It’s interesting timing that our legislature, with the support of our local state senators, is rushing to pass the “Anti-Racism Act” at the same time we’re preparing to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The Anti-Racism Act, despite its noble title, is intended to stifle any discussion of race or racism in West Virginia’s public schools.
The bill, which is almost certain to pass, bans the teaching of certain concepts. While it states that it won’t apply to the teaching of history, the bill’s mechanism of allowing complaints against schools and teachers will be more than enough of a threat to keep teachers away from any topic that might fall under the bill’s purview.
It is ironic that this bill is rapidly advancing through the legislature as we celebrate MLK Day, because this bill would almost certainly prohibit teaching students anything but the most superficial facts about Dr. King’s life and work. In Dr. King’s Letter From a Birmingham Jail, for instance, he describes the horrific indignities inflicted on all African Americans not just by individual racists, but by racist structures and institutions. He defends civil disobedience to unjust laws. And he excoriates members of the white clergy and those he describes as “white moderates” who refused to take a principled and forceful stand in favor of the civil rights movement, putting themselves in league with the more overtly racist citizens councils and sheriffs responsible for jailing him.
The letter is an essential part of understanding not just Dr. King’s individual philosophy, but the broader struggle for civil rights, then and now. But I wonder if West Virginia’s teachers, fearful of drawing a complaint, might worry if Dr. King’s letter would run afoul of the Anti-Racist Act’s prohibition of material that calls out individuals for unconscious racism or material that suggests that members of one race bear responsibility for the actions committed by individuals of the same race.
Dr. King was right to specifically call out white people who stand by in the face of injustice, and he was right to call out the social structures that perpetuate racism just as much as individual racists do, if not more.
It is clear from the statements of legislators, if not from the text itself, that these are conversations that they do not want occurring in West Virginia schools. By doing so they cast their lot with the very people that Dr. King was writing about. The Anti-Racism Act will make his work meaningless to West Virginia’s students by stripping away the full context and the parts that should, rightfully, make anyone face uncomfortable truths about race in America.
The Anti-Racism Act would reduce him to a caricature, equivalent to the answer to a trivia question. As we celebrate Dr. King’s achievements this week, one has to wonder if ensuring that those achievements do not live on might be the point of this bill.
Neal Wilson
Williamstown
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