The self-proclaimed enemy of “the radical left” and all things woke who heads Oklahoma’s public schools has provided fresh evidence of his ignorance by declaring that race was not a factor in the Tulsa Race Massacre.
As Oklahoma schools have been required by law to teach since 2002, the massacre was a 1921 paroxysm of racist violence in which white mobs killed as many as 300 Black residents and burned some 1,600 homes and businesses in what was known as Black Wall Street.
Those facts seem to have been lost on Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters.
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“Let’s not tie it to the skin color and say the skin color determined that,” Walters told a public forum hosted by Cleveland County Republicans in the Oklahoma Room at the main library in Norman this week.
Walters’ preposterous statement came during a Q&A session in which he was asked how teaching about the massacre did not violate a prohibition he instituted against teaching what he defines as critical race theory.
“That doesn’t mean you don’t judge the actions of individuals,” he continued. “Oh, you can, absolutely. Historically you should. This was right, this was wrong. They did this for this reason.”
But in his willfully warped view, the reason cannot include race.
“That is critical race theory,” he said. “I reject that.”
Walters’ views are the more disturbing when you consider that he was teaching AP History at the high school in his hometown of McAlester three years ago. His YouTube channel includes an April 2020 virtual class that seemingly would violate his ban. Walters today would call what he taught then indoctrination.
At the time, Walters was preparing his students for the Advanced Placement U.S. History exam. The video shows him sharing the screen with a black and white photo of armed soldiers escorting the first nine Black students into Little Rock Central High School in 1957.
“This is the Civil Rights Movement,” Walters said. “You’re gonna see this reach its apex here in Little Rock.”
He then stepped back three years to the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision.
“The Supreme Court said, when you segregate, that is unconstitutional,” he said. “Segregation is illegal. You cannot segregate someone based on their race.”
He talked about the case itself.
“By the way, there’s this amazing moment where an attorney comes in and calls onto the stand the psychologist,” Walters says, “And the psychologist talks about, ‘I can show you how much damage is done to children based on segregation in schools.’”
Walters did not identify the psychologist, but it is Dr. Kenneth Clark, whose wife, Dr. Mamie Clark, devised what became known as “The Dolls Test.” Walters proceeded to offer a not-quite-accurate description of the famous study in which 253 Black children aged 3 to 7 were asked if they preferred white dolls with light hair or Black dolls with dark hair. The great majority of the children chose the white dolls and expressed negative feelings about the Black ones. The Clarks attributed the results to racist practices and attitudes.
“And so these psychologists went on and talked about how detrimental that was,” Walter said. “So it’s a fascinating case.”
A case that was based on skin color.
The Walters of 2020 clearly understood that even if he had some of the details wrong. (Kenneth Clark did testify in numerous other segregation cases, but he never took the stand in front of the Supreme Court in this one. He did submit a written statement to the high court that detailed test.)
At another point in the class, Walters changed the screen background to a photo of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. addressing a huge crowd at the Washington Monument in 1963.
“This is his famous D.C. speech—‘I have a dream.’ Unbelievable speech,” Walters told his pupils. “It is hard to overstate his impact.”
One question that arises from this 50-minute class three years ago is how can Walters now declare that race is not a factor that demands critical study in American society? Could it be that he simply found it politically expedient in a red state going even redder?
Five months after the AP class, Gov. Kevin Stitt appointed Walters the Oklahoma secretary of education. He left that position to briefly run a non-profit that misallocated millions in funding from a 2021 federal program intended to help low-income Oklahoma families homeschool during the pandemic. Much of the money went instead toward big screen TVs and washing machines.
Walters then successfully ran for the elected position of superintendent of public instruction. He won by spouting nonsense about CRT and indoctrination, and the fake story that kitty litter boxes were being installed in schools for kids who identify as cats.
After he was elected, Walters began speaking like someone who aspired to even higher office. A once seemingly reasonable history teacher issued an official statement that posited the arrest of former President Trump for withholding classified documents was “the most profound unwinding of the U.S. Constitution that our country has ever experienced since the Civil War.”
Last week, Walters was in Philadelphia to address a gathering of the far-right Moms for Liberty, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has branded an extremist group. He spoke much the same nuttiness there as he did at the library in Norman.
Outside the library were several dozen protesters. Somebody inside played a laugh track with a cellphone as Walters spoke.
Those in attendance included Samuel Perry, a prominent sociology professor at the University of Oklahoma. He tweeted afterwards about hearing Walters say that the Tulsa Race Massacre was not about the color of anyone’s skin.
“My wife (a teacher) and I attended this event tonight,” Perry reported. “This was just the tip of the iceberg of idiocy Walters spewed. Driving home we felt so angry and embarrassed we live in a state where people elected this ignorant and incompetent clown.”
