Tennessee declines to act on first complaint under new law banning critical race theory

Grievance objects that curriculum on civil rights movement is Anti-American' and Anti-White'

The Tennessee education department declined to investigate the first complaint under a new state law that bans some teaching approaches to issues of race and bias - a complaint that included a book about the Rev Martin Luther King Jr and the March on Washington.

The bill, passed in the spring, includes among its targets critical race theory, or CRT, an academic discipline that examines the ways in which racism operates in US laws and society. CRT is rarely taught below college level but Republicans across the US have exploited fears about it for electoral gain.