Be a Radical: Read The Damn Books
BLM CRT SEL OMG
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It feels like a lot right now.
Life has been about what we can't do. But the sun is about to come out on an abundant springtime of release and relief even as it illuminates the shit show that is present day America. We are the ones we've been waiting for. You are part of the solution. Don't you ever forget that.
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This past summer, I was invited to do a keynote for a state-wide professional development conference of K-12 educators in a southern state. It was a big deal. I was honored. I wanted to do a terrific job for them.
A week prior to the talk, I jumped on a prep call with the organizers to learn what they were up to and how I could be of most use with my keynote. As the conversation drew to a close one of the organizers paused, rolled her eyes, and then very kindly asked me if I wouldn't mind refraining from mentioning 'Critical Race Theory/CRT' in my talk. She shook her head with disgust as she said it. (At the fact that people in her community have turned a manner of examining the implication of race on historical and current events into some kind of bad word.) She was worried about the potential backlash and fallout if I did mention it. "No worries," I told them. "My talk is on how to help kids develop agency and resilience; there'd be no reason to raise CRT." It was all good.
Then they said "Could you also not talk about 'social and emotional learning' or 'SEL,' because those people lump SEL into the same category as Critical Race Theory."
This one was harder because I was in fact literally planning to mention the work of my educator friend Randy Weiner who teaches SEL techniques to educators so that they can hold their shit together as they try to lead schools and teach and support kids in this very challenging American moment! In other words I was going to offer a few SEL techniques and mention my friend's book in order to help these people. And now I was being asked not to.
Nevertheless, I agreed. These people were paying me good money to speak to their people and the last thing wanted was to drive their people away.
Yeah that was all well and good last August.
But right about now I'm seeing that maybe I'm part of the problem.
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What I mean is, while our fearless leader Michelle Obama famously said:
we Democrats and liberals are often chided for being 'too nice.' And lately I'm thinking that maybe in order to clean up this shit show, we Democrats and liberals (and people of reason and conscience in of whatever party) may need to get better at going low. I'm not talking unethical/illegal/criminal low. More like really fucking clever low. Sorry Michelle...
I'm talking things like this audacious (if disgusting) launch video put out by Congressional candidate Alex Walker who aims to unseat Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) – one of the vilest politicians of our time. You may disagree that Walker's ad has merit. It is gross, I'll give you that. But Boebert is nuts. She's a QAnon conspiracy admirer who casually refers to Muslim congresswoman Ilhan Omar as "part of the jihad squad" and tweeted out Speaker Pelosi's physical location to the January 6th insurrectionists! That such a person should occupy even a square inch within the U.S. House of Representatives let alone an actual voting seat? Give me a break. Alex Walker is a more moderate Democrat than I am (and may have crossed some kind of decency line with his political ad) but I like his cleverness and confidence and frankly the policies he supports. Were I a Coloradan in the 3rd district I would vote for him in a heartbeat over Boebert. Instead, all I can do is donate to his campaign (which I HAVE).
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The vast majority of us aren't going to run for office. (Although, my former student Victoria Virasingh is now running to represent the region she grew up in, Virginia's 8th district. I'm hosting a virtual fundraiser for her on Thursday! Read more about her here.)
But what's something any of us can do to make a difference?
I got one word for you:
Read.
Over the course of human history, those in power have tried to keep the rest of us either illiterate or indoctrinated by outright punishing us for reading (and punishing those who aided us, too) or by controlling what we were allowed to read. Enslaved persons were brutally punished for speaking their native language and for attempting to learn how to read or write. Even in fictional dystopian narratives like The Handmaid’s Tale we see authoritarian regimes controlling the masses by preventing them from having access to written material. And, as real-life dystopian America threatens to turn the clock back on voting rights, privacy, and the protection of democratic systems, it's as unsurprising as it is heartbreaking that book banning has come back into fashion. "Republican lawmakers are, in states across the country, introducing bills that suppress debate and stifle discussion in favor of the rote memorization of approved facts," says Jamele Bouie in a recent OpEd in the New York Times.
(Don't you love how we can't ban guns, but we can ban books? Roll the question what constitutes the greater danger over and over again in your mind like a hard candy in your mouth. Does this logic work for you?)
Getting rid of books that spotlight bigotry is their goal. They're worried about hurting the feelings of the descendants of people who did horrible things. (Yet have the temerity to call us 'snowflakes'!) Whether you are in a "banned books" community or not, you can stand up and say the opposite: Learning about bigotry is the only way we root it out! You can speak out and declare Nope, not on my watch. You can commit: We will read these books in our book club. You can stock your Little Free Library. You can tell your public school and independent school leaders that you want these books taught. You can stage a protest outside your library or city hall. You can write a letter to your local paper sharing your point of view. You can have this conversation over and over again within earshot of your kids so that they begin to really GET that the grownups around them are concerned about this shit. (Speaking of kids, if there's a freethinking high schooler in your life (15+), tell them about this 500 word essay contest called "Think For Yourself" sponsored by Let Grow, that could land them a $5000 college scholarship (and $1000 for three runners-up). Deadline is April 30. Here are the details.)
If you're going to make a beeline for the very titles that have small-minded people up in arms, you may be wondering Which books do I select? (Sadly, there are hundreds to choose from.) Well, today's bans tend to center books about the racism embedded in the founding and running of America, about queer or transgender people, about the Holocaust, or about the right of women to control their bodies. So, you can start anywhere, and here are some great lists of banned books by category. But if it were me, I'd start with Pulitzer Prize-winning The 1619 Project.
The Wall Street Journal is now caterwauling that DEI being taught in schools reflects "a divisive obsession with race." But America was founded on the presumption that land could and should be stolen from its native inhabitants and that an economy should be built on the backs of enslaved people who would be treated as animals or worse. They who are descended from those who invented the concept of race and racial hierarchy have the audacity to tell us that race is our obsession? Give.Me.A.Break.
To know our history is to give ourselves the power to overcome rather than repeat it. This land is YOUR Land. This land is MY Land. Ban books about the full truth of this American experiment inaptly called a place of "liberty and justice for all"? Not on my watch.
In fact, don't hold me to this, but I'm thinking of hosting a banned books book club right here in my backyard this summer where we’ll gather once a week to discuss some of these books. It's not a done deal. Lord knows I could just use a break this summer. But equity, justice, and possibility call me, as do neighbors and friends hanging around the fire pit and barbecue and reading a damn banned book late into the night.
How bout you? What might you do?
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😳 Right after I published this, a friend (thanks Megan!) sent me this eye-opening article in Slate about an ethnographer who spent three years observing elementary school teachers in a large public school district and came away stunned by the amount of racism the observed teachers perpetuated.
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📸 Cover Photo Credit Getty Images/Cavan Images/Cavan
📸 Michelle Obama Image by Pantastic
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