Since the short-lived summer of racial reckoning in 2020, a wave of backlash fueled by anti-Black racism has rolled across the United States. Book bans have been supercharged by state legislation and well-funded national extremist organizations like Moms for Liberty. Key targets of those bans have been books by Black authors or about Black historical figures or characters. Teachers in 22 states have been censored from speaking about systemic racism, while videos from PragerU that justify and minimize enslavement have been approved to be shown in classrooms in 9 states and counting.
Just a few weeks into the new administration, we have already seen Department of Defense military base classrooms stripped of displays honoring Black History Month and books taken from shelves. In one school, posters of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Susan B. Anthony were removed, while one of Leonardo Da Vinci was left on display. When asked why, the school official replied “Because he [Da Vinci] was a real historical figure.” So the message being sent to the children of military families is that the contributions of Black people are not worthy of recognition. And that even someone as widely revered as Dr. King is not of “real” historical significance.
Modern democracies die through deception, including the subversion of knowledge and science. After the freezing of federal funding of their health research programs, higher education institutions are now being pressured by the Department of Education to eliminate any programs aimed at reducing barriers to equal opportunity for students of color, while the same office has halted racial and gender discrimination investigations. We have seen analytical frameworks like Critical Race Theory, intersectionality, and gender theory under attack through state legislation and now executive orders from the new administration precisely because they function to reveal truth, expose misinformation, explain social reality, and provide a blueprint for resisting.
Continuing to read book by Black authors and to utilize frameworks developed by Black scholars to make sense of what we are seeing are two powerful ways we can stand up as witnesses who will not look away from or deny the censorship happening before our eyes.
TODAY’S PRACTICE: Register to attend TOMORROW’s Under the Blacklight, “Executive Disorder: Resisting the War on Equal Opportunity” at 7pm EST. This event will provide the space our communities need right now — the space to resist, to plan and to learn from our history.