White people are FREAKING OUT about “critical race theory”
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Southlake, Texas, schools restrict classroom libraries after backlash over anti-racist book
nbcnews.com
Southlake, Texas, schools restrict classroom libraries after backlash over anti-racist book
By Mike Hixenbaugh
9-12 minutes
An English teacher at a Carroll campus wrapped their classroom library with yellow caution tape, according to a photo provided by another teacher. Photos from another classroom Thursday showed bookshelves covered with black sheets of paper and a sign that read, “You can’t read any of the books on my shelves."
“How am I supposed to know what 44 sets of parents find offensive?” a Carroll teacher asked. “We’ve been told: ‘The parents are our clients. We have to do what they want.’ And this is what they want.”
Ahead of the mandatory training, teachers began taking stock of which books might have to go based on the new rules. An elementary school teacher said she would need to get rid of “Separate Is Never Equal,” a picture book by Duncan Tonatiuh about a Mexican American family’s fight to end segregation in California in the 1940s. Another said she was setting aside “A Good Kind of Trouble” by Lisa Moore Ramée because the girl at the center of the story gets involved in the Black Lives Matter movement.
A high school English teacher said that it would take her months to review every book in her classroom and that based on the guidelines, she would most likely need to get rid of many of them. She said she no longer feels safe keeping a copy of “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas, in part because it depicts racialized reactions to a police shooting, or any books by Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison.
“One of the questions we’re supposed to ask is ‘Does the writer have a neutral stance on the topic?’” the teacher said. “Well, if you are Toni Morrison, how can you have a neutral stance toward racism? Now history is being depicted through this rose-colored lens, and all of this is creating a chilling effect that’s going to hurt our students.”
The fight in Southlake over which books should be allowed in schools is part of a broader national movement led by parents opposed to lessons on racism, history and LGBTQ discrimination that some conservatives have falsely branded as critical race theory. Across the country in recent months, parents groups have launched campaigns to remove books that focus on racism from schools.
In Franklin, Tennessee, a group called Moms for Liberty has been trying to get an elementary school to ban dozens of books that it says are too divisive for children. The list includes “Martin Luther King Jr. and the March on Washington” by Frances E. Ruffin and “The Story of Ruby Bridges” by Robert Coles, about the 6-year-old Black girl who integrated a Louisiana public school in 1960.
In York County, Pennsylvania, last month, the Central York School District’s board voted to prohibit teachers from using hundreds of books that the district’s own diversity committee had recommended. After students protested, drawing national media attention and support from Bernice King, a daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., the school board reversed its decision and said it never intended to permanently ban the books.
And last week, the Katy Independent School District, a sprawling suburban system of 85,000 students outside Houston, removed award-winning graphic novels about the lives of young Black boys written by Jerry Craft after a group of parents signed a petition falsely claiming that the books promoted critical race theory. The district also canceled a meet-the-author event with Craft, but following widespread media attention, it announced that the event could be rescheduled after the district finished reviewing the books.
Kim Anderson, executive director of the National Education Association, which represents public school teachers, said her group has never seen so many reports of schools’ being pressured to ban books. She said parents and school leaders should trust teachers to provide students with age-appropriate reading materials that reflect the diversity of American students.
“It is frightening to think that we are back in the days of book banning,” Anderson said. “I guess our question is: Why don’t school board members who are taking these actions or legislators who are taking these actions believe that America’s students deserve an honest and truthful reflection of our history?”
The push to remove books from classrooms in Southlake comes more than a year into a heated fight over the way the Carroll school district handles issues of race, identity and student discipline. Southlake parents protested last fall after the mostly white but diversifying school district tried to implement a plan that would have required new lessons on diversity and new rules to crack down on discrimination. A mother sued to stop the plan, and a conservative group called Southlake Families PAC raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to support school board candidates who promised to oppose the changes.
In the midst of that fight, which is the subject of a six-part NBC News podcast, a fourth grade student at Johnson Elementary School found a copy of “This Book Is Anti-Racist” in her teacher’s classroom library and decided to take it home. The book, a 2020 New York Times bestseller, includes illustrated lessons on understanding the ways racism is ingrained in society and guidance about what children can do to fight back.
The fourth grader’s mother, Sarah Muns — who had donated $1,000 to Southlake Families PAC — was outraged when she saw the book, she wrote on social media. The teacher, Rickie Farah, agreed to remove the book from her class library, but Muns was upset with how Farah handled the situation and how she treated her daughter afterward, according to Muns’ social media post. Muns elevated her complaint to senior district officials, who investigated and decided not to punish Farah.
