Breaking up with your favorite racist childhood classic books - The Washington Post

Breaking up with your favorite racist childhood classic books - The Washington Post

Breaking up with your favorite racist childhood classic books

Philip Nel is the author of “Was the Cat in the Hat Black?: The Hidden Racism of Children’s Literature and the Need for Diverse Books,” a 2017 book that helped launch a conversation about racism in children’s books that led to a recent decision by Dr. Seuss Enterprises to stop publishing six of the prolific author’s books.

Nel, who is a professor of English at Kansas State University and director of the children’s literature program there, spoke with me about the book a few years ago. I republished the conversation here earlier this year when it was falsely reported that a Virginia school district had banned the books of Dr. Seuss, the pen name of Theodor Seuss Geisel.

No, a Virginia school district didn’t ban Dr. Seuss books. Here’s what really happened.

Nel is back with this post, in which he discusses racism in children’s books and the way the issue has become politicized. At the heart of his piece is this:

“Why not break up with your favorite racist childhood classics? Maybe doing so will break your heart a little. But, to quote a line attributed to Rumi (but which is probably not him), ‘You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.’"

By Philip Nel

It is possible to cancel a culture. More than 300 Indigenous languages were once spoken in the United States. Only about 175 of those languages remain today. Colonization, genocide, forced assimilation have all been very effective at canceling cultures.

However, the “cancel culture” that animates professional grievance actors today refers to culture under no threat of cancellation. Dr. Seuss books. Muppets. Disney. White innocence. Because it’s hard to cancel a dominant culture. “Cancel culture” is a White supremacist fantasy that creates villains and then mobilizes anger against the villains it CONTINUE READING: Breaking up with your favorite racist childhood classic books - The Washington Post

Oklahoma: State Officials Say It’s “Racist” to Teach About Racism | Diane Ravitch's blog

Oklahoma: State Officials Say It’s “Racist” to Teach About Racism | Diane Ravitch's blog

Oklahoma: State Officials Say It’s “Racist” to Teach About Racism

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher, reports that the Republican Governor and Legislature are determined to stop teachers from teaching about racism, sexism, and bias because such topics Dow discord and racism. This “cancel culture” at its worst. Every sentient adult who has studied American history knows that racism runs deep and strong in our history and present culture and the best way to eliminate it to confront it honestly.

Thompson writes:

As Education Week explained, across the nation, legislators are attempting to “make it harder for teachers to talk about racism, sexism, and bias in the classroom,” and directly or indirectly ban Critical Race Theory. Oklahoma passed HR 1775 banning mandatory gender or sexual diversity training or counseling, while implicitly threatening lessons about racism.

Oklahoma provides just one example of the way public education and civil discussions are under assault. But it CONTINUE READING: Oklahoma: State Officials Say It’s “Racist” to Teach About Racism | Diane Ravitch's blog

ANDRE PERRY: If you don’t want critical race theory to exist, stop being racist - The Hechinger Report

COLUMN: If you don’t want critical race theory to exist, stop being racist

COLUMN: If you don’t want critical race theory to exist, stop being racist

Conservatives campaigning against critical race theory are making it even more popular

Conservative legislators across the country are passing laws to ban books and courses that espouse critical race theory — scholarship born in the 1970s that examines the role that racism plays in our daily lives. For instance, the Idaho House of Representatives passed a higher ed bill based on some lawmakers’ beliefs that critical race theory and similar work “exacerbate and inflame divisions on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or other criteria in ways contrary to the unity of the nation and the well-being of the state of Idaho and its citizens.”

You’d think that after the white supremacists defiled the halls of the Capitol on January 6, policymakers would be compelled to uproot clear and present sources of racial division. After four years of Trump falsely equating white supremacists with activists fighting for racial justice, you’d also think policymakers would see critical race theory as a way to make sense of systemic racism in the U.S. But, alas, racists find a way to use what should be teachable moments as a twisted opportunity to perpetuate their worldview.

A culture built upon a false racial hierarchy can only be maintained through lies, force and duplicity — all of which are on full display in the asinine attempts to ban critical race theory. Those who are threatened by any systemic analysis of racism and its underpinnings reveal exactly where they stand on white supremacy. 

The reasons this country is literally divided are clear to any reasonable person: slavery, Jim Crow segregation, housing and education discrimination, a biased criminal justice system and feckless conservative CONTINUE READING: COLUMN: If you don’t want critical race theory to exist, stop being racist