Across the United States, members of the “conservative” movement are engaging in an Orwellian assault on freedom of thought and the truth. Their tactics and strategies include banning books, targeting librarians and other educators for harassment and violence, and forcing both private and public schools (including universities and colleges) to change their curriculum to conform with “patriotic education," meaning a literal white-washing of American history in service to a right-wing and neofascist agenda.
Central to this Orwellian propaganda-indoctrination program is distorting if not outright lying about and erasing the real history of black and brown Americans, women, the LGBTQ community, and other marginalized people. This is not an abstract debate about public policy and education: it is a matter of power, life, death and the future of the United States. As political scientist Derefe Kimarley Chevannes warns in a new commentary essay at The Chicago Tribune, “Banning Black literature is not an abstraction. Its costs are counted in Black graves.”