But then, on Monday night, Carroll’s school board voted 3-2 to overturn the administration’s decision and formally reprimand Farah, who was named Johnson’s 2021 teacher of the year. Farah declined to comment, and Muns didn’t respond to a message requesting an interview.
Before she cast one of the two dissenting votes, school board member Sheri Mills issued a warning to any educators who might have been watching the meeting on the district’s live feed.
“I would like to let the teachers know, if you are worried about teaching in this school district, that you should watch this vote,” said Mills, who declined to be interviewed. “I want you to know that you are right to be worried.”
The next morning, word began to spread across the district that teachers were going to be required to go through all of the books in their classrooms and get rid of those that might upset parents. The training in determining which books should be removed is scheduled for Friday afternoon, toward the end of a districtwide staff development day, according to a schedule reviewed by NBC News. The document doesn’t specify a deadline for when teachers should remove books deemed inappropriate.
Some parents of National Junior Honor Society students got an email this week offering a chance for their children to get involved in the process: The kids would be helping middle school teachers create catalogues of every book in their classes, a volunteer opportunity that would count toward the honor society’s annual requirement to complete 10 hours of community service.
A Carroll ISD teacher hung a sign and an anti-censorship quote from Judy Blume in a classroom protesting the new policy. The quote reads, in part: "It is not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written."Obtained by NBC News
Jennifer Hough, the mother of two high school students, has been a leading voice calling for new diversity programs in the district. She said she has been hearing all week from teachers, students and fellow parents who are upset about the crackdown.
“I feel like I’m in a dystopian novel,” Hough said. “Students and people sharing pictures of teachers’ bookshelves covered and telling kids they can’t read books on their shelves. Are we really that scared of our kids’ being exposed to stuff and being challenged?”
Teachers said it isn’t the first time the district has cracked down on the content shared in classrooms. The school system told teachers this year that they could no longer use Scholastic News, a current events magazine for kids, after parents complained that its articles showed a liberal bias, according to four teachers and internal emails shared with NBC News.
Some educators said they were particularly upset that the latest push targets classroom libraries, which are meant to give kids easy access to a wide variety of reading materials, because research shows that children are more likely to become avid readers if they find books that are especially interesting to them. In recent years, before the blowback against new diversity programs, Carroll had been working to add a more diverse collection of books to classroom libraries, relying on grants and donations.
“Basically, those are all the books that I feel like we have to get rid of now,” a teacher said.
A high school English teacher said she had difficult conversations with some of her students who were upset when they saw teachers pre-emptively clearing books from their shelves or covering their libraries with caution tape.
“My classroom library provides an opportunity for students to just escape into a book that they might not find otherwise,” the teacher said. “The ability to get inside the pages of a book and walk with someone from as far away as Afghanistan. The ability to meet a person who is just like you, and even though it’s fiction, you’ve felt your whole life that you don’t belong, but he gets you, and that means everything. That’s what we’re losing.”
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skokiaan
African original
theory can lead to facts thodo i support the white right removing all mention of white supremacy & anti black racism in schools? NO
do i support the white left saying that we need to institute critical race theory as a counter? NO
damn nikka, so what the hell do you want?!?
i want black history not critical race theory taught in schools. historical facts about black people's oppression in this country is not a theory. facts are not theory, facts are facts. and unlike critical race theory it will not have curriculum taught about LGBTQIA+ rights, white women are victims too, and non black immigrants like asians are oppressed just like black people. the main architect of critical race theory is a white woman named jean stefancic in conjunction with a latinx named richard delgado. look them up on your free time. non-black folks finna give empowering yall black history huh? lol yeah right
this is a prime example of good cop bad cop my nikkas. like our brother shawty lo said they know. i understand it's difficult, give it time and you will see. read up on critical race theory. have you in it's entirety? nah? aight then bet. when you got some time do so and you'll see it facts b
In Virginia, Republicans see education, curriculum fears as a path to victory
In Virginia, Republicans see education, curriculum fears as a path to victory
Citing both Martin Luther King Jr. and Fox News, Republican Glenn Youngkin has found an issue that animates his base without alienating moderates.
Alex Seitz-Wald is senior digital politics reporter for NBC News.
Oct. 17, 2021, 4:33 AM EDT
WARRENTON, Va. — Democrat Terry McAuliffe launched his campaign for Virginia governor last year at a public school to tout his education plan.
