A conservative Republican is receiving heavy backlash after telling a group of people that the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre was not motivated by skin color.
On July 6, Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters spoke at a forum. While there, someone asked him how teaching about the 1921 mass killing of Black people in Tulsa did not violate his ban on learning Critical Race Theory. Walter informed the attendees that it was okay to teach schoolchildren about the massacre because it wasn’t ignited by race.
“I would never tell a kid that because of your race, because of the color of your skin, or your gender or anything like that, you are less of a person or are inherently racist. That doesn’t mean you don’t judge the actions of individuals,” he said. “Oh, you can. Absolutely, historically, you should. ‘This was right. This was wrong. They did this for this reason.’ But to say it was inherent in that because of their skin is where I say that is Critical Race Theory. You’re saying that race defines a person.”
However, historical facts tell a different story. In 1921, residents of the Greenwood neighborhood in Tulsa known as the “Black Wall Street” were violently attacked, killed, and their homes burned by armed white vigilantes because of their skin color, archival documentation stated.
University of Oklahoma’s social scientist Samuel Perry revealed he was in the audience during Walters’ opinion on the tragic event. He let his thoughts be known about the 38-year-old former high school history teacher on Twitter. “My wife (a teacher) and I attended this event tonight. This was just the tip of the iceberg of idiocy, Walters wrote,” Perry stated. “Driving home, we felt so angry and embarrassed we live in a state where people elected this ignorant and incompetent clown.”