed countless cases of the either under or over-representation of specific groups in just about every diagnosis and to ignore that there are specific aspects of society that play into why these inequalities in representation exist would be a complete disservice to our students. Take the fact that black students far out represent white students who are diagnosed with aggressive personality disorders and that ADHD diagnoses are far more likely to be received for boys than girls, and that boys are more likely to receive accommodations for this diagnosis than girls in the same grade. The discussion of this bill has especially affected my CSE 300 class because the topic of the class is to address inequalities in our society caused by race, sex, nationality, gender, etc. (basically this bills worst nightmare) 

When I first read through this bill, I'll be honest I was kind of confused on where the issue was because it was never stated that certain divisive topics couldn't be discussed in class but from what I can tell, the issue lies in the part of the bill that states that employees and students cannot be penalized/rewarded for their refusal to support, believe, endorse, embrace, confess, act upon, or otherwise assent to one or more divisive concepts. From my own experience in a college classroom, I can definitely see a situation arising where a teacher is discussing a topic that a student doesn't agree with and the student arguing that the teachers "endorsement" of a topic was the reason that they have received certain treatment in the classroom which creates a total fear system for educators who don't want to get caught up in the "cancel culture" that tends to follow these situations. Overall, through reading through some of these bills and talking about them, I've been able to take away from it that while it lays out the topics that should be avoided and gives some type of legal allowance for people who would like to challenge the inclusion of topics in a lesson, etc., overall the bill is decently vague and it's hard to tell exactly what constitutes discussion of these topics which is another reason that these bills have received so much backlash. 

Taking the first "Divisive Concept" listed in the bill for example, "One race or sex is inherently superior or inferior to another race or sex", clearly (hopefully) no teacher is going to stand up in front of their class and express this particular view but this bill puts into question how a teacher would lead a discussion about the Women's rights movement of the '60s and '70s and whether it would be appropriate to talk about the oppression of women that led to the need for this movement. The same thing goes for the Civil Rights movement and so many other important histories that not only defined our culture when they happened but still leave a lasting impact today. To allow these bills to shut down these conversations is to ignore the effects of these events and systems that are still in place today to allow the continued comfort of the oppressor to decide what is appropriate conversation and how the oppressed may feel. If these oppressive systems were not in place, there would be no uncomfortable conversations about them because there would be no evidence of the systems, there would be no one to complain about the effects of the systems, there would be no one affected by the systems who would have a reason to stand up against them. Our students are affected by these issues, our communities and societies are affected by these issues, and without the ability to educate others about the history and the steps that can be taken to counteract these issues no one benefits except the people who were already benefiting off of the system.