Ryan Walters, a far right wing education official and pro-Trump republican who currently serves as Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction, recently caused a political firestorm and is facing calls for impeachment, after insisting that the Tulsa race massacre “can be taught in public schools without amounting to ‘critical race theory’ - so long as it’s taught without discussing race.”

A senior level state education administrator, Walters made the comments during a forum at the Norman Public Library on July 6th after he was asked how accurately teaching about the infamous white supremacist massacre which killed as many as 300 Black people wouldn’t violate a state ban on teaching critical race theory. His response was:

“I would never tell a kid that because of your race, because of the color of your skin, or your gender or anything like that, you are less of a person or are inherently racist,” he told the audience. “That doesn’t mean you don’t judge the actions of individuals. Oh, you can. Absolutely, historically, you should. ‘This was right. This was wrong. They did this for this reason.’ But to say it was inherent in that because of their skin is where I say that is critical race theory. You’re saying that race defines a person.”

The Frontier, an Oklahoma based investigative journalism organization, reported Walter’s comments. Not surprisingly, such a foolish response did not go over well.

Damario Solomon-Simmons, executive director at Justice for Greenwood, harshly criticized Walters’ comments stating, “it is beyond belief for a top elected education official to say that. He’s misinformed and this is a disgusting comment and it’s so inaccurate and false. The massacre was all about the skin color of the Black people who were destroyed. The [white mob] call Greenwood N-word town. They said they wanted to run the Blacks out of Tulsa.” Solomon-Simmons is spot on in his response.

For those of you who do not know (although you should,) the Tulsa massacre was a horrific act of racial terrorism in 1921 that destroyed the Greenwood District of Tulsa, a nationally-renowned prosperous community nicknamed “Black Wall Street.” Dick Rowland, a shoe shiner and dapper dresser in his late teens, was arrested on trumped-up charges for allegedly assaulting a white elevator operator, Sarah Page.

Encouraged and manipulated by racially motivated media agitation and other forms of racial hostility, enraged, envious, erratic, enraged White residents of Tulsa engaged in two consecutive days of violent and sadistic carnage, eventually burning and destroying the Greenwood District. The national guard had to be called in. More than 300 people were killed. According to the Oklahoma Historical Society, the massacre is believed to be the single worst incident of racially motivated violence racial violence in U.S. history.

Initially, rather than acknowledging that he made a mistake, Walters, who was elected by campaigning on a platform of ordering teachers to be given “patriotic education,” doubled down and went on the defensive. “It doesn’t matter how much the radical left attacks me,” Walters said during the public forum. “It doesn’t matter how much the teacher’s union spends against me. I will never stop speaking the truth.”

Realizing that he had stepped in it so-to-speak, he made an attempt to clarify his comments. “The Tulsa Race Massacre was a terrible, evil event perpetrated by folks that chose to act in a way that was evil and racist,” Walters told “I said (at the event) it was evil, all of our kids need to know it and they need to judge the action of those people.” Okay!

The fact is that whatever Walters believes he is/was speaking, it is/was certainly not the truth! His initial defiance was the classic definition of someone who is pathetically clueless. The truth is that a number of whites are in denial about racism. A greater percentage are even more dismissive, (willfully so), about the potential negative economic, psychological, and emotional impact that it can have on the lives of Black and brown people.

A history of violence and discrimination has deeply affected America’s Black population. The results still linger with us today, and those emotional scars are ripped open when callous and careless and comments like those made by Ryan Calvert and others of his misguided ilk and mindset.

Denying such hard truths about various racial tragedies in our nation’s history does nothing to bring us any closer to any sort of racial reconciliation. Rather, acknowledging our sordid and tortured racial past and making a valiant, diligent, and committed effort to confront such a tragedy will be the only viable solution to addressing such an undeniable fact.