But in the final days of an unexpectedly tight race, it’s his opponent, Republican Glenn Youngkin, whose closing message is all about schools.
“I’m getting texts and emails and phone calls from parents all over America and they need us to stand up for them,” Youngkin told supporters Thursday at an outdoor rally. “Parents around the country need us to say, we are standing up for our children, because the same thing is happening in their school districts and their school boards and they need us to give them hope.”
Schools have long been a top issue in gubernatorial campaigns. And education has frequently been the battlefield of American culture wars, from war protests to classroom prayer.
But thanks to frustration over pandemic school closures, a national push by conservatives to resist a wave of race-focused curriculum changes and an unforced error by McAuliffe, Virginia Republicans have found an issue that unites their fractious base without turning off the suburban moderates they need to win statewide on Nov. 2.
”Virginia offers a first test as to whether or not education issues like these could be effective at wooing back suburban voters that Republicans hemorrhaged during the Trump administration,” said Jessica Taylor, an analyst who tracks governor races for the non-partisan Cook Political Report.
Youngkin could be an example for Republicans to use in next year's congressional midterm elections.
“If Youngkin is able to improve his margins in suburbs that have gone from red to blue over the past decade in Virginia, we could see this used as a blueprint in the midterms in certain place," she added.
For Youngkin, who has been holding “Parents Matter” rallies across Virginia, schooling has become a stand-in for a host of contentious issues that galvanize the conservative base, from mask mandates to charter schools to critical race theory — an until-recently obscure academic field that conservatives say liberals are using to indoctrinate children into thinking white people are inherently racist. (Proponents say that are simply advocating for schools to be honest about the nation's complicated racial past and ongoing systemic racism.)
But emblematic of his entire approach to the campaign, Youngkin is careful to speak in a way that is unlikely to turn off voters who see themselves as the good guys in the fight against racism as he vows to “ban critical race theory on Day One” if elected.
“It all starts with curriculum. The curriculum has gone haywire," he said to cheers in Warrenton on a sunny fall afternoon, claiming parents from across the ideological spectrum were joining in him a non-partisan "movement."
“We are going to teach all history. The good and the bad,” Youngkin continued. “On Day One, we are going to embrace Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous, famous comments that we are not going to judge one another by the color of their skin, but rather the content of our character.”
With just over two weeks to go and both sides spending heavily, the most-played political ads in Virginia right now are Youngkin spots featuring a McAuliffe gaffe from the last debate when he said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
McAuliffe was referring to a 2017 bill he vetoed during his first term as governor (Virginia is the only state in the country that doesn’t allow governors to serve two consecutive term) that would have allowed parents to prevent their children from studying literature deemed sexually explicit, such Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” which provoked the push for the so-called “Beloved Bill.”
McAuliffe vetoed the bill on free speech grounds, arguing it could chill the teaching of classics deemed offensive.
But his debate comment, removed from its context, plays into long-standing conservative narratives about "Big Government," as well new ones about mask mandates and critical race theory that are not toxic to moderates, unlike, say, conspiracy theories about the 2020 election from which Youngkin has had to distance himself.
“He thinks that the government should stand between parents and their children,” Youngkin said of McAuliffe. “We all knew this. He just absolutely confirmed what we all believed.”
McAuliffe has dismissed the issue and conspiratorial fear-mongering, saying critical race theory is not even taught in Virginia schools. Independent fact checkers have backed him up on that point and labeled Youngkin’s claims “false,” saying critical race theory is not part of state curriculum standards and there’s little evidence it is present in many classrooms
“It really bothers me because it is a racist dog whistle,” McAuliffe said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe this week, “We don't teach critical race theory here in Virginia. And all he's doing, like (Former President Donald) Trump, is getting parents fighting parents, using children as political pawns. I hate that.”
Still, debates over race and history have roiled school districts across the country, with a particular hot spot in the exurbs of Northern Virginia, where one cannot venture far in any direction without encountering a street named after a Confederate general.
McAuliffe’s campaign says it's not seeing much movement among swing voters on these issues in their internal data, likening it to a surge of concern about the MS-13 gang in the closing days of the 2017 gubernatorial race, which outgoing Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam nonetheless ended up winning handily. (Republicans ran ads suggesting that the suburbs of Washington, D.C., had become dangerous because of gang activity and blamed Democrats.)
A Fox News poll released Thursday, which showed McAuliffe leading 51-46 percent overall, found voters split evenly 45-43 percent on which candidate they trust more to handle education.
