When governments enter the business of banning books and censoring history, loud alarm bells should be ringing about the state of democracy in the present.
And that’s exactly where we are today in countless states around the country—and, most prominently, this week in Florida, where Ron DeSantis banned an AP African American Studies Course.
In a nation with a long and painful history of racial discrimination—marked by a painful but very clear pattern of a fierce white backlash following moments when Black Americans have forged progress—that censorship is especially dangerous.
As the video above explains, when you excise American history of its worst moments of discrimination, white supremacy and violence, you leave the false impression that progress in this country came through steady, inevitable progress. The truth is: breakthroughs in justice have always been followed by an intense backlash, only overcome later—sometimes lifetimes later—by heroic struggle and fierce resistance.
Progress, pushback….progress, pushback. That’s our history. Excising the pushback from our history books and courses distorts it all. It shields us from the hell of some eras, and the true heroism of others
Another reality that is obscured by censoring that history is that the tools of that repeated backlash have largely been the same over the years: myths and misinformation (eg. false accusations of voter fraud), voter suppression, intimidation, and outright violence. Not appreciating that history camouflages those tactics even as they are being wielded in the present day.
Suppression and censorship go hand in hand. We must stand up to both.
