Join the Librotraficante Caravan of Banned Books in #ATX Tomorrow to the Texas State Capitol—Friday, April 29, 2022

 Friends:

Tony Diaz, the famous “Librotraficante,” or book smuggler, has turned his sights on his very own Texas after having smuggled books to Arizona when the Tucson Unified School District dismantled the Mexican American Studies program in 2010, resulting in a court case in which I and others testified that was ultimately won in 2017. (Note: I have covered all of this amply on this blog; keyword search the following to learn more: “Mexican American Studies (MAS),” “TUSD Ethnic Studies,” “Tony Diaz,” and “Librotraficante.”)

Now in light of banned books in Texas, he and his colleagues are looking to smuggle books into different places, including Austin. Here is his Austin schedule in the event that you want to join us tomorrow as we openly challenge the attack on our history and the censorship of books in the schools.

—At 2:00 PM, Librotraficante Underground Library, Palm Park 200 N IH-35 frontage road, 5B (also known as “Palm School”)

—At 3:00 PM, March for Cultura (from Palm Park to the Capitol, along Cesar Chavez St. to Congress St., to the State Capitol Building). 

—At 3:30 PM, Austin State Capitol

—At 5:00 PM Refreshments, Raul Salinas

—At 8:00 PM (Teatro) ¡Estar Guars!: A May The Fourth/Cinco De Mayo Comedy Fiesta, 600 River St, Austin, TX 78701-4218, United States

Like Librotraficante on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Librotraficante

Follow Tony Diaz on Radio Show 90.1FM KPFT: https://www.tonydiaz.net/radio

He is also a reporter for Fox 26 News Houston: https://www.fox26houston.com/

Check out the wonderful piece on him below by Alejandro Serrano in the Houston Chronicle, as well. I won’t have a revolution if I can’t dance, my friends. Looking forward to good times tomorrow!

-Angela Valenzuela

‘Book smugglers’ plan caravans from Houston, San Antonio to start underground library for banned books

Alejandro Serrano, Staff writer | Houston Chronicle | April 27, 2022

Librotraficante members Tony Diaz and Liana Lopez try to decide which sign to make into a large poster on Tuesday, April 19, 2022, in Houston. The group of activists plans to use signs and posters later this month at a rally in Austin, following a caravan from Houston, against recent efforts to ban books in the state.

 

Godofredo A. Vásquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

A decade ago, Tony Diaz and four other Latinos organized a caravan to deliver forbidden books and history to Tucson, Ariz., where a Mexican-American studies program had been banned from schools.

The “book smugglers” return this week, spurred by the wave of book challenges and bans that has spread across the country over the last year, with some parts of Texas leading the charge.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Texas has seen a surge in requests to pull books from schools. Here are Houston's numbers so far

The Librotraficantes, which translates to book traffickers, plan to lead a pair of caravans loaded with banned books to Austin from Houston and San Antonio Friday with a similar mission to 10 years ago: spread the words others have sought to suppress.

“I am hoping that this is going to open the eyes of our community members,” said Diaz, who 24 years ago founded Nuestra Palabra, which started as a group of Latino writers and has evolved into a mission to promote Latino literature and culture. “This is not a one-shot deal. We proved that we are here for decades-long work. We’ve proven that, but now this movement is a response to the movement that is trying to silence voices.”

The caravans, organized in partnership with LULAC Texas, are in response to a spate of attempts to remove books from school libraries across Texas and the nation. In the Houston region, school districts so far mostly have avoided mass challenges that have occurred elsewhere, but still have recorded an increase in requests for book reviews. Last week, the ACLU of Texas accused Katy, Klein and San Antonio’s North East ISDs of violating students’ First Amendment rights by removing dozens of books and, in some instances, not following designated review procedures.

The American Library Association tracked the most attempts to ban books last year — 729 challenges to library, school and university materials — since it began 20 years ago compiling a list of such efforts.

In Texas, state officials have emboldened such efforts. Gov. Greg Abbott put educators in the cross-hairs, essentially accusing them incorrectly of stocking porn in school libraries, among other attacks.

COMPLAINTS: Books challenged in Houston schools are 'contrary to everything Christian', promote BLM

State Rep. Matt Krause, R-Fort Worth, chairman of the House General Investigating Committee, sent a list of some 850 books — many of which explored LGBTQ issues — to school districts, asking if the titles were on their shelves.

