The chair of a high school English department in South Carolina approved AP English teacher Mary Wood’s request to use Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book, Between the World and Me, for a lesson. But some parents’ snowflake children complained that the book made them feel “uncomfortable” and “ashamed to be Caucasian,” so district officials ordered the lesson halted in February.
Yesterday, the parents who value education showed up wearing blue (the school color) to support Ms. Wood. Ta-Nehisi Coates showed up too! He sat next to Wood to demonstrate his support.
Good for Mr. Coates. Here’s an excerpt from a story about the meeting in the Post & Courier:
One of those speakers, Tess Pratt, the chairwoman of Chapin High School’s English department, told the board that she had ordered the copies of Coates’ book for Wood’s class, and recounted her experience taking the assigned copies of “Between the World and Me” away from students after district officials stopped the lesson.
“I became a high school English teacher 30 years ago because I believe that every human being has a story … I have dedicated my entire life to sharing such stories, both fiction and non-fiction with my students,” she said, choking up. “I have shared my own stories with my students throughout these years and invited them to do the same with me.”
“On the day that I took Ta-Nehisi Coates’ books out of the hands of Ms. Wood’s students, I silenced his story,” she continued. “Even though this was a decision that was not mine, I will regret that moment in front of those students for the rest of my life, because it was wrong.”
Good for Ms. Pratt for owning that. Good for all those parents and students for showing up.
The meeting ended inconclusively (no vote on resuming the lesson), but at least there was pushback on the book banners, and the sane people had their say too. God knows the Moms for Liberty types never shut the fuck up, so it’s up to the rest of us to show up and support educators.
Open thread.
Baud
Showing up is half the battle.
Yutsano
Fuck the book burners. That is all.
EDIT: 2ND!!!
Shalimar
@Baud: And then came the ambush. lessons learned from G.I. Joe.
MattF
@Baud: Yep. And ‘Moms For Liberty’ is a textbook example of a bad actor who walked on stage with their own script when no one was watching. Pushback is essential.
Benw
So it looks like an appeals court will give NY Democrats another shot at redistricting before 2024. If it holds up on the next appeal NY could claw back 4-5 Democratic districts. Fuck Cuomo!
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/07/2024-election-new-york-redistricting-congress-speaker.html
Dorothy A. Winsor
When are we likely to hear about whatever happens in Cannon’s court today?
@Benw: That’s excellent!
Josie
I don’t understand why the students who were “uncomfortable” could not be given an alternate book and assignments. It is a constant source of amazement that schools require teachers to earn essentially a master’s degree to prepare for their jobs and then do not permit them to make the decisions about what and how to teach. I hope someone outside this school offers to provide the book for those students who want to read it.
PaulWartenberg
TNC showed up, thank God.
FOR THE HORDE!!!
Old School
To think that children might be taught that white people have been imperfect!
What kind of world are we living in?
Lapassionara
A story from Irmo! Thanks, BC. I know this community well, alas.
zhena gogolia
I remember when the movie Nothing but a Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_but_a_Man
made me “ashamed to be Caucasian.” I thought that was a good, healthy experience.
oldster
I am impressed that TNC showed up in person. He has always struck me as someone who is uncomfortable with in-person confrontation, or at least someone who tried to avoid it.
He’s at a stage in his career where he could very easily turn his back on the US and live off his MacArthur in France.
So I am glad he overcame whatever reluctance he usually has in order to support the teacher.
kindness
@Josie: Isn’t this an AP course? I don’t think people taking college level courses (supposedly) should be the one’s controlling the curriculum. If they/their parents didn’t like it they could have signed up for the regular English class I figure. In all honesty I seriously doubt it’s the students that are driving these complaints. It’s their MAGA/racist parents.
Alison Rose
Coates’ book is terrific, and it damn well fucking should make white readers uncomfortable and ashamed. Because the racism he experiences and that he talks to his son about (the book is essentially him writing a letter to his son about the history and lived experience of being a Black man in America) is the fault and crime of white society. And it is just as important for white kids to learn that as it is for Black kids.
I’m gonna be pompous and just quote from my own review of the book, because I appreciated it so much and feel very strongly about the importance of white folks reading it:
gvg
I don’t even understand why the kids who were made uncomfortable have to have alternate assignments. How can you not know somebody in the past was bad? You aren’t responsible, even if it was your own parent. Unless you want to do those things too.
