Critical Race Theory is No Excuse for Ignorance
There’s a lesson there for Democrats. What voters know matters less than how you make them feel. McAuliffe’s effort to paint the mild-mannered Youngkin as another Donald Trump failed miserably. As election analysts say, McAuliffe had a messaging problem. Future Democratic candidates take note.
Meanwhile, in state governments and local school boards, anti-CRT campaigns, fueled by brisk social network traffic, pose a threat to academic freedom and informed education about people of color, LGBTQ people and other marginalized groups.
It struck me as ominous, for example, that the first complaint filed under Tennessee’s new anti-CRT law targeted a book about Martin Luther King Jr.
The Williamson County chapter of the conservative parents group Moms for Liberty complained that the book about King and his historic March on Washington was part of a set that promoted “Anti-American, Anti-White and Anti-Mexican teaching” in the district south of Nashville.
In a similar spirit, a York, Pennsylvania, school district sparked student protests by striking books on race, history and social justice — books about Rosa Parks, “Sesame Street” and the biography of education activist Malala Yousafzai.
And back in Illinois, a high school district school board meeting in suburban Downers Grove turned raucous as some Proud Boys joined parents and others to call for removal of the award-winning “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe from the district’s library shelves.
Those who spoke up to defend the book, which is not part of the assigned curriculum, reportedly outnumbered its detractors, I was relieved to learn. I haven’t read the book yet but I am heartened to hear about students who want to read something more than their text messages.
The best response to controversial speech, according to an old maxim, is more speech. I feel the same way about good, age-appropriate books. There’s a big diverse world those kids are about to take over. We don’t do them any favors by keeping them in ignorance about it.
========
(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
©2021 Clarence Page. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
(c) 2021 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