The moves helped spur the return of the Librotraficantes, who already were thinking of marking the 10-year anniversary of the original caravan.

“Honestly, I thought we were just going to mark the anniversary,” Diaz said. “But the book bans are back.”

Since the original caravan to Arizona, a federal judge ruled in 2017 the state had violated Mexican-American students’ constitutional rights by ending the successful ethnic studies program, writing in an opinion that the enactment and enforcement of the ban was “motivated by racial animus.”

To Diaz, a writer who switched from fiction to nonfiction around the time Arizona enacted the ban because he figured he “can’t make this stuff up anymore,” the ruling was a victory. He also believes the current attacks on history have been informed by that success, as well as the success of the 2012 caravan.

So, he and the Librotraficantes have organized again.

On HoustonChronicle.com: How did 400 Katy ISD parents get a book removed? Accusations of Marxism and 'critical race theory.'

Friday’s events are expected to start with a morning press conference in Houston before some 45 individuals board a bus to Austin, where it will meet the bus from San Antonio at Palm Park. There they will launch an underground library with about 200 donated books, to start. The group, Diaz said, will give some of the books to La Peña, a cultural organization and art gallery that will serve as their steward.

“Literally, what it means is it will be a bookshelf with those books and then the stewards decide: Do they just lend them out, do they give them away,” Diaz said. “When they run out, they need to tell us.”

In the afternoon, The Librotraficantes plan a procession of banned books on Cesar Chavez Street to Congress Avenue en route to the capitol in a “March for Cultura.”

The group also plans to honor six Latina icons — among them Dr. Angela Valenzuela, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who had testified in a case cited by the federal judge who overturned Arizona’s law — in hopes of inspiring their recognition in Austin, Diaz said.

The whole plan came together in a matter of weeks, Diaz said, following a conversation about the 10th anniversary of the Tucson caravan.

Liana Lopez, one of the other five original organizers who goes by Librotraficante Lilo, said it felt like the effort to ban Mexican American studies that spurred the first protest was a “testing ground” for the current, wider attacks on history.

“I don’t understand what is scary about history,” Lopez said. “The only way to heal is to heal ourselves first, and we have to be able to address what’s happened in the past in a way that is not scary.”

alejandro.serrano@chron.com

View Graphic with hyperlinks at http://www.librotraficante.com/

The Texas GOP has Declared War on Books. I've Seen This Before," by Lupe Mendez, the Texas Observer

Great read by librotraficante Lupe Mendez in this Texas Observer piece. Many of us have seen this before, as well.

As Yogi Berra famously said, "It's deja vu all over again."

With Arizona as the test case for how to respond to banned books, we need to re-ignite the Librotraficante movement in Texas again—but this time, for Texas instead of Arizona. 

So prescient of Librotraficante founder, Tony Diaz, who brought a lot of imagination and motivation to the fight over the dismantling of Mexican American Studies in the Tucson Unified School District back in 2010 that involved a court battle and subsequent victory. These struggles not only give us hope, but they chart a path toward success against those that would deny us our First and Fourteenth Amendment Rights to our precious knowledge and curriculum.

In the meantime, students must continue to gain access to the liberatory knowledge that they're being denied by fearful zealots and bullies. 

More immediately, we all need to show up to the SBOE the first week of April to get involved in the conversations taking place right now on the social studies standards for the state of Texas. 

El movimiento continua! The movement continues.

Sí se puede! Yes we can!

-Angela Valenzuela

The Texas GOP has Declared War on Books. I've Seen This Before," by Lupe  Mendez

Jan. 14, 2022

A decade ago, in March 2012, a group of writers, artists, educators, and activists banded together to combat the deplorable actions of Arizona’s state legislature. The state’s lawmakers had recently passed a bill making the teaching of “Ethnic Studies” illegal, along with banning courses that “promote resentment toward a race or class of people” and “are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.” The bill also created a list of banned books. Of the more than 80 books that were eventually added to the list, many of the authors were Black and Latinx.

