What happens when someone feels uncomfortable about being told what white people did even though the teacher doesn't tell them they should be uncomfortable about it?
The bill does not forbid white people being uncomfortable, nor does it say a teacher must tell them that they should not feel guilt. It forbids a teacher telling white people they should feel inferior because they are white.
I've had some great teachers, and I've had some really bad teachers and most of my teachers were bang on average. I cannot imagine a teacher telling anyone that white students should feel inferior because they are white.
Note: I've hear teachers (really, the same teacher) say something very similar about girls/women being inferior to men or at least that they should behave as though they were inferior and opine in some depth about the importance of a woman to marry a man who is smarter than she is. I've had teachers say some things that were....racially insensitive in class. Actually, directly to me, about another child who was black, in first grade when I attended a school with a small minority of black students. I've had teachers discuss The Bell Curve and its implications about race, albeit very quietly. Certainly it was extremely common for girls to be told, very openly, that they were not well suited towards mathematics or science, or shop or mechanics or any stereotypically male field back when I was in school. Fun times.
I've never heard any teacher, at any level, every suggest that white people were in any way inferior to people of any races, nor have I heard of any teacher doing such a thing.
At least some legislation specifically forbids teaching of subject matter that might make white students feel bad about being white. I actually agree: No student should be made to feel bad about his or her race, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation or any other characteristic that is inborn and not a choice. Any non-malignant teacher would not do this to any student.
The fact that there is a history in the US of some teachers being abusive to students because of their race, religion, gender, sex, ethnicity and sexual orientation, often with the blessing of the local school board and even state board of education and legislators. Of course, those being abused were not white and generally not male, so it was ok.
I do understand why some would fear that there might be a racial comeuppance if the actual facts of the US history of slavery, treatment of indigenous peoples, and the treatment of Asian Americans, Jews and other people considered 'not white' were openly discussed. Honestly, if one reads what some very famous, very revered men wrote about Africans, it would be very hard to continue to revere them or hold them in such high esteem as they generally enjoy.
But I've seen no evidence that there is any such intention or any likelihood that white students would be taught that they were inferior. Being taught that you are equal when society is built around the assumption that you are, in fact, superior, is not the same thing as being taught that you are inferior. Being explicitly taught what white people did to people who were not white is not the same thing as telling you that white people are or were bad. Any decent teacher would be able to teach facts, and also discuss what led to (some) people in the Americas believing so strongly that people whose ancestry was not European were justifiably treated as inferior and in some cases, sub-human.