And while a majority of parents sided with Youngkin’s message that they should be able to tell schools what to teach, McAuliffe still had a 9 percentage point lead among parents likely to vote.
But among Youngkin’s mostly white supporters, pushing strollers or balancing kids on their shoulders at his rally, threats to their kids’ education felt real and personal.
“Anybody who’s going to tell me I can’t have an opinion about what goes into my kid’s body or what they get taught will never get my vote,” said Ashleigh Mitchell, referring to potential mandates for the Covid-19 vaccine.
George Fletcher, a father of four, said that when he was growing up in Central Virginia, many of his friends were Black and race just wasn’t an issue people dwelled on. Now, he wonders if his kids could have that experience today.
“I never heard anyone talk about racism,” he said. “Now, with our kids in school, there’s more division.”
Fred and Peggy Keapproth, who used a blue Sharpie to amend a “Parents for Youngkin” sign to read “Grandparents for Youngkin,” said they worry their three grandkids will be exposed to “Marxist indoctrination” that downplays the progress America has made on race.
“American history, you know, it wasn’t perfect. Things happened. We did have slavery and all that. That’s true and that’s a bad thing,” Fred said. “The world is different today.”
“We learned our lessons and we moved on,” Peggy added.
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The Second Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
The Second Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
King’s nightmare of racism is being presented as his dream.
By Ibram X. KendiOctober 14, 2021
Photo illustration by Adam Maida / The Atlantic; Images: William Lovelace / Getty; Evelyn Hockstein / Reuters
Early on the evening of October 23, 2019, I took a tour of the Lorraine Motel. I’d been to Memphis, Tennessee, several times before, and I’d come back to speak at the National Civil Rights Museum, which encompasses the motel. But until that October, I’d never been able to bring myself to visit the site of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.
I saw what King saw moments before he saw no more. His second-floor room had been preserved. Walking into there was like walking into 1968. I saw the antique dishes from the motel’s kitchen. I saw two beds: one for King, unmade, and one for his friend Ralph Abernathy. On April 4, 1968, King had been feeling under the weather.
The night before he was killed, King addressed striking Black sanitation workers in Memphis. “If something isn’t done, and in a hurry,” he said, “to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed.”
From the King issue: The whitewashing of King’s assassination
I walked out of Room 306, as King did, around 6 p.m. From the balcony, I looked down on a white 1959 Dodge Royal and a white 1968 Cadillac. King looked down to talk with some friends in the parking lot. He turned to walk back into his room. A bullet smashed into his neck. I stood on the concrete square where King’s life fell. I looked to where King’s associates pointed in the sniper’s direction.
I did not say anything during the tour. A guide spoke, but I couldn’t hear him. My silence kept screaming in my solemnness. I would grieve in silence (and later in words).
The second assassination of King began days after the first assassination. Almost a third of Americans polled in April 1968 felt that King himself was to blame for his assassination, felt that he had “brought it on himself.” When King was killed, he was one of the most hated people in the United States. Nearly half of Black Americans and three-quarters of white Americans disapproved of him when he stepped out onto that motel balcony. Death threats were a fact of his life.
King’s first assassins professed to hate him half a century ago. His second assassins profess to revere him. Death threats to King’s legacy are now sold as love songs to his legacy. King is adored in death, literally. King is still hated in life.
Take the small Ohio crowd that gathered for a political rally last month. A white woman held a sign that read EDUCATE DON’T INDOCTRINATE. Another sign said SAVE THE DIVISION FOR MATH CLASS. Another person held a large poster of King.
Read: Martin Luther King Jr. saw three evils in the world
Josh Mandel, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, spoke to the crowd. “What the liberals are doing by advancing the cause of critical race theory—they are stomping on the grave of Martin Luther King,” said Mandel, whose internal pollshows him leading the Republican primary race.
“Martin Luther King once said that he had a dream that his grandkids would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” Mandel added. “But what you have going on in the government schools by these liberals and the media, by the secular left, by the radical left, they’re trying to make everything about skin color.”