The Arizona law was so restrictive that it made news here in Texas, where we created the Librotraficante Movement in order to highlight the attack on books, educators, and education by “conservative” politicians. Librotraficante means “book smuggler,” and that’s what we did: collect books in Texas and “smuggle” them to Arizona, where those same titles had been abruptly banned. We used all of our book nerd talents to create an old-school freedom ride, collecting 35 bus riders and caravanning to six cities: Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, Mesilla, Albuquerque, and Tucson. We collected more than 1,000 copies of Arizona’s banned books and disseminated them to community libraries through book bundles to Arizona high school students. The Librotraficante Movement has been crucial in giving a voice to students of color across the nation.  

A decade later, that work stays with you. Now the attacks are happening right here in the Lone Star State.

In the last legislative session, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 3, which banned the teaching of “critical race theory” in Texas classrooms. Governor Greg Abbott and other Texas Republicans have also called for bans of school library books that might make students “uncomfortable.” State Representative Matt Krause, a Fort Worth Republican, has named 850 books he’d like to see removed from libraries. Like in Arizona, the lists seem to target non-white and LGBTQ authors. This much is clear: The Republican Party intends to deny children access to books, authors and an education that would spur their intellectual growth. And in an effort to satisfy their base, Republicans in Texas are pushing away the one population that needs their attention the most: youth—and more pointedly—youth of color.

LUPE MENDEZ

 State Republicans’ run on libraries and classrooms comes as the state’s demographics continue to shift. In the 2019–2020 academic school year, Hispanic students accounted for the largest percentage of the state’s student enrollment with roughly 53 percent. White students made up only 27 percent of the student body; Black students represented 13 percent, and Asian students represented 5 percent. Each year Texas schools get more diverse, but the same can’t be said for the state legislature.  

It’s worth noting that at the same time the Legislature was cooking up Senate Bill 3, the body quietly shot down another bill that could have created a whole new set of possibilities for youth in Texas. House Bill 1504, filed by state Representative Christina Morales (D-Houston), would have allowed school districts to create an Ethnic Studies course as an alternative to World Geography and World History courses. The bill made no mandates but would have granted the thousands of school districts across the state the ability to adapt coursework to their specific student bodies. It was a beautifully fair bill that gained both Republican and Democratic sponsors. 

The bill couldn’t survive the state’s intensifying culture wars, however. It was placed on the Senate’s intent calendar in May before dying.  

That brings us to the present. For a playbook of how to combat the troubling new actions in Texas, I think back to the last days of the Librotraficante caravan. As we arrived in Tucson, where the school district had shut down a Mexican American Studies course, a few of us were assigned the task of sorting the more than 1,000 books amassed during the caravan. It was early morning—7:30 or so—when we noticed that a tiny group of teens had come by. They quietly approached to see the books and grabbed some, retreating without a word. Later, a young lady grabbed a book and took it away to the corner to read it. 

As the day went on, the young lady returned, saying, “Thank you for giving me this moment. I was just about to finish this book on the day the district personnel came to forcibly take the books away from us.” Wise beyond her years, she left us with some parting advice: “I want you to have this book back. Give it to somebody else. I hope somebody can learn from this book.”   

As an educator and a writer, those words were especially powerful. If you can get a kid to pick up a book that they haven’t seen in three months, then read it like it’s a sacred text—hell, you have witnessed all that is good in education. 

Now, 10 years later, I’m still a Librotraficante. And I’m ready to do it all over again.

Beautiful 2012 piece by Dr. Rudy Acuña. His powerful words on the purpose of Chicana and Chicano (or Mexican American) Studies still resonate. Liberation is simply not achievable without a vigorous life of the mind that a critical education provides. Expressed differently, literacy gets corrupted when it's about testing companies making tests, young people hopefully scoring highly on them, and even internalizing the results as saying something meaningful about them.

Once we relax these assumptions about students' test scores, we must ask not only why they have such a grip on both students' and educators' lives, but also what they say about students' education? 

Dr. Acuña provides some key insights that link pedagogy to the practice of freedom.

-Angela Valenzuela

Rodolfo F. Acuña: The purpose of Chicano Studies was “to liberate students through literacy”

By Rodolfo F. Acuña

June 13, 2012

LatinaLista

“Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.”
-Paulo Freire. Pedagogy of the Oppressed

I always start a meeting with the farm worker handclap in a tribute to University of Arizona Professor Mark Stegeman, the former president of the Tucson Unified School District, who as a pretext for eliminating the TUSD’s Mexican American Studies (MAS) Program, said that he went after MAS because after listening to Mexican Americans use the clap, he knew that Mexican American Studies was a cult. Stegeman’s statement proves my mother’s saying that “Para pendejo no se estudia. Se nace.”

