Texas' book ban law isn't just bad. It's bad business. (Opinion), by Ed Nawotka, Houston Chronicle, Aug. 4, 2023

Here's a recent piece on Texas'  medieval “book ban law," or House Bill 900, that passed in the regular 88th (2023)Texas Legislative Session. The short of it is that banning books violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and is just plain bad for business—or as Molly Ivins used to say—"bid-ness," in Texas. This specific piece addresses the converting of some Houston Schools' libraries into detention centers referenced in the piece I just posted to this blog.

What distinguishes us as a democracy is freedom of speech, thought, and equal protection under the law. I wish those filing suit a successful day in court, beginning with a preliminary injunction hearing in Federal Court on August 18th here in Austin, Texas. If we can't win these battles in the legislature, we must turn to the courts.

-Angela Valenzuela

Texas' book ban law isn't just bad. It's bad business. (Opinion)

Ed Nawotka | Houston Chronicle

Aug. 4, 2023Updated: Aug. 4, 2023 2:36 p.m.

Valerie Koehler, owner of Blue Willow Bookshop, is part of a lawsuit aimed at stopping a law that would require bookstores to label books with sexual content.

Brett Coomer/Staff photographer

It is only fitting that the battle over House Bill 900, Texas’ new “book ban law," would start at the Alamo — or, to be more specific, across the street at the historic Menger Hotel. In April, more than 75 booksellers had gathered there to preview and celebrate the year’s forthcoming books. The star writer in the room that day was Houston’s Bryan Washington. Among those on hand to take it all in were more than a dozen new booksellers who have opened stores in the state in recent years, including David and Dara Landry, owners of CLASS bookstore.

The booksellers were concerned. The Texas Legislature was about to vote on and pass the new law that demands, in part, that “library material vendors,” including booksellers and publishers, create and implement a rating system for books sold to Texas schools and school libraries based on the book's “sexual” content. The intent, said lawmakers, was to protect children and keep pornography out of schools. (A cause that would be better served by taking away their phones and shutting off the school Wi-Fi.) The consequence of not doing so or getting the rating wrong, according to the state, is to be blacklisted from selling books to any Texas schools.

What’s ironic is that for all of Texas’ flag-waving talk about personal freedom, independence and freedom of speech, this law is akin to those in China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Turkey or Russia — all countries where the government controls what books can be published and put on sale.

That’s some nefarious company.

Something had to be done about this intimidation, the booksellers agreed. And the fight was on.Last week, Houston bookseller Valerie Koehler, owner of Blue Willow Bookshop joined Charley Rejsek, CEO of BookPeople bookstore in Austin, in filing a lawsuit in federal court to try and get the law struck down. The pair were joined in their case by the American Booksellers Association, the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund — a group that represents pretty much anyone and everyone who writes or sells you a book.

Their argument is that not only does the law violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments, but that it is vague, sweeping and, frankly, untenable. As Koehler put it to me for an article about the lawsuit in Publishers Weekly, “The hours, the payroll that it would require for us to check and rate every book we sell, and then do it retroactively for the all the books we’ve ever sold, as the law implies we must do, is just absurd. Our job is to sell, not rate, books.”

If you’re not familiar, Koehler’s store, Blue Willow, is nationally known and considered one of the best in the country. It runs hundreds of events a year, including numerous author visits to schools and three book festivals for children and teens, including Bookworm Festival, Tweens Read, and Teen BookCon. She estimates sales to schools account for 20 percent of her annual revenue. For bookstores that operate on extremely thin margins — 3 percent profit is considered good — this lost revenue could be catastrophic.

To call this law foolhardy is to be kind to it. It’s simply ignorant. Rejsek told me that in the debate on the floor of the Legislature the lawmakers presumed this would only impact a handful of vendors, 50 or so at most. Instead, it impacts hundreds. No company, not even Amazon, could comply with this law. It’s an exercise in existential bullying, simply put. Or maybe the lawmakers are hoping AI can step in and take over the job. 

