Sorry, but ‘Gone With the Wind’ is not a history book – Roll Call

Why? Because for all the chest-thumping toughness so many Americans brag about, apparently white students are too fragile to hear the truth, or see the pictures on prized postcards that treated lynchings as entertainment for the whole family, an indictment of more than a few rogue racists.

Black students, of course, subject to disproportionate school suspensions, stereotypical assumptions from teachers and keen scrutiny by law enforcement on their way to and from, and sometimes in, the classroom, know all too well that the problems they face stretch back 400 years and more. But the laws being passed and pushed in states across the country no surprise dont have them in mind.

For those making and debating these rules,in statessuch as Idaho, Tennessee,Oklahoma, Texas and Arkansas, creating an alternate reality, a version that resembles a Disneyfied diorama, is fine even if it is false, as long as it accommodates white feelings and gives in to white fears.

How will these laws be enforced? Government monitors? Would a fine be imposed if a teacher steps over some vague line? Well, yes,in Arizona,the penalty could be $5,000. If a curious student asks a question, will the teacher no longer be allowed to answer?

The late Rep. John Lewis, brave and persistent, who endured brutal beatings as a consequence of his civil rights activism including his part in the Freedom Rides would seem to be someone Americas students could look up to. But Im doubtful his march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 would make it past the curriculum censors since his attackers were agents of the state, enforcing unjust laws that prevented African Americans from voting, from living a free life.

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Sorry, but 'Gone With the Wind' is not a history book - Roll Call