A line of textbooks aimed at teaching students current events has been targeted by right-wing media because it happens to address the complex issues raised by Black Lives Matter.
Right-wing radio personality Larry Elder criticized the book on Fox News as means of “indoctrinating” black kids and “teaching them they are victims.” The Daily Caller took the textbook as a sign that it was “never too early to teach young children to revel in racial discord fomented by radical intellectuals who believe American society is hopelessly and structurally oppressive.”
The forthcoming book, to be released by the Minnesota-based ABDO publishing, is part of a series on current events for middle schoolers. Other topics in the series include ISIS, transgender rights, the vaccination debate, and the Ebola outbreak. Like many educational materials these days, it advertises itself as compliant with Common Core educational standards.
The book is authored by local Missouri journalist Sue Bradford Edwards, a white woman, and Duchess Harris, a black woman and American studies professor at Macalester College. The book covers some major events that have inspired the Black Lives Matter movement, from Trayvon Martin to Freddie Gray.
In an interview with ThinkProgress, Harris dismissed right-wing media’s alarm, saying “They do not have a copy of the book, so they have not seen the book.”
She said she was inspired to do the book because of what she’d been hearing from other parents. “It is important for it to be in the classroom. I was interviewed on public TV on Friday. I was explaining I have a lot of white friends who approach me who asked what could they use to facilitate these conversations [about Black Lives Matter],” she said. “I’m black, my husband’s black, my kids are black. They don’t need a guidebook. It’s those other parents who do.”
Though many have suggested that the content is inappropriate for middle school students, Harris pointed out that as a professor at a college, she’s often surprised at how little her disproportionately white students know about race issues in America. They often have a surface-level knowledge of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, but know little else. “People are concerned about talking about contemporary race relations,” she said.
She said teaching these events can be challenging, especially as current events have already overtaken some aspects of the book. “I was very disappointed that Sandra Bland wasn’t in the book, but we had already gone to press,” she said in her local TV interview.
Harris also said there’s already been early interest from schools in St. Paul to use the book in classrooms, though the book will be distributed nationally.
But the subject matter isn’t the only thing that could make the book polarizing in local school districts. Its adherence to Common Core standards have been demonized by right-wing politicians. Though the voluntary program of state-based standards initially enjoyed broad, bipartisan support, just 19 percent of Republicans view Common Core standards favorably.