Old Times There Are Not Forgotten

On Ruby Bridges’ birthday, let’s not lose sight of how White Republicans are trying to prevent children from learning about her contribution to American history. 🧵

Introducing the “Moms for Liberty” chapter of wealthy, White, Williamson County, TN, led by Robin Steenman. 1/ https://t.co/0JbNGxhpZm pic.twitter.com/u8R56UE0OW

— Sam Hoadley-Brill (@deonteleologist) September 9, 2021

These people are full-bore insane. They are also quite  familiar to someone who grew up in the south 60 years ago. White people been passing on “how to be white.” It never stopped; it never slowed down.

2nd graders are assigned Ruby Bridges’ very own, “Ruby Bridges Goes to School.”

Moms for Liberty call for the book to be banned: “Shows the oppression of people of color, and demonizes whites. Causes shame for young impressionable white children to read this dark history.” 3/

— Sam Hoadley-Brill (@deonteleologist) September 9, 2021

Ruby Bridges is my age. Everything she accomplished, everything she started, these white women want to stop, to undo. And most of them look young enough to be my daughter, rather than my contemporary.

Several other texts are condemned for allegedly “paint[ing] white people in a negative light,” for “show[ing] division along racial lines,” and the dubious claim, repeated throughout, that “[the author’s] narrative is reducing people down to their race.”

Rufo, is that you? 5/

— Sam Hoadley-Brill (@deonteleologist) September 9, 2021

This is an excellent example of how White people take whiteness to be racelessness. The idea that a child, in picking out a doll (of SOME skin color or other) could somehow be “colorblind” literally makes no sense unless there’s no racial diversity (colorblind white supremacy) 7/ https://t.co/SiGP9LEnXs

— Sam Hoadley-Brill (@deonteleologist) September 9, 2021

"White is raceless." It's true. It’s what these people think. Nice way to blame everyone else for your racism, and never be racist yourself.

Even the attempts to malign the teacher are embarrassingly transparent. These parents couldn’t handle a teacher exposing the hard truth about the vile history of how White people treated Black and Native Americans, and how an insistence on colorblindness obfuscates that history. pic.twitter.com/27n1LRfYW1

— Sam Hoadley-Brill (@deonteleologist) September 9, 2021

.@ProfTDParry gives an excellent, concise review of other remarkable Black Americans from the South whose legacies are excluded from the mainstream narrative of American history in most K-12 schools, just as M4L is now attempting to do to Bridges. 11/ https://t.co/4eu0QOlARh

— Sam Hoadley-Brill (@deonteleologist) September 10, 2021

I wasn’t taught the true horrors of slavery in school, but I remember a CBS special on American history and race when I was a child which would have some today screaming about how bad it made the children feel. (It’s always the children. The fundamental dynamic of family law cases: the children are the battlefields, not the true object of concern. No one thinks of the children, they can only think of themselves.) I did read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. That was enough to make me feel bad in high school. But feeling bad can be the beginning of understanding truth.

 I met a very angry black woman in seminary, who made me feel many things about myself, including anger and shame. She taught me many things I needed to know about “whiteness,” about race in America, about racism. She taught me to understand her anger.

 I understand myself as a racist now, not because I am irredeemable or full of hate, but because American culture is and has been racist since Columbus landed and started enslaving the natives. I was raised in that culture. I don’t hate myself, I don’t think I’m evil, but I know I see people in racial categories, through a racist lens. It’s the way I was raised to understand the world.  Understanding that has helped me understand how not to be a racist.

But I’m not a racist the way these people are. “American Girls” is racist because some of the dolls are not “white”? These people don’t deserve the respect of an audience. Frighteningly, they are getting one. And I don’t mean just on Twitter.