LET’S TALK ABOUT ONGOING RACISM

What would be a more appropriate time to discuss ongoing racism in America than during Black History Month?

Fourteen states — think primarily the former Confederacy where current residents still proudly hang the Confederate battle flag from their front porches and their pickup trucks with their intent that it is representative of their culture — have passed laws that limit or prohibit schools from teaching about racism. Forget the debate over whether or not we should introduce critical race theory into classrooms, these states are restricting any mention that racism ever existed.

Here are examples on how some of these 14 states are approaching race:

Teachers can note that Jackie Robinson was the first African American to play Major League Baseball. They cannot, however, explain why it took until 1947 for a Black man to be granted a spot on a Major League Baseball team. If they want to share the history of the White riots that took place in Rosewood, Fla., or Tulsa, Okla., they may only reference that riots took place. They may not bring attention to the murdering of Black people and the destruction of Black homes and businesses that took place, much less note that the riots were racially motivated — in essence communitywide lynching.

Teachers may introduce their students to Malcolm X, but they must do so without exposing their students to his speeches. If they choose to discuss the music of the civil rights era, they can’t reference the meaning of lyrics that draw attention to the injustice of racism.

This, in the best light, is the extremist response to the campaign to introduce critical race theory into schools’ curriculum. At worst, it is again evidence of the desire of racism to come out from hiding these past five years.

According to the sponsors of these laws, their purpose is to rescue White students from being traumatized with guilt from the culture their grandparents were once engaged in or at the least chose to ignore while they returned home from their jobs to dine on meatloaf and gather around the radio to laugh at “Fibber McGee and Molly.”

Imagine, if you will, that Germany held that same mindset in developing textbooks and criteria for what knowledge German students should be “protected” from. Fortunately for German youth, for German democracy and for the world as a whole, Germany does not hide its racist and inhuman past from its youth. They are taught the unblemished history. They learn from that history. They are given the opportunity to be better human beings and to work for a better German state and culture than what existed in the 1930s and ’40s.

After the African American vote flexed its muscle and contributed heavily to electing a Democratic president in 2020, Southern states from Texas to Georgia have gone into full throttle to make it more difficult for residents of Black neighborhoods to vote. The Brennan Center for Justice says 19 states passed 34 laws restricting access to voting last year and at last count, lawmakers in at least 27 states had introduced, pre-filed or carried over 250 bills with restrictive provisions in their 2022 legislative sessions. These laws have, among other things, reduced the number of drop boxes and polling stations in Black neighborhoods, which not only creates greater effort, if not hardship, for some Black families to vote, it gravely extends wait times in line due to the limited number of polling places. That is why, in Georgia, for example, a parallel law was also passed to prohibit anyone not standing in line from being able to provide water to the crowds attempting to tolerate the heat and humidity that exists. During the 2020 election in Texas, poll workers reported that they often had to come out to the aid of Black people who were standing in line and being openly harassed by White people wearing red caps. In response, Texas has passed a law prohibiting election workers from interfering with alleged harassment.

This trend actually began in 2013 when Southern states jumped at the opportunity to harness Black voters when the majority conservative Supreme Court tossed out the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which long protected Black voters who suffered in the Jim Crow era of Black voter suppression. No, those states whose racist policies were restrained by the Voting Rights Act did not reintroduce polling taxes and voter eligibility tests, but nine mostly Southern states — Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia — immediately went to work in their state legislatures, drafting new laws targeting the Black vote. Republicans in those same nine states began drawing up districts that would isolate Black voters from forming majorities to help ensure the election of non-Black legislators. We are clearly wading into Jim Crow 2.

It seems the South does intend to rise again.

Barber