And Justice For All Episode 2

The episode discusses how limiting educational opportunities in public schools supports systems of oppression and white supremacy. Legislators restrict education when marginalized populations gain more freedoms. The powerful manipulate historical truth and co-opt hot-button issues for their own advantage. Education and art can be used to fight against injustice and express freedom. Book banning and limiting access to education suppress freedom of expression. Those in power use truth as a weapon rather than a roadmap to freedom. The community should come together to fight against restrictions and prioritize education for empathy, awareness, kindness, and hope. Welcome to another edition of And Justice For All. My name is Dawn. On today's episode, we're going to look at what is taught or not taught in our public schools and how curtailing or limiting educational opportunities props up systems of oppression and white supremacy. Institutional racism rolls back hard-fought-for civil rights, and who benefits when underrepresented people are kept poor, uneducated, and afraid? And more importantly, we're going to think outside of the doors of the institutions that sustain this unequal American culture. In our last episode, we looked at the voting rights of the recently incarcerated. Today's episode is an extension of that discussion, where we'll explore familiar and unfamiliar connections to think creatively of ways to make incremental systemic change. First, I'm going to examine how the texts Being Wrong by Katherine Schultz and On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder have helped shape the framework from which I've been exploring my topic. In On Tyranny, Snyder begins by explaining how the Founding Fathers looked to history for direction. And Snyder writes, As they knew, Aristotle warned that inequality brought instability, while Plato believed that demagogues exploited free speech to install themselves as tyrants. Similar to the Framers, but with very different intentions, the current power structure, including Ron DeSantis in Florida, Greg Abbott in Texas, the so-called Freedom Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives, and, of course, former President Donald Trump, all continue to sow the seeds of authoritarianism to further their own agendas and remain in power. This is a familiar connection where legislators begin restricting educational opportunities when they see marginalized, underrepresented populations gaining more freedoms. Ron DeSantis, for example, claims there is a war on truth, so therefore, he needs to wage a war on woke, as he calls it. Woke is a form of cultural Marxism. It's about taking individuality, merit, and achievement and subordinating that to a political agenda based on identity politics. It is effectively displacing the truth in favor of ideology, and I think it's important that we fight against that because our society doesn't need to be rooted in truth. This is a familiar connection where the powerful co-opt historical concepts and hot-button issues for their own advantage. As Snyder describes, the biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights. By legislating against educational opportunities through book bans, for example, DeSantis is manipulating historical truth to his own advantage. Schultz, in her book, Being Wrong, helps us understand how being wrong and making errors in our lives is the only real way we can move forward as a society. As she explains, far from being a sign of intellectual inferiority, the capacity to err is crucial to human cognition. It is in this spirit that I'd like to explore how examining historical moments where things went incredibly wrong can help us in this current moment where the powerful are once again trying to limit freedom of expression in the name of maintaining the white power structure in America. The framers did look to history to instruct, as Snyder writes, to try and learn from the mistakes of the past, but they also enshrined states' rights as a key tenet of American freedom in the Tenth Amendment, and we've seen states' rights play out following last summer's overturning of Roe v. Wade. Those on the far right have a history of trying to limit the power of the federal government, especially when a Democrat is leading the country. Again, a familiar connection where they say that the federal government shouldn't be in your business when, ironically, they create legislation that does just that. States will legislate your constitutionally protected freedoms if they are viewed as a threat to the power structure. Freedom is great as long as it's the powerful who has it. How do those in power stay in power? Looking back, we can see that the institutions and structure of American life is built upon a paradigm of class. One only has to look at Thomas Jefferson, who wrote, All men are created equal, but profited off the backs of the over 600 that he owned, while at the same time he espoused abolition. The American ideal was built upon a foundation of inequality from the very beginning. A class system was established where the powerful stay powerful and the poor stay poor. This is how the system was designed. So, when you have someone like Phyllis B. Lee, an enslaved black woman who published a book of poetry in 1773, the first black woman to do so, the power class questions its authenticity. The enslaved were kept subservient by not being allowed to read or write, thus bringing Wheatley's authorship into doubt. This is an unfamiliar connection between politics, art, culture, and class. When minorities succeed, the powerful take it as a threat to the white supremacist class structure they've worked so hard to maintain. When we look at the significance of art and culture in America, we see people like Phyllis Wheatley using her education and art to fight for freedom of expression and against injustice. In Stamped from the Beginning, a documentary film based on the book of the same name, Dr. Jennifer L. Morgan, a professor of social and cultural analysis and history, describes how the Boston elite were skeptical that Wheatley wrote the poetry herself. They are so accustomed to the stories that they've been telling about black people that they literally cannot imagine that a black woman could produce art. What Phyllis Wheatley is doing is very dangerous. I mean, what's at stake is the entire colonial economy. It needs black labor. That's what it needs. It does not need or want black art. If we concede that black women can produce art, what else do we have to concede? Phyllis Wheatley is a historical example of what can happen if people have access to education and the freedom to express themselves. Even in times of great oppression, great art is made. Let's look at a contemporary example, book banning. In Martin County, Florida, in May of this year, Grace Lynn, a 100-year-old woman whose husband died fighting fascism in World War II, stood before a school board meeting and explained her opposition to book banning. One of the freedoms that the Nazis crushed was the freedom to read the books that they banned. History will repeat itself if you don't know history. Banned books and burning books are the same. Both are done for the same reason, fear of knowledge. When history is reframed to further an agenda, when a minority class is denied access to an education, when freedom of expression is legislated against, when those in power use uniquely American freedoms, like the right to vote, the right to speak your mind and express yourself through art and literature, they do so in the name of power, not freedom, and certainly not justice. When the free press becomes an agency of oppression and used against the underrepresented and the poor, those in power are better able to use the truth as a weapon instead of a roadmap to freedom. What if, as Snyder describes in On Tyranny, we all used our abilities to discern the facts? Snyder says the individual who investigates is also the citizen who builds. What if groups like Moms for Liberty, labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, continued to lose steam like they have after the last election when most lost their bids for school board and city council seats, seats they sought in an effort to ban books and school curriculum they deemed too dangerous for our kids to read and learn? What if the federal government determined that some rights were too important to leave up to the states to decide and instituted a ban on banning books and limiting educational opportunities? What if our communities banded together and realized that limiting access to knowledge is designed to suppress freedom of expression and not designed to protect anyone but those in power legislating what we can and can't do? What if those in power actually look to history to instruct, as Snyder describes, set their egos aside, learned from their mistakes, and truly did what's best for the people they represent? Education breeds empathy and awareness, kindness and hope, and is the only thing standing between those that want to restrict freedoms and those that want to expand them.