The History Wars: How MAGA Is Making America Dumb — Again
Will 2023 be the last year Black History Month is celebrated in our schools?
Much of the study of history has involved a discussion of humanity’s wars. But in the USA, history itself has become the victim of warfare.
History, particularly Black history, is the newest theater of conflict in American politics. If we who strive to be truth advocates lose this battle, there will be generations of school kids growing up ignorant and, sadly, as potential fertile ground for the worst sentiments of intolerance — the kind that led to the rise of fascism in the 20th century.
In the Central York school district of Pennsylvania, the school board faced a backlash after instituting a de facto ban on books about MLK and Rosa Parks. According to the demographic data source, City-data.com, York County is approximately 83% white, 8% Latino, and 5% Black.
The effect of that school board decision would have been to deprive the white majority of that district the opportunity to learn about two seminal figures in American history. The ramifications for the BIPOC minority would have been clear — a dismissive message that Black historical icons do not count.
But since that minority will eventually become a national majority, it also stripped the white students of a critical social skill for functioning in our increasingly multi-ethnic society.
Similarly, we’ve seen unleashed in Florida assaults on books by Black authors, books with African-American subject matter, and Black history curricula. This embargo has been engineered by that state’s cynical governor and his allies in local government. Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Florida) has mandated that an African-American studies Advanced Placement (AP) course proposed by the College Board “is inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value.”
The fact that Governor DeSantis is a former high school history teacher should send signal flares of alarm to future voters. His actions here are conducive to the cultivation of white supremacist attitudes in future generations.
But instead of a Florida imitation of Bernhard Rust, Hitler’s minister of education, American school districts would be well-advised to take guidance from an earlier German source: the great philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. To his credit, Nietzsche hated the proto-Nazi cultural influences of his 19th-century era.
That philosopher had a keen perspective of the value of history — far more so than Ron DeSantis. Thus, Nietzsche opined this on the topic:
“… we need history, for the past flows on within us in a hundred waves.”
Historically, one of the benefits of Western philosophy has been to prod us to find the truth and be smarter about the way we think. Unfortunately, Americans now face an anti-truth movement advancing in blitzkrieg fashion as it bends the arc of social progress: but in the wrong direction. School boards and politicians are failing to understand how history can enhance civic life.
To illustrate, Duval County in Florida provides yet another example of the threat which augurs a reverse Enlightenment. In contrast to York County, Florida’s Duval County is more diverse: 52% white, 29% Black, and nearly 11% Latino. Yet that concentration of populations of color did not forestall that school district from its own exercise in deleting Black history.
In a reversal of a book order involving various multicultural topics, the school district has put 176 books into what seems to be the bureaucratic equivalent of a concentration camp. Those books will not be allowed on library shelves for an indefinite length of time. And among those titles: a book on Rosa Parks.
That’s worth emphasizing — Rosa Parks, likewise, has been banned in Florida.
So, since when has one of the intrepid female leaders who catalyzed the civil rights movement been considered a clear and present danger to the republic — both above and below the Mason-Dixon Line? And what does this portend?
Some ninety years ago, the German Weimar Republic also chose to ban books about, or authored by, some of its most accomplished countrymen. And that, too, was predicated on issues of ethnicity and how that might make proud Aryans “feel uncomfortable.” Thus, in 1933, the Nazi regime launched book burnings of authors and titles considered to be “un-German.”
That included a German-Jewish physicist by the name of Albert Einstein.
Therefore, American school districts should consider the slippery slope that they will slide when they ban or embargo works embracing Black history. When the legacy of Rosa Parks is deemed unfit for the minds of our nation’s children, what else can we expect to follow?
So book bans are an assault on a student’s capacity for critical thinking. I must confess, however, that I did not read many of the recommended books during my adolescent years — nothing close to all the titles on my school’s suggested reading list. However, Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s dystopian tale of a future America where all books are burned because they might offend someone, was one I read; The Autobiography of Malcolm X was another.
Yet, if Ron DeSantis and his ilk are successful, then Ray Bradbury’s dystopian vision of book bans will be realized for Black history, and the Malcolm X biography may never again be read or taught in many of our public schools.
“Now, I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist, I’m simply saying the racists believe he’s a racist.” — Andrew Gillum, DeSantis former political opponent
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