The Attack on Black History in Schools
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 8 April 2024
⏱️ 38 minutes
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Summary
Across much of the country, Republican officials are reaching into K-12 classrooms and universities alike to exert control over what can be taught. In Florida, Texas, and many other states, laws now restrict teaching historical facts about race and racism. Book challenges and bans are surging. Public universities are seeing political meddling in the tenure process. Advocates of these measures say, in effect, that education must emphasize only the positive aspects of American history. Nikole Hannah-Jones, the New York Times Magazine reporter who developed the 1619 Project, and Jelani Cobb, the dean of the Columbia University School of Journalism, talk with David Remnick about the changing climate for intellectual freedom. “I just think it’s rich,” Hannah-Jones says, “that the people who say they are opposing indoctrination are in fact saying that curricula must be patriotic.” She adds, “You don’t ban books, you don’t ban curriculum, you don’t ban the teaching of ideas, just to do it. You do it to control what we are able to understand and think about and imagine for our society.”
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| 0:49.4 | This is the political scene, and I'm David Remnick. |
| 0:56.0 | In 1963, James Baldwin gave a speech to a group of teachers, encouraging them to grapple more honestly with the realities of American history. |
| 1:07.6 | Baldwin said this, you must understand that in the attempt to correct so many generations of |
| 1:13.2 | bad faith and cruelty, when it is operating not only in the classroom, but in society, you'll |
| 1:20.4 | meet the most fantastic, the most brutal, and the most determined resistance. There is no point |
| 1:26.0 | in pretending that this won't happen. |
| 1:30.6 | 60 years after Baldwin's speech, it is still happening, |
| 1:35.0 | an escalating backlash against the teaching of black history. |
| 1:38.6 | Dozens of states have proposed measures |
| 1:40.5 | to restrict teaching the history of race and racism. |
| 1:47.1 | In Florida, new state history standards specify, for example, that enslaved people might have benefited from slavery. Florida schools must now |
| 1:55.5 | teach students about the, quote, benefit of slavery when teaching black history. The controversial new education standard passed by the State Board of Education earlier this week. |
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