I joined the struggle to Save Ethnic Studies in Arizona because the stupidity of xenophobes and their intent to destroy all the educational reforms that Mexican Americans have struggled for.

In this context I pay tribute to Paulo Freire who has become a legend so much so that we know the legend, but have contesting views of Freire. Our understanding of Freire and his relevance differ due to the fact that several generations separate us and time has a way of distorting reality. In other words, we do not have a common epistemological base, although we are all concerned with education.

Not everyone wants to be educated, however. The forces who benefit from the status quo want this generation to conform to their interests. Consequently, they see Freire as a subservice and worse, according to them, un-American. This is at the crux of the inquisition in Tucson.

When I first read Freire, it was in the context of another time. He was not a legend yet but one among other progressive educators.

The Sixties were a time when we wanted to transform society and create the underpinnings of a democratic and just society. Educators such as Freire were the antithesis of today’s “No Child Left Behind” which reduces learning to indoctrination with subject matter drilled into students.

Education today is reduced to “Roses are red and violets are blue” with no other answer acceptable.

As a junior high school teacher, my education included the great John Dewey who wrote, “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” The purpose of teaching was to educate – to motivate, to engage students to learn – and if they did not, it was your fault not theirs.

Dewey gave literacy a meaning beyond reading the bible. Dating back to the days of Plato and the birth of the notion of democracy literacy has been associated with citizenship.

An American myth is that what makes this nation exceptional is its commitment to public education. The reality is that while Massachusetts Bay Colony had schools, eligibility was limited to race – blacks and Indians could not attend them. As the nation developed, former colonies became states. Compulsory education became more common.

Yet this changed with the growth of cities and the growing number of immigrants; by the second half of the 19th century, education was neither compulsory nor available to the children of immigrants. Reformers fought for compulsory education for the newcomers and the various states passed compulsory education laws — California in 1874 and Texas in 1915. However, the laws were not enforced, especially in the case of migrant children.

As the number of Mexicans grew, organizations such as the Alianza Hispano-Americana and the League of United Latino American Citizens pressed for educational reform. After World War II, educators such as George I. Sánchez demanded better education for Mexican American children and advocated for pedagogies such as bilingual education.

In 1960, the median education of Mexicans in Texas was the third grade and in California the eighth. However, teachers knew that this was an illusion and that large numbers of Mexican Americans were functionally illiterate. They knew that the schools were not teaching Mexicans rather warehousing them.

Reformers were also motivated by Vatican II which began in 1962; it gave birth to Liberation Theology. The poor had the right to enjoy the bounties of the earth – salvation was communal.

This environment produced giants such as Ivan Illich who in 1960 established a center in Cuernavaca, Mexico — CIDOC (Centro Intercultural de Documentación). It was a watering hole for educators and intellectuals throughout the Americas. His books Deschooling Society and Tools of Conviviality were anchors.

Many educators, myself included, looked at a lasting transformation emanating from education. Literacy was not the possession of communism or any other ideology, although note was taken of Mao’s literacy campaign in China.

Educators knew that literacy had broken the isolation of Helen Keller, a blind child with a limited vocabulary. Words freed Keller and words made her a world intellectual.

It did not take much to look around the schoolyard and recognize students mired in poverty and hopelessness. Many would go to jail because of a lack of literacy. I remember teaching literature from Classic Comic Books and occasionally motivating students to read.

I remembered my mother who had been legally blind since the age of four reading the Encyclopedia Britannica peering through the largest magnifying glass I had ever seen. Although she could not help me, she wanted me to read.

In this context I read The Invisible Minority (NEA) in 1966. An essay by a 13 year-old Mexican girl caught my senses:

Me
To begin with, I am a Mexican. That sentence has a scent of bitterness as it is written. I feel if it weren’t for my nationality I would accomplish more. My being a Mexican has brought about my lack of initiative. No matter what I attempt to do, my dark skin always makes me feel that I will fail. Another thing that “gripes” me is that I am such a coward. I absolutely will not fight for something even if I know I’m right. I do not have the vocabulary that it would take to express myself strongly enough…

How could someone who looked at herself in this way learn?

