To be honest, Critical Race Theory/Intersectionality was not really on my radar screen. I think of myself as being an open minded, progressive person who believes that true liberty of conscience requires the free exchange of ideas. I'd heard of Critical Race Theory before, but hadn't educated myself on exactly what it was. What prompted me to learn about it was all of the fuss being made by political and religious conservatives about it.
Reading about a resolution initially written to put the Southern Baptist Convention on record as being completely opposed to it, and condemning it as non-Christian and of Marxist origins was what prompted me to find out what all of the caterwauling was about. I was raised Southern Baptist, and was a member of a Southern Baptist church for the better part of my life, and knowing how the conservative branch of that denomination operates got me interested in CRT, because I figured that if the ultra conservatives in the SBC were against it, it must have some merit. As it turned out, what the denomination actually adopted as a resolution was not as beset by the kind of ignorance and misinformation as the resolution originally penned by ultra-conservatives, and saved the denomination from the embarrassment of explaining why they adopted something so ignorant and uninformed.
I was a student in both a Southern Baptist-related university and then in one of the denominations graduate-level seminaries during the "conservative resurgence," as fundamentalists within the denomination were gaining control of the trustee boards of its two missionary sending agencies, its graduate level seminaries and the denomination itself. The restrictions they put on what Baptists refer to as "soul freedom," which is one of the principles that they consider a distinctive to their movement, caused many students, myself included, to investigate the works of those whose voices and books were being removed from libraries, curriculums and classrooms.
Censorship invites investigation. And in a free society, there are always detours around the prohibitions and restrictions.
Florida Frustration
Ron Desantis is Making it Hard for Teachers Like Me to do Our Jobs
I can understand the frustration most teachers and college professors in Florida are experiencing at this point. Having to subject their personal classroom libraries to a vetting by the state or cover their bookshelves so students can't have access to something the governor and his extremist minions don't approve of is about as egregious a violation of conscience as educators in this country have experienced. It is heartbreaking for teachers to see education move from the realm of developing critical thinking skills and opening up a world of ideas and experiences to a form of regulated indoctrination.
But, Florida teachers and students, there are ways to resist, while you are waiting for the coming wave of lawsuits against this dictatorial fascist governor and state legislature for violating the constitutionally guaranteed right to the free expression of conscience. Your fascist governor has unwittingly motivated the interest of a large number of students in everything associated with racism and "wokeness," and while his intention was to make Florida a white supremacist paradise, by eliminating instruction of certain objectives from schools, he has instead motivated teachers, professors and students to figure out ways of nullifying his ignorance and turning it to their advantage.
Freedom of conscience is a federal constitutional guarantee, and there are plenty of lawyers ready to start picking up cases to take to federal courts where there are judges who understand the Constitution and are willing to take down laws just like those now rolling out of the Florida legislature. It always amazes me that the legal processes can be so slow, and take so much time when it comes to some things, but it moves at the speed of light when it comes to others, all dependent on the politics of the issue. And I think it will have to be resolved in the federal court system because the states where the virus of censorship has infected the legislature have courts where the judges are infected with the same virus.
There's already a de-facto censorship imposed on the content of textbooks and classroom reading materials by the commercialism involved in school district purchasing almost everywhere in the country. Unless items are on some sort of "bid list," or available from "approved vendors" who have negotiated contracts to provide them using scarce resources, the only way certain items can find their way into classrooms is by the teacher purchasing them for themselves, and then sharing them with their students Try to get a classroom copy of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, or Jill Lepore's These Truths: A History of the United States from a school district's approved "bid list" of vendors.
The Free Marketplace of Ideas is Energized by Censorship
I think we are about to see just how creative a group of teachers and college professors can be in helping their students have access to all kinds of ideas as the censorship of the state government motivates the curiosity of those who will now be looking to learn all about what their governor doesn't want them to know. Educators in America have done an outstanding job of finding ways to exercise their academic freedom. We've already seen some examples of this.
Though it was not really being taught in elementary schools or high schools, and wasn't being promoted by colleges and universities, all of the wailing done by extremist conservatives over Critical Race Theory had the effect of moving it front and center, and causing educators and students alike to investigate to find out what it was all about, and why the extremist right saw it as such a danger. Now, their opposition to its presence in a marketplace of free ideas marks them as white supremacists and racists and its proponents, advocates, apologists and the experts who have written books to explain the theory and its dynamics are front and center in the media, with far greater coverage than they ever had before.
Even in a restrictive, controlled environment like the Southern Baptist Convention, the exposure caused by the passage of Resolution 9 back in 2019 opened the door to discussion of the issue of Critical Race Theory and the education of those who knew almost nothing about it except as a political cannonball. The result of that controversy wound up calling into question the credibility of those who initially tried to bring a resolution full of inaccuracies and false pretenses, pushed into the convention by extremist right wing political activists, and a discussion across a much wider spectrum of the denomination's churches. At the two subsequent annual meetings of Southern Baptists since then, attempts to rescind the resolution have been overwhelmingly squelched, and none of those nominated for denominational offices who were opposed to the resolution that passed have come close to being elected.
Common sense and the freedom of conscience go hand in hand. They are the foundation of our constitutional democracy. We wish teachers, professors and educators everywhere success in overcoming the censorship of small-minded governors and biased, uninformed and ignorant state legislators and in giving their students the intellectual gift of critical thinking.
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