Sowing the Seeds of White Supremacy Through Education

Since its conception, the Koch network has worked to undermine the rights and liberties of non-white demographics, starting with an anti-civil rights crusade that challenged Brown v. Board of Education. The Koch network has made no secret about how it views public education as a critical arena for influencing U.S. policy and culture. Through a variety of tactics—including charter schools and vouchers; influence on curriculum, textbooks, and trainings; and using state politicians to engage in culture war against progressive ideas—they’re attempting to reshape education to ensure the spread of their regressive ideas. Between June 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021, the Koch network of think tanks and political organizations published 146 articles, podcasts, reports, and videos critical of CRT.^[3] Some affiliates, including the Heritage Foundation, FreedomWorks, and the Manhattan Institute, among others, used their influence to generate and spread talking points rooted in white supremacy (such as the denial of systemic racism and white privilege^[4]), briefed state and federal legislators on model policy,^[5] and attempted to generate grassroots mobilization against local school districts.

And the influence works. State politicians were almost entirely silent on the topic of CRT until Koch-funded entities started pushing the issue earlier this year. Now, more than 25 states have introduced legislation or taken other action that, backers claim, is aimed at banning CRT from schools and government programs.^[6] Several are already law. In addition, there has been an influx of candidates running for school boards on anti-CRT platforms.^[7]

The Arizona state budget passed this June includes language that bans any instruction that infers that one race is inherently racist, should be discriminated against or feel guilty because of their race.^[8] In early July, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey—who has long received support from the Koch network, including a staggering $1.4 million donation to his 2014 gubernatorial campaign^[9]—signed a second bill into law. The two bills together could levy $5,000 fines on schools, or the revocation of teachers’ licenses, if instructors even broach so-called controversial subjects, or teach that… “one race, ethnic group or sex is in any way superior to another, or that anyone should be discriminated against on the basis of these characteristics,” according to a press release from the governor’s office.^[10] There’s no precedent of any Arizona school district ever having implemented CRT in their curriculum before, but the vague wording of the bill has left many educators in the state fearful of how it might impact the way they teach historical events like the Civil Rights movement or the Trail of Tears.^[11] The second bill Ducey signed “prohibits the state and any local governments from requiring their employees to engage in orientation, training, or therapy that suggest an employee is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”^[12] In doing so, Arizona became one of the first states in the nation to ban CRT at all levels in the government, showing the immense power and influence that outside interests have on the state.

The push to prevent CRT from being taught at schools goes beyond the state level. Koch-backed U.S. senators like Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) have reintroduced the Saving American History Act, first proposed in 2020, in an effort to block federal funds from going to schools that use curriculum inspired by the 1619 Project—an educational New York Times project about the history of slavery in the U.S.^[13]

As a queer, Black woman with indigenous kinship in the South and children in Arkansas’ public school system, I’m not surprised by how the Right is attempting to foment a moral panic to further their agenda of privatizing education. I’m also not shocked to learn that there are people eager to prevent their children—and mine—from learning an accurate and full account of their ancestors’ history. As someone who has worked toward pulling back the curtain on how the Koch network uses its money and influence to further an anarcho-capitalist political strategy laser-focused on property owner supremacy and minority control of all levels of government, I know that the material outcomes of the Koch network’s strategy are anti-Black and further embed our society in white supremacy.

A 2018 report from UnKoch My Campus, Advancing White Supremacy Through Academic Strategy, details the history of the Koch network’s contributions to white supremacy, in both its explicit and more hidden forms.^[14] The Koch network and its affiliates within higher education have been advancing an agenda that directly harms our country’s most marginalized groups for over 50 years. Sometimes it’s subtle, like spreading the seeds of a false campus free speech “crisis” on behalf of white, conservative students, while simultaneously advancing anti-protest legislation intended to further disempower those most impacted by historical limitations on free expression.^[15] Sometimes it’s very overt, as when we discovered that many scholars involved with the Koch network have also become fellows of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, which has been flagged as a group with “strong neo-Confederate principles” by the Southern Poverty Law Center due to its intimate ties with the League of the South—a group best known for its racist and antisemitic rhetoric and which advocates for Southern secession and the creation of an independent, white-dominated South.^[16] Other Koch-affiliated scholars have disseminated white supremacist ideas through college and graduate school programs^[17] (like George Mason University’s Institute for Humane Studies^[18]), under the guise of promoting “Western” or “American” civilization.

Today, the network continues such efforts by advancing policy initiatives that strengthen the private prison industrial complex and suppressing the voting rights of minority groups.^[19]

A white supremacist is not just the outwardly hateful individual in a white robe burning crosses on people’s lawns. He can also be a Koch-funded economics professor in a thousand-dollar suit, preaching that governmental equity measures are harmful, the regulation of business is destructive, and racial inequality is overblown.