TX Gov. Abbott Signs Bill Limiting What Kids Can Learn About Race

DALLAS, TX —There's a meme making the rounds on social media. It says simply, "If Black children are old enough to experience racism, white children are old enough to learn about it."

That notion became a little more quaint and antiquated on Tuesday, when Texas became the latest state to dissuade teachers from wading into the waters of America's complex history of racial interaction.

Over the objections of numerous educators who fear that not only will children's educations be incomplete, this law widens the door to a less tolerant, less inclusive and less informed populace.

No one yet knows how the State Board of Education will adjust its curriculum to stay within its provisions. But, with Abbott's signing the legislation only days from Juneteenth, it's appropriate to ask: what can Texas kids be taught about that event when the dust settles?

Will they learn that slaves were kept from knowing about the Emancipation Proclamation for the better part of three years so their masters could get as much free work from them as possible?

Here's the way Woodlands Rep. Steve Toth — the author of the bill — explained its necessity to his colleagues in the Texas House, according to The Dallas Morning News. Legislation was required, Toth said, “at a time when racial tensions are at a boiling point” because “we don’t need to burden our kids with guilt for racial crimes they had nothing to do with.”

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Back in the 1950s and '60s, conservatives warned that liberal eggheads were indoctrinating America's youth with "communist" ideology. That wasn't true, but challenging authority by teaching the ability to think analytically was indeed taught. And once students learned how to think, rather than just regurgitate information, colleges became a Pandora's box of dissidents.

After that, there came an assault on intellectualism — the very element, along with the G.I. Bill, that educated the middle class to the point of the nation's greatest collective prosperity — not to mention that it helped America put a man on the moon and lead the way in computer technology.

No, said people like President Nixon's attack dog, Spiro Agnew, who waged war on the same smartypants Americans who were part of The Greatest Generation — people who split the atom, created a cure for polio and gave us everything from microwave ovens to velcro.

"A spirit of national masochism prevails," said Nixon's Veep, "encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as 'intellectuals.' In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism."

What such people have to fear from information can only be guessed at, but it stands to reason that an informed electorate might be harder to control with knee-jerk issues like abortion, transgender rights than teaching them about the Tuskegee Experiment or the Japanese Internment Camps of World War II.

But it's clear that controlling the flow of information has become a core conservative value. First it was "Don't Trust the Liberal Media" under George H.W. Bush. And that found its natural conclusion when Trump Senior Counselor Kellyanne Conway introduced the idea of "alternate facts," which then led to dismissive cries of "fake news" whenever the data didn't suit a politician's narrative.

This law will make our children less smart. It could likely make them more nationalistic, which is not to be confused with patriotism. And the programs that are being shunned through this law are called "critical" for a reason: Not because they criticize, but because they teach kids to weigh ideas rather than accept indoctrination.

It was icewater down the back to learn as an adult that Dr. Martin Luther King was a womanizer, in addition to being a champion of equality. Likewise, it was no joy to discover how a great progressive of his time like Thomas Jefferson went out of his way to keep his slaves right where they were. But there's tremendous value in understanding that no one is flawless, and that even the most iconic heroes often have feet of clay. That's real life.

What will be taught now? That America is always right? That we didn't steal the very soil we stand on from Native Americans? That the burning of Black Wall Street never happened? America has done many mighty and wonderful things — including liberating Europe twice in the last century.

But we are not perfect.

No one is. That is the point.

And to teach otherwise puts Texas kids at a disadvantage. White school kids won't be given the same grounding to develop a sense of social justice and empathy. Kids of color will be told their history, and therefore their present lives, just don't matter.

With all its vagaries, the law goes into effect in September. Court challenges could be forthcoming shortly thereafter. But even a generation ago, the idea that our kids need to be "protected" from the truth would have been considered unAmerican.

Now some consider it their patriotic duty to keep children from thinking, weighing the alternatives, and making up their minds for themselves.

Not long ago, historians dubbed the hundred years between 1900 and 2000 as "The American Century." When schoolchildren are actively discouraged from using the cognitive abilities nature gave them in a supposedly free society, we move away from repeating that victory.

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