Uncritical

One of the books [Robin Steenman, head of the Williamson County chapter of Moms for Liberty] specifically referred to was "Ruby Bridges Goes to School," written by Ruby Bridges herself. Bridges, when she was age 6, was one of the first African American students to integrate New Orleans' all-white public school system.

Steenman said that the mention of a "large crowd of angry white people who didn't want Black children in a white school" too harshly delineated between Black and white people, and that the book didn't offer "redemption" at its end.

[...]

She said she disapproves of guidance for teachers to teach words like "injustice," "unequal," "inequality," "protest," "marching" and "segregation" in grammar lessons.
Here's what to know about the debate over 'Wit & Wisdom' curriculum in Williamson schools

This gets to what, for many Black people in the United States, the conservative anger over "Critical Race Theory" is all about; the idea that White Americans are okay with children understanding that slavery, Jim Crow and segregation were a thing (even if the details are off-limits), but that the United States should must still be presented in the way that many conservatives want the nation (or, more specifically, the White population of the nation) to be seen, as a country that had done bad things in the past, but had fully atoned for them, been redeemed and was now an objectively just and fair place, whose current inhabitants have nothing to ask forgiveness for. And "Critical Race Theory" has become a catch-all term for a way of looking at the United States that doesn't admit to this "correct" way of viewing history.

Ruby Bridges Goes to School fails, in the eyes of Ms. Steenman, because it is specifically the story of Ms. Bridges and her individual experience, rather making room for, or even being the story of, the United States and its progress towards (or achievement of) equality. And if one views Ruby Bridges Goes to School as being the sort of historical narrative that's commonly taught to grade-school children, one with clear heroes and clear villains, it's understandable how White segregationists who aren't shown as embracing Ms. Bridges at the end of story should be the villains, and that this casts "good" and "evil" along racial lines.

It's an interesting situation, because it does represent progress in its own way. After all, there was a time when the insistence would have been that the United States had never done anything warranting atonement; that slavery was an affirmative good because it took primitive people out of Africa and brought them to a first-world nation where, even as second-class citizens, they were better off than they would be otherwise. And that segregation, which kept "like with like," was a benefit to everyone.

In any event, the need for redemption points to a problem in the way people see the world. Redemption arcs are elements of fiction, not recurring themes in history. Viewing history as the stories of heroes and villains, as if they were fables or adventure stories, hides the fact that history is about normal, even if important, people. And people don't always conform to the moral roles that observers might like to place them in.

Conservative media outlets like Fox News and political bigwigs like President Trump have all hit upon the realization that the framing of American history as a narrative prompts people to view it as just another sort of fiction, and subject to many of the same tropes. And while people may like to cosplay as the evil Galactic Empire, because the bad guys are always cooler, they don't like to see themselves as actually evil. And if history is going to be a contest of Good versus Evil, if people can't start out on the right side of history, they want to be shown as having seen the error of their ways, repudiating it and ending up where they ought to be. It's one thing to want this; it's another to feel that one is entitled to it. And in the anti-"CRT" mindset, Critical Race Theory violates that entitlement to be seen as just and righteous, as living up to the promises made in the Declaration of Independence.

Where things went wrong with the Declaration, however, was not that it was a cynical statement, penned by men who had no intention of living up to its provisions. It's that living up to those provisions required more resources than they felt they had access to. And so the compromises started even before it was formally signed. But there was never a commitment to saying "here is what we will need to fulfill this promise and here is the plan to get it." Instead, the can was kicked down the road, again and again, because the costs of picking up were understood. As late as 200 years after the signing of the Declaration, there still hadn't been a genuine accounting of the price that was demanded. And it's not clear that the accounting has happened yet. People like Ms. Steenman may object to even small parts of the bill coming due, but they don't lay out a path for showing how to pay it later.