There’s a line from the movie “Bridges of Madison County” where Meryl Streep, playing an Italian transplant to an Iowa farm, says something to effect of, “The people here are all very nice, that’s true, but it’s kind of like meeting the same person over and over.”

Don’t ask me why that line stuck with me. Perhaps the truth of that sentiment resonated with me because it reminded me of home at a time when I was submerged in the cultural soup that is Southern California. I don’t know.

I do know that one of the things I miss about California is living amid more diversity of culture. Because there’s still a regular arrival of immigrants to the state, over-riding hope for opportunity that epitomizes what America is about is still palpable there.

Out here in the bread basket, things are a bit more “settled.” There’s a sense of dominion here, as though the Germans, Irish, Swedes and Norwegians have always been here. But it wasn’t really all that long ago they, too, were brave newcomers — swarming in, setting down roots and striving toward their dreams.

Today we have what seems to be an established culture we call “American,” though we still seem to be struggling to define who that is, who fits the profile, and just how much of the sordid history of our “melting process” we want to own up to. Thus, there is presently a good deal of disagreement and confusion over what Critical Race Theory (CRT) truly means, as well as its relationship to other terms, like “anti-racism” and “social justice,” with which it is often conflated.

But why all the hoopla? Critical race theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old—the core idea of which being that racism is as much a social construct as it is a product of individual bias or prejudice, and therefore, also embedded in our legal systems and policies.

A good example of this is when, in the 1930s, government officials drew lines around areas deemed poor financial risks—explicitly due to the racial composition of its inhabitants—and banks subsequently refused to offer mortgages to Black people in those areas.

Today, we can see those same patterns of discrimination prevailing in policies like single-family zoning that prevents the building of affordable housing in advantaged, majority-white neighborhoods, effectively stymying racial desegregation.

As long as discussions about CRT stayed focused on housing and zoning laws, no one got overly excited about it; indeed, most American citizens, of any race, had never even heard of CRT before last year. (That’s also a big part of the confusion: many still don’t fully understand what it is.) But when scholars studying CRT in education began looking into the ways in which policies and practices in K-12 education contribute to persistent racial inequalities in education, they began to advocate for ways to make some changes.

Begin: Major Hoopla.

A recent poll by the advocacy group Parents Defending Education claimed some schools were teaching that “white people are inherently privileged, while Black and other people of color are inherently oppressed and victimized”; that “achieving racial justice and equality between racial groups requires discriminating against people based on their whiteness”; and that “the United States was founded on racism.”

Thus much of the current debate appears to stem not from properly informed texts, but from fear among critics that students—especially white students—will be exposed to supposedly damaging or self-demoralizing ideas.

To me, the question that begs to be asked here is: what’s wrong with teaching kids the truth?

Are history teachers not supposed teach about the Trail of Tears, the Civil War, and the civil rights movement? Are English teachers to avoid literature by African American authors because many of them mention elements of racism?

Kids today are immersed in more information on a daily basis than my generation probably absorbed in an entire year of public education. They aren’t stupid. But they are, I would think, overwhelmed at times. How could they not be?

But the widespread CRT backlash demonizing educators, and the educational system, serves no one. Educators today face enormous challenges within the classroom—more so than in any preceding era, I’d wager— still, most are every bit as dedicated to making their students feel safe and supported for their best chance for academic success; for a bright future.

If we aren’t willing to support an academic agenda that isn’t afraid to take an honest look at our past mistakes and our present problems, and be bold enough to discuss the reality of those issues openly with our youth, then we are the ones casting a pall over their future—and that of the entire nation.