The sniper shots aimed at King’s body of work sound this way almost every time. His modern-day assassins endlessly recite King’s “dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”—as if that was all King said during his 1963 March on Washington speech. They disregard the lines before and after it, when King lamented that his dream was being thwarted by “vicious racists” in places “sweltering with the heat of oppression.” They disregard King’s paraphrase of his iconic “dream” line in 1965: that “one day all of God’s Black children will be respected like his white children.” They disregard King’s recognition that the civil-rights movement did not end racism, leading him to tell an NBC News correspondent on May 8, 1967, that the “dream that I had [in 1963] has at many points turned into a nightmare.” (Ironically, it was this nightmare of post-civil-rights racial inequality that caused legal scholars in the 1970s to develop critical race theory in law schools, particularly to study and reveal the law’s role in the maintenance of inequality.)
King’s modern-day assassins disregard everything he said about education. “Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance,” King wrote in 1967. “It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn.”
They disregard King’s worry about the effects of not teaching Black history, including white people internalizing notions of superiority and Black people internalizing notions of inferiority. “The history books, which have almost completely ignored the contribution of the Negro in American history, have only served to intensify the Negroes’ sense of worthlessness and to augment the anachronistic doctrine of white supremacy,” King wrote in 1967.
But all of this disregarding of King’s words has not been the worst of it. The distortions are what’s truly lethal to his legacy, such as the claim that King’s dream was for his four little children to live in a nation where despite numerous racial disparities, no one judges racism or mentions skin color and everyone judges only character, because a hierarchy of character is apparently causing the inequities. King’s nightmare of racism is being presented as King’s dream.
Ibram X. Kendi: Our new postracial myth
Those who distort King’s dream are now also distorting critical race theory, and distorting CRT to distort King. “Critical race theory is a Marxist doctrine that rejects the vision of Martin Luther King Jr.,” Donald Trump said at a Michigan campaign rally last October. In July, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said, “Critical race theory goes against everything Martin Luther King has ever told us, don’t judge us by the color of our skin, and now they’re embracing it.”
It is wrong to present King, who continuously spoke out against racism, as someone who stood against people speaking out against racism. It is wrong to claim that teachers educating their students about past and present racism “are stomping on the grave of Martin Luther King,” to quote Mandel. But people such as Trump, McCarthy, and Mandel aren’t simply stomping on King’s grave themselves. These self-professed admirers of King are digging a new grave, and burying King’s body of work within it.
The Second Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
King’s nightmare of racism is being presented as his dream.
By Ibram X. KendiOctober 14, 2021
Photo illustration by Adam Maida / The Atlantic; Images: William Lovelace / Getty; Evelyn Hockstein / Reuters
Early on the evening of October 23, 2019, I took a tour of the Lorraine Motel. I’d been to Memphis, Tennessee, several times before, and I’d come back to speak at the National Civil Rights Museum, which encompasses the motel. But until that October, I’d never been able to bring myself to visit the site of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.
I saw what King saw moments before he saw no more. His second-floor room had been preserved. Walking into there was like walking into 1968. I saw the antique dishes from the motel’s kitchen. I saw two beds: one for King, unmade, and one for his friend Ralph Abernathy. On April 4, 1968, King had been feeling under the weather.
The night before he was killed, King addressed striking Black sanitation workers in Memphis. “If something isn’t done, and in a hurry,” he said, “to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed.”
From the King issue: The whitewashing of King’s assassination
I walked out of Room 306, as King did, around 6 p.m. From the balcony, I looked down on a white 1959 Dodge Royal and a white 1968 Cadillac. King looked down to talk with some friends in the parking lot. He turned to walk back into his room. A bullet smashed into his neck. I stood on the concrete square where King’s life fell. I looked to where King’s associates pointed in the sniper’s direction.
I did not say anything during the tour. A guide spoke, but I couldn’t hear him. My silence kept screaming in my solemnness. I would grieve in silence (and later in words).
The second assassination of King began days after the first assassination. Almost a third of Americans polled in April 1968 felt that King himself was to blame for his assassination, felt that he had “brought it on himself.” When King was killed, he was one of the most hated people in the United States. Nearly half of Black Americans and three-quarters of white Americans disapproved of him when he stepped out onto that motel balcony. Death threats were a fact of his life.
King’s first assassins professed to hate him half a century ago. His second assassins profess to revere him. Death threats to King’s legacy are now sold as love songs to his legacy. King is adored in death, literally. King is still hated in life.
Take the small Ohio crowd that gathered for a political rally last month. A white woman held a sign that read EDUCATE DON’T INDOCTRINATE. Another sign said SAVE THE DIVISION FOR MATH CLASS. Another person held a large poster of King.