The chilling effect of the law is already being felt. The Katy ISD school board has said that it will not put any new books in circulation until the books are reviewed for content. Expect this to be the case more and more often in other Texas counties. And sometimes, the educators themselves take the lead on curtailing access to books, such as new HISD superintendent Mike Miles who is converting the libraries of some challenged schools into centers where disciplined kids will be sent. That’s the way to promote a lifelong love of reading and literature: Equate being among books as punishment.One cannot help but think that the passage of HB 900 reeks of grandstanding and currying favor. Why go after booksellers and librarians, and not, for example, the large media and telecom companies that pump the internet and its trillions of sexually explicit (and worse, much, much worse) images and content directly onto our phones, iPads and computers? Could it be that this would, by extension, implicate every parent who ever bought their child a mobile phone? Or more likely lawmakers probably thought the bookish people were soft targets; after all, the tech companies have deep pockets and, let’s be frank, are pumping billions of dollars through the Texas economy. The booksellers? They don’t account for nearly as much.

What’s more, I suspect there’s a certain amount of self-congratulation among the politicians that they outsmarted the smarty-pants people. Readers are to be viewed as suspicious; after all, they might learn to think for themselves. This isn’t new: look up the late Houston comedian’s Bill Hick’s routine from the 1990s, “What are you reading for?” on YouTube.

Koehler and her colleagues in bookselling and publishing are fighting uphill. They also know that the only argument that politicians will listen to is one that concerns money. “To be honest, I never thought this law would pass. No one in their right mind did,” Koehler told me. “Clearly no one thought this through. In one of the most business-friendly states in America, this is one of the most business-unfriendly laws ever passed.”

A preliminary injunction hearing is being held in Austin on Aug. 18. What can you do to help in the fight? In the past, I might have told you to “write to your legislator.” But it appears our legislators don’t like to read and at this point, that option is passed.

Ideally, I’d urge you to go to Austin and show your support for our freedom to read in person. I know I’ll be there. But if that is not an option for you, how about this: Go to a bookstore. Talk to a bookseller. Ask for a recommendation. Buy the book. Read it. And repeat. You get extra points if you share it with your children, their teachers, friends and family.

It’s easy. That’s it. Buy books. Read. Repeat. Vote with your dollars. Then, when the time comes, vote the knuckleheads responsible for this out of office.

Ed Nawotka is a Houston-based writer and the international editor at Publishers Weekly.

Book banning totally needs to become the bad policy that it is. Most parents—and teachers and administrators—oppose schools becoming battlegrounds in our current culture war against books—a war characterized by shrill, exaggerated expressions of the books children are exposed to in schools.

I agree with author E. J. Dionne, Jr., that it should not at all be the case that the most upset parent can determine either a school's library holdings or what kids read in school, suggesting the need for parents and communities to step up to the plate and challenge this nonsense. Here are the most concerning observations Dionne offers:

A report by the freedom of expression group PEN America found 1,586 instances of individual books being banned between July 1, 2021, and March 31, 2022, affecting 1,145 unique book titles. In September, the American Library Association reported that there would be more challenges to books in 2022 than there were in 2021, which was a record year.

For more information, do check out PEN America's report titled, "Banned in the USA: Rising School Book Bans Threaten Free Expression and Students’ First Amendment Rights (April 2022). 

Clearly, bans against books and the teaching of controversial topics—under the auspices of the disingenuous "anti-CRT" instruction agenda, are "red meat" issues that don't square with most parents and youth who are in the majority of those seeking a truthful and fair rendering of society and our nation's history. 

If you need Texas data on this, check out the Butt Foundation report titled, Connected Through Our Schools). If these folks decrying alleged indoctrination via "porn" that's getting taught in our schools really cared about public education, they'd be pushing for funding it and stemming the teacher turnover crisis. Instead, they opt for engaging in a contrived culture war that is cynical and damaging of the the trust that should emanate from the hard work and good faith efforts of our teachers, administrators, and librarians.

