Granite State Times

In the budget passed by the New Hampshire Legislature earlier this year, language from Rep. Keith Ammon (R-Hillsborough)'s bill regarding the teaching of critical race theory (CRT) was included.

Subsequently, House Bill 544 bans New Hampshire teachers, state employees and state contractors from teaching concepts that target individuals based on their race, including that one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex; that an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, “is inherently sexist, racist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.” 

Or that an individual’s character is necessarily determined by his or her race or sex.

Critics of the language in the budget bill say it prevents teachers from discussing matters of race and sex-based discrimination. Ammon told Granite State Times that the language was important to include with the taxpayer-funded education system promoting such a controversial ideology. 

“At the root of [critical race theory] is a Marxist doctrine that separates society into oppressors and oppressed,” Ammon said, denoting that this is a “classic Marxist trick. In this iteration they’re doing it on the basis of race, so they know that this ideology divides our society into an oppressor and oppressed class based on skin color, or immutable characteristics that people are born with.”

According to the representative, HB 544 didn’t outlaw critical race theory by name, but touched on some of the “more extreme” aspects of the CRT school of thought, listing 10 practices that educators would be banned from using under the guise of CRT. 

“Nothing ... shall be construed to prohibit discussing, as part of a larger course of academic instruction, the divisive concepts listed [above] in an objective manner and without endorsement,” the bill states. It also specifies that “promoting racial, cultural or ethnic diversity or inclusiveness” is not prohibited.

According to Seacoast Online, Ammon introduced HB 544 at the request of a professor from a New Hampshire state university, who remained anonymous for fear of being fired.

“[The professor] saw critical race theory creeping in, not only through what the faculty was promoting but also the critical workplace environment, the trainings and discussions were marginalizing or promoting people based on skin color,” Ammon said. “It was getting out of hand. That professor brought the idea for the bill forward.”

Ammon says that CRT was already underway in many school districts across the state when he wrote the bill, including the Hollis, Manchester and Exeter districts.  

It was the first state-level piece of legislation to address CRT in the country, Ammon said, modeled after a September 2020 executive order from former President Donald Trump. After HB 544 was filed in November 2020, many other states reportedly followed suit, leading to at least a dozen introducing similar bills to Ammon’s. 

“Under the guise of diversity training, they’re putting in curriculum and training for teachers that focuses on racializing everything,” he said. “This ideology is so extreme that if you talk about working toward a colorblind society, which is what Martin Luther King talked about, you’re considered promoting an extreme racial ideology, when it’s actually an aspiration of our country that we treat everyone as individuals regardless of how they were born.”

HB 544 applied to any state-level institution where taxpayer money was being spent, not just public schools. Diversity training has been inserted into a vast array of institutions, including state and federal agencies, corporate boards and schools. 

“There’s a DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) officer inserted in all of these institutions now," Ammon said. "It’s a billion-dollar-plus industry to provide these types of trainings.”  

While that specific metric could not be found in a verifiable source, the average American company can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to introduce DEI programs, and the Center for American Progress estimates that cases of workplace discrimination cost the U.S. private commerce space $64 billion each year. 

Ammon referenced the controversial “whiteness” section introduced by the Smithsonian Institute. Last year, the section included a graphic that described “aspects and assumptions about white culture,” including religion, work ethic and nuclear family structures, as elements of white supremacy. After a flurry of backlash, the Smithsonian pulled the graphic. 

“This shows that if we don’t put some kind of guardrails on what they’re teaching, what they’re using taxpayer money for, they can get pretty extreme,” Ammon said. 

Ammon also pointed out the case of Larry Elder, a Republican California gubernatorial hopeful, who was painted as “the black face of white supremacy.”

“He's a successful black man in America, but the left is able to paint him as a white supremacist,” Ammon said. “On the surface that makes no sense. But if you look at it through the lens of critical race theory, what that theory teaches is that every institution in our country was founded on racism, designed to perpetuate racism. And if you're standing up for the Constitution, or any of our long-held traditions or institutions, you are perpetuating white supremacy, even if you're not white.”

Parents in New Hampshire organized a petition to prevent the teaching of critical race theory in New Hampshire schools, releasing a statement saying that CRT “teaches children to judge others not by their character but by their skin color – a complete reversal of the lesson of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. which has been a moral foundation in education for over 50 years.”

Ammon chalked CRT up as a “perversion of language,” a swing and a miss at the appropriate way to discuss race, history and inclusion in any institution. 

“It's the idea of collective guilt," he said. "Collective guilt is an anathema to American ideals, and that means that, because you were born a certain way, you are guilty of some sort of original sin, based on what people that lived before you who happened to look like you did. And that's not the spirit of America, where we're all individuals, and we're responsible for our own actions and our own choices.”

Supporters of the approach to education say conservatives have latched onto the college-level experimental critical race theory as an excuse to whitewash the worst parts of U.S. history regarding the nation's treatment of people of color.