The campaign to purge schools of the realities of the oppression of Black, Brown and Native people, and of LGBTQ people—or even of their existence as full human beings—is reaching tsunami proportions.

In 2021, 51 laws were proposed in 33 states—and at least 10 were enacted—that would “regulate how and what educators may teach about race, history and sexuality in schools.”

That was already extremely alarming. But in just the first three weeks of 2022, another 71 such laws have been proposed in 27 states.

According to a researcher with PEN America, “these bills overwhelmingly target speech related to race and sex or sexuality,” and they are “getting more and more severe, more and more ambitious, and the punishments are getting more and more draconian.” These punishments can include educators being fired and school districts being sued.

Many of these bills ban teaching “Critical Race Theory.” Some specifically ban curriculum that uses The 1619 Project, which reframes American history as starting with and bound up with slavery. Others ban diversity or sensitivity training for staff.

Along with this, fascist organizations of “concerned parents” have been turning up at school board meetings in many districts, hysterically complaining that any book that even encourages empathy for people who are targeted by discrimination makes their children “uncomfortable.” And many of the new laws encourage parents to monitor the classrooms—forcing teachers to post curriculum online (as if to “expose” some “secret plot” by teachers to actually teach children), and then allows any citizen to sue the schools.

This madness recently reached new depths:

On January 10, 2022, the McMinn County School Board in Tennessee voted unanimously to remove Maus from school libraries. Maus is a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel by Art Spiegelman; it tells the story of his parents’ experience under Nazi rule in Poland during World War 2. (It is called “Maus” because the Jewish characters are drawn as mice, hunted by German Nazi’s drawn as cats.) A school board member complained: “It shows people hanging, it shows them killing kids, why does the educational system promote this kind of stuff?”

A better question is this: Who—besides today’s Nazis—wants to hide the reality of the horrendous crimes of yesterday’s Nazis?

Here are some more shocking examples of this epidemic of crazed attacks on telling kids the truth—even a little bit of it:

• In November 2020, the York Pennsylvania school board removed from libraries 68 books that had been recommended by the district’s diversity committee.
  • A member of the committee commented that “While some might be quote-unquote controversial, a vast majority of them were just books with Black characters in them—not even about race necessarily.”
• In May 2021, the Palm Beach (Florida) County School Board removed a reference to “white advantage” from its equity statement, after some parents claimed it was an attempt to inject “critical race theory” into policy.
  • So now “equity” means that you can’t mention inequality!
• In June 2021, a “parents’ group” in Tennessee complained that reading The Story of Ruby Bridges (a picture book) violated state law by presenting all white people as bad. Ruby Bridges was six years old when she integrated an all-white school in New Orleans. On her first day, many white parents pulled their kids out, and all but one white teacher refused to teach a Black child.
  • Sorry “parents,” it’s not a pretty picture. But maybe if your kids learn about it and are upset, it will motivate them to do something to change it.
• On June 10, 2021, the Florida Board of Education adopted new rules meant to “ban” critical race theory, including that teachers “may not define American history as something other than the creation of a new nation based largely on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.”
  • Since it is a fact that America was founded on slavery and did not abolish it for 90 years, Florida authorities are either saying that teachers should lie about this, or they are saying that enslaving Black people is a “universal principle.” Either way, they are lying fascists.
• On June 15, 2021, Texas Governor Abbott signed a bill banning use of The 1619 Project in classrooms, and sharply restricting the way teachers could discuss the role of slavery and segregation in Texas history. Another pending bill would establish a committee “to promote patriotic education” about “Texas secession.”
  • Steve Toth, a fascist Texas legislator argued the need for these bills this way: “Do you want our Texas kids to be taught that the system of government in the United States and Texas is nothing but a cover-up for white supremacy?” Well Steve, the fact is that in 1836 Texas was part of Mexico, but seceded (broke away) in a revolt led by American slave-owners and backed by the U.S. government, because slavery was illegal in Mexico. Later Texas joined the U.S. and sided with the Confederacy in the Civil War.
  • In other words, Texas was stolen from Mexico in order to protect the “right” to enslave Black people! So the question is, should children be taught the truth, or a bunch of lies and prettifications that cover over the truth?
• On July 1, 2021, a new law went into effect in Iowa barring educators from teaching “critical race theory,” from describing Iowa or the U.S. as “systemically racist or sexist,” or saying anything that would make any student feel “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress” due to their race or sex.
  • So either white students shouldn’t learn about the enslavement and brutal oppression of Black people, or … that shouldn’t make them feel “uncomfortable”?
• In July 2021, a school district in Pennsylvania tabled a donation of books to elementary school libraries because parents complained that the books taught critical race theory. Titles included Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story and Hidden Figures: The True Story of Four Black Women and the Space Race.
  • Fry bread is a staple food of some Native peoples. Fry Bread won more than a dozen awards; the New York Times described it as “wonderful and sweet.” Here is a passage from this dangerous book:

               Fry bread is food.

               It is warm and delicious, piled high on a plate.

              Fry bread is time.

              It brings families together for meals and new memories.

             Fry bread is nation.

              It is shared by many, from coast to coast and beyond.

             Fry bread is us.

             It is a celebration of old and new, traditional and modern, similarity and difference.

As a University of Michigan professor of education said: “The presence of diverse children is not liberal politics—diverse children exist in the world.” And so are the presence of different cultures and peoples, of their savage oppression, and their inspiring resistance and struggle to be treated as full human beings.

But not in the world the fascists are fighting like hell to bring into being.