January 30, 2022
Knowledge exposes the lie. Millions of Americans rock themselves to sleep each night with the fairy tale that their place at the top of the pyramid of American society is evidence of their intellect, their industriousness, of some innate, ineffable quality that makes them somehow “superior.” Knowledge threatens that mind numbing illusion. Small-minded, power hungry bigots know that, which is why we have seen an epidemic of book banning over the last several months.
It began with “The 1619 Project,” Nikole Hannah Jones’ brilliant recontextualization of American History through the lens of slavery and the persistent persecution of the descendants of the enslaved. The attack on The 1619 Project failed to garner the reaction that right wing extremists were hoping for, so Christopher Rufo widened the attack to encompass Critical Race Theory. It did not matter that CRT was a scholarly approach primarily taught in law schools (Source: “Critical Race Theory: A Brief History,” by Jacey Fortin, The New York Times, 11/8/21). In Rufo’s hands, it became the label for teaching any books by or about Black people, leading to bans on books ranging from Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” to a children’ s book about Ruby Bridges, the Black girl who had to be escorted by federal marshals in order to integrate a New Orleans public school. This did the trick, igniting moral panic in suburban white women eager to “protect” their children from the knowledge of the harm that racism inflicts on children. Republican Glenn Youngkin rode that panic straight into the Virginia Governor’s mansion, where he has wasted no time in further demagoguing the teaching of Black history, going as far as setting up a tip line to report teachers who dare to teach about racism, (Source: “The Virginia Education Department Is Getting Flooded With Memes After Creating A Tip LineTo Report Schools Teaching About Racism,” by Steffi Cao, BuzzfeedNews.com, 1/27/22).
The purpose of this ban is to bolster the belief that the position of Black people at the very bottom of the hierarchy is the natural order of things. If Black History is banned, it can seem credible to the ignorant that Black people’s position in society is a function of indolence, “deficient culture,” or disdain for education— their innate inferiority, if you will. Knowledge exposes the lie.
Teaching Black History would expose white Southern children to the fact that they owe the very existence of public education in the South to the activism of Black people, (Source: “How former slaves established schools and educated their population after TheCivil War,” by Craig Chamberlain, Illinois News Bureau, 2/12/07). During Reconstruction, emancipated Black people used their newfound political power to push for public schools open to all children, only to be segregated in under-resourced inferior schools after the establishment of Jim Crow.
Teaching actual history might expose children to the fact the Brown v. Board of Education decision was the culmination of a decades’ long strategy engineered by Harvard trained lawyer, Charles Hamilton Houston, to dismantle segregated public education so that Black people could have access to the same education as white people, (Source: “Charles Hamilton Houston,” by Stephen D. Jamar, Brown @50, law.Howard.edu).
Reading books like Maus would show children how easily ordinary people can be complicit in evil. It might cause some children to condemn those who chant, “Jews will not replace us,” and slow the alarming rise in Antisemitic vandalism, harassment and assaults, (Source: “Antisemitism in the U.S.,” ADL.org).
Kids who learn history will know that the First Amendment of our Constitution bars the government from banning books with facts that make adults uncomfortable. Reading these uncomfortable facts might cause kids to ask tough questions about what they’ve been told. It might foster empathy for folks who don’t look like them.
The adults waging a crusade against so-called “woke history” and Critical Race Theory know that. Let’s face it, it isn’t their children’s innocence these folks are trying to protect. It’s the illusion of their own.