CRT in Mildred Taylor's Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry

UPDATED 6/24/21

I hear there's quite the brouhaha in this country over the "teaching" of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in our public schools. Who'd have thunk? 😐I should note that teaching is in quotes because I see CRT as more of a lens and a paradigm than a school subject. Update: I've since learned that "Classic Critical Race Theory" is a school subject in law school. I knew it was rooted in law, but thought that it was *just* a lens and not a course. I learned this from Kimberlé  Crenshaw.

Creator of term ‘Critical Race Theory’ Kimberlé Crenshaw explains what it really is https://t.co/KUMUv8dcC6 via @msnbc

— Stephen R. Flemming, Ed.D. (@kellygrade6) June 22, 2021

Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, whose name we don't hear enough of as she's the OG of CRT + education, summarizes, "...CRT actually attempts to make plain the racialized context of public and private spheres in our society" (Ladson-Billings, 2003). In education, she has and continues to look through this lens to "explicate new epistemological perspectives on inequity and social injustice" (Ladson-Billings, 2003).

In short, the social construction of race is woven tightly into the fabric of this country and the CRT looking glass seeks to make race's threads visible, including in education.

While there's lots of discussing and debating, I'm sitting here like, "the censoring of Black teachers, in particular, isn't new." What better way to censor Black educators than to fire them in the era post-Brown v. The Board. In fact, the very book that is the main subject of this post faced some backlash as noted in this letter to the Seminole County School Board in 2004. Taylor, herself, broaches the subject in her 1998 acceptance speech of the 1997 Alan Award.

This isn't to suggest that because this tale's as old as time that we shouldn't resist it. The exact opposite. I've also been thinking that it really doesn't matter to me what laws or policies are enacted, the lens through which I've experienced the world as a Black man and the history behind those experiences is what it is. I continue to learn and teach through that lens and that cannot be legislated out of me. 

Big ups to those K-20+ educators of all colors and stripes, honest resisters in Black and majoritarian media and politics, and those in other sectors who are pushing back. Black resistance isn't new. Black teachers' resistance isn't new. Dr. Jarvis Givens describes these Black teachers' resistance pedagogies as subversive or fugitive.  I suppose because it's  2021 and loathsomely blatant that it makes it all the more..."Wooooooow, y'all racist ratchet bigots really still in y'all feelins about Black existence and truth-telling!" One only need Google "1619 Project" to see how their tightly wound briefs really are in a knot.

All of that said...

The real reason why I'm here is because I thought of a particular event in Mildred D. Taylor's Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry published in 1976.

You may remember Mr. Granger, one of the primary racists and landowners, interrogating Mrs. Logan, in front of her class, about what she was teaching because he "don't see all them things you're teaching in here (the textbooks)." What things? She taught about how slavery was wicked and how whites and the country benefitted, and still do, off of free enslaved African labor. That's a critical look at white wealth accumulation via enslaved Black labor. 

Mama Logan simply replies, "That's because they're not in there."

"Well, if it ain't in here, then you got no right teaching it," since the books had been approved by the school board. Because, of course, school board approval is the standard, especially an all white southern one. 

Mama Logan tells him, "I can't do that."

"And why not?"

"Because all that's in that book isn't true."

Short story shorter, she was fired.

We will see that, if we haven't already. Teachers will be fired. I'm especially concerned for my colleagues who are non-unionized and in spaces where due process might be negligible at best. I suppose the question is, what will we do about it? I reckon the answer is, continue to fight, to teach, to tell the truth about the heinous genesis of this country. 

In the words of the late Ida B. Wells. "The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them."

Forgive my scribble. I cannot not read a book and not mess it up. I forget the year I did this scribbling.

"Mama's teaching got...her fired."

Did I really just APA this? lol

Yes.

Ladson-Billings, G. (2003). It's your world, I'm just trying to explain it: Understanding our epistemological and methodological challenges. Qualitative Inquiry, (9)1, 5-12 doi: 10.1177/1077800402239333

Taylor, M. D. (1976). Roll of  thunder hear my cry. New York, NY: Penguin Books USA, Inc.

Mildred Taylor's, "Let the Circle Be Unbroken"

For the xth time I'm reading the sequel to Mildred Taylor's, Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry. The book, Let the Circle Be Unbroken, picks up where the first book leaves off. With each rereading of books that I love, I get something different out them every time. With each rereading, I read with a different set of experiences based on which I form different opinions and draw different conclusions from previous readings of the books.

This is how reading and English classes should be; discussions of themes in literature based on the myriad experiences and background knowledge that students bring to the classroom. In this education reform era, teaching, much to our chagrin, has become everything but!!!

In any event, I didn't mean to go off on that tangent. My primary point was that this book deals with themes that we are very much experiencing today: race relations, unionism, the coming of age of a 14 year old black boy, unemployment, the role of strong women holding down households, etc.

Movies, videos, and games cannot capture the experiences that can be had in the reading of good quality books!!