Stupidity? Cowardice? Over-Reaction? You Decide.

Students protesting what they say was an attempt to
censor their Black History Month program

A couple of days ago, Curmie’s netpal Jack Marshall at Ethics Alarms posted a piece titled (before the colon) “Roshomon Ethics” (well, yes, it should be “Rashomon,” but let he who is without typos cast the first snark). Jack’s point, referencing the classic film by Akira Kurosawa (it was later adapted into a play by Fay and Michael Kanin), was that different people will see the see the same event—in this case the murder of a samurai—fundamentally differently, filtered through their idiosyncratic perspectives and self-interest. That is, the characters are not necessarily lying, although the accounts are mutually exclusive. And the viewer is granted no closure. 

This case is similar, with the one exception being that it’s extremely difficult to believe that someone isn’t lying. The problem is that the points of view we hear represent two of the most mendacious groups imaginable: those who cannot resist the siren song of being perceived as victimized, and high school administrators looking to cover their collective ass in a situation of their own making. 

Neither is to be believed implicitly, but at least this one is at least disjunctive: a white school administrator either did or did not tell the student organizers of a Black History Month program at Hillcrest High School in Tuscaloosa, Alabama to omit events from prior to the 1970s from their presentation because it they would make administrators “uncomfortable,” a lovely irony in that it’s usually the students who make such claims. 

The school denies the allegation. Well, of course they do.  There’s also a charge that black students faced stricter school dress codes and lower academic expectations. The former claim may well be true; the latter certainly is, as it is what Affirmative Action/DEI/”anti-racism” campaigns are all about. 

What is undeniable is that a large group of students (estimated variously at “more than 200” to “about 300”) walked out of classes in protest. The school seems not to have made any attempt to prevent the walkout. Indeed, Hillcrest High School Principal Jeff Hinton said he expected students to protest and asked teachers to “respect their decision” to walk out or remain in class. 

Tuscaloosa County Schools System Director of Student Services Ty Blocker is quoted as saying that “TCSS supports our students in expressing themselves and including all parts of history, such as slavery and the civil rights movement, in their program.” 

So what happened to cause the protest? To hear the school tell it, “It is not true that faculty or staff supervising the program told students that history prior to 1970 could not be included in the program. This is a rumor started by someone not part of the student group creating the program.” The local NAACP President, Lisa Young, proclaims that “there are too many students saying the same thing for it to be untrue.” What passes for logic in this declaration is absolutely stunning in its idiocy… which doesn’t mean the students’ allegations are unfounded, only that rumors’ ability to achieve viral status is hardly an indication of their veracity. 

Curmie has chronicled a good many cases of school administrators doing transcendently stupid things, and he’s undoubtedly missed a lot more than he’s written about. As moronic as this? Well, that’s a pretty high bar for ineptitude, but, alas, it seems more than plausible that someone in a position of educational authority could indeed have said something this dim-witted. 

There are claims, too, that if the as of yet publicly identified administrator did indeed attempt to restrict the chronological breadth of the program, it may have been out of concern how to negotiate with the state’s controversial 2021 resolution that prohibits teaching “social or political ideologies that promote one race or sex above another.” Critical Race Theory is not specifically mentioned, but, as an article on AL.com points out, the legislation came about “during the national fervor over the academic theory.” 

Nor is it coincidental that the bill is worded so vaguely. Using one set of ideological blinders, the mere fact of a Black History Month is problematic; discussions of the fact that someone like Martin Luther King, Jr. not merely existed, but was necessary are particularly so. Teachers, once able to devise their own curricula according to—you know—their professional judgment as to what their students needed to know at a particular point in their academic development, are now looking over their shoulders, unclear where that line between good pedagogy and the impermissible is drawn by politicians who really couldn’t care less about education as long as the newspaper spells their name correctly.

Even if the administrator(s?) spoke from a position of extreme caution rather than actual advocacy, however, if they did indeed say what is alleged, we’ve got a major problem. Obviously, any high school curriculum that skirts around anything that might be regarded as problematic by someone else is born of cowardice rather than pedagogy. Slavery happened. The Tulsa Race Massacre happened. The Civil Rights movement happened. Black life in America did not begin with Beyoncé (or even with B.B. King). 

Is that what happened—a moment of stupidity or pusillanimity, whichever it was? Or was it an over-reaction to the slightest hint of something that could have been actively, perhaps even intentionally, misconstrued? Chances are, we’ll never know for sure.

It appears that there are racial concerns at the school that extend past what was or was not said about the Black History Month program. These may or not be relevant to the situation at hand: if there’s a spirit of distrust, that could lead to misunderstandings, although as noted earlier, this seems like a disjunctive question. Whether the initial contretemps is the fault of the school or not, it appears that at least they’re trying to get to the bottom of what happened, and to try to make the future better than the present. That may be all we can hope for.