I’ve never met Nikole Hannah-Jones, but I feel a kinship with her.
She’s The New York Times journalist who won the for commentary for her powerful personal essay introducing the groundbreaking , which reframes American history through the prism of its original sin, slavery.
“The United States is a nation founded on both an ideal and a lie,†Hannah-Jones wrote. “Our Declaration of Independence, approved on July 4, 1776, proclaims that ‘all men are created equal’ and ‘endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.’ But the white men who drafted those words did not believe them to be true for the hundreds of thousands of black people in their midst. ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’ did not apply to fully one-fifth of the country. Yet despite being violently denied the freedom and justice promised to all, black Americans believed fervently in the American creed. Through centuries of black resistance and protest, we have helped the country live up to its founding ideals. And not only for ourselves — black rights struggles paved the way for every other rights struggle, including women’s and gay rights, immigrant and disability rights.â€
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The year before those words helped Hannah-Jones win the Pulitzer, I won in the same category, for a series of columns that exposed the modern-day use of debtors prisons in Missouri to jail poor people who couldn’t afford to pay the bill they received after having been jailed for minor criminal offenses, like shoplifting. Those columns led the Missouri Legislature to pass a bill making the practice illegal.
Now, that same Legislature — or its Republican supermajority, anyway — wants to make something else illegal in Missouri. It wants to stop schoolchildren from reading Hannah-Jones’ work. This is part of the latest wedge issue adopted by Republicans nationally, accusing public schools of “indoctrinating†children by teaching critical race theory, a somewhat amorphous concept that means different things to different historians, but generally teaches that racism in America is a systemic problem.
How ironic. White, rural Republicans in Missouri are proving the point by seeking to ban the use of an acclaimed work that teaches the history of America from the Black perspective. Just months ago, they were intentionally misusing the word censorship because businesses (Twitter and Facebook) were trying to limit misinformation and racism, and now, they are committing an intentional act of government censorship, with no apology. Talk about cancel culture.
In that has been offered to House Bill 1141, the Missouri Republicans backing the effort not only ban the teaching of Hannah-Jones’ work, in any context, but also ban other forms of curriculum that might teach racial tolerance or equity.
It’s racism and censorship wrapped up in the same package, and it’s already having an impact on real lives. This week, a group of state lawmakers — including Rep. Dottie Bailey, R-Eureka, and Sens. Andrew Koenig, R-Manchester, and Cindy O’Laughlin, R-Shelbina — are taking part in an event to discuss the alleged use of critical race theory in the Rockwood schools. Teachers and administrators are increasingly finding themselves under attack in the overwhelmingly white school district for trying to teach anything related to racial tolerance or equity, with the private members of the conspiracy-theory-loving Facebook group “Concerned Parents of the Rockwood School District†providing the fuel to such a dangerous fire.
As I’ve written before, my wife works for the Rockwood schools, and my two youngest children have attended the district since kindergarten. It’s a wonderful public school district, and it’s under attack by angry parents pushing Q-Anon conspiracy theories and stoking a racial divide, and they are now being cheered on by state lawmakers who apparently have nothing better to do.
Challenging public school curriculum isn’t anything new. It’s been happening for decades, but most public school districts have a well-defined process by which material can be challenged and ultimately taken to the school board. The Concerned Parents — er, Angry Parents — tried and failed to change the school board in the most recent election. So now they are asking lawmakers to make their case for them.
In doing so, they strike directly at Black people and try to make them the scapegoats, once again, for whatever it is they fear. Indeed, that’s the story of America, Hannah-Jones wrote in the 1619 Project.
“For centuries, white Americans have been trying to solve the ‘Negro problem.’ They have dedicated thousands of pages to this endeavor,†she wrote. “It is common, still, to point to rates of black poverty, out-of-wedlock births, crime and college attendance, as if these conditions in a country built on a racial caste system are not utterly predictable. But crucially, you cannot view those statistics while ignoring another: that black people were enslaved here longer than we have been free.â€
America’s original sin has never been washed away. You don’t have to read the 1619 Project to learn that (though you should). All you have to do is listen to the debate in the Missouri Legislature.
The curriculum includes resources that would be banned under a proposed Missouri rule.