It’s February, time for Black History Month to show itself off in its finest glory, even when its best wardrobe may have to include combat boots.
This year, the month that the late educator and former Chicagoan Carter G. Woodson founded faces a new war of sorts widely known as “critical race theory” and whatever sounds like CRT to some people, even when it isn’t.
Conservatives eager to push back against what they see as dangerously “woke” ideas have been rallying parents and politicians to stigmatize and ban even benign discussions of Black history as “woke” propaganda and “critical race theory.”
Since January 2021, 36 states introduced bills or took other steps to restrict teaching CRT or otherwise limit how teachers can discuss racism and sexism, according to Education Week.
You don’t have to scratch very deep beneath the surface of this new debate before war against CRT sounds like a vague and ominous war against “discomfort.”
A Florida bill backed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis would prohibit that state’s public schools and private businesses from making people feel “discomfort” or “guilt” over historic actions by their race, nationality or gender.
Although the bill, does not mention critical race theory, the term is used in the attached bill analysis that was given to senators.
In Tennessee, a new anti-CRT law similarly enjoins educators from offering lessons in which an “individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual’s race or sex.”
In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed a school curriculum law that prohibits instruction that would cause an individual to “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual ‘s race or sex.”
In Virginia a “tip line” set up by new Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin for parents to report the teaching of “inherently divisive concepts” in public schools, a pivotal issue in his long-shot election victory in the heavily Democratic state, was described by one teacher as “scaring people to death.”
It’s ironic, to say the least, that Republicans usually obsessed with “wokeness” and “cancel culture” so boldly push a cancel culture of their own.
I can only imagine how appalled Woodson would have felt by this inconsistency.
Yet the concern for “discomfort” pops up repeatedly in these debates, although that only raises questions about what role a concern for “discomfort” should have in education.
After all, discomfort is not the same as injury. A provocative challenge to one’s preconceived notions is not a punch in the nose. It should serve as a stimulus to further thought. Over time it can result in better arguments and maybe, just maybe, it might change our minds.
Sometimes the rising generation of young people grasps the value of these lessons quicker than we old timers do. As Taylor Cassidy, a popular young online TikTok “creator,” recently said, “You don’t see a big representation of black history (in schools). I see comments all the time saying ‘I learn more from TikTok than I do from my own school.’ “
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That shouldn’t have to be the case. Woodson sought better platforms of education when he was studying at the University of Chicago, where, among other achievements, he received his master’s degree in 1908, on his way to becoming the second African American— W.E.B. DuBois was the first— to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard.
A son of former slaves, he became committed to the cause of Black history education after finding there were almost no books on the topic. Among his other academic activism, he founded Negro History Week in 1926, which became Black History Month through a proclamation by President Gerald Ford in 1976.
“When you control a man’s thinking,” he said in his most-remembered quote, “you do not have to worry about his actions.”
With that he expressed his reverence for the power of education and independent thinking based on sound research and wise teaching.
He learned and experienced more than enough to make any sane person uncomfortable. But he also knew the value and power of how, as the Bible says, the truth will set you free. Our children deserve no less.
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Clarence Page is a member of the Tribune Editorial Board.
Twitter @cptime