-Angela Valenzuela

#EyesWideOpen

Book banning is bad policy. Let’s make it bad politics.

by E. J. Dionne, Jr., Washington Post, December 18, 2022

Amanda Darrow, director of youth, family and education programs at the Utah Pride Center, poses in Salt Lake City on Dec. 16, 2021, with books that have been the subject of complaints from parents. (Rick Bowmer/AP)

There was a time when the term “Banned in Boston” was one of the best things that could happen to a book, a play or a movie. From roughly the 1880s to the mid-20th century, a censoriousness rooted in the city’s Puritan past supported especially aggressive laws aimed at suppressing material seen as salacious or dangerous. For many, the label was a guarantee that whatever was banned must have been, well, interesting.

West Texas Parent are Suing Their Schools Over Racism as Others Demand Action Over Antisemitic Bullying

This piece provides evidence on how racism and anti-semitism are on the rise in Texas schools. It's interesting, if not predictable, to note that this is happening at the same time that books and materials, including those designed to challenge racial, sexist, and homophobic hatred are limiting what can get taught in the schools. This creates a vacuum in knowledge and information that risks getting filled by other readily accessible online communities that promote hatred and violence. 

This vitriol then manifests at school board meetings where parents refer to race and gender justice texts as "porn," when what is really obscene is the racial hatred that plays out in school environments as youth take cues from adults, including from government leaders and members of the legislature who are happy to perpetuate fallacies, most especially, an ethnically-cleansed curriculum that's non-inclusive and thusly, narrow and harmful.

I think that most Texas students, their parents, and Texans, generally, find this to be both reprehensible and unacceptable, but those perpetrating these harms are often the loudest voices. I'm glad to see the federal government stepping in on behalf of these aggrieved students. Read for yourselves the IDRA statement here that expresses the following:

"The complaints list a number of demands for resolution, including revised district anti-harassment, anti-discrimination and anti-bullying policies; training of school and district staff on Title VI and appropriate school discipline practices; effective and age-appropriate prevention programs for students; systems for student and family input; alternatives to exclusionary discipline placement, such as restorative practices; an external evaluator to regularly assess the educational climate and effectiveness of policies; and annual reports posted online summarizing the reports of racial bullying and harassment."

These corrosive and toxic dynamics have to change if we are to prevent racial, religious, and other forms of harassment and violence in our schools. Anti-racist curriculum and pedagogy together with policies like Ethnic Studies that support their teaching, are also steps in the right direction. There is a bill this session, House Bill 45, an Ethnic Studies bill authored by Rep. Christina Morales, is what merits specific support. And now is the time to rally for it as a way to move positively forward.

-Angela Valenzuela

 West Texas Parent are Suing Their Schools Over Racism as Others Demand Action Over Antisemitic Bullying

LUBBOCK — Parents, full of anger and disbelief, have confronted school leaders in the Lubbock area over a series of racist and antisemitic incidents in several schools.

In total, four separate incidents have come to light in recent weeks.

Two episodes — both involving Black students targeted in constant bullying by their peers and inaction by school officials, parents say — have led to separate federal civil rights lawsuits.

At the heart of the two lawsuits is the pain parents say their children have endured as a result of months of constant and violent bullying — including an Instagram account that posted photos of Black students from a Lubbock middle school with racist captions, and racial discrimination by school officials against students at the high school in Slaton, about 17 miles south of Lubbock.

A third South Plains school district — Roosevelt ISD — had a parent file a federal complaint against them for racial discrimination by school officials. There, a mother took her daughter out of school after she claims school officials targeted her child for undue disciplinary actions.

Meanwhile, a threatening antisemitic petition was passed around by a student at another Lubbock middle school. Parents say they are disappointed the school hasn’t had a strong response.

On their own, these might seem like isolated incidents of school-age angst. However, racially driven and antisemitic incidents are on the rise in Texas. And now four different school districts in the South Plains are facing tensions emblematic of the widespread problem. Instead of addressing it directly, parents say school officials try to sweep the issues under the rug.