I looked for inspiration to the work of humanist psychiatrist Frantz Fanon. His writings gave me goose pimples:

I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of language. To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.

When students created an opening in 1968 and 1969, I became part of the first wave of hires. The mission was to set up a Chicano Studies Department.

My epistemological underpinnings differed from most activists — I did not consider the disciplines to be at the core of Chicano Studies. For me, its purpose was to liberate students through literacy. Its purpose was pedagogical.

This discipline-pedagogy dialogue consumed the next forty-two years. No one seemed to be listening until one day I was invited to speak at the 12th Annual Institute for Transformative Education sponsored by the TUSD Mexican American Studies Department.

I had written about the Arizona-Sonoran Border and published Corridors of Migration (Arizona 2008).

In the early 2000s I accompanied Armando Navarro and others to the border to protest the growing violence against Mexican immigrants. But participating in this conference and witnessing their resurrection of Freire reminded me of an encounter I had had in the 1980s when I got a call to go up to La Paz, the United Farm Workers headquarters.

I was not thrilled at the prospect of spending time there, I was not into rabbit’s food. However, I greatly admired César Chávez.

Much to my surprise when I go there I was introduced to Paulo Freire; César and he were to have a special encuentro. César arrived late and immediately launched into dialectic on how he was in the middle of union business and as a poor man could only control his time so it was a duty to use that time for the union.

I had feared that César was going to get blown away. However, after he finished, Freire got up emotionally and pointed to him and said only one word “praxis.”

My emotions so overwhelmed me at Tucson that I too could only think of the word “praxis” when I met Sean and the MAS teachers. These people were teachers.

So when the “rose are red” people tried to eliminate them I had no other choice but to enlist.

In this struggle I have often recalled the words of Fanon,

Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit in with the core belief.
— Frantz Fanon (Black Skin, White Masks)

I understand this but as a teacher I also understand that everyone has the right to be “Me” and feel proud of themselves. Roses can be blue and violets red.

Dr. Rodolfo Francisco Acuña, called the “father of Chicano Studies,” is a historian, professor emeritus, activist and the author of 20 titles, 32 academic articles and chapters in books, 155 book reviews and 188 opinion pieces. Currently, he teaches Chicano Studies at California State University, Northridge.

Check this out, everybody. We're headed into the Dark Ages given how Medieval this is. So reminiscent of the Arizona Department of Education that banned books in the wake of the dismantling of the Mexican American Studies (MAS) program in the Tucson Unified School District in 2010.

Readers of this blog might remember  that in May 2001, State Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal called for the Arizona Department of Education to conduct an evaluation of the literature that had been used in the MAS classrooms. I read the review and discovered just how shoddy it was and how it was indeed a witch hunt that served as a justification, however incorrect and tortuous, that the program was in defiance of ARS 15-112 as follows:

15-112. Prohibited courses and classes; enforcement

A. A school district or charter school in this state shall not include in its program of instruction any courses or classes that include any of the following:

1. Promote the overthrow of the United States government.

2. Promote resentment toward a race or class of people.

3. Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.

4. Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.

Like Senate Bill 3, this is the reincarnation Arizona State Policy. We'll see if they go as far as actually banning these books. 

I hope not. But these guys have little imagination left for how they can win their races, especially when providing greater resources to children in our public schools, helping low-income people survive this economy, or bringing and end to environmental destruction caused by Texas' oil and gas industry never seem to register. And these should not require any imagination.

They require love, caring, and concern for fellow Texans and residents. One shouldn't hold political office if one doesn't love the people of Texas.

-Angela Valenzuela

Texas House committee to investigate school districts’ books on race and sexuality

State Rep. Matt Krause, a candidate for state attorney general, asked school superintendents to confirm whether any books on a list of 850 titles are in their libraries and classrooms.

BY BRIAN LOPEZ OCT. 26, 20212 PM CENTRAL

His list of titles includes bestsellers and award winners alike, from the 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Confessions of Nat Turner” by William Styron and “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates to last year's book club favorites: “Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot” by Mikki Kendall and Isabel Wilkerson's “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.”

