Unfortunately, this isn't the freedom some Americans desire!
Some Americans want the freedom to overcame what is perceived to be a nightmare: the history of white violence!
Last week, I read an email from a friend and college professor in Florida. The faculty are no longer free to mention the word, race, in reference to American history and the legacy of racial injustice. Governor Ron DeSantis is free to clamp down on any narrative surrounding American history that doesn't support the MAGA claim white supremacy a myth and everyone is equal, unless you are black and insist on discussing slavery's legacy.
How does a high school teacher or college professor introduce American literature without having students read the narratives of enslaved blacks? How will students understand Hawthorne's retreat to his home in the North after he visits southern plantations? Or Melville and the white whale? Is Baldwin's analysis of America's nightmare to be banned?
Generating fear in the average white American is more important. Certainly more lucrative, keeping whole populations of people of color away from the table where generations of white children and young people are expected to maintain not democracy but the supremacy of whiteness. How many times did I hear from white male chairs and deans in Wisconsin and in Philadelphia about the necessity to cuddle innocent minds and never allow them to feel uncomfortable.
Challenging and stressful for me, as a black educator, was trying not to censure myself by remaining silent. Thus, collaborating with the marginalizing of my ancestors and all black lives currently living on this planet.
Across the 48 states, the battle cry is chilling: the lives of white children are threatened by, of all things, a graduate law-school study of Critical Race Theory!
We're not racists! We just want what is best for our children! Our hard-fought freedoms are under attack by black people. Again!
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