(New York) On January 15, the first day of his term as governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin fulfilled one of his most important campaign promises by banning by decree the teaching of critical race theory in schools. public in his state.
Posted at 6:00 a.m.
The president of a group of African-American parliamentarians from Virginia immediately accused him of having declared “war on black history”. The Republican financier turned politician defended himself, insisting on the importance of not teaching children to “see everything through the prism of race”.
“Yes, we’re going to teach the whole story, the good and the bad, because we can’t know where we’re going if we don’t know where we came from,” the new governor said on Fox News the day after. his investiture. “But teaching our children that one group is advantaged and the other disadvantaged simply because of the color of their skin goes against everything we know to be true. »
PHOTO STEVE HELBER, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
Glenn Youngkin at his inauguration as Governor of Virginia on January 15
Critical race theory, remember, refers to a decades-old academic concept that racial inequalities are perpetuated by structural forces rather than individual behaviors.
It is not taught as such in primary and secondary schools in the United States. But it permeates certain initiatives adopted by companies and schools to counter racism and prejudice, according to its critics, many of whom do not hesitate to distort it.
Virginia is now one of 35 U.S. states that have introduced bills or other measures to ban the teaching of critical race theory or restrict how teachers can address racism or sexism, according to a report. Education Week analysis.
Fourteen of these states have imposed these bans or restrictions through legislation or other means.
At the same time, elected officials and conservative parents in several states are leading campaigns to ban books dealing with racism or sexuality from school libraries.
targeted books
This is the other culture of banishment, which has nothing to envy in intensity to that denounced by American conservatives. The question is whether it is part of a desire to counter the excesses of “wokism” or to turn a blind eye to the reality of racism, sexism or transphobia, among others.
Glenn Youngkin’s statement to Fox News isn’t the only one to raise questions. In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis recently called critical race theory “shit,” claiming to see it as a derivative of Marxism. He gave his support to a bill that was supposed to combat the concept. The measure would prohibit public schools and private businesses in his state from offering classes or training that might make people feel uncomfortable or feel guilty because of their race, gender or national origin.
Parents from a school board in Tennessee demonstrated the potential effect of such a law last June. They challenged the classroom use of the autobiography of Ruby Bridges, one of the first black children to enter a white school in 1960 in the Deep South. According to them, the book violates the new law prohibiting the teaching of critical race theory. They argued that the author’s depiction of white opposition to racial desegregation gave the impression that all white people were evil and had oppressed black people.
This dispute is not an isolated case. According to the American Library Association, the number of attempts to ban books from school libraries increased by 67% from September 2020 to September 2021.
Since September, books have been removed from school libraries in at least seven states following pressure from elected officials or parents.
Among the titles most often targeted: The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, All Boys Aren’t Blue, by George Johnson, Gender Queer, by Maia Kobabe, lawn boy, by Jonathan Evison, and Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel.
How to teach slavery?
These books have in common to deal with racism or sexuality. Most of them are on the list of 850 titles sent last October by a Republican congressman from Texas to school board officials in his state. In particular, they had to reveal which of these books were in their libraries. Among the works on the list: The Confessions of Nate Turner, by William Styron, The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, and Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Matt Krause, the parliamentarian in question, said he was interested in books likely to generate “a feeling of unease, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress because of race or sex [d’un élève] “.
This is the language used by all states that have passed laws inspired by the campaign against critical race theory.
Matt Krause’s list has not remained without effect. In particular, she contributed to the San Antonio School Board’s decision to remove 414 books from its libraries to allow their content to be reviewed.
And the fight against critical race theory continues these days in Mississippi and Indiana, among other places. At a public Senate committee hearing in Indianapolis, Matt Bockenfeld, a history professor, wondered how he could approach the issue of slavery without arousing feelings of unease, guilt and even anxiety in some students.
“How can I tell my students that they shouldn’t be distressed to discover that the library at Monticello, where [Thomas] Jefferson began our great experiment in democracy, rests on a foundation riddled with the fingerprints of [esclaves] who built the building? My fear is that this bill will make us teach 250 years of slavery and 90 years of Jim Crow by leading students to believe that those years say nothing about who we are as a nation, that the millions of souls lost in this barbarism were only regrettable spectators in our march towards justice, that their lives were so insignificant that they in no way defined our history. »