CHRISTINE FLOWERS: White Individuals and the civil rights motion | Hartsville Messenger

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People might be fed up with stories about my father, Ted, and his Mississippi summer. You might roll your eyes if I write again about how he faced hostility and the KKK during his time in the places legendary for their savage efforts to silence black voices and voices.

There are many out there who have never heard of my father but do their best to ensure that people like him are silenced and forgotten. They do this because they have fallen victim to a disease that some call tolerance, others (rightly) ridicule as “alertness” and still others call a reinterpretation of history.

To paraphrase Orwell, it’s actually “stopping” history. And it’s already leaving a brutal scar on the landscape of humanity.

Last week a school district in Burbank, California decided to ban the teaching of certain books believed to be offensive, degrading and a source of so-called “microagression” against color students. While the books themselves will continue to be available in school libraries, teachers have been told to “pause” their classes in order to effectively hand these books over to the intellectual ghetto where only racists and the uneducated live.

And here is a list of books that are “on hold”: “Huckleberry Finn”, “The Cay”, “Of Mice and Men”, “Roll of Thunder”, “Hear My Cry” and “To Kill A Mockingbird”.