I was never given alternate assignments. Who is teaching them they are responsible for the past? it’s the future they need to worry about. They must be getting this false idea at home.
Well racism does have a big component of tribal guilt and collective responsibility that always works against the lower status groups, however this is not actually what the law says. I think that is the fundamental wrong idea that needs to be named and destroyed.
pluky
@Josie: It’s AP English, like college equivalent! Kids that can’t handle texts that challenge their preconceptions shouldn’t be there.
Lapassionara
@Alison Rose: well done!
and for the student who felt uncomfortable, well suck it up, cupcake. Learn to handle that feeling, because your life will be full of uncomfortable moments. Tough!
VOR
I predict in 2024 there will be a coordinated push to put slates of “Moms for Liberty” fellow travelers onto school boards. There were attempts in 2022 in several of my local school board elections pushing anti-vax, anti-max, anti-lockdown candidates. There will be more of these in 2024. Someone is funding this stuff.
japa21
@zhena gogolia: I have never been ashamed to be Caucasian. I have been ashamed of some people that share that trait with me. However, I also have never been proud to be a Caucasian.
Dorothy A. Winsor
If it’s an AP course, these students are closing in on adulthood (by some definitions). They’re not tender little flowers.
Suzanne
I am, quite frankly, amazed by all the parents who seem to deeply give a damn about what books their kids read. I mean, SuzMom went to “Meet the Teacher” night every year, but she was not deeply invested in making sure I read (or did not read) any specific books/content. And she used to teach high school English.
I also cannot muster too much feeling about what’s on the official list for my Spawns. Whatever they are assigned to read will be, I am sure, worth reading. (Tho I was assigned The Red Badge of Courage my sophomore year of high school, and I tried to read it, found it boring AF, and gave up.) Like, is someone going to tell these parents that kids are allowed — nay, encouraged! — to read books outside of class?!
Good on Coates, of course.
tobie
The news today…it just keeps on coming. Michigan AG Dana Nessel charges MI’s slate of false electors in the 2020 election.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/michigan-attorney-general-charges-false-electors-efforts-overturn-2020-rcna94838
Jackie
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I saw this snippet – haven’t read the full link, yet.
Looks like Cannon’s open to helping TIFG out😡
”Judge Aileen Cannon says the proposal of a mid-December documents trial is “a bit rushed,” CNN reports.”
“Cannon did not decide on a trial date but said she plans to “promptly” issue an order on the matter.”
catclub
@PaulWartenberg:
Does anyone else think his name is a sneaky way to be called “tennessee”?
Like Tex, or Cal?
danielx
Busybody god-botherers….
Elizabelle
So: the “ashamed to be Caucasian” kids (OK, their dipshit parents), and their supporters, complained to someone who shot the complaint straight up to the School Board, instead of having the courage to start with their teacher and school leadership. Turned it into a political issue, post haste.
How interesting.
Also, I think the “ashamed” kids should have had their asses tossed out of AP English. They may not belong there. That would have made the dipshit parents think twice. The “ashamed” were probably just doing it to look good on a college application, and they (and their dipshit parents) interfered — actively — with their fellow students getting an education.
Although, they are all getting an education. In book banning. So maybe this will work out better in the long run.
I’d be curious how many of the AP students acquired another copy of TNC’s book, and finished it. Please let copies be in their libraries. Along with Maus, and all manner of other “disturbing” books.
Elizabelle
@Jackie: Meh. Early January would be fine. You don’t want to be running this circus during the Christmas/Passover/end of year holidays.
geg6
@Suzanne:
My parents were just happy to have a house full of readers. They never monitored what we read. I was reading Dickens at 8 and Jacqueline Susann at 12. If we had a book in our hands and our noses in it, we were fine as far as they were concerned.
rikyrah
@Benw:
Good. Finally!
rikyrah
These are High School students. Every book you have in High School English is supposed to challenge you on some level.
Leto
Oh bless your heart, Janet. You keep right on thinking you’re a “majority”.
Suzanne
@geg6: Same at my house. Read whatever TF you want.
