Conservative Republicans are running around the nation and scrambling to put laws into place to ban critical race theory (CRT) as if it were as bad as insurrections, militia groups, white supremacists, and far-right extremists. Of course, these things are not the same. The latter exists to frighten, intimidate, and terrorize people while the former exists to enlighten and spark discourse.

But if you have no idea what CRT really is and all you’ve heard is a shorthand describing a methodology designed to diminish your (white) children, then I guess it could seem like something that needs to be contained and banished. 

So when University of Mississippi Law School student Brittany Murphree opted to actually take a CRT class, it caused her parents to turn a whiter shade of white and her classmates to wonder what was wrong with her. 

But Murphree, who told Mississippi Today that she always hoped to have a role in Republican politics, stood her ground, telling her friends: “The best way to have an opinion about this class is literally to take it.”

Critical Race Theory 747 at Ole Miss is taught by Professor Yvette Butler, who according to Murphree tells the students on the first day that the only thing she demands of them is that they keep an open mind. 

Murphree adds that the class introduces students to CRT and how it applies to the law, current events, and current issues, but the core principle of the class is “interest convergence,” which simply means that only when white communities prosper do communities of color prosper. It’s a challenging and complex tenant and one that obviously isn’t being taught in K-12, as the GOP knows, but refuses to stop peddling. 

But as much as Murphree advocates that other law students, particularly white students, at Ole Miss take CRT to understand what it really is and dismiss with the rhetoric, the Mississippi Senate Education Committee has advanced SB 2113, a bill aimed at preventing CRT from being taught in classrooms across Mississippi, to the statehouse.

Introduced by Republican Sen. Michael McLendon, the new bill would prevent students K-12 in both public and private schools as well as universities from learning about CRT.

“I’ve had so many of my constituents ask me … ‘is there a chance of this ever going on in our schools?’ So that’s the reason for this bill,“ McLendon told the Clarion-Ledger. The bill also threatens any school that does teach CRT with losing its funding from the Department of Education. 

Mississippi, along with several other Republican states, have attacked CRT, blowing the whistle and appeasing their conservative base with the CRT boogeyman. 

“In what world are we living in where it’s OK to teach children that they’re born racist?” Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said in a speech at the Neshoba County Fair in August. “In what world is it OK to teach children that they’ll be judged by the color of their skin, not by the content of their character?”

Black lawmakers in Mississippi walked out of the Senate chamber on Jan. 21, when the bill passed in the Senate by a 32-2 vote. Democratic state Sens. David Blount and Hob Bryan—both white—were the only two legislators to vote against the bill.

“This is not needed. It’s a waste of time, your time and mine. I know there are people out there who got fear but as a good senator, you can relay to them that there is no basis for it,” Democratic state Sen. David Jordan said just before the Dems left the chamber. 

“It is sad that we have wasted so much time on something that’s not even necessary,” Jordan said during his remarks. “We cannot continue to stumble into the future backwards. That’s what this bill does. That’s why we don’t need it,” he added.

Murphree will likely miss her class. “To date, this course has been the most impactful and enlightening course I have taken throughout my entire undergraduate career and graduate education at the State of Mississippi’s flagship university,” she told Mississippi Today.