As a history teacher in the south, first of all I say find a way to enforce it. I teach mostly black students who want to hear the truth. And their phones are put up so no recording. They learn about the importance of Black economics and black politics. They are blowed to find out the Black Panther party started here. Power to the people!
But anyway, just say I meet them where they are talking.
Yes, black people in the south learned more valuable trades than regular white people because they usually performed the specialized trades for the white owners. If I am a plantation owner, do I want to hire out a white man seeking a fair wage, or my enslaved person who will not only do my work for free, but bring in income as I let him for others for a profit?
After slavery ended, we saw the stereotype of black people being lazy. That was a racist strategy to provide unskilled white workers (who were vastly unskilled and illiterate because mass public education in the south wasn’t a thing until blacks and the freedman’s bureau. After we showed it’s utility they started making schools for white kids in masse )
But those talented black people were usually the ones targeted by the white pogroms of the early twentieth century. Their businesses and platforms were systematically destroyed, and they were forced to relocate, usually by force.
This opens up a lot of shady history shyt done by white supremacists. I teach that Birmingham and a lot of the early capital generated by this state was done by convict laborers, which was a neo form of slavery. I teach that the rail line in southeast Florida, built by harry Flagler, which spurred the boom off growth in south Florida and Miami was built by us.
It’s not critical race theory, it’s just the history of the state. Get mad at your ancestors and not me.