Probably the best thing I got from my family as a kid was tons of exposure and encouragement to all forms of arts and literature, high and low and everything in between. No bullshit about content. Trips to the library, rides to the punk shows, musicals, symphonies, operas…..
tobie
Like many adolescents I was ashamed of myself and wanted to crawl into a hole. It’s hard for me to imagine my Mom going to the school board to demand that gym class be cancelled. Actually, it’s impossible. The same rightwingers who complain that we’re too easy on kids and they need tough love don’t want their precious spawn exposed to anything that would force them to reflect on themselves, their community, their country, etc.
MisterDancer
It’s clear this is about race/gender. “My kid is unconformable” never seems to come up around, say, bullying.
Good for the brave parents, supporters, that strong teacher, and Mr Coates!
Brachiator
Because , as always, for these people, only the feelings of white children matter.
Black children, on the other hand, are told, “all that slavery and racism stuff was long ago. You really should get over it.”
schrodingers_cat
@geg6: Same here. I read many age-inappropriate books as a teen. I was a voracious reader in two languages. Read everything from magazines to newspapers to novels and short stories.
cmorenc
@Jackie:
IMO Cannon’s actual game is to tolerate just enough delay tactics to push the trial date past the election, in order to finesse how she handles the case, and create a win-win situation for herself (or at least, no bad options for her).’ However, in the meantime she will make no rulings that significantly undermine Smith’s ability to (eventualy) prove his case.
If Trump wins the 2024 election, he will immediately corrupt the justice department and pardon himself, and effectively the efforts to prosecute Trump are made moot.
If Trump loses the 2024 election, Cannon handles the trial straight-up, thus permitting Jack Smith to obtain felony convictions against Trump. MAGAS may be mad at her, but establishment and business conservatives are grateful that she allowed Smith to take out Trump so they can run more electable Presidential candidates in 2028 (with decent chance of winning, if the party moves past Trump)
OTOH if she seems to be favoring Trump and deliberately trying to kneecap Smith, she only (maybe) comes out a winner if Trump wins in 2024. She should remember also that with Trump, loyalty and gratitude only runs one way – to his benefit, not yours.
Betty Cracker
Watching the Ron DeSantis interview on CNN. I think the handlers need to tell him to write LIKABLE in even larger capital letters on the notepad.
Alison Rose
@Elizabelle: I think you meant Hanukkah. Passover is in the Spring.
Eolirin
@Josie: I really strongly disagree with that. They should feel uncomfortable. It’s an uncomfortable topic. Learning how to deal with discomfort is a hugely vital skill to develop along the way to becoming an adult.
And it’s far better that we work through feelings like these under the guidance of people with the qualifications, skill, and compassion necessary to do so in a safe and healthy way before we’re forced to confront these issues out in the wilderness.
Beyond just providing cover for bigotry, the Moms for Liberty types are pushing for things that will make white kids more brittle, less capable of dealing with a complex and diverse world. They’re setting them up for failure.
Alison Rose
@catclub: No. I recall reading in an interview or some such that his name is from an ancient Egyptian language.
Elizabelle
@Eolirin:
Had to see that again. It’s true.
I want people to show up at Moms for Liberty protests in tee shirts that say “We are all Bob Ewell.”
The literate will get that reference right off. OK, you can put a mockingbird on the shirt too, if you need.
Elizabelle
@Alison Rose: Thank you! Hanukkah it is. All those beautiful candles.
Josie
@Eolirin:
I agree with everything you wrote. I was just trying to come up with a solution in which the majority of students would actually get to read the book. I sincerely doubt that, in South Carolina, you will find a school in which all students will be expected to read it. Hopefully I am wrong about that, but I doubt it.
Yarrow
@Eolirin: And why are they getting some special treatment because they feel something? No one is making them feel any way whatsoever. That’s on them. If we’re stopping lessons because people feel something, we could just as easily say they can’t teach math because it makes a student feel stupid. They can’t teach about any wars in history class because it makes someone feel sad. They can’t teach art or music because it makes someone feel good or happy or joyful or whatever.
It’s so DUMB. The book is the book. How people feel about it is on them. People are responsible for their own feelings.
