History should not scare us — unless we plan to repeat it

OPINION: Banning books, outlawing words and censoring curriculums not only diminish the injustices experienced by generations of Americans but also prevent educators from doing their jobs and challenging students to achieve a more equitable future.

Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.

Last week, amidst cookouts, parades, gatherings and fireworks, we as a nation celebrated Independence Day, the foundation of our democracy and the freedoms that it birthed. As we continue to reflect on the promise of this country, now more than ever, we must remain vigilant and focused on a shared commitment to a more perfect union.

We must recommit to the belief that all of us, no matter our race, gender or ZIP code, deserve to live in a country where our rights to vote, get medical treatment and our freedom to learn are respected — even expanded.  

We must unite in our understanding that all of us deserve an America that fully embraces its founding principles, “that all … are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

These truths should be self-evident by now. Yet, some 247 years after the founders penned our Declaration of Independence, some elected leaders are trying to redefine what freedom means. These deniers do not want to face historical truths if it makes them uncomfortable. They’d rather politicize public education, ban books about Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, and dehumanize our LGBTQ+ community while ignoring the real issues facing communities, students, parents, and public schools.

You can’t strip people of rights and call it freedom. That’s not the way freedom works. 

Stoking the embers of fear is a familiar strategy among politicians who seek to sow seeds of division. In the past, it’s been used to declare wars, enslave and intern fellow Americans, incarcerate our youth, redline our communities and segregate our schools. And now they are using it to gerrymander congressional districts, deny health care, ban books, restrict voting and rewrite history.

Politicians currently engaged in fearmongering in statehouses across the country to roll back the rights of millions of citizens is a bad-faith, calculated path to power. That’s not going to work for us!

With eyes set on the White House, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump and the like-minded politicians riding their coattails are igniting fears to erode freedoms — fundamentally changing the way generations of children will come to understand the world, their right to have a place in it and how they can be part of making it better. This is not what educators or parents want for their children, nor is it what our children deserve.

It’s not only politicians who are trying to change the way generations of children will come to experience and understand the world. In its decision to end affirmative action in higher education as we know it, an out-of-touch and extreme Supreme Court majority has reinforced barriers that prevent Black, brown and Indigenous people from accessing the opportunities we all deserve to achieve our dreams. 

We are a country rich in our differences, founded on principles designed to unite us. Yet we remain a nation unfinished, mired in a struggle to be better, more inclusive, more compassionate and more hopeful. 

Understanding our history, the moments that fill us with pride and the ones that fill us with shame is the key to unlocking a better tomorrow for all of us — especially our children. This requires us to be honest about our origin story and not cower in the reality of truth. 

Banning books, outlawing words and censoring curriculums will not erase our history or its impact on our current reality. These are merely tactics used to control the political narrative, one that is not reflective or welcoming of all of us. History should not scare us — unless we plan to repeat it.

Today, we have witnessed an escalation of book bans in public schools across America preventing teachers from speaking about race, gender and racism, and denying students the right to a truthful and honest education. These dangerous attempts to stoke fears and rewrite history not only diminish the injustices experienced by generations of Americans but also prevent educators from doing their jobs and challenging students to achieve a more equitable future.

Restrictions on what we can teach, say, read and whom to love aren’t democratic; they’re dictatorial. And we will not tolerate this government overreach in our states or our nation.  

Instead, we must move forward, united in the reality that our work as a nation remains unfinished. It is our forward drive, in pursuit of a more perfect union, that defines what it means to be American. But a forward focus, on its own, will never deliver us a more perfect union. Our history grounds us in this time and this place. It has brought us to this moment with all the lessons we need to make the next right step. We must be brave enough to take it, together.

Becky Pringle is president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest labor union. Becky is a middle school science teacher with 31 years of classroom experience and has distinguished herself as a fierce social justice warrior and defender of educator rights.

Derrick Johnson serves as president and CEO of the NAACP, a title he has held since October of 2017. President Johnson formerly served as vice chairman of the NAACP National Board of Directors, as well as state president for the Mississippi State Conference NAACP.

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