最新杏吧原创

Some time back, it was soccer moms.

Last presidential election, it was suburban moms.

This cycle, it seems, public school parents are the target. Finally, I matter. I鈥檝e been a public school parent off and on for going on 30 years. Three decades of back-to-school nights, emails with teachers over lost assignments, meetings with principals over discipline issues, booster club meetings, chaperoned visits to the zoo. All of that work, and for once, I鈥檓 in the select focus group of voters who matter.

It鈥檚 always Republicans who come up with these things. Some consultant like Frank Luntz develops a poll-tested phrase. The national media runs with it, and Democrats, who can鈥檛 agree on what day it is, let alone which voters to target, play catch-up. The Affordable Care Act becomes 鈥淥bamacare.鈥� The safety net becomes 鈥渟ocialism.鈥� Environmental protections become 鈥渏ob-killing regulations.鈥� Rinse. Repeat.

Parents are the new goose that laid the golden election egg. Well, as Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of 鈥�,鈥� so aptly pointed out during a recent appearance on 鈥淢eet the Press,鈥� the actual target is white parents. More specifically, white parents who are aggrieved by racial equity 鈥� white parents who would convince a local school board to, for instance, ban the groundbreaking book, 鈥淭he Bluest Eye,鈥� by acclaimed American author Toni Morrison.

That鈥檚 what happened last week, as the Wentzville School Board voted 4-3, against the recommendation of a review committee, to ban Morrison鈥檚 masterpiece about a Black girl in the Great Depression dealing with racism and sexism, and struggling with her own self-worth.

In 1993, Morrison won the Nobel Prize in Literature for her full career of using language to challenge racial and gender stereotypes, as she did in her 1970 book that currently sits at No. 9 on the American Library Association鈥檚 list of . The ALA has been keeping statistics on such challenges since 1990, so while the current book-banning craze fueled by Republican fear-mongering over racial equity is dangerous, it鈥檚 not particularly new.

In 1994, as a parent, I was involved in beating back such an effort at my children鈥檚 elementary school in Colorado. A group of white parents who identified as Christians came to the school鈥檚 site-based management committee 鈥� I was a member 鈥� and asked us to remove a series of books from the school鈥檚 young adult readers鈥� section.

It鈥檚 almost quaint thinking back to those controversial days more than a quarter-century ago in light of the legislation pushed by Missouri Republicans calling for a so-called 鈥淧arental Bill of Rights鈥� to bring more transparency to public schools. As parents, we had then, and still do, all the things folks like Attorney General Eric Schmitt are pretending we don鈥檛 have now.

To read a book in the young adult section 鈥� books by R.L. Stine, Judy Blume, J.R.R. Tolkien 鈥� students needed a permission slip signed by their parents. The school district maintained a list of the books in that section, available to any parent. There was a well-established system by which a parent could protest the inclusion of a book 鈥� or any element of the curriculum 鈥� all the way up to the school board.

No books were banned at my kids鈥� school that year, but efforts like it happen in school districts and libraries every year.

There is an uptick in 2022 because Republicans are fueling a push to rewrite history, highlighted by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis鈥� effort to pass a bill that would ban any teaching about discrimination that would cause white people

Were she alive, Morrison would see the irony in the fact that the same Republicans who falsely called it censorship when Twitter and Facebook banned some politicians from using their platforms, now are pushing their own actual government censorship bills aimed at banning any content that brings them discomfort.

As Morrison said in her Nobel lecture so many years ago, the discomfort of language is the point.

鈥淲hether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek 鈥� it must be rejected, altered and exposed,鈥� . 鈥淚t is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language 鈥� all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.鈥�

Today鈥檚 Republican masters seek to erase history by first banning the very challenging language that opens our minds to new ideas. We parents, with our newfound voting-bloc power, need to rise up and make sure they don鈥檛 get away with it.