Just can't take the race out of the Tulsa Race Massacre

A couple of months ago, it was the state of Florida going bonkers about "Critical Race Theory," which in Florida parlance apparently means any mention of race at all. So in their frenzy to make sure that little white kids wouldn't feel bad about something their grandparents, or great-grandparents, or wayer way back antecedents may or may not have done, some Florida school districts stripped biographies of Jackie Robinson and Rosa Parks off their school library shelves.

I guess because it's kind of hard to read about Jackie Robinson breaking the baseball color line without risking some kiddo asking why there was a color line and/or being subjected to learning about the insults, cat-calling, death threats, beanballs, and spitting incidents that Jackie Robinson had to withstand because he was a Black man.

And Rosa Parks? Hard to tell that story without getting into Jim Crow laws as interpreted by the city bus line in Montgomery, Alabama.

Some editors stepped in and tried to save the day by redoing the Rosa Parks story so it wouldn't be quite so "offensive." In one - the most extreme - revision, Rosa Parks is asked to give up her seat on the bus, but she bravely refused. No mention of why Rosa was asked to give up that particular seat and move to the rear of the bus, thus stripping the bio of all meaning. (What was going to happen in that classroom if some kid asked about who was hassling Rosa and why? How was the teacher supposed to respond if they couldn't explain things like segregation in public transportation. Or, if anything else came up, about segregation in schools and in drinking fountains and in hotels and in housing. If they couldn't mention what a lunch counter sit in was for. Or why James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were killed as they tried to register voters in Mississippi. Or why Emmett Till was murdered.)

And now there's the Oklahoma Secretary of Education stepping into it with a clumsy remark about the Tulsa Race Massacre that suggested that it should/could/would be taught in Oklahoma schools without necessarily branding those who participated in it as racists.

Now, the Tulsa Race Massacre is one of the most horrifying and shameful race-based incidents ever recorded in American history.

So on reading about Ryan Walker's comments, heads in the liberal chattersphere started to explode. Including mine. 

Here's what Walker said in response to a question at a Republican forum about whether teaching about the Tulsa Race Massacre was, in fact, teaching Critical Race Theory, which is verboten in Oklahoma. (Verboten although poorly defined and poorly understood. CRT is an academic framework for thinking about racism and whether its systemic, but the rightwing outrage machine has conflated it with pretty much any thinking about or discussion of race. Thus we can't mention that Rosa Parks couldn't sit where she wanted to sit on that Montgomery bus because she was Black.)

“I would never tell a kid that because of your race, because of the color of your skin, or your gender or anything like that, you are less of a person or are inherently racist. That doesn’t mean you don’t judge the actions of individuals. Oh, you can. Absolutely, historically, you should. ‘This was right. This was wrong. They did this for this reason.’ But to say it was inherent in that because of their skin is where I say that is Critical Race Theory. You’re saying that race defines a person.” (Source: KFOR)

Walker - depending on how you want to look at it - either clarified his remark or backtracked given the pushback when, a few days after the initial affront, he said:

“I am referring to individuals who carried out the crime. They didn’t act that way because they were white, they acted that way because they were racist...I mean, the facts of the day really are not much of any question. Those individuals acted that day during the Tulsa Race Riot. They had evil, racist intentions and murdered people then our students should be able to learn from that history.”

I'm not especially inclined to give an Oklahoma right-winger the benefit of the doubt. And even by Oklahoma standards, Walker is right out there, advocating for the promotion of Christianity in the classroom and displays of the Ten Commandments in order to "restore morality," and dubbing LBGTQ themes "demented morality." Not to mention that this is a pretty mealy-mouthed, contorted hairsplitter of a walk back.

But I'll concede that he's was not originally saying that the Tulsa Race Massacre had nothing to do with race. 

So I'm just happy that students, in Oklahoma and elsewhere, will be allowed to learn about the Tulsa Race Massacre, and hopefully not in a distorted way. It sure wasn't taught when i was a kid. I came of age in the Civil Rights Era, so knew all about Jim Crow, Selma, the little girls bombed in Birmingham, Medgar Edgars, Fannie Lou Hamer, school desegregation, sit ins, fire hoses, and attack dogs. But I don't believe I'd ever heard of the Tulsa Race Massacre until a few years ago, and learned more about it in 1921, when its 100th anniversary was observed. (I posted about here.)

There's no getting around the fact there there are just some parts of American history that are just plain shameful. There's also a lot that's great. C.f., the Declaration of Independence; the fact that immigrants and their progeny really can become bona fide Americans; innovation and creativity aplenty. 

But the good, the bad, and the ugly. We can and should be teaching it all.