The right wing "cancel culture" is at it again. In a recent column by John McCroskey in The Chronicle, the right wing is making "critical race theory" a major talking point.
They are certainly being true to form.
These are the same people who have long promoted a whitewashed version of history. It’s the original, true cancel culture. History itself canceled. The lost cause myth. The Tulsa massacre. Rosewood. Wimington. Thousands of lynchings. Ku Klux Klan nightriders. Jim Crow and the rule of terrorism. The Trail of Tears. The massacre of Black Kettle and his friendly Cheyennes at Sand Creek. Wounded Knee.
History untaught so it did not happen. No more. Call it truth and reconciliation if you wish, but Americans need an honest accounting of our history.
The strife we are now experiencing in America is the product of a clash between the America of myth and the America that really happened. What is known loosely as critical race theory, that asserts racism is systemic in America, has now become a right wing culture war battle cry. They contend that teaching students the truth about race and the legacy of racism is harmful and diminishes their love of country. Schools should teach patriotism, not facts.
We can handle the truth. To understand there is evil in our past does not disqualify all the good things America has done and stood for. However imperfect our self-government has been, the American concept of freedom and equality under the law was revolutionary 233 years ago and remains so to this day.
Perhaps, if he has not already done so, McCroskey should read Bill Bratton's new book, "The Profession." In this excellent memoir, Bratton, who served one term as Boston's police commissioner and two each in New York and Los Angeles, describes the role race and racism has played in American policing. The inscription to the book is from Jim Timoney, one of Bratton's deputy commissioners in the New York Police Department. "Those who don't study history are destined to repeat it and those who study policing know we don't study history."
I think of the Tuskegee Airmen and the Navajo code talkers and the Nisei 442nd. They certainly were all familiar with the truth about America's racism. They served their country in World War II and came home to often brutal and cruel treatment from white America, but they never stopped believing in the ideals of the country. They had to believe America was more than a geographic area and more than the sum of its racism.
The right wing contention that teaching the truth is dangerous and undermines loyalty to the state is a common feature of totalitarian thinking. The present regimes ruling China and Russia are superb examples of that.
Teaching objective facts and the whole truth of our history is not America's greatest weakness. It is America's greatest strength and a high form of patriotism.
Marty Ansley
Cineba