Lubbock-Cooper ISD — which includes Laura Bush Middle School, where the Instagram account was based — declined to comment on the federal lawsuit.

“Racism has no place at any school within Lubbock-Cooper ISD,” the district added in a statement. “It is not a reflection of our beliefs as a school and it completely contradicts the virtues we wish to instill in our students.”

Black students at the Laura Bush Middle School in Lubbock-Cooper ISD were allegedly bullied over months, including with an Instagram account that posted photos of them with racist captions. Credit: Mark Rogers for The Texas Tribune

If Book Bans Continue, What’s Left on the Classroom Shelf? | Oct 13, 2022 by Tanji Reed Marshall

This piece is about how book banning on such topics as slavery has resulted in an ahistorical curriculum that serves the interests not of truth, but rather of white people themselves considering that such structured omissions default to a positive, whitewashed portrayal of this history.

An examination of more than 250 non-banned books found that when characters of color are represented, they typically appear in stereotypical fashion with white characters get to be the protagonists. They have more voice, agency, and are the "primary voices in historical texts." 

It's beyond disappointing—and speaks volumes—to think that a country, any country, feels so ashamed of its own history that it resorts to banning books and punishing people who teach that history.

-Angela Valenzuela

If Book Bans Continue, What’s Left on the Classroom Shelf?

 

4M+ students across 34 states have had their reading freedom curtailed due to #bookbans.

Given the growing racial, ethnic, and gender diversity in schools, students need to be 

reading widely and deeply, not reductively. @edtrust's @Remarsh76 explains

Oct 13, 2022 by Tanji Reed Marshall

Over the past year, more than 4 million students have had their reading freedom curtailed due to book bans. A report by PEN American reveals that these students are educated in 138 districts across 34 states and have had more than 5,000 books removed from classroom shelves, school buildings, and local libraries. Book removal is problematic enough; however, the types of books being banned is quite noteworthy. If legislators across this country continue treading this dangerous path, very few books will be left on the classroom shelf.

Despite students having a First Amendment right to learn, state and district lawmakers and so-called “parents’ rights” groups have been curtailing this right by focusing their attacks on books with LGBTQ+ characters and topics, books with African Americans as protagonists and primary antagonists, and books, articles, and primary sources on topics related to U.S. history, such as the Red Summer Massacres, which they have deemed controversial. According to the PEN report, 41% of the more than 5,000 books banned have been on topics related to the LGBTQ+ community and 40% of those banned featured protagonists and primary secondary characters of color. Such targeted banning decreases the representational balance of characters and cultures thus creating one-sidedness in student reading. Given the growing racial, ethnic, and gender diversity in public schools, students need to be reading widely and deeply, not reductively.

Historical complexity and accuracy have also come under fire and become factors in the increasing numbers of banned books. Our nation’s history is beautifully nuanced; however, many students across the country will never have the opportunity to learn about it honestly. Instead, right-wing extremists have delegitimized the term “critical race theory,” a very real collegiate approach to understanding systemic racism and power structure in society, and have obfuscated its meaning to fabricate fights using the misnomer, prompting lawmakers and family groups to rally together to ensure topics related to slavery, institutional racism, and other “isms” are not taught. Instead, students are relegated to an ahistorical curriculum whereby the comfort of White students (or rather, their parents) supersedes learning about the travesties of slavery or any topic or story where White people are portrayed in a negative light.

Take for example, the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Students in the aforementioned 34 states would learn that President Lincoln was a champion of liberty and freedom because he signed the document ending slavery; however, they would be robbed of learning about Lincoln’s reluctance to freeing enslaved people and that he had no intention in actually doing so. Students would not get the opportunity to grapple with the nuance in Lincoln’s decision-making because such documents and readings are being removed. Meanwhile, despite the majority of U.S. student body being students of color, no such care is given to the emotional safety of Black and brown, LGBTQ+ children, or students from low-income backgrounds.

