You've Got to Be Carefully Taught
Melissa Harris-Lacewell
This article appeared in the June 28, 2010 edition of The Nation
I spent Memorial Day in New Orleans, where I watched a group of citizens lay
a wreath at the foot of a statue of Jefferson Davis. It was a jarring
reminder of how the South understands American history. Memorial Day was
founded after the Civil War to honor Union soldiers. When Southerners choose
to memorialize Confederate leaders, it is an act of subversive historical
revision and an indication of the unresolved political and cultural
anxieties that stir just below the surface of the "New South."
The white New Orleanians paying their respects to Davis made me nervous. Few
things disgusted Confederates more than property-owning women, free blacks
and evidence of miscegenation. I am all of these, so I feel the very
legitimacy of my citizenship is challenged by their nostalgia. But I noticed
that those gathered at the monument appeared to be mostly senior citizens.
In contrast, young New Orleanians were hanging out in integrated groups in
the park, listening to music, drinking beer and worrying about how the
impending hurricane season would affect the BP oil disaster.
The generational divide in how these Southerners spent Memorial Day was
jarring and instructive. In May, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed a bill
cutting state funding to schools that offer classes "designed primarily for
students of a particular ethnic group" or "advocating ethnic solidarity."
The law aims to ban ethnic studies curriculums and implies that classes in
African-American history or Latino literature are dangerous and
discriminatory. Then the Texas State Board of Education voted to introduce a
considerably more conservative slant to the social studies curriculum. In
the revised Texas version of history, there is an increased emphasis on
Phyllis Schlafly, segregationist George Wallace and the National Rifle
Association, while the United Nations is presented as an enemy of American
sovereignty and the separation of church and state is reduced to an
ideological suggestion rather than a constitutional mandate.
The celebration of Confederate traitors as American heroes, the whitewash of
school curriculums and the conservative reinterpretation of national history
are weapons in America's decades-long culture war. These policies reflect an
impulse similar to the Cultural Revolution of Communist China: an attempt to
gain authority by controlling the very definitions of truth available to
young people. After all, it is among young Americans that conservatives are
losing this war, and if they are serious about taking back their country,
the education of American youth is the critical terrain where they plan to
make a stand.
Young Americans are significantly different from their older counterparts.
At the end of the Clinton administration a majority of young Americans
strongly supported multicultural education and believed that the government
should ensure integrated schools and workplaces. In the year George W. Bush
was re-elected, an overwhelming majority of young Americans believed gay men
and lesbians should have equal protection in housing and employment and
should be protected under hate crimes legislation. Barack Obama garnered two
of every three votes cast by people under 30. Across parties, ideologies,
regions and religions, young people are less likely to subscribe to racial
stereotypes, more likely to support legal equality for gay Americans and
more likely to believe tolerance is an important ideal. These enduring
generational trends have prompted some observers to question the long-term
viability of the GOP-which seems to be growing older but not grander.
These statistics are comforting for progressives, who tend to believe that
generational replacement will be enough to usher in a new liberal majority.
They wax poetic about how the Obama generation-young people coming of age
with a black president, female secretary of state and Hispanic justice of
the Supreme Court-will undoubtedly extend the social safety net, end
discriminatory state practices and create a more just nation. But the
differences between younger and older Americans are neither automatic nor
inevitable; they are the result of demographic, policy and curricular
changes that occurred as the result of protest and struggle in post-civil
rights America.
Although poor urban minorities continue to suffer the effects of
hyper-segregated communities, young white Americans live in a more diverse
world than their parents did as children. More than ever, white children
learn in integrated classrooms, have mothers who work outside the home,
encounter racial minorities in positions of authority, learn about different
religious traditions, read literature by diverse authors, encounter same-sex
families as a routine part of the popular culture and have technology-based
access to a dizzying array of opinions. These experiences are widely seen as
necessary components for contemporary citizenship. In fact, in the aftermath
of the Supreme Court's Bollinger decision, the state's compelling interest
in ensuring diverse educational environments is the last legal standard on
which affirmative action rests.
Social conservatives shudder with apocalyptic anxiety about these
generational trends. They understand that the best defense against this
frightening, changing world is to wrest control of the historical narrative.
To retake the country, they must first reshape young people's reality by
revising the meaning of their daily lives. They must make traitors into
heroes, erase the contributions of marginal groups, decry self-knowledge as
sedition and reinforce fear of those who are different. I'm reminded of the
lyrics of a song in South Pacific, Rodgers and Hammerstein's controversial
1949 musical: "You've got to be taught to hate and fear,/You've got to be
taught from year to year,/It's got to be drummed in your dear little
ear-/You've got to be carefully taught." Arizona and Texas policy-makers
seem to be using the lyrics as a guide to curriculum development, but they
may find that the world has already moved beyond their fearful grasp.
