Censoring Truth in the Classroom

What if your race had known only tragedy throughout America’s history? What if your people had been enslaved, murdered, persecuted and denied their civil rights? And what if, instead of owning up to having inflicted such outrages, showing remorse, asking forgiveness, and making amends, those responsible, their descendants and sympathizers denied that those actions had ever occurred or, if they had, they had best be forgotten?

But what if the history of those deeds could never be taught in our schools, but covered in silence because it would only be “divisive” or “racist” against those whites who had committed them? Rather, let bygones be bygones! We should forget the past and simply move on!

This is the white supremacist gospel being preached by some in our country today, especially by protestors at school board meetings. It is the New Jim Crowism that would leave no public record in the classroom of the centuries-old infamy that was inflicted on the Black race.

Moreover, these protestors add insult to injury by denying the victims of this racism the chance to finally have their story told to America’s children as our schools have done for the Holocaust. Children deserve the truth, not fairy tales, even when the truth makes racists uncomfortable.

Anyone with an ounce of humanity could not help but be moved when learning about the brutal treatment of Blacks over the centuries. Students would learn that the justification of slavery was preached even from church pulpits. They would learn about the KKK, Jim Crow laws, lynchings, fire bombings of Black churches, racial segregation of our schools today — decorously disguised as “school choice,” the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the killing of George Floyd and Tyre Nichols, and the freedom march in Birmingham, Alabama when Commissioner “Bull” Conner turned his fire hoses, attack dogs, and police truncheons on peaceful Black marchers demanding their civil rights, as Americans watched aghast at their TV screens as it unfolded.

It would be a national catharsis to know that America was finally coming to terms with the dark chapters in its history and not-so-distant past. For this is what great nations do that are big enough, humble enough, contrite and courageous enough to admit their failings and vow to do better.

The beginning of healing is the admission of wrong! Great nations also reverence the sacrosanct nature of the mind. They do not insult those who have dedicated their lives to the noble profession of teaching the young. They do not force teachers to indoctrinate their students with a sanitized history that omits the entire truth about their nation’s past.

However, teaching the truth is terrifying to these protestors who view truth as dangerous, especially for their children, for it would mean losing control over their minds. Schools that teach what actually happened should be shut down because truth leads to social unrest, and it is better to have peace based on lies. In a word, we are dealing with an educational philosophy that teaches: Thou shalt not think! Thou shalt not question! Thou shalt only conform!

These protestors abhor teaching about what happened to Black people since this would mean the end of their white supremacist world. Their protests are an assault on the mind itself, the importance of truth, and the nature of education.

An education in its ultimate sense is not an initiation rite into the myths of one’s tribe, but a personal struggle to free oneself from those myths. It is escaping from Groupthink.

An education is not about fear of the truth or a blind acceptance of White supremacist doctrine. Teachers resist such indoctrination of their students. They want to teach, not suppress, the truth of what happened, but these protesters know what happened and want to suppress it lest it be taught not only to their children, but to everyone’s children, as well, a.k.a. censorship.

Teachers refuse to aid and abet this fantasy of a dying white Supremacy whose days are numbered as anyone knows who has checked the demographics, for what we are hearing today is but its death knell!

A classroom is a sacred place, a temple of reason, not a recruiting station for a white supremacist doctrine that would ban the teaching of Black history because it dismisses Black people themselves as unimportant in their kind of supremacist democracy that is not a democracy at all, but an ethnocentric, xenophobic, would-be fascist dictatorship, and not the American democracy most of us know, cherish, and want to preserve.

Teachers refuse to violate their consciences by lying to children and shattering their trust in them, and when they are forbidden to tell the whole truth lest it embarrass white racists, they refuse to betray both children and truth

A Purpose-Driven Life

Once upon a time over the portals of the fabled Library of Alexandria were chiseled these words: “The Hospital for the Soul.” This majestic phrase captured for all times the eternal dream of the pure and unfettered pursuit of knowledge and our need for quiet places like schools and libraries to find repose in renewing the spirit.

Amidst the confusions of this distracted world, the Greeks never lost sight of thinking about the larger issues of life and its ultimate meaning. We must not lose our way amidst the obsessions of the moment, they warn us, for in turning a blind eye to the concerns of our humanity, we court our destruction.

The school and all that it stands for are now under siege for its very soul. Paideia, that noble dream of classical antiquity in the transformative power of education, the belief in self-enhancement through knowledge, the single-mindedness in promoting the common good, and an aware citizenry about political charlatans, this enduring legacy is struggling for survival in these darkest of times.