Ed Trust rejects the curtailing of students learning accurate and honest U.S. history. We also believe that the lives of students of color and other underserved students need to be represented in the books they read and are exposed to in the classroom. That’s why we have embarked on an extensive curricula review of how children of color are represented in children’s and middle grade books. We examined more than 250 books from five major publishers and found that while texts may have characters of color, these characters are stereotypically represented. We also found that White characters were the primary protagonists, were depicted with more agency, and were the primary voices in historical texts. In a few months, we will release our findings, with the goal of guiding curriculum publishers to ensure that the texts they produce are representative of the rich and diverse culture that our nation has to offer, and that all children can be empathetic to multiple perspectives that will afford them opportunities to develop deeper understandings and connections between and among historical events, especially those that may offer a less than positive image of our country.

Measures taken to ban books also leave schools unable to achieve the academic outcomes they desire for their students. Take Florida, which has the second highest rate of banned books in the nation, right behind Texas. What’s most disturbing about the sheer volume of banned books is that individual parents make up the smallest group raising concerns while vocal conservative groups comprise the loudest critics. So, the key question becomes, if states are charged with overseeing the education of all their children, why is it that a minority voice gets to decide what someone else’s child gets to read?

As states continue to take a reductive stance on books, they jeopardize the future of our citizenry. Not only is reading fundamental, but it is a core tenet of our democracy. Students need to be able to engage in critical thinking and see the world through multiple perspectives. But this will not happen and if state leaders continue to center a narrow-minded understanding of who and what America has been, who this country truly represents, which sets us up to be less free — creating a future where there is indeed very little of merit left on the classroom shelf.

"The Nazification of American Education," by Dr. Henry Giroux, in Counterpunch

These are dangerous times. Current policies that seek to limit critical thinking in schools combined with extremist ideologies like white replacement theory and the literal rise of white supremacy and supremacist groups in the U.S., combined with voter suppression laws that Republicans like Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott and others seek, are fully about the Nazification of American education as eloquently argued by Henry Giroux. 

We as a polity and a press who want schools to be vibrant spaces where youth can engage in informed, measured, dialogue and critique and in so doing, cultivate their skills for their full participation in an equally vibrant democracy, should all take heed. To wit, we are witnessing full-blown fascism. We must vote these people out of office as they are harmful to the future of democracy.

-Angela Valenzuela

The Nazification of American Education

BY HENRY GIROUX  JULY 22, 2022  | Counterpunch

DeSantis’s View of Education as Propaganda Factories

The crisis of education in the United States presents not only a danger to American democracy, but also advances the ideological and structural foundations for the emergence of a fascist state. The slide towards lawlessness and authoritarianism is now aided and abetted by educational policies that are repressive and dystopian, wedded to social control and the death of the social imagination. An unimagined catastrophe now characterizes how American education is being shaped by far-right Republican Party politicians. Nowhere is this more evident than in the policies of Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who is on the forefront of transforming American education into a feral propaganda tool for producing and legitimating what is euphemistically called “patriotic education.” Coercion, conformity, and toxic forms of religious, political, and economic fundamentalisms now threaten to destroy education as a democratic public sphere, however weak it may be. Institutions of learning at all levels in the red states are becoming laboratories for what I term the Nazification of American education, replicating pedagogies of repression that were at work in Germany in the 1930s.

The mean-spirited, far-right DeSantis and his Republican allies have inverted an insight taken from the renowned, late educator John Dewey who recognized that politics required informed judgments, public dialogue, dissent, critical exchange, judicious discrimination, and the ability to discern the truth from lies. Instead of embracing these democratic elements of education as central to creating citizens with an open mind and with a willingness to engage in a culture of questioning in order to expand and deepen the conditions necessary for a flourishing democracy, DeSantis and the GOP are doing everything they can to remove such practices both from schools and other cultural apparatuses that function as teaching machines. Under such circumstances, DeSantis and the GOP are producing what Dewey claimed amounted to the “eclipse of the public,” which he considered the most serious threat to the fate of democracy.[1] DeSantis has put into place a range of reactionary educational policies. These include banning books and critical race theory, requiring educators sign loyalty oaths, and forcing them to post their syllabus’s online. He has also instituted legislation that restrict  tenure and allows students to film faculty classes without consent, and much more. [2]

Opinion: Why books have become a battlefield in Texas

Important opinion piece in the Washington Post by Karen Attiah on Rep. Matt Krause's reading list that you yourselves can link to here. It's a doozy.

