Unless you have been living under a rock, you would know cancel culture and critical race theory have been extremely hot-button social issues in America. I consider myself among the left, but I have seen some awful hot takes in the grand context of American politics from my side.
Among these takes are “there’s no such thing as cancel culture” or “schools aren’t actually teaching critical race theory.” Completely dismissing complaints of cancel culture or the shifting ways we’re teaching race in schools just lends more credibility towards the stereotype of smug, elitist liberal.
The fact is many of these fears are more than just right-wing conspiracy theories— the world has changed a lot since the beginning of the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd.
This change is overwhelmingly positive. The world is growing more aware of injustices against Black and brown citizens, racial traumas in America, and the lines have shifted around what can and can’t be said in 2022 compared to 2019.
As an example, today, any utterance of the n-word by a white person, whether it’s read in a book or repeated in a song, is an instant egregious offense, highlighted most prevalently by the Joe Rogan n-word scandal.
When I was in high school, when we were reading To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, let me just say I heard several of my white classmates read the n-word in a book.
That was in 2012–2014, but in 2022 America, a white person reading the n-word in a book is completely unacceptable and an egregious offense. I am reading To Kill a Mockingbird with my students and completely skip the word while reading the book.
This is an example of a societal change I see as positive.
But you have to be naive or completely in denial to not recognize this change and believe every American citizen was going to accept it without backlash. But, I also believe Democrats need to be smarter about handling the backlash to how the world has changed.
To many ordinary Americans, especially those not connected with left-wing intellectual and academic circles. these examples are not always positive — while they have good intentions, some changes are seen as censorious, Puritanical overreach. People can only walk on eggshells for so long before they don’t care about breaking them anymore.
How could I be so sure? Well, it could be a reasoning flaw to generalize what other people think based on conversations with peers and how I feel about the current political climate, but I feel this “walking on eggshells” feeling all the time now, and I’m an extremely left-leaning person.
You don’t have to like it, but that’s the way many white Americans, who are still the majority demographic within the United States, see the current conversation around how the world is changing and shifting rules of speech.
The left is winning the culture and will probably continue to do so. With how the political landscape is looking, the right will win elections. Winning the culture is not equivalent to winning elections and introducing legislation that will benefit the progressive cause.
In terms of cancel culture, however, which has valid and hysterical examples on the left, it turns out the right’s use of cancel culture is worse than any example of left-wing overreach.
And I’m surprised it’s not more of a national headline than it currently is.
. . .
The simple fact is Republicans are more pernicious in the grand scheme of American democracy. Some school districts have used the hysterical race theory as a license to ban books and ban the teaching of critical race theory.
In particular, Florida’s Polk County banned Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Beloved. A school board in Wentzville, Missouri, also banned The Bluest Eye. A Tennessee school board, McMinn County School Board, banned Maus from its curriculum. Last year, Texas House Bill 3979 forbade teaching the 1619 Project and anything depicting “slavery and racism…or failures that live up to, the authentic founding principles of the United States.” Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida is introducing a bill that would limit discussions on sexual orientation.
Suffice to say, book banning is what the Nazis did. It’s censorship, plain and simple. Even large a large majority of conservatives who hold pejorative views of critical race theory oppose book banning. A recent CBS News/YouGov poll found that over 80% of Americans opposed banning books depicting slavery, discussing race, or criticizing history. Even 88% of Trump voters said books shouldn’t be banned for depicting slavery.
To Kill a Mockingbird is a very controversial book because of its use of the n-word. But my school district still teaches it. Teaching it invokes intellectually heated but necessary conversations in the classroom: is a white person who reads the n-word in a book automatically racist? Is it racist to read the n-word if it’s in the book? Was Atticus Finch a good guy even though he was a segregationist?
Conservatives love to decry how liberals are intolerant, preachy, not accepting of nuance, and shutting down conversations where people disagree with each other. But banning books is literally the most intolerant, preachy, and intellectually dishonest thing you can do. It is not a classically liberal education to have books students can’t read. It is not accepting of nuance to ban ideas or ban books from being taught.
A group of cross-partisan, moderate, right-leaning, and left-leaning authors wrote about the danger of anti-critical race theory laws. They disagreed immensely about the 1619 Project and critical race theory, but all agreed on the danger anti-CRT laws posed to a liberal education.
Teaching about oppression and the oppression of marginalized groups is uncomfortable, especially if you are in a relatively privileged position. The authors cite Germany’s approach to teaching the Holocaust after World War II, which fully embraced the sins of Nazi Germany after the Holocaust. Many German students would “feel anguish over their ancestry,” but they were at the end of the day exposed to the sins of their nation and not in denial.
Not exposing students to uncomfortable ideas is intellectually irresponsible. It makes it difficult to responsibly teach U.S. history at all — the authors. say not teaching about redlining or housing segregation, for example, would make “ignorant citizens who are unable to understand, for instance, the case for reparations — or the case against them.”
Students and people, in general, must form their own opinions. They can make their own evaluations.
State laws that ban books and ban ideas violate due process and ban forms of expression. Imagine if the same laws were applied to a university and the public outcry that would result.
A fair and robust democracy is fundamentally threatened by outright censorship laws. You can disagree with shifting norms on how we’re teaching race, but supporting laws that ban these norms is an attack on democracy.
People have the right to disagree. But having speech codes to ban ideas and ban books is an attack on free speech and a threat to democracy.
. . .
As an electoral strategy, Democrats and liberals must vocalize the fact that Republican legislators across the country are banning ideas and banning books. Again, Republicans are banning ideas and banning books.
This is a much greater evil than any example of cancel culture or intolerance the left has been perceived to have committed.
While some school boards will use the parental choice argument for why certain books are unsafe or are banned, the simple fact is the vast majority of Americans believe others should be open to other ideas and have intellectually difficult conversations.
Yes, “all white people are racist” is a controversial opinion that is probably not going to win a lot of white voters. But being exposed to the argument and being exposed to the idea is necessary — to have an intellectually open society, kids should be exposed to controversial ideas.
When I was 12 years old, in 7th grade, Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. My music teacher then had a lot to say about how Obama did not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, how the country was certainly not at peace being in a war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and how completely undeserving Obama was of the prize.
I thought he was wrong and full of shit. I supported Obama. But I formed that opinion — and his tirade was very thought-provoking and made me do my research.
Needless to say, his expressing his political opinion that openly in that manner was very controversial. Teaching evolution was once (and in some places, still is) controversial. Does that mean biology teachers shouldn’t teach evolution? Absolutely not.
Yes, there’s an ideological bend and tendency towards censorship on the left, too. But the fact is the left does not use government or state power to enforce censorship. The right is, which is even scarier and a much more fundamental threat to democracy than any peer pressure or cultural pressure towards cancel culture.
People can disagree about ideology and how American history is taught. We will always have those debates. And America is having a culture war and clash around the narrative of our country — these are difficult conversations but people have the right to have these conversations.
Banning these conversations is an attack on free speech and anti-democratic. Not only are they anti-democratic, but opposing these bans is an electorally popular strategy.
If 88% of Trump supporters disagree with banning books depicting slavery, then this isn’t a conversation Democrats and liberals are having enough. It isn’t a message Democrats are having enough to average Americans.
And legislatively, we have to be honest in acknowledging Democrats will probably not hold the House and the Senate for much longer.
Opposing these bans while Democrats have the majority in both branches of Congress is time-bound.
This might be Democrats’ last chance to oppose this threat to democracy. And opposing this threat is not only the right thing to do but a politically beneficial approach.
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This post was previously published on An Injustice!.
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