But race is not the only thing on the committee chair’s list. Other listed books Krause wants school districts to account for are about teen pregnancy, abortion and homosexuality, including “LGBT Families” by Leanne K. Currie-McGhee, “The Letter Q: Queer Writers’ Notes to their Younger Selves” edited by Sarah Moon, and Michael J. Basso’s “The Underground Guide to Teenage Sexuality: An Essential Handbook for Today’s Teens and Parents.”

Krause, a Fort Worth lawmaker and founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, is running for state attorney general against Ken Paxton. Krause declined to comment and no explanation was given as to how these books were chosen.

Krause sent notice of the investigation to Lily Laux, the Texas Education Agency deputy commissioner of school programs, as well as some Texas school superintendents. His letter did not specify which school districts Krause was investigating.

Krause informs districts they must provide the committee with the number of copies they have of each book, on what part of campus those books are located and how much money schools spent on the books, as well as information on any other book that violates House Bill 3979, the so-called “critical race theory law”designed to limit how race-related subjects are taught in public schools. Critical race theory, the idea that racism is embedded in legal systems and not limited to individuals is an academic discipline taught at the university level. But it has become a common phrase used by conservatives to include anything about race taught or discussed in public secondary schools.

The law states a teacher cannot “require or make part of a course” a series of race-related concepts, including the ideas that “one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex” or that someone is “inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive” based on their race or sex.

School officials have until Nov. 12 to respond. It is unclear what will happen to the districts that have such books.

The letter did not give a specific reason that Krause was launching the investigation, only that “the committee may initiate inquiries concerning any ‘matter the committee considers necessary for the information of the legislature or for the welfare and protection of state citizens.’”

Lake Travis Independent School District officials received the letter and are trying to figure out what the next steps are, a spokesperson said. Officials in that Austin-area school district are speaking with other school districts to figure out what this means for them. In nearby Round Rock Independent School District, the district spokesperson, Jenny Caputo, texted that it will "take significant staff time to gather the information to reply to this request." The district's legal team is still reviewing the request.

State Rep. Victoria Neave, D-Dallas, who is vice chair of the committee, said she had no idea Krause was launching the investigation but believes it’s a campaign tactic. She found out about the letter after a school in her district notified her.

“His letter is reflective of the Republican Party's attempt to dilute the voice of people of color,” she said.

Neave said she doesn’t know what Krause is trying to do but will investigate the motive and next steps.

The TEA and the rest of the Committee on General Investigating members did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, said it doesn’t surprise him that Krause has taken initiative on a conservative item, especially since there is crowded field in the Texas attorney general race.

“He's not well known statewide, and so he needs to put down a pretty tall conservative flag to get notice,” Rottinghaus said. “As a political statement, it certainly conveys the clear message that the Republicans are watching.”

Rottinghaus said he doesn’t recall a time in recent memory when legislatures have taken the role of investigating school districts.

“The monitoring of this definitely is a political statement and so the fact that the legislature is attentive to it definitely implies that they're not going to drop the issue,” he said.

Jim Walsh, an attorney who often represents school districts, pointed out there is nothing in the law that says books must be removed and Krause’s investigation also doesn’t call for books to be removed. For now, it’s up to school districts to decide how they will respond, but what’s certain is that it will add more workload to Texas schools that are already struggling from the effects of the pandemic.

Texas State Teachers Association President Ovidia Molina said in a statement that the investigation is a “witch hunt” and that nothing in state law gives lawmakers the right to go after educators.

“This is an obvious attack on diversity and an attempt to score political points at the expense of our children’s education,” she said.

Krause’s investigation comes after several school districts across the state removed books from libraries because of parental outcry.

Earlier this month, the Carroll Independent School District board in Southlake reprimanded a fourth grade teacher who had an anti-racist book in her classroom after a parent complained about it last year.

Then, in a separate incident this month, a Carroll ISD administrator asked teachers to provide materials that presented an “opposing” perspective of the Holocaust in an effort to comply with HB 3979. The law, which comes with little to no guidance, has caused confusion and fear among teachers and administrators, who have seemingly misinterpreted the law.

In the Katy Independent School District, a school removed a book after parents claimed it promoted “critical race theory,” which the district later found to be untrue and reinstated the book.

Disclosure: Texas State Teachers Association and University of Houston have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

Today It’s Critical Race Theory. 200 Years Ago It Was Abolitionist Literature. The common denominator? Fear of Black liberation.

