I read this essay today and because I was born and raised in Florida (b. 1947), I thought of my own experience in public education there. In those 12 years I never heard even once the word "Holocaust" and racism was swept under the rug neatly - until one Black boy was admitted to our high school in 1964-65. One. I felt so sorry for that lonely teenager. I did, however, learn about the Holocaust on my own, at age 11, when I was babysitting for a neighbor, and there was a bookcase with Time-Life books. I picked up one - I forget the cover and title. But inside were pictures and stories of WWII. Horrific photos of dead bodies thrown into a pit. I couldn't stop reading and looking. And then I couldn't sleep at night, with all these images floating inside my terrified mind. I didn't mention it to ANYONE. Was I afraid? I don't even know. I needed context. I needed someone to tell me the whole story. I only learned it in bits and pieces over many years.
The way you described it, with "systems" in place, helped me understand it more than I have. I also bought your book "On Tyranny" and live by it. But then to watch what is happening to our country right now, and to see the systems shaping up, is completely frightening. BUT this time I'm an adult and I can fight back. When Donald Trump was elected I saw the illegality and the terror coming. Slowly but then speeding up, more and more and more. We're in big trouble, and there are so many fascist elements coming straight - from our own Congress.
I read your newsletters and listen to certain podcasts to keep my sanity, and keep striving to save our democracy. It's up to a simmer now. But boiling is ever so close.
Thank you for providing us with insights into the meaning of what is happening in Florida and elsewhere. The risk is grave. I am now thinking about “systems”.
Is there a system in place that works to influence, organize, fund, and lobby for these disruptions to the Department of Education’s mission? Why? Who? For what?
Creating a “moral panic” seems to be a repeating theme utilized within the system to disrupt the institutions that a pluralistic society leans on. Why? Because, as history informs us, the possibilities for leadership to abuse their “power over others” is endless once a moral panic is manufactured and becomes sustainable through ever increasing demagoguery.
As I read this essay, I couldn't help but thinking about the landmines my daughter, who teaches high school American history, has to negotiate around these days.
The hypocrisy of FL education law is shocking, made even more apparent by the continually fantastic writing of Dr. Snyder. Requiring the teaching/identification of the systemic slaughter of millions of human beings under Nazism (Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, etc.) in the Holocaust, while, in the same sentence, comparing it to CRT, is shockingly ignorant and clearly value-charged. You cannot discuss American history without discussing the SYSTEMIC chattel slavery, Jim Crow, Black Codes, etc. As Eric Foner puts it, the US was a slave society, rather than a society with slaves. This SYSTEMIC slavery created and entrenched the cultural aspects of racism, as well as legalized it through democratically elected representatives who pandered to/endorsed racist values.
My question is, and still remains, how do teachers in a state like FL teach real American history? And by teach, I do not mean tell students about America's systemic racism but rather, allow students to see such systems themselves through the develop of historical analysis skills (primary source analysis, comparing and contrasting, historiography, etc.).
The ambiguity in the law is clearly designed to make teachers afraid to teach, since they don't actually know what CRT includes (nor do the legislators themselves). Nonetheless, I would think that these memory laws are ripe for a challenge, akin to that of Brown v Board, in which a teacher (or multiple teachers throughout the state) allow students to analyze a writing by someone like WEB Du Bois (or Ida B Wells, Marcus Garvey, MLK, Malcolm X...).
This post is (an example of) why I subscribe to "Thinking About..." The material on Nazi systems supporting the Holocaust is a tour de force in its own right, but just about the time I am thinking "Okay, but why this, why now?" and then saying to myself "Oh yeah, must be CRT" the next paragraphs lay it out. The statements by Florida BoE officials that lumped together CRT proponents with Holocaust deniers was just another absurdity to me, but reading those statements in the context of the Florida 1994 law raises the roof and lets the light shine in.
Posts like this also help me to review mentally the themes from Prof Snyder's books covering the periods 1930-1945 and 2010 following, and Yes also the twenty maxims from On Tyranny, mentioned by an earlier commenter. In those books Snyder writes sometimes of the politics (myth) of inevitability and the politics (myth) of eternity. I think that this post adds to those political demons the politics (myth) of innocence.