Betty Cracker
@Eolirin: Not trying to speak for Josie, but I think there’s a difference between the discomfort people experience when grappling with difficult topics (which you accurately describe as a “vital skill”) and feeling discomfort because you feel singled out when discussing history that implicates your asshole ancestors. The Moms for Liberty types are meeping about the latter — the “ashamed to be white” detail is the tell.
I think it’s a societal duty to be aware of the shitty things in our history, to understand the ramifications and address them as best we can. But I don’t think people should feel personal shame as individuals for shitty things their ancestors did, and I suspect most normal people don’t. The Moms for Liberty goons act like white children are being personally shamed, and I don’t think that’s true.
Hoodie
@Eolirin: I suspect that this more about the discomfort of parents about their own prejudices than any discomfort experienced by their children. There is nothing for kids to feel guilty about, as they haven’t been around long enough to do anything positive or negative about systemic racism. At most, they’ve just parroted their parents’ views up until high school. The parents don’t want their kids to question their attitudes because they’re afraid their kids will find them lacking. They want to think they own their children and can control how they turn out. Good luck with that, guys.
louc
Funny how no German kids go around saying they’re ashamed of being German when they learn about the Holocaust.
And yes, this was an AP class. If you can’t handle that book, you sure as hell don’t belong in college.
Lyrebird
TRUTH.
And as for discomfort, how about all the female students get to avoid reading Hemingway? Or should every non-Christian get to skip TS Eliot? Sometimes I do not know what to say, because it is so recent that anyone started acknowledging that student discomfort about anything mattered, but I feel like it’s being distorted big time.
bluefoot
@PaulWartenberg:
I’m impressed and happy that TNC showed up. I was just thinking the other day that I really miss the Horde. I used to participate fairly regularly (under a different nym) over at Coates’ joint at The Atlantic. And I miss reading TNC basically think and reason and work things through out loud, and invite us to participate in that.
I loved the book. I read it, then once on a long trip I listened to it. Hearing TNC read the book made it hit differently, and more intensely. I recommend the experience!
For the students who felt “uncomfortable” or “ashamed to be Casucasian”, I would never recommend TNC for comfort for *anybody* – he’s pretty unflinching. There’s a lot in the corpus of English-language literature that makes people and different groups uncomfortable. It’s one of the functions of good literature – to make us think, to take us out of ourselves and into the experiences of others.
Eolirin
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, it’s clearly bad faith; only white children get a pass on that kind of personal exclusion based shame, since the minority kids that are having their history made illegal to discuss still have to live with it and aren’t getting the protections afforded the white kids, and it isn’t even applied to poor white kids. If that was a legitimate concern we’d be having a very different conversation about free school lunches. They have no problem with shaming as long as it’s being pointed in the “right” directions.
But even if we were to take it in good faith, in a context like this, I can’t say I agree even then. If you have slave holders for ancestors and feel bad about it as you start to hear more about what people like your ancestors did to black people, it’s still better for this to come out in a setting where it can be addressed productively. If a student is being bullied by the other students for it, that’s something else entirely. But teachers should be able to walk a student in a situation like that through what they’re experiencing, and should be able to manage the classroom reaction to such a thing.
MisterForkbeard
@Eolirin: It’s amazing to me that we don’t just… teach kids what happened. And is happening.
It does not reflect poorly on white kids now if white people did terrible things 50 years ago. The same way current Christians shouldn’t feel personally bad for the Crusades, or violent conversions of Native Americans. That’s not on you.
What IS on you is denying this stuff ever happened. Or continuing to do awful things to black people. In which case: Feel bad about it and change.
Mo MacArbie
It’s just a troll/no-you’re-the-hypocrite move. They’ve been told to take the feelings of others into account, so now everybody has to stop changing the world when they feel bad or you’re the real bullies.
Eolirin
@MisterForkbeard: It kinda does if those white people were their grandparents that they have fond memories of. There are legitimately complex emotions in some of these situations.
But we shouldn’t be moving away from experiencing complex emotions. We need to walk toward them. Learn to process them. It’s not a coincidence these people are also against social emotional learning programs and critical thinking. They want stunted kids.
Betty Cracker
@Lyrebird:
Great point!
gwangung
It made your kids UNCOMFORTABLE?
What do you think >MR. COATES< felt???
