Robert Azzi: It's about race; It's always about race

"Since January 2021," Education Week reports, "42 states have introduced bills or taken other steps that would restrict teaching critical race theory [CRT] or limit how teachers can discuss racism and sexism ..."

New Hampshire is one of those 42 states where opponents incorrectly assert that CRT classifies all whites as oppressors and all people of color as victims, a state where many are still unwilling to acknowledge how America’s racist history impacts our present and impacts our children.

CRT doesn't argue that white people living today are to blame for what people did in the past; it argues that too many American institutions like housing, education and the economy are still embedded with laws and regulations that often still lead to racially disparate outcomes.

Last week, at Trinity High School in Manchester, a white student posted a homecoming proposal on Instagram of a photo of himself with a girl while holding a sign that read: “If I was black I’d be picking cotton. But I’m white so I’m picking you.” The student — no longer enrolled at the private Catholic school — was a senior and a member of the school’s football team.

“I know his heart. This is not what he’s about," his football coach said.

New Hampshire is one of those 42 states.

In March, white middle schoolers at the K-8 public J.S. Waters School in Goldston, North Carolina, pretended to sell off Black classmates in a "slave auction" that apparently was even videotaped in the presence of staff and faculty.

“Actions such as these, they just do not reflect who we are as a school system,” the schools superintendent said.

North Carolina is one of those 42 states.

Last month, at California's public River Valley High School in the Yuba City Unified School District, the varsity football team was forced to forfeit the rest of its season after some athletes were video recorded appearing to sell their Black teammates in a “slave auction."

In response, school Superintendent Doreen Osumi said that the auction appeared organized and suggested that the students planned the situation without considering that it was “disgraceful.”

California is one of those 42 states.

Such racist vulgarities, in New Hampshire, North Carolina, and California — and in other jurisdictions too numerous to list — aren't disgraceful; they're racist.

They are who many Americans are; that is what festers in the hearts of many of our fellow citizens and reflects, I believe, in 2022, an America where the demonization, marginalization and disenfranchisement of minority communities and communities of color not only continues but is increasingly embraced.

Afraid of losing privilege, scared their children might learn an unexpurgated history of a nation that from 1619 — from 1776 — prospered on the backs of enslaved peoples and the theft of land and genocide of Indigenous peoples, white communities around the nation, fearful of losing their privilege are becoming increasing aggressive in trying to inhibit consideration of diverse, equitable and inclusive American perspectives.

Let's be clear: Children learn to be racists — or to become complicit with racism — from families, friends and unfettered social media, not from teachers trying to contextualize complex historical narratives.

Let's be clear: Children learn to be racists from parents who fly Confederate flags from their pickup trucks, from those who fear people who don't look and pray like them, from those who believe opportunity in America is a zero sum game.

It's always about race, and one of the most pernicious and persistent narratives promoted by white supremacists and Christian nationalists — promoted by too many parents, pastors and pundits who value prejudice and tradition over truth and enlightenment — is that not all of humanity is created equal.

Last week, at a Donald Trump rally in Nevada, one of his acolytes, Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, actually compared American descendants of enslaved people to criminals.

Last week, in front of an overwhelmingly white and supportive crowd, Tuberville ranted that Democrats "want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparations because they think the people that do the crime are owed that. Bulls---! They are not owed that."

Those are the Americans from whom too many students learn. They don't learn hate from Critical Race Theory; they learn hate from believers in the so-called Lost Cause, believers in "Great Replacement Theory," from unrepentant white supremacists. 

Too often they learn too well. 

They learn from antisemites marching in Charlottesville, from massacres by domestic terrorists at El Paso, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, marketplaces, from the slaughter, by unrepentant racists, of worshippers at Mother Emanuel Church in Charlottesville, South Carolina, and at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

They learn from the insurrectionists, seditionists and racists who tried to overthrow our democratic republic on Jan. 6, 2021.

Today, those infections of racism, those falsehoods of cruelty and violence being transmitted from Charlottesville and the U.S. Capitol, from Manchester's Trinity High School to Trump rallies in Nevada, thrive because too many are comfortable in their privilege and pulpits while too many others are silent, afraid to step forward believing that all people are created equal.

If we don’t confront the legacies of our past these racist stories that don't “reflect who we are” will continue to expose the truth of our failings, whether we “study” our history or not. If we don't confront America's original sins of slavery and genocide, if we don't fully narrate the truth of our struggle to fulfill the aspirational promise of America that all people are created equal, we will be depriving all our children the possibility of leading lives illuminated by more opportunity, truth and beauty than what preceded them.

Robert Azzi, a photographer and writer who lives in Exeter, can be reached at theother.azzi@gmail.com. His columns are archived at theotherazzi.wordpress.com.