The 19th-century Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt referred to a coming age of “terrible simplifiers” that would crush these ideals. We are now in that age, with the school especially vulnerable in being taken over by the toxic mentality of those with no understanding of a school’s meaning and purpose in liberating the mind from all forms of hatred and bigotry.

They reject the search for truth and the things of the spirit and would replace them with the ignorance and intolerance of White supremacist dogma, a betrayal of what education has always embodied since the Greeks.

The truth will make you free, but it may not always make you happy, and it may even make you uncomfortable, which is always the sign of growth and abandoning the delusion of “possessing the truth.”

Is there any hope for the moral regeneration of our nation when some Congressional GOP leaders, state legislators, and governors institutionalize a national amnesia about historical truth in avoiding a long-overdue reckoning with our national racism?

Rather than denial, what we need from these leaders is honestly confronting this sickness in providing moral leadership as apartheid South Africa did in the 1990’s. Their bellowing silence, however, speaks volumes about these leaders in high office.

Many are disappointed but not surprised that these “profiles in courage” have not already offered a strategic vision for lasting peace and reconciliation between our two races by having not at least tried to convince their followers to confront our national demons to seek moral rebirth. Instead, they have rejected the only lasting solution to this tragic malady — a national examination of conscience.

This dismissal of the brutal treatment of the Black race in American history from being taught in the classroom must also be seen within the framework of that other GOP outrage of voter suppression, the very embodiment of its disdain for Black voters, minorities, and democracy itself.

These politicians would rather that their party steal its way to power because they know that cheating is the only way they will win. It used to be called “losing with honor” rather than “winning with disgrace,” but that was a long, long time ago.

Suppressing the historical truth in schools and the votes of Blacks and other people of color are two different forms of the same censorship in the cause of enshrining a White racist supremacy in a nation that was once a welcoming beacon of hope to all of humanity.

When Whites think about race, they think as Whites because they have never endured racial hatred and discrimination. But if they had suffered the same enormities as Blacks at the hands of a non-White population, they would see the country that enslaved them in a much different light.

A little role-play, however, evokes compassion and empathy, magical elixirs that are good for the soul and can transform one forever! As the ancients well knew, it is not logic that softens the heart, but pity.

Fortunately, many Whites today do understand what Blacks have endured in this country for centuries to the extent that any White person can understand this. They deeply sympathize with their Black citizens and are appalled at their fellow Whites, who even to this day are still consumed with such unaccountable hatred.

They realize that it doesn’t matter what color a person’s skin is because we are all human beings with a common destiny when we all, indeed, shall be equal in very fact. They affirm our common humanity, no matter one’s race or ethnicity.

What is hard for them to comprehend, however, is why all Whites cannot see this. They feel a moral obligation to promote peace and good will between the races, while living in a country where, almost 160 years after the Civil War, Black Americans still find it impossible to vote in many parts of our country or even to have their story told to America’s schoolchildren, as it is routinely told about the Jewish Holocaust.

One hundred and sixty years, and the hatred and bigotry continue among those who take enormous pride in being God-fearing, righteous, church-going people!

I am reminded of those words in the Good Book: If a man says, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he that loves not his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? (1 John 4:20)

There is a psychologically astute observation by the Roman historian Tacitus about hating those whom one has injured because of the guilt one feels at having injured them, which, naturally, makes one feel “uncomfortable”!

Tacitus was characteristically much more laconic, Proprium humani ingenii est odisse quem laeseris. It is human nature to hate someone you’ve injured (Tacitus, Agricola, 42).

All of us are here today and gone tomorrow, and we sometimes forget what we are doing and what it all means. What will be our legacy? When the final curtain falls and we are resting in our graves, would some be exultant to have these words on their gravestones: Here lies one who tried his best to make America a Hell for Non-Whites?

The Danger of Empathy

The Desert Fathers of the 3rd and 4th centuries CE lived alone in their caves and hovels in the Egyptian wilderness and began to have visions. Gustave Flaubert’s The Temptation of St. Anthony gives a literary artist’s portrait of why it isn’t good to be alone shut off from the world. We need other human beings to keep us human and, more to the point, to keep us sane.

When we take the trouble of getting out of ourselves, we are no longer adrift in our own inner galaxy, but can mingle with all manner of different persons and all the beautiful things we share in common with the human family. We need this vacation from ourselves for balance and healing, but if we are cynical or bitter, we can project into others our own inner demons which we mistakenly believe to be theirs, whereas all we’ve discovered are only our own.

