“You’re a historian; you must tell the whole truth as best you can piece it together. Acknowledging past wrongdoing is the first step toward making things right.” from the novel The Museum of Lost Quilts by Jennifer Chiaverini (2024)
~a column by Colleen O’Brien
A while ago – 2020s – the far Right was suddenly aghast and against CRT, which stands for Critical Race Theory and involves teaching plain old history, what really happened and how racism works in the U.S. and its formal institutions – government, universities, city councils, athletics and so on.
For some reason having to do with prejudice and racism among some White guys, Critical Race Theory became a rallying cry of evil and the far Right telling states that teaching about racism, slavery, Jim Crow laws, the Holocaust or any subject that creates discomfort, guilt or anguish on the basis of political belief is bad, bad, bad for morale.
Laws against teaching what actually happened in our past flourish in our country now. It has to do with white-washing past wrongdoing – slavery, for example – and never teaching it to our children because it makes Whites look bad, and White children should not be subjected to the first step toward making things right.
Does this mean that everything written in a newspaper today cannot be taught tomorrow? By tomorrow, it is history. Well, as soon as it happens, it’s history. So, no murders, no Blacks marrying Whites, no same sex marriages, no White guys doing bad things that are then written about for all to know, no news of wars in other countries that are racist, fascist, anti-semitic, sexist or classist? These are indeed political beliefs; they are also truth. Facts. Reality.
We don’t hear the CRT letters much now, but we are inundated with other letters saying NO to D.E.I., which means diversity, equity and inclusion. Laws against these simple, reasonable, peace-making behaviors to one another are now thick throughout the states – no more “discriminatory techniques used by the Left to enforce ideological conformity on campuses under the guise of D.E.I.” (Goldwater Institute)
“The tyranny,” as #47 calls D.E.I.
I understand that we humans are contrary. But I truly wish for the impossible – that we were reasonable, peace-making and less complicated and bull-headed. Some more than others, of course. A leader comes to mind.
By lying about everything, including that it’s not raining when it is, that a Capitol building was never besieged and damaged into the millions of dollars and people were not killed, that the word mandate no longer means that you win by a significant margin but by a tiny margin like 1.6 percent…. By not telling the truth — by not being told the truth – once, twice, over and over, we become confused and then cynical. We are all being taught to refuse truth. Like them.
