With only a handful of days remaining in the 2023 legislative session, the clock has officially run out on Alabama House Bill 7 and Senate Bill 247 which have come to be collectively known as the "Anti-CRT" bill. Sponsored by Alabama legislator Ed Oliver who represents House District 81, HB7 was primarily aimed at preventing Alabama's children from being groomed to hate themselves for the cardinal sin of simply being born with the wrong skin color. With the legislation having failed to pass, activist teachers and administrators in the state's educational system will continue to enjoy access to poisoning young minds with the socialist indoctrination program euphemistically referred to as critical race theory.
One key provision in the bill prohibits teaching the CRT belief that "individuals, by virtue of race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin, are inherently responsible for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin." Despite a nearly identical bill seeking to curtail CRT having passed in the house during the 2022 session and the current bill continuing to enjoy overwhelmingly widespread support in that legislative body as well as from the state GOP in the 2023 session, the herculean effort seeking to protect children from harmful leftist propaganda in public schools has been unceremoniously scuttled for the 2nd year in a row thanks to the feeble leadership of Alabama's senate in an astonishing dereliction of duty. Considering the common perception of Alabama as a deeply conservative so-called red state, it begs the burning question as to why a common sense bill such as this would be sabotaged yet again by its senate leadership. Shrouded in mystery, their craven motivations and self serving machinations provide an uncomfortable answer that many citizens may find hard to stomach.
Tom Whatley, former Alabama State Senator representing District 27, spoke with the Examiner in an exclusive interview about the puzzling fate of the legislation. "I'm for Ed's bill. I don't know why house and senate members who say they are 'conservative' would have a problem with it. Maybe cause they are not truly conservative." Describing the legislation as something that "should be an easy lift", Whatley scoffed at the senate debacle by characterizing a situation where "you have people in Governor Ivey's administration, in the bureaucracy who are very leftist" and lamented a sad state of affairs where "Alabama is not as conservative as Florida." Seeking to clarify the baffling proceedings with an inside perspective based in part on his own failed efforts to legislatively reign in the state's overreaching health officer, Whatley noted "sometimes from my experience you put something out like that, everyone knows there is going to be a lot of debate. Leadership puts it on the calendar, knowing they will never get to it."
In the immediate aftermath of the bill's expiration, the Examiner interviewed its sponsor representative Ed Oliver to conduct a thorough post-mortem on the doomed legislation. Oliver remarked "Leadership never let it get to the floor. We actually ran separate bills through committees in each house. We did have a promise from leadership that it would pass, but they reneged." Asked if there was any explanation provided by leadership for their curious conduct, Oliver clarified "No. There were several groups putting pressure on them. Politically it made no sense not to put it on the floor. Easy bill, movements in both houses to pass it. It was a republican party bill from the state party, they had a resolution asking us to pass it. The house republican caucus had actually voted to pass it." As the deadline approached in the session's final days, Oliver began to see the unmistakable writing on the wall recalling "One lobbyist kept putting pressure on me to change some language and then about two days out they stopped. That was a bad sign, that is when I knew that somebody had gotten to somebody."
Expounding further on the mysterious morass, Oliver said "This year we had made a decision with the Speaker of the House, we had a conference on how to approach it. Since we carried the bill last year in the house and passed it in the house, we put it to the senate to pass it. If they would pass it, then we would pass it. The second they passed it in the other house we would do it, and that was fair. But ultimately the senate failed, twice. The senate failed two years in a row." Decrying the inexplicable gridlock of legislative stagnation, Oliver noted "All the things that would turn our world upside down, anything that is pro-Marxist or Leninist, we will be after it. It is the vast majority of both houses that support us, this is strictly leadership issues that we are having. If they want the bill to pass, it passes."
Critical race theory has been loosely defined as an incoherent philosophical framework which rabidly insists that virulent racism was maliciously embedded into the original founding of the United States and is terminally ingrained within its legal, financial and educational systems. Acting as a companion movement to CRT is Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI for short) which is a dogmatic regime of government, academic or corporate policies that require DEI training as a condition for being employed by an organization or enrolled in a university. DEI promotes hiring practices based on race and gender as well as demanding that job candidates provide a "diversity statement" which are declarations written under duress where they swear a binding oath to prioritize the promotion of diversity objectives in their work decisions.
Looking forward to next year's session, Oliver stated "My intent is to do the forensics and find out why we didn't get to the floor. Work with the state republican party, work with the leadership in the house of representatives and the senate and hopefully with Will Barfoot, he carried the companion bill in the senate, and see what we have to do to get this passed. I think it is my responsibility to make sure that leadership understands how important this is. It is not just CRT or divisive concepts, we have a DEI bill coming out this year. We have another ESG bill coming, we are not letting up at all." ESG stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance which is an ideological framework that mandates making the judgement of a company's "environmental impacts" the main criteria when determining investment decisions for people’s retirement plans, essentially blacklisting businesses who fail to completely abandon the pursuit of profits while adhering mindlessly to the climate change green new deal agenda.
Reflecting on the gravity of the situation on the ground in Alabama, Oliver warned of the imminent threat posed by CRT to the entire nation and the dire need to urgently pursue legislation as a countermeasure to provide a last line of defense for his constituents. Oliver fears that failing to act upon CRT, DEI and ESG movements could result in the U.S. becoming the same sort of communist country it has spent the last several decades struggling against in the global battle for freedom. Concluding his thoughts, Oliver remarked "They think it is ok to racialize kids and they think its ok to compel speech with employees and students. There's nothing else you can say."
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