History repeats itself. One should indeed go back 200 years to learn about the banning of abolitionist literature, but don't forget that it was only 9 years ago on January 10, 2012 when the Tucson Unified School District Board dismantled the Mexican American Studies program, banning not just courses, but also books as I've posted on this blog, e.g., The Banned Books List for Arizona Ethnic Studies (search "banned books" on this blog for more information).

I researched the impact of Arizona on the Mexican American Studies advocacy community here in Texas—of which I am a part—and found that what happened in Arizona surrounding Mexican American Studies is what inspired us in 2013 to organize what is today the contemporary Ethnic Studies Movement in Texas. I predict that this conservative movement—under the banner of "Critical Race Theory"—will ultimately fail as have all previous attempts.

The main difference today from years and decades past is greater awareness of our country's possessive investment in its racist, classist, sexist, and homophobic ways of knowing and being that underlie the violence we've witnessed against dark-skinned people for much too long. We undoubtedly share a common humanity such that these dispositions are simply neither desirable nor sustainable. 

What the larger advocacy community must learn from all of this, as well, is the interconnectedness of these struggles in order to build unity and a shared sense of purpose for collective action. Many of us are having this very conversation right now here in Texas.

Así es...and there is no better time than now to advocate for a good and just education that disavows hostile, domineering, and dehumanizing ways of knowing and being in the world.

Sí se puede! Yes we can!

-Angela Valenzuela

Today It’s Critical Race Theory. 200 Years Ago It Was Abolitionist Literature.

The common denominator? Fear of Black liberation.

ANTHONY CONWRIGHTSEPTEMBER+OCTOBER 2021 ISSUE

by Anthony Conwright | Sept.-Oct. 2021 | Mother Jones

There have been many contributions to help make sense of the Republican obsession with critical race theory, a framework developed some 40 years ago to analyze the ways racism is endemic to our laws and policies. Conservatives have decided it’s a domestic threat, and, as of this writing, 11 states have already banned teaching it in public schools. But perhaps the best explanation for the hysteria is in a journal entry written on April 7, 1829, by a schoolteacher named Susan Nye Hutchison, who lived in Augusta, Georgia, and whose diaries illuminate a quarter century of life before the Civil War. “Great fear begins to be prevalent that the negroes are about to rise,” Hutchison wrote.

Georgians had experienced a spate of fires, as rumors of insurrection made the citizens of Augusta both negro- and pyro-phobic. Four days before Hutchison’s entry, another “terrible fire” burned about a third of the city, according to a contemporary news article. Estimated damages totaled half a million dollars, with nearly 350 homes destroyed. Hysteria ensued, and enslaved Black people were blamed, rounded up, and tried without evidence.

Months later, a pamphlet named the Appeal, David Walker’s polemic against slavery, emerged in the South. “My object is, if possible,” Walker, a free Black man, wrote, “to awaken in the breasts of my afflicted, degraded and slumbering brethren, a spirit of inquiry and investigation respecting our miseries and wretchedness.”

Southern politicians viewed Walker’s Appeal and its repudiation of their values as “incendiary,” a pyrotechnic of another kind. When Walker’s treatise reached his hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina, magistrate James McKee issued a warning to Gov. John Owen:

The dissemination of Walker’s pamphlet…[proves] beyond a doubt that a systematic attempt is making by some reckless persons at the North to sow sedition among the slaves [of] the South, and that this pamphlet is intended and well calculated to prepare the minds of the slave population for any measure, however desperate, that they may propose for accomplishing their emancipation…unless some measures are taken to counteract this design in time, I fear the consequences may be serious to the extreme.

North Carolina quickly passed two laws aimed at stemming slave rebellions by repressing the spread of abolitionist literature. An Act to Prevent the Circulation of Seditious Publications made it a felony to import and distribute “any written or printed pamphlet or paper…the evident tendency whereof would be to excite insurrection, conspiracy or resistance.” A second law banned “the teaching of slaves to read and write,” saying it “has a tendency to excite dissatisfaction in their minds and to produce insurrection and rebellion to the manifest injury of the citizens of this State.”

Walker’s Appeal also led to Georgia’s December 1829 anti-literacy law, which made circulating insurrectionary texts punishable by death. Virginia, Missouri, and others followed. As a Missouri state archive website puts it, the bans were deemed necessary because “an uneducated black population made white citizens feel more secure against both abolitionists and slave uprisings.”