Read: Martin Luther King Jr. saw three evils in the world
Josh Mandel, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, spoke to the crowd. “What the liberals are doing by advancing the cause of critical race theory—they are stomping on the grave of Martin Luther King,” said Mandel, whose internal pollshows him leading the Republican primary race.
“Martin Luther King once said that he had a dream that his grandkids would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” Mandel added. “But what you have going on in the government schools by these liberals and the media, by the secular left, by the radical left, they’re trying to make everything about skin color.”
The sniper shots aimed at King’s body of work sound this way almost every time. His modern-day assassins endlessly recite King’s “dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”—as if that was all King said during his 1963 March on Washington speech. They disregard the lines before and after it, when King lamented that his dream was being thwarted by “vicious racists” in places “sweltering with the heat of oppression.” They disregard King’s paraphrase of his iconic “dream” line in 1965: that “one day all of God’s Black children will be respected like his white children.” They disregard King’s recognition that the civil-rights movement did not end racism, leading him to tell an NBC News correspondent on May 8, 1967, that the “dream that I had [in 1963] has at many points turned into a nightmare.” (Ironically, it was this nightmare of post-civil-rights racial inequality that caused legal scholars in the 1970s to develop critical race theory in law schools, particularly to study and reveal the law’s role in the maintenance of inequality.)
King’s modern-day assassins disregard everything he said about education. “Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance,” King wrote in 1967. “It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn.”
They disregard King’s worry about the effects of not teaching Black history, including white people internalizing notions of superiority and Black people internalizing notions of inferiority. “The history books, which have almost completely ignored the contribution of the Negro in American history, have only served to intensify the Negroes’ sense of worthlessness and to augment the anachronistic doctrine of white supremacy,” King wrote in 1967.
But all of this disregarding of King’s words has not been the worst of it. The distortions are what’s truly lethal to his legacy, such as the claim that King’s dream was for his four little children to live in a nation where despite numerous racial disparities, no one judges racism or mentions skin color and everyone judges only character, because a hierarchy of character is apparently causing the inequities. King’s nightmare of racism is being presented as King’s dream.
Ibram X. Kendi: Our new postracial myth
Those who distort King’s dream are now also distorting critical race theory, and distorting CRT to distort King. “Critical race theory is a Marxist doctrine that rejects the vision of Martin Luther King Jr.,” Donald Trump said at a Michigan campaign rally last October. In July, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said, “Critical race theory goes against everything Martin Luther King has ever told us, don’t judge us by the color of our skin, and now they’re embracing it.”
It is wrong to present King, who continuously spoke out against racism, as someone who stood against people speaking out against racism. It is wrong to claim that teachers educating their students about past and present racism “are stomping on the grave of Martin Luther King,” to quote Mandel. But people such as Trump, McCarthy, and Mandel aren’t simply stomping on King’s grave themselves. These self-professed admirers of King are digging a new grave, and burying King’s body of work within it.
PART 2:
Texas state Senator Bryan Hughes said in July that he was aggrieved by educators teaching “the inverse of what Dr. King taught us.” But this same legislator proposed a bill weeks earlier that would have removed King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and “Letter From Birmingham Jail” from the Texas state curriculum. This year, the Tennessee group Moms for Liberty attempted to banFrances E. Ruffin’s book Martin Luther King Jr. and the March on Washington. Pennsylvania’s Central York School District banned Brad Meltzer’s I Am Martin Luther King, Jr. Two years ago, the Columbia County School District in Georgia banned Nic Stone’s Dear Martin. There’s no contradiction in these elected officials and parents banning books about a historical figure they claim to adore when they adore this historical figure only now that he is dead.
King’s adult children have spent the past year defending their father’s legacy. In the latest instance, Bernice King invited Josh Mandel, in response to his Ohio rally speech, “to study my father’s teachings in full and in context. He was not a drum major for a colorblind society, but for justice.”
“Spare me your lectures,” Mandel shot back.
“I don’t see liberals stomping on my father’s grave,” Martin Luther King III tweetedat Mandel. “I see a GOP effort to whitewash history.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Mandel tweeted.
Mandel then addressed both of them together on Twitter. “You guys are just charlatans who use CRT to pervert his legacy and make money. He was a leader among leaders who brought people together and tore down racial barriers.”
When President Ronald Reagan marked the first federally recognized Martin Luther King Jr. Day, in January 1986, he saluted “all those who have continued to work for brotherhood, for justice, for racial harmony—for a truly color-blind America where all people are judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. To them I say, never, never abandon the dream.”
