That book looks effin’ awesome. I just previewed it and now I want to read it.
But.
To be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t assign that book to middle schoolers myself without consulting with school administration.
The book starts off with a graphic description of the author’s experience in 1908 of seeing the fatal lynching of a Black teenager at the hands of a white mob when he was falsely accused of raping a white girl. The n-word and other epithets are freely quoted.
I think it’s disgraceful if school administrators are trying to suppress or ban this book entirely because of stupid “CRT” panic or anything like that, natch. But if all they’re doing—and from the linked Twitter thread, I can’t really tell exactly what they’re doing—is requiring some extra scrutiny on the assignment of the book to students due to its potentially traumatic content, then based on what I know now (which is of course extremely incomplete and may well be incorrect), no matter how Stupid Republican they are, I’d be inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt about it.
I think that’s exactly the kind of thing middle schoolers should be assigned to read. It’s important that children understand the history of racism in this country so that they can confront it when it rears its ugly head as it has done in the past 15 years.
I completely agree. But I wouldn’t have a problem with teachers and administrators saying “you know, this book is talking about some pretty heavy shit, we need to present it thoughtfully and maybe have some traumatic-content warnings as appropriate.”
I bought the e-book and just finished reading right through it, heartily recommend! Hope the students at George Dawson Middle School get the same chance.
Mehmet Oz: campaign spokesperson: "“If John Fetterman had ever eaten a vegetable in his life, then maybe he wouldn’t have had a major stroke and wouldn’t be in the position of having to lie about it constantly.”
What I’m looking forward to, what with all these book-bannings, anti-science laws, and anti-history laws, is when students who graduate from these idiotically-run states find out they cannot get into a reputable, or even accredited, university thanks to their lack of education.
It’s weird that “crudite’” is the thing everyone is latching on, rather than his random thrashing about the produce section looking for things to be outraged about in a supermarket he can’t name properly and also the salsa thing.
I’ve never seen an explanation of what they were actually going for with that bit, but I firmly believe that introducing the guac, salsa, and tequila was an effort by his staff to “reach out to the Hispanic voters.” Too bad they didn’t go for the “reach out to the black voters” by going to find some fried chicken and watermelon.