Most importantly, it begs the question of how these books were picked. It's interesting what was NOT picked, as it reflects a bias against Mexican American authors and topics from Texas and the Southwest. Even the recently controversial book, Forget the Alamo, authored by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford failed to make the cut. Never mind Dr. Rodolfo Acuña's  Occupied America or Dr. Emilio Zamora's award-winning book, Claiming Rights and Righting Wrongs in Texas. 

Where is Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La frontera: The New Mestiza or Cherrie Moraga's Loving in the War Years? I could go on and on. 

These structured omissions suggest that either Rep. Krause isn't a real Texan or he simply lifted this list from somewhere else in the country or both. If he were, he'd be an equal opportunity offender—particularly in light of our great successes at the state board level in getting Ethnic Studies passed. 

In any case, "the list" provides great Christmas gift ideas for our kids who actually have far fewer issues with such topics than adults who pump them up with baggage they'll end up carrying for the rest of their lives—short of, of course, a virtuous education that is inclusive of the richness and diversity of the human experience.

-Angela Valenzuela

Opinion: Why books have become a battlefield 

in Texas

The Texas Capitol is seen on the first day of the 87th legislature's third special session, on Sept. 20, 2021 in Austin. (Tamir Kalifa/Getty Images)

By Karen Attiah

Columnist|

November 1, 2021 at 5:17 p.m. EDT

DALLAS — “Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature,” wrote Cassandra Clare in her novel “Clockwork Angel.” A powerful and debilitating strain of such intellectual fragility has been sweeping across red states such as mine. Texas stands at the front lines of America’s thought wars, with books increasingly the battlefield.

Last week, state Rep. Matt Krause (R-Fort Worth), chairman of the House General Investigating Committee, sent school districts a list of more than 800 books and asked that they investigate how many copies are in their classrooms or libraries, as well as the amount of money spent on them. Krause also wants the districts to identify books or content dealing with human sexuality, HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases and graphic depictions of sex.

And borrowing language from the so-called anti-critical-race-theory laws recently passed in Texas and other states, Krause asked schools to report whether they have books that could make students “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex.” Districts were given until Nov. 12 to respond.

As colder weather approaches, it’s as though Krause plans to use school books to keep us all warm this winter — at the requisite 451 degrees Fahrenheit. Given our rickety power grid, I suppose torching books might tide Texans over for a while.

On a more serious note, looking at Krause’s list, it’s hard not to conjure up images of totalitarian regimes and violent groups that have gone after books throughout history, from Nazi attacks on works considered “un-German” in 1933 to al-Qaeda destroying precious manuscripts in Timbuktu. A gander at Krause’s list reveals an almost exclusive focus on race and racism, sex and sexuality, LGBT issues, abortion and — gasp — even puberty.

Popular anti-racism titles such as Ibram X. Kendi’s “How to be an Antiracist” and Ijeoma Oluo’s “So You Want to Talk about Race” unsurprisingly were targeted. But in general the list seems anything but painstakingly curated. It’s as if someone typed in the keywords “Black,” “racism,” “LGBT,” “gender” and “transgender” and simply poured the results into a spreadsheet. How else to explain the inclusion of Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s chronology "And Still I Rise: Black America since MLK”? How is Tim Hanley’s “Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World’s Most Famous Heroine” a possible threat to Texas students?

And as to making students uncomfortable? Many of the titles were written precisely to help developing young people become more comfortable with being and feeling different — whether it be due to their race, gender or sexuality.