However, I would be less than candid were I not to alert you that there is a danger for some in reaching out to others through the magical power of role-play. In fact, these individuals feel that role-play is very dangerous, so dangerous, in fact, that they would even ban it from our schools, such is its power in awakening compassion toward others.

Role-play teaches the young many things, one of which is how bigotry and hatred can blind us to the suffering of others, suffering which those more powerful have made them endure. It enables the young to feel the pain of others and be appalled at those responsible for inflicting that pain. It exposes them to the cruelty that one group can cause another when they learn of the horrors of American slavery, the extermination of the American Indians, and the persecution of the Jews down through the centuries.

This discovery of the fate of millions who, through no fault of their own, had to endure a lifetime of suffering merely because of their color or creed, is a shocking revelation that remains with these children for the rest of their lives.

Those who could torture innocent men, women, and children, while at the same time priding themselves on being such virtuous, God-fearing folk, leave them deeply confused and unsettled. It makes them confront, perhaps for the first time in their lives, the inhumanity that so often comes with power over others and the twisted delusion that, while causing such pain, they are doing God’s Will.

It allows them to peer into the very heart of darkness to realize that there are those of such bottomless malignity who, with a clear conscience, could inflict such deeds upon others. Exposed to these lessons, it is no wonder that these children resolve to treat everyone, no matter their race or religion, with the deepest respect and dignity.

The power of role-play is, indeed, dangerous because it would mean that they could never understand how some in this world could demonize innocent groups of people — Blacks and other people of color, Asians, Jews, immigrants, and the LGBTQ community, when they see them for who they really are: fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, grandmothers and grandfathers who want nothing more in this life than what everyone wants — to be free to find a better life for themselves and their children.

Role-play is nothing else but the willingness to come out of ourselves and identify with the pain of others, an ability that makes and keeps us human. Those who possess this ability might even want to become better human beings while they are still young, open-minded, and have a sympathetic heart that beats within them.

If you are one of these young people, you might even want to remake the world into a place of justice and kindness where everyone can pursue their dreams without being victimized by those who cannot abide those who are different. If you do this, then your youth will be remembered as the Golden Time of your life.

All of these salutary lessons are the blessings of being made uncomfortable, which is always a source of growth, insight, and a deepened humanity.

Being made uncomfortable is the open sesame into a much larger world which lets us feel the pain of others that can transform us forever into more caring and sensitive members of the human family.

For out of the darkness of being uncomfortable comes the light of discovery that we are all in this world together, sharing the same fate, and helping one another.

Regrettably, however, this inner transformation is never allowed to happen in some of our schools today, where teaching the history of the Black race in America is decried by White supremacists and those politicians who share their views.

Why are so many against this noble endeavor in our schools that could, for the next generation, begin the healing of America’s racism about which there is such obdurate denial?

Just listen to one possible answer: God forbid that role-play should ever be allowed to be taught in our schools since the compassion it engenders toward other human beings might prove fatal in infecting our children.

Anything that awakens pity in the human heart is dangerous, but role-play is especially dangerous because it might also weaken our children’s belief that ours is the only true way, and that would mean the end of our world.

However, since God is on our side, we righteously struggle against those who would divide our great nation established by White men for the White race alone.

We are called benighted, implacable foes of justice and truth when the Lord has vouchsafed to bestow this great nation upon the White race alone to rule as our sovereign birthright.

We are said to want to brainwash not only our children, but also the children of others who demand that Black history be taught in our schools.

The Federal Government claims that our doctrine of States’ Rights is but an excuse to perpetuate hatred and bigotry toward non-Whites unto the next generation.

We call it the inviolable States’ Rights over the tyranny of a Federal Government that would impose its abominable falsehood of non-Whites being equal citizens on God-loving parents like ourselves, who champion the ways of our forefathers and, by Heaven, we shall not be moved!

*****

Today’s Black Lives Matter Movement is catching fire all across the nation as pubic recognition is now increasingly being paid to the classics of Black writers who have tried to educate the White population about what our nation’s Black population has always had to endure as reflected in these bestsellers: The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin; Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King, Jr.; The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X; The Ways of White Folks, Langston Hughes; Native Son, Richard Wright; Race Matters, Cornel West; Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass; The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois; Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison; and Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon. Those who have suffered can teach us much about America.

Frank Breslin is a retired high-school teacher in the New Jersey public school system.