Jill Lepore on Parents’ Rights and the Culture War

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, David, Books, Arts, Storytelling, Wnyc, New, Remnick, News Commentary, Yorker, Politics

4.2 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2022

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A wave of book bannings sweeping the country, along with conservative fury over titles like “Antiracist Baby,” seems like a backlash against the heightened racial consciousness of the post-George Floyd era. The historian and staff writer Jill Lepore sees these conflicts as the continuation of an old dynamic. She relates today’s “anti-anti-racism” movement to the anti-evolution campaign of the nineteen-twenties, which included the prosecution of a Tennessee teacher for teaching Darwin’s theory in a high-school class. Lepore tells David Remnick that what links these battles over biology and history is the argument that parents have the right to determine their children’s education in public schools.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNWC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:09.9	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour, I'm David Remnick.
0:13.1	Right now, a wave of bookbannings is sweeping schools around the country.
0:18.0	The examples are many.
0:20.1	But the focus is clearly on how schools teach race and racism.
0:24.8	Whether acknowledging some of the realities of history is just too divisive.
0:30.8	The political ramifications go well beyond the classroom.
0:34.4	In the state of Virginia to take one recent race, Glenn Youngkin, the Republican, made
0:40.2	the alarm over critical race theory a cornerstone of his campaign for governor, which he won,
0:45.8	even though CRT is not part of the state curriculum.
0:50.0	The Ted Cruz made school library books a set piece in the confirmation hearings of Judge
0:55.3	Katangi Brown Jackson.
0:57.3	I find that statement a little hard to reconcile with the public record because if you look
1:03.4	at the Georgetown Day Schools curriculum, it is filled and overflowing with critical
1:09.4	race theory, critical race theory and introduction.
1:14.3	They include the end of policing and advocacy for abolishing police.
1:21.3	They include how to be an anti-racist by Ibram Kent Kendi.
1:25.8	They include literally stacks and stacks of books.
1:28.0	I'll tell you two of the ones that were most stunning.
1:31.4	They include a book called Anti-racist Baby by Ibram Kenty.
1:37.4	This is a book that is taught at Georgetown Day School to students in pre-K through
1:42.6	second grade, so four through seven years old.
	...

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