The past few years have proven tough for the world of public education. COVID-19 kept many out of schools, and parents flocked to school board meetings to argue about mask mandates and school closures. Two of the major problems that arose from this increased amount of involvement and questioning was a divisive conversation about what content and curriculum is provided to students, with topics like Critical Race Theory and LGBTQ+ representation making it into the spotlight.
The issues have largely culminated in certain books being banned from schools. According to the American Library Association, 273 books were purposely targeted for removal in schools, libraries and universities in 2020.
This correlates with an effort across the nation to create laws that prohibit conversations regarding these same issues. For instance, Florida recently passed a law, nicknamed the “don’t say gay” bill, prohibiting the talk of gender in primary schools. Similarly, Alabama law states that “… homosexuality is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public and that homosexual conduct is a criminal offense under the laws of the state,” and as such course material will only relate to sexually transmitted diseases. Other states currently holding laws prohibiting instruction of homosexual material include Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas.
Texas also recently produced a law disallowing the teaching of certain aspects of race. Particularly, one sect of the law states that, if an instructor speaks on a current event regarding race, they must provide the information from a diverse perspective. However, the law does not define what a diverse perspective means. Other states such as Arizona, Idaho, Iowa, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Tennessee have laws prohibiting the discussion of race in the classroom to some degree.
This led to a string of academic conversations regarding a topic known as Critical Race Theory. There have been many books banned due to their promotion of Critical Race Theory. Critical Race Theory is defined by Perdue University as “a theoretical and interpretive mode that examines the appearance of race and racism across dominant cultural modes of expression. In adopting this approach, CRT scholars attempt to understand how victims of systemic racism are affected by cultural perceptions of race and how they are able to represent themselves to counter prejudice.” Essentially, CRT seeks to look at the way certain races have been systematically oppressed through content-neutral laws.
The prime example of systematic oppression through content-neutral laws pertains to the mass incarceration of African Americans. In his book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” Michelle Alexander writes that in the modern world, prisons are being used to discriminate against people of color.
Some people using the methodology of CRT would argue that since race-neutral laws are not doing the job correctly, laws should be written in such a way to enforce race, but many people push against this idea. Trisha Posey, director of the Honors Scholars Program, said that the solution should lie in first identifying the issues, then proceeding to deal with them on a case-by-case basis with the hope that eventually lawmakers will understand how to write non-discriminating laws.
These issues exist on a local level too. On Jan. 6, the Siloam Springs School Board voted to remove “Beyond Magenta” from the library shelves. The book, which features LGBTQ+ themes, lost in a 3-2 vote.
Photo courtesy of Ruben Rodriguez at Unsplash