The 2020 executive order banned race teaching because such teaching builds reparations support

Evidence

Our focus group testing provides a powerful lesson in the importance of teaching the history of racism in our country, particularly when it comes to changing public opinion, and it perhaps explains why Republicans are waging a political campaign to take race history out of our public schools. Consider President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 13950, issued on September 20, 2020, which forbids training or teaching government employees (and federal contractors) about “divisive concepts.” That includes those where “any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex.” In other words, this campaign is attempting to ban empathy through banning books. Can you read Part II as a white person (or as a member of any other race or ethnicity) and not feel some discomfort? I barely survived writing it. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 505

Categorization

• QUESTION: Is the causal link ‘focus groups show history-teaching persuades, therefore the conservative ban exists to prevent that persuasion’ adequately evidenced, or is it assertion? Worth probing when defending the book.