Republicans White-washing History Again

Republicans are now trying to prevent our children from learning about the ways in which our country has too often failed to live up to the promise of our constitution. They don’t want kids to learn about the way that wealthy whites have often used propaganda and economic power to build and maintain their wealth and control over the lives of not just minorities but others who are less well off as well.

A few years ago when there were efforts around the nation to take down statues honoring Confederate leaders and slaveholders, Republicans made ridiculous claims that it was an effort to rewrite history. They made the same non-sense arguments about efforts to stop flying Confederate flags over state government buildings. All activists really wanted was to put a stop to honoring traitors and those who enslaved and abused other human beings for the benefit of themselves.

Over the last year or so all over this nation state legislatures controlled by Republicans are enacting laws outlawing the teaching of topics that might make a student uncomfortable. While using vague and often inaccurate language these efforts are aimed at discouraging teaching about how so much of this nation was built by enslaved Africans on the grounds that white children shouldn’t be shamed for what other white people did over 100 years ago. Of course, they give no consideration to the black student who feels uncomfortable when only white historical figures and achievements are discussed. Texas Republicans don’t want teachers to talk about the racist actions of the Texas Rangers toward Hispanic citizens.

While they literally white-wash history Republicans claim that Liberals are at fault for something they’ve named cancel culture. That’s what they call it when an educational institution or media outlet decides that some individual with a hateful message should not be given an opportunity to use that organization’s resources to spread their ugly propaganda. In fact, it is Republicans who are the big cancel culture proponents, besides delegitimizing the teaching of black history; their latest efforts are to ban more books from public schools. One such book is Maus, which is an award winning children’s book about the holocaust using mice as stand-ins for people. Many of the books Republicans find offensive are written by members of the LGBT community about children and adults that don’t fit their narrow-minded heterosexual orthodoxy.

When the Texas legislature took up the topic if restricting what could be taught in public schools last session the Republican Speaker of the House admonished all our representatives to not use the term racist to attack the regulations that they were working to pass even though much of what they were doing was in fact racist and that’s why it needed to be attacked. That’s like telling the prosecution that they can’t say the goods were stolen when the perpetrator did in fact take things that didn’t belong to them from the premises of the rightful owner.

Last week Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick announced he would seek to abolish tenure for professors at Texas’ public universities. In addition he said “The law will change to say teaching critical race theory is prima facie evidence of good cause for tenure revocation.” Critical Race Theory is another boogeyman for Republicans with many claiming it is taught in elementary and high school when in fact it isn’t. The reality is it is a method used in graduate level courses to see the connections between government policy and the economic and social consequences of minorities.

Republican censorship won’t solve our problems, talking those problems and our differences out might.

 Published in the Seguin Gazette - March 2, 2022