For now no bonfires are planned, but really none will be necessary if teachers are scared out of introducing books into classes in the first place, which one imagines is the point of this exercise. There have already been reports of teachers pulling titles preemptively to avoid controversy. Other state-supported educational institutions have felt the pressure, too — this summer, the Bullock Texas State History Museum canceled an event around the launch of “Forget the Alamo,” which challenges whitewashed myths about the fort and the famous battle that took place there.

On one hand, the whole thing reeks of a political stunt that will waste valuable educational time and resources. Krause is challenging Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a Republican primary next year. In today’s Texas politics, there is no penalty for going to extremes on the right.But on the other hand, a dangerous blueprint is being written and fine-tuned.

Outside of Texas, GOP leaders and candidates are increasingly using book-banning to burnish their credentials. In Virginia, GOP gubernatorial nominee Glenn Youngkin has seized on the anti-CRT hysteria, producing an ad featuring a White mother in Fairfax County who campaigned to have Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Beloved” removed from her son’s curriculum. And it doesn’t stop at books. Wisconsin Republicans want to ban specific words, most of which have to do with race and diversity, from the state’s public schools.

It’s not hard to read between the lines. These attacks on books come as a response to the growing power that marginalized people have demonstrated recently in our public discourse. Book-banning, like the Southern Strategy of old, is an effort to harness White fears of a new, more racially equal America.

And so another cycle turns. For as long as the GOP tries to stop new generations from learning from America’s past, we will be doomed to repeat the darkest elements of it.

Rep. Matt Krause's Campaign for Attorney General Scrutinizes Texas School Districts for Texts on Race and Sexuality

Compliments of the Voice of the Mainland blog, here is specific detail on the specific request by Ft. Worth Rep. Matt Krause who is running for attorney general for texts purchased by school districts, including award winners, that address issues of race and sexuality [also read: Analysis: Matt Krause’s campaign for attorney general comes with a reading list]. This amounts to a new level of scrutiny of Texas public schools that falls on the heels of anti-CRT bill, Senate Bill 3, that promises to earn him a measure of notoriety. 

Accordingly, read my earlier post titled: "Texas House committee to investigate school districts’ books on race and sexuality." You can't make this stuff up.

Glad to see the the Austin Independent School District not going through with this primarily since there's already a link to the requested information [read: "Austin ISD dismisses Texas lawmaker's probe into books on race, sex"]. 

Requests like these that are designed to bolster the political aims of lawmakers are not only a cost to taxpayers, but involve an inordinate amount of time—and for what purpose other than to polarize society even more? The Rs have reached the limits of their political leadership if this is all they have, pestering superintendents and local school boards for narrow, political ends.

-Angela Valenzuela

***

Editor: Texas State Representative Matt Krause is asking several Texas schools to conduct an assessment of books in their library and see if any of these books are in their library system, how many copies and the amount of dollars expended by the school district to purchase those books. The public has no knowledge what Rep Krause intends to do with the outcome of his investigation. Maybe noting. Maybe burn the books. Maybe deduct the amount spend on the books from the school district's budget. We do not know. Anyway, book burning seems to be making it's way into Texas education, maybe not as an act, but as a threat.

The text of his message is below. The full letter can be linked to here.

1. Please identify how many copies of each book in the attached Addendum your

District possesses and at what campus locations including school library and

classroom collections. Please identify the amount of funds spent by your District to 

acquire the books identified in request No. 1 above.

3. Please identify any other books or content in your District, specifying the campus

location and funds spent on acquisition, that address or contain the following topics:

human sexuality, sexually transmitted diseases, or human immunodeficiency virus

(HIV) or acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), sexually explicit images,

graphic presentations of sexual behavior that is in violation of the law, or contain

material that might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of

psychological distress because of their race or sex or convey that a student, by virtue

of their race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or

unconsciously.

Your prompt attention to this request is appreciated, and I request a written response via 

email by November 12, 2021. If you have any questions, please contact me or the 

Committee’s General Counsel, Darren Keyes.