You’re comparing your precious snowflakes discomfort against Mr. Coates’ experiences and viewpoints? You can cram that discomfort where the sun doesn’t shine, MFers.
Elizabelle
The more I think about this, the more I think the “ashamed” complainers should have been dumped out of AP English. They lack the maturity to benefit from the coursework.
But they sure put Chapin High School on the map.
Martin
Kids don’t feel guilty because redlining happened decades ago and they happen to be white. They feel guilty because their parents want that redlining to continue and their loyalty is torn between their parents and doing right by society. That is not a problem of the book, that is a problem of the parents.
This is not about getting white people to feel guilty about what HAD happened, but nobody should spare your feelings of shame about what you want to CONTINUE to happen. And that’s the real issue here and I wish we could find a way to talk about it. There’s a mural somewhere that says:
Martin
@Elizabelle: I don’t think that’s quite fair. My parents say that trans people should be killed, and this book makes me sympathetic to trans people. It’s not immaturity that a 17 year old might have a moral crisis in that situation, and removing them from the class doesn’t do anyone any good when that student more than the ones nodding along with the book are the one who are benefitting the most by being there, and are the ones benefitting the trans community the most by being there. Remove them from the class and what do you think their attitude toward trans people would be?
This whole exercise by Moms for Liberty is just a campaign for infantilizing young people. Medical emancipation is 14 both in California and Alabama. It’s roughly start of high school in most states. And yet these kids can’t consent on their own to what book they read? You can get a job in a meat packing plant in Iowa at 14 but you can’t consent to read Between the World and Me?
Like, this is easy bullshit to call out. Do parents get to go into McDonalds and remove training materials when their kid gets a job there? Why do they get that right with a school? Liberal parents need to be countersuing and I don’t see that happening.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
If ronnie understood the word likable I would be astounded.
Now I’m pretty sure he understands the word unlikable because he works so hard to achieve that. But then maybe he’s just a dumbass.
Ruckus
@Eolirin:
OK but see they do not want the world to be complex and very much do not want it to be diverse. They want it to be simple. Like they are. They want to be the top of the pile but because the only way they have any say, any shine, any position is to steal it, and that is what they are trying to do. But they misunderstand that the top of a pile of shit is still part of the pile of shit. They want to be liberated from humanity, from reality, from being the bottom of the pile.
Eolirin
@Ruckus: Their desires for what the world should look like are about as relevant as a screaming voice on the shore demanding the tide not to come in is to the sea.
They’re burying their kids in the sand at the water line, whatever else they think they may be doing.
Dan B
@Brachiator: Very astute. They never include the feelings of LGB kids or TQ kids because “those” are not kids. “They” are perverse behaviors that should be stomped out. My loneliness and isolation as a gay boy would not only not matter but would have opened me to persecution.
Snarki, child of Loki
“I happen to have TNC right here…”
then TNC get’s to tell the RWNJs
“You know nothing about my work”?
Roger Moore
@MisterForkbeard:
It’s the “is happening” that’s the key. If it were purely historical, there wouldn’t be nearly the same pushback. The people who object hardest to these things are the ones who are still doing it today. They don’t want a discussion of the historical wrongs because they know it will inevitably lead to people recognizing the contemporary wrongs.
Geminid
@Ruckus: I read a pertinent comment attributed to Eric Hoffer:
Ruckus
@Eolirin:
Yep.
@Geminid:
Exactly.
People that think the world does or should only work one way are simpletons. They can’t comprehend a world that doesn’t look like the shitty one in their heads.
laura
I don’t think this whole Mom’s for Liberty/Christopher Ruso/parent choice is anything other than the machinery of project Appartheid America. The disappearing of history- both past, recent and present day is the White Christofacist attempt to erase all knowledge of and participation by Black people, by non-white and immigrants, to return to segregation in school, to limit higher education to white men, to force women out of the workplace, out of the public sphere and without bodily autonomy, to eradicate our LGBTQ brothers and sisters, to ensure in fact and in law that this minority be allowed to run rough shod over all of us. It is a plan of forced forgetting and denial of what we know, what we see and hear unless we all stop it.
Betty Cracker
@laura: We’ll said! The only thing I’ll add is this: their project will fail.
Manyakitty
@PaulWartenberg: I miss the Horde. TNC rocks.