Reagan abandoned government efforts to eliminate racial inequities, and constantly evoked King to justify his abandonment. King, though, had been clear about how to achieve his dream. “If we are going to make the American dream a reality, we are challenged to work in an action program to get rid of the last vestiges of segregation and discrimination,” King said in his 1965 “American Dream” speech. “This problem isn’t going to solve itself.”
But Reagan Republicans then and Trump Republicans today have disparaged these anti-racist action programs to eliminate racial disparities as “racist,” as “reverse discrimination,” as handing out “special privileges” or “special treatment,” all of which they claim King opposed.
“It is, however, important to understand that giving a man his due may often mean giving him special treatment,” King wrote in his 1967 book, Where Do We Go From Here. “I am aware of the fact that this has been a troublesome concept for many liberals, since it conflicts with their traditional ideal of equal opportunity and equal treatment of people according to their individual merits.”
Fifty-four years later, this remains a troublesome concept for many Americans who declare that they adore King. “Identity politics values people by characteristics like race, sex, and sexual orientation and holds that new times demand new rights to replace the old,” Trump’s 1776 Commission report stated in January. “This is the opposite of King’s hope that his children would ‘live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.’”
Read: The first white president
The 1776 Commission tried to turn King into an advocate of “color-blind civil rights.” But King had already written back in 1967: “This is a day which demands new thinking and the reevaluation of old concepts. A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for him, in order to equip him to compete on a just and equal basis.”
Historians and writers have called attention again and again and again to the “misappropriation” of King, the misunderstanding of King, the stealing of King, the attempts to “defang” King, the “watering down” of King, the “whitewashing” of King by the conservators of racial inequity. As the distortions of King have intensified over the years, so too has the language denouncing them.
And yet, the second assassination is about King and hardly about King at all. If Mandel is an avatar of the snipers, then King is an avatar of history. The second assassination of King is the latest assassination of history. The war on science, on expertise, on facts, on journalism, on democracy necessitates a concomitant war on history. And the war on history is the war on education—as history is essentially educational. If an anti-racist King can be turned into a color-blind conservator of racism, then anyone and anything from history can be assassinated. Pro-slavery Founding Fathers can be recast as having been“against slavery.” Racist Confederate rebels can be recast as “not racist” heroes deserving of monuments in town squares.
Assassinating the reality of the past assassinates the reality of the present (and creates a new simulated reality). In this simulated reality, critical race theory can be warped into being like Jim Crow. Anti-American insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6 can be presented as pro-American patriots. Education can be turned into indoctrination, and indoctrination can be turned into education. Teaching children that there’s nothing special about their skin color can be turned into teaching children to hate their skin color. People organizing and writing against racism can be portrayed as “race politics profiteers,” as Mandel sadistically framed Bernice King.
It’s been a year. I’ve raged. But rage has not been my overwhelming emotion as I’ve witnessed the assassinations of reality, of history, of King. I’ve largely felt grief, like I did at the Lorraine Motel two years ago. Grief—as I long for the wisdom of evidence and history to guide our policy decisions. Grief—as I long for King to live through his body of anti-racist words. Grief—as I realize that the assassins of his legacy will stop at nothing until those words are dead, until every trace of the dreamer of a multiracial democracy is gone.
I remember leaving the Lorraine Motel’s museum that night. I walked past the old cars in the parking lot to view the large historical inscription opposite King’s motel room. I looked up at his motel room, and looked down at the biblical passage that reads:
They said one to another,
Behold, here cometh the dreamer …
Let us slay him …
And we shall see what will become of his dreams.
Texas state Senator Bryan Hughes said in July that he was aggrieved by educators teaching “the inverse of what Dr. King taught us.” But this same legislator proposed a bill weeks earlier that would have removed King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and “Letter From Birmingham Jail” from the Texas state curriculum. This year, the Tennessee group Moms for Liberty attempted to banFrances E. Ruffin’s book Martin Luther King Jr. and the March on Washington. Pennsylvania’s Central York School District banned Brad Meltzer’s I Am Martin Luther King, Jr. Two years ago, the Columbia County School District in Georgia banned Nic Stone’s Dear Martin. There’s no contradiction in these elected officials and parents banning books about a historical figure they claim to adore when they adore this historical figure only now that he is dead.
King’s adult children have spent the past year defending their father’s legacy. In the latest instance, Bernice King invited Josh Mandel, in response to his Ohio rally speech, “to study my father’s teachings in full and in context. He was not a drum major for a colorblind society, but for justice.”
