The Veil Of Ignorance

Lay not that flattering unction to your soul....

It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,

Whilst rank corruption, mining all within,

Infects unseen.

- Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4

The above attests to the destructive, corrosive effects of not confronting one's wrongdoing. The wrongdoing does not go away, but continues to fester beneath the surface, often with severe consequences.

It seems the perfect metaphor to apply to  America's reluctance, and in many cases, refusal, to confront its racism.

As I recently wrote, Florida, under its governor, Ron DeSantis, seems particularly loathe to address that past, judging by the restrictions on what books and what curriculum can be taught. The main criterion for acceptability seems to be material that will keep young people in ignorance about what many of their fellow Americans have dealt with in the past and continue to confront today.

As a result of all of this, the College Board, the organization responsible for AP courses, has changed content and made optional some parts of its African American Studies. It denies that it was influenced by DeSantis's recent proclamations.

The NYT begs to differ. When the revised course was revealed at a glitzy Washington party, it was clear the board had succumbed to political pressure.

The College Board purged the names of many Black writers and scholars associated with critical race theory, the queer experience and Black feminism. It ushered out some politically fraught topics, like Black Lives Matter, from the formal curriculum.

And it added something new: “Black conservatism” is now offered as an idea for a research project.

NYT Editorial Board member, Mara Gay, elaborated  on the College Board's timidity:

They downgraded the study of Black Lives Matter, of reparations, of queer life and of incarceration. They removed prominent writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates and bell hooks, who have helped so many people understand the relationship between race, class and feminism.

It is no coincidence that the Black writers under assault, like Mr. Coates and Ms. hooks, have been militant in refusing to allow America to forget. “The time to remember is now,” Ms. hooks wrote. “The time to speak a counter hegemonic race talk that is filled with the passion of remembrance and resistance is now. All our words are needed.”

Awareness of Black history is a threat to the groups promoting racism, because 

[i]t humanizes the enslaved and their descendants. It lays bare the terrible cost of white supremacy, not only to Black Americans, but to the nation. It opens the door for exactly the reckoning that makes interracial coalitions possible, giving life to democracy and pluralism and stripping would-be tyrants of their power.

The problem is that looking directly at this history is a prospect that terrifies many white Americans. 

Canada, hardly a country awaiting canonization, at least has had the rectitude to move toward truth and reconciliation as it attempts to confront and atone for its racism toward the Indigenous.

Not so in the United States, which brings to mind an old proverb, reputedly of Russian origin, that says, Better a bitter truth than a sweet lie.

Clearly, it is a notion with which many, many Americans vehemently disagree.

 

 

 

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