Many thanks to Eric Holder and his calumny against America as a “nation of cowards” for the maddening reminder of one of the reasons we yanked our children out of the D.C. public school system and fled to Virginia 15 years ago. Black History Month was a particular trial, during which the children were taught–or rather, hoodwinked into believing (some of them, anyway)–that the light bulb was the invention not of Thomas Edison but of Lewis Latimer, a black man; that bathing, underwear, tables, and chairs were imports to backward “Euro-Americans” from Africa; that Cleopatra was definitely black and Moses probably so; and that Michael Jordan, Bill Cosby, Rosa Parks, Michael Jackson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, Aretha Franklin–you name ’em, we looked ’em up–were all black “leaders,” roughly indistinguishable from one another in their contributions to the history of their people, and equally worthy of oral reports to the class, or, better yet, dioramas: basketball court, Birmingham Jail–what’s the diff? Where’s the harm in lying to students about the accomplishments of, say, a Latimer, the son of escaped slaves who by self-demand and toil became a respected scientist and brilliant draughtsman? Here’s the harm: to pretend he was something he wasn’t is to diminish completely what he was, and, in a devilish inversion, to tell little children that what’s good–hard work against difficult odds–is worthless, and what’s bad–the self-excusing blaming of others–is acceptable. A courageous dialogue about race in D.C. public schools was nowhere to be had. Complaints to the “educators,” as the principal and teachers at our elementary school liked to call themselves, fell upon deaf, not to say hostile, ears. Our neighbors, who like the Clintons and the Obamas “believed” in public schools for other people’s children, had no use for honesty either. We were left alone to confirm our children’s sneaking suspicion that hitting a triple-double on the basketball court is not the same as standing up to violence and humiliation and prison and dogs and fire hoses to win your God-given rights.
