Today, fascist politicians, “parent groups” and other fascist lunatics are waging a vicious campaign to ban books and in other ways keep kids, and people generally, from learning even some of the basic truths about this country, its actual history and its present reality. One of the main lines of attack of these fascists is the claim that learning about white supremacy and racism will make children—that is, white children—“feel bad.”
Well, as a white youth growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s, when I learned about white supremacy and racism, it did make me feel bad—and that was a very good thing!
It made me feel outraged—and, yes, it made me feel ashamed—and that made me want to do something: to be part of fighting against this white supremacy and racism.
And I was not alone in this: This was the experience of huge numbers—millions—of white youth who came of age in that period, who were inspired by the civil rights movement and then by the more militant Black liberation movement and became part of the revolutionary upsurge of the 1960s.
These fascists are determined not to let something like that happen again, in these highly charged times—and instead they are setting out to mold a bunch of mindless white youth into rabid racists (similar to the Hitler Youth in Germany during the rise of the NAZI fascists there in the 1930s).
Shutting down these fascists in their attempt to suppress the truth about this country is a crucial part of defeating this fascism overall.
And this, in turn, can be and must be part of getting rid of this whole system of capitalism-imperialism: which has bred this fascism... which has white supremacy built into its foundation and its ongoing functioning... which is the source of horrific oppression of literally billions of people, here and throughout the world... and is a threat to the very existence of humanity, through its escalating destruction of the environment and the continual danger of war between nuclear-armed capitalist-imperialist powers, including the U.S., Russia, and China.