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The new law will impose restrictions around what it calls eight “divisive concepts” dealing with race and personal identity. It also requires public colleges to designate bathrooms “for use by individuals based on their biological sex.”
“The purpose of this bill is to prevent compelled speech and indoctrination,” Republican Sen. Will Barfoot said when he introduced the legislation, according to WBHM.
Since 2023, 80 anti-DEI bills have been introduced in 28 states and Congress, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. Measures have been signed into law in eight states.
Critics of such bills say they’re motivated more by politics than by educational aspirations; they also say efforts to ban DEI are more likely to undermine, rather than protect, free speech protections.
The legislation does not specifically mention the troubling record of Alabama and the U.S. on race, such as the dehumanizing enslavement of Black people and longstanding attempts to disenfranchise Black voters. The way schools teach students about those topics has been a political lightning rod in recent years, as opponents took aim at critical race theory.
The new Alabama legislation lists eight “divisive concepts” that range from the idea that “any race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin is inherently superior or inferior” to the notion that “any individual should accept, acknowledge, affirm, or assent to a sense of guilt, complicity, or a need to apologize on the basis of his or her race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin.”
The bill also rejects the idea that any “individual is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously” — a position that runs counter to what social scientists have concluded in recent decades.
Other divisive concepts, the legislation states, include the idea that people in one demographic group “are inherently responsible for actions committed in the past by other members” of that group.
White Fragility: The Law. And then people will turn around and wonder why I feel no love, loyalty, or patriotism for this country, when I have to watch the people I’m supposed to accept as countrymen act like this.
Related: Trump’s ‘Lost Cause’ mythmaking.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
College students who oppose the bill have organized protests against it, including a large rally at the State House earlier this month, member station WBHM reports.
The way schools teach students about those topics has been a political lightning rod in recent years, as opponents took aim at critical race theory.
The new Alabama legislation lists eight “divisive concepts” that range from the idea that “any race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin is inherently superior or inferior” to the notion that “any individual should accept, acknowledge, affirm, or assent to a sense of guilt, complicity, or a need to apologize on the basis of his or her race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin.”
The bill also rejects the idea that any “individual is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously” — a position that runs counter to what social scientists have concluded in recent decades.
“Nothing in this act,” the legislation states, “… May be construed to inhibit or violate the First Amendment rights of any student or employee, or to undermine the duty of a public institution of higher education to protect, to the greatest degree, academic freedom, intellectual diversity, and free expression.”
In other subsections, the bill gives some leeway to colleges needing to fulfill accreditation standards or requirements, both in their subject matter and in the collection of demographic information.
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