When We Fight Against Each Other, all of us Lose
Scott Guggenheimer
“However conscious it may have been, there is no doubt in my mind that all this moral and verbal obfuscation is intentional. Nor do I doubt that its purpose is to shelter us from the moral anguish implicit in our racism – an anguish that began, deep and mute, in the minds of Christian democratic freedom-loving owners of slaves.”
Wendell Berry, The Hidden Wound
The verbal obfuscation is real and intentional. Want to teach a more honest story of our country? One in which we face hard histories together? That’s CRT! The ensuing moral panic leads to a governor’s tip line for reporting teachers who promote “divisive practices.”
Avoiding topics that produce moral anguish may seem like a good way to protect students, but in practice, it only protects the current system.
The call for “parental rights,” is the latest verbal obfuscation to do the same. While it sounds innocuous, the movement is being used to ban books, force teachers out of the profession, and create an environment where LGBTQ+ children aren’t safe, valued, or protected.
“But what if the entire logic is wrong? What if they’re not only paying too high a cost for segregation, but they are also mistaken about the benefit? Compared to students at predominantly white schools, white students who attend diverse K-12 schools achieve better learning outcomes and even higher test scores. Exposure to multiple viewpoints leads to more flexible and creative thinking and greater ability to solve problems.”
Heather McGhee, The Sum of Us
By continuing the generations-long fight for less inclusive, less welcoming, and inadequately funded public schools, advocates of “parental rights” are limiting the educational experience for all young people, including those they have said they care most about.
This practice is familiar. From massive resistance to redlining to the anti-labor movement, people who imagine they are already in a position of power decide that undermining our institutions, hoarding resources, and embracing an “us vs. them” story is the best way to create wealth and security. The opposite happens.
We create mortgage crises. We make health care unaffordable. We prevent our children from having the chance to learn with and from each other. We deny transgender youth the chance to attend schools where they are affirmed and loved, and we deny the country the chance to experience their insight, creativity, and ingenuity. These precious resources – the creativity and ingenuity of our young people – will be vital for us to solve the challenges of the future, and we are foolish not to invest in and nourish them more dearly.
Instead of dividing ourselves, for example by fighting over whether something is “sexually explicit,” we might be better off working together to ensure that our teachers are supported, that we have strong relationships between school staff and parents, and that our schools have the financial resources and community support they need to focus on teaching and learning.
To move Albemarle County Public Schools in this direction, we will need to find small ways to be in relationship with each other, build trust and solidarity across real and imagined differences, and insist that we all have a fundamental right to an excellent public school system, one that embraces the fullness of our history and the uniqueness of our identities and one that prepares each and every one of our children to step into a new story, together.
Check out more from Heather McGhee on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.