“Spare me your lectures,” Mandel shot back.
“I don’t see liberals stomping on my father’s grave,” Martin Luther King III tweetedat Mandel. “I see a GOP effort to whitewash history.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Mandel tweeted.
Mandel then addressed both of them together on Twitter. “You guys are just charlatans who use CRT to pervert his legacy and make money. He was a leader among leaders who brought people together and tore down racial barriers.”
When President Ronald Reagan marked the first federally recognized Martin Luther King Jr. Day, in January 1986, he saluted “all those who have continued to work for brotherhood, for justice, for racial harmony—for a truly color-blind America where all people are judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. To them I say, never, never abandon the dream.”
Reagan abandoned government efforts to eliminate racial inequities, and constantly evoked King to justify his abandonment. King, though, had been clear about how to achieve his dream. “If we are going to make the American dream a reality, we are challenged to work in an action program to get rid of the last vestiges of segregation and discrimination,” King said in his 1965 “American Dream” speech. “This problem isn’t going to solve itself.”
But Reagan Republicans then and Trump Republicans today have disparaged these anti-racist action programs to eliminate racial disparities as “racist,” as “reverse discrimination,” as handing out “special privileges” or “special treatment,” all of which they claim King opposed.
“It is, however, important to understand that giving a man his due may often mean giving him special treatment,” King wrote in his 1967 book, Where Do We Go From Here. “I am aware of the fact that this has been a troublesome concept for many liberals, since it conflicts with their traditional ideal of equal opportunity and equal treatment of people according to their individual merits.”
Fifty-four years later, this remains a troublesome concept for many Americans who declare that they adore King. “Identity politics values people by characteristics like race, sex, and sexual orientation and holds that new times demand new rights to replace the old,” Trump’s 1776 Commission report stated in January. “This is the opposite of King’s hope that his children would ‘live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.’”
Read: The first white president
The 1776 Commission tried to turn King into an advocate of “color-blind civil rights.” But King had already written back in 1967: “This is a day which demands new thinking and the reevaluation of old concepts. A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for him, in order to equip him to compete on a just and equal basis.”
Historians and writers have called attention again and again and again to the “misappropriation” of King, the misunderstanding of King, the stealing of King, the attempts to “defang” King, the “watering down” of King, the “whitewashing” of King by the conservators of racial inequity. As the distortions of King have intensified over the years, so too has the language denouncing them.
And yet, the second assassination is about King and hardly about King at all. If Mandel is an avatar of the snipers, then King is an avatar of history. The second assassination of King is the latest assassination of history. The war on science, on expertise, on facts, on journalism, on democracy necessitates a concomitant war on history. And the war on history is the war on education—as history is essentially educational. If an anti-racist King can be turned into a color-blind conservator of racism, then anyone and anything from history can be assassinated. Pro-slavery Founding Fathers can be recast as having been“against slavery.” Racist Confederate rebels can be recast as “not racist” heroes deserving of monuments in town squares.
Assassinating the reality of the past assassinates the reality of the present (and creates a new simulated reality). In this simulated reality, critical race theory can be warped into being like Jim Crow. Anti-American insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6 can be presented as pro-American patriots. Education can be turned into indoctrination, and indoctrination can be turned into education. Teaching children that there’s nothing special about their skin color can be turned into teaching children to hate their skin color. People organizing and writing against racism can be portrayed as “race politics profiteers,” as Mandel sadistically framed Bernice King.
It’s been a year. I’ve raged. But rage has not been my overwhelming emotion as I’ve witnessed the assassinations of reality, of history, of King. I’ve largely felt grief, like I did at the Lorraine Motel two years ago. Grief—as I long for the wisdom of evidence and history to guide our policy decisions. Grief—as I long for King to live through his body of anti-racist words. Grief—as I realize that the assassins of his legacy will stop at nothing until those words are dead, until every trace of the dreamer of a multiracial democracy is gone.
I remember leaving the Lorraine Motel’s museum that night. I walked past the old cars in the parking lot to view the large historical inscription opposite King’s motel room. I looked up at his motel room, and looked down at the biblical passage that reads:
They said one to another,
Behold, here cometh the dreamer …
Let us slay him …
And we shall see what will become of his dreams.
Cracker talking to MLKJr's children telling them they don't know what they're talking about SMH
these people are truly sick individuals....MLK Jr is great for quotes and whatnot, just not his REAL message...
That was a good (but sad) read! Both parts of that