Melissa Harris-Lacewell
***
All-Star Speak Out: Baseball Players Pledge to Boycott Arizona All Star Game
"The biggest star in the game, Albert Pujols, came out in direct opposition
to his Arizona-law-loving manager Tony LaRussa, saying, 'I'm opposed to it.
How are you going to tell me that, me being Hispanic, if you stop me and I
don't have my ID, you're going to arrest me? That can't be.'''
by Dave Zirin
The Nation: July 12, 2010
If Major League Baseball's 2011 All-Star Game is held as planned in
the anti-immigrant "meth lab of democracy" otherwise known as Arizona,
players are letting it be known that the show will go on without them. On
Monday's media day for this week's 2010 game in Anaheim, [1] several Latino
All-Stars were asked for their thoughts about next year's game taking place
in a state being monitored by the justice department for racial profiling.
''If the game is in Arizona, I will totally boycott," said Milwaukee
Brewers pitcher Yovani Gallardo. Tampa Bay reliever Joakim Suria and Detroit
Tigers pitcher Jose Valverde seconded that emotion. ''They could stop me and
ask to see my papers. I have to stand with my Latin community on this," said
Suria.
The three have now joined San Diego Padres all-star Adrian Gonzalez,
and his teammates Yorvit Torrealba, and Heath Bell along with Chicago White
Sox manager Ozzie Guillen in stating that they would stay away from Arizona
next summer.
Other even more prominent players didn't call for a boycott, but they
made their feelings exceedingly clear. Major League home run leader, Toronto
Blue Jays outfielder Jose Bautista said, ''Hopefully, there are some
changes in the law before [next year]. We have to back up our Latin
communities.''
The biggest star in the game, Albert Pujols, came out in direct opposition
to his Arizona-law-loving manager Tony LaRussa, saying, "I'm opposed to it.
How are you going to tell me that, me being Hispanic, if you stop me and I
don't have my ID, you're going to arrest me? That can't be.''
A spokesperson for the Baseball Players Association also made news by
saying they would fully back any player who chose to boycott the 2011 game.
[As a side-note, Alex Rodriguez - Major League Baseball's answer to Lebron
James in too many ways to name - was also asked about Arizona's laws but
just said, ''Wrong guy," and then pointed to other players in the locker
room. Rodriguez then proceeded to drown after attempting to make love to his
own reflection in a nearby duck pond.]
This flurry of commentary in this most staid of sports threatens to
overshadow Tuesday's Midsummer Classic and spotlight the political and moral
impotence of Major League commissioner Bud Selig. Selig refused to comment
on the issue today and his one statement all season on the issue managed to
be both puzzling and inane. (After much analysis, it was determined that
Selig wants the game to stay in Arizona.) Selig's constant crutch of
no-comments may be coming to an abrupt end.
The sports media wasn't asking about immigration out of concern for the
28% of Major Leaguers born outside the United States. They were probing the
actual political thoughts of players because of a very real, growing
movement of civil rights and grass roots organizations calling on MLB to
move the game.
On Monday morning, the organization movethegame.org held a press
conference where they showcased more than 100,000 names who had signed their
petition calling on Major League Baseball to act. A protest has also been
called for Tuesday at 3pm right at Angel Stadium, on all American Gene Autry
Way in Anaheim.
As Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and
Human Rights and Janet Murguia is president of the National Council of La
Raza wrote in an oped on Alternet, "Unless the league acts, next year our
favorite all-stars could enter a hostile environment, and the families,
friends and fans of a third of the players could be treated as second-class
citizens because of their skin color or the way they speak.. We are not
asking Selig to weigh in on immigration policy; we are asking him to take a
stand against bigotry and intolerance. Despite being petitioned by numerous
members of Congress and civil rights, labor and social justice groups, Selig
has not adequately addressed the issue."
He certainly has not. But if civil rights activists keep up the
pressure on the outside and players keep speaking out on the inside, Selig
will have no choice but to make perfectly clear where he stands on the most
basic civil rights of his own players. If the NFL could move the Super Bowl
from Arizona two decades ago because they wouldn't acknowledge Martin Luther
King's birthday; if the NCAA can keep post-season tournaments out of states
that still fly the confederate flag; then Bud Selig can wipe that hang-dog
look off his face, straighten his back, and do the right thing. If not for
the people, he can do it for Pujols.
[Dave Zirin is the author of the forthcoming "Bad Sports: How Owners are
Ruining the Games we Love" (Scribner)
Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com.
Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.]
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