“This is a terrorist assault in our country, and rioting cannot be tolerated,” Ted Cruz said last year as citizens rebelled against police murder. Republicans had little scripture to demonize protests against the public torture and execution of George Floyd, so they deferred their anti-rebellion rhetoric into new laws against looting, property damage, and even protesting, suggesting that failing to do so would bring a conflagration that would consume the country. “These people are violent, domestic extremists,” Marco Rubio said. “They hate the police, they hate the government, and they want this country to fall apart…some of them want a second civil war.”

Anti-protest bills were an opening salvo against the Black Lives Matter rebellions, but there would be another volley. As demonstrators and their allies picked up How to Be an Antiracist, White Fragility, and other books—which helped them articulate demands to dismantle white supremacy, to rebel against state-sanctioned murder, to call for defunding police and obliterating qualified immunity—Republicans turned to locking down these texts and the ideas they carry.

From 2012 to 2019, critical race theory was mentioned on Fox News only four times. From June 2020 to May 2021, it was mentioned in 150 broadcasts. By July, it was 250 times a week. Christopher Rufo, a Manhattan Institute fellow who started banging the CRT drum on the network, was quite frank about how and why he’d engineered the upward trend. “The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory.’ We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans,” he tweeted in March.

In attacking the things they’ve labeled as critical race theory, Republicans are seeking to erase the entire contemporary genre of abolitionist oratory. Critical race theory, diversity training, anti-­racism, DEI, discussions of white fragility, Nikole Hannah-Jones and her New York Times 1619 Project—to them, it’s all interchangeable jargon in the Black Lives Matter anthem, seditious lyrics that prelude uprisings against the proper order of things. This campaign to annihilate anti-­racist speech is not only the ideological offspring of the laws banning abolition literature; it’s a ruse to veil their hatred and fear of Black Lives Matter rebellions.

Literacy among enslaved Africans was not always antithetical to slavery in the colonies. It was once permissible for the enslaved to read Bibles, but when colonists realized the skill could be a gateway to liberation, literacy was outlawed. The first anti-literacy legislation in the colonies was in the wake of South Carolina’s 1739 Stono Rebellion, led by the purportedly literate slave Jemmy and resulting in the death of some 25 white people, as many as 50 Black people, and the burning of at least six plantations. Afterward, the colony passed An Act for the Better Ordering and Governing Negroes and Other Slaves in This Province. The law contained a bevy of provisions to keep enslaved Africans in “subjection and obedience,” essentially ending manumission and prohibiting them from writing or growing their own food.

The fear of insurrection and rebellion—and the spread of thoughts and words that might fuel them—persists today. “Critical Race Theory teaches kids to hate our country and to hate each other. It is state-sanctioned racism and has no place in Florida schools,” said Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor. A bill he signed into law forbids teaching “that racism is not merely the product of prejudice, but that racism is embedded in American society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white persons.” It also says educators “may not define American history as something other than the creation of a new nation based largely on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.” The text echoes an op-ed article published in the Richmond Enquirer in 1856:

Every school and college in the South should teach that slave society is the common, natural, rightful and normal state of society. Any doctrine short of this contains abolition in the germ: for, if it be not the rightful and natural form of society, it cannot last, and we should prepare for its gradual but ultimate abolition…To teach such doctrines we must have Southern teachers and Southern school books. It is from the school that public opinion proceeds, and the schools should be set right. No teacher should be employed in a private family or public school at the South, who is not ready to teach these doctrines. Parents, trustees and visitors should look to this thing.

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon shared this prophecy on his podcast in May. “The path to save the nation is very simple—it’s going to go through the school boards.” That fight played out mercilessly at the University of North Carolina, where the conservative-­controlled board of trustees’ unprecedented obstructions to hiring Hannah-Jones caused her to walk away from a prestigious position on the journalism faculty.

Locally, parents have taken heed, turning school board hearings into tribunals to eradicate anti-racism. Elana Yaron Fishbein, founder of No Left Turn in Education, a grassroots movement against critical race theory, claimed in a letter to her district’s superintendent that such curricula “plan to indoctrinate the children into the ‘woke’ culture.”