I read this essay today and because I was born and raised in Florida (b. 1947), I thought of my own experience in public education there. In those 12 years I never heard even once the word "Holocaust" and racism was swept under the rug neatly - until one Black boy was admitted to our high school in 1964-65. One. I felt so sorry for that lonely teenager. I did, however, learn about the Holocaust on my own, at age 11, when I was babysitting for a neighbor, and there was a bookcase with Time-Life books. I picked up one - I forget the cover and title. But inside were pictures and stories of WWII. Horrific photos of dead bodies thrown into a pit. I couldn't stop reading and looking. And then I couldn't sleep at night, with all these images floating inside my terrified mind. I didn't mention it to ANYONE. Was I afraid? I don't even know. I needed context. I needed someone to tell me the whole story. I only learned it in bits and pieces over many years.
The way you described it, with "systems" in place, helped me understand it more than I have. I also bought your book "On Tyranny" and live by it. But then to watch what is happening to our country right now, and to see the systems shaping up, is completely frightening. BUT this time I'm an adult and I can fight back. When Donald Trump was elected I saw the illegality and the terror coming. Slowly but then speeding up, more and more and more. We're in big trouble, and there are so many fascist elements coming straight - from our own Congress.
I read your newsletters and listen to certain podcasts to keep my sanity, and keep striving to save our democracy. It's up to a simmer now. But boiling is ever so close.
Thank you for providing us with insights into the meaning of what is happening in Florida and elsewhere. The risk is grave. I am now thinking about “systems”.
Is there a system in place that works to influence, organize, fund, and lobby for these disruptions to the Department of Education’s mission? Why? Who? For what?
Creating a “moral panic” seems to be a repeating theme utilized within the system to disrupt the institutions that a pluralistic society leans on. Why? Because, as history informs us, the possibilities for leadership to abuse their “power over others” is endless once a moral panic is manufactured and becomes sustainable through ever increasing demagoguery.
Such an excellent way of explaining how legislation against CRT suppresses learning about and understanding systemic racism. Thank you.
As I read this essay, I couldn't help but thinking about the landmines my daughter, who teaches high school American history, has to negotiate around these days.
The hypocrisy of FL education law is shocking, made even more apparent by the continually fantastic writing of Dr. Snyder. Requiring the teaching/identification of the systemic slaughter of millions of human beings under Nazism (Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, etc.) in the Holocaust, while, in the same sentence, comparing it to CRT, is shockingly ignorant and clearly value-charged. You cannot discuss American history without discussing the SYSTEMIC chattel slavery, Jim Crow, Black Codes, etc. As Eric Foner puts it, the US was a slave society, rather than a society with slaves. This SYSTEMIC slavery created and entrenched the cultural aspects of racism, as well as legalized it through democratically elected representatives who pandered to/endorsed racist values.
My question is, and still remains, how do teachers in a state like FL teach real American history? And by teach, I do not mean tell students about America's systemic racism but rather, allow students to see such systems themselves through the develop of historical analysis skills (primary source analysis, comparing and contrasting, historiography, etc.).
The ambiguity in the law is clearly designed to make teachers afraid to teach, since they don't actually know what CRT includes (nor do the legislators themselves). Nonetheless, I would think that these memory laws are ripe for a challenge, akin to that of Brown v Board, in which a teacher (or multiple teachers throughout the state) allow students to analyze a writing by someone like WEB Du Bois (or Ida B Wells, Marcus Garvey, MLK, Malcolm X...).
On point as usual. Thank you sir!
This post is (an example of) why I subscribe to "Thinking About..." The material on Nazi systems supporting the Holocaust is a tour de force in its own right, but just about the time I am thinking "Okay, but why this, why now?" and then saying to myself "Oh yeah, must be CRT" the next paragraphs lay it out. The statements by Florida BoE officials that lumped together CRT proponents with Holocaust deniers was just another absurdity to me, but reading those statements in the context of the Florida 1994 law raises the roof and lets the light shine in.
Posts like this also help me to review mentally the themes from Prof Snyder's books covering the periods 1930-1945 and 2010 following, and Yes also the twenty maxims from On Tyranny, mentioned by an earlier commenter. In those books Snyder writes sometimes of the politics (myth) of inevitability and the politics (myth) of eternity. I think that this post adds to those political demons the politics (myth) of innocence.