Whitney Kimball Coe, director of national programs for the Center for Rural Strategies, advises those who are outraged about the removal of MAUS from the eighth grade curriculum by the McMinn County School Board to support those in the South and rural areas who agree with them, instead of showering them with contempt and condescension. She was invited to appear on CNN to talk about the decision, and she had a sleepless night trying to find the right way to condemn the decision without condemning her neighbors.
Do they think we’re not outraged, too, here in East Tennessee? Do they think we can’t speak up and respond for ourselves? Because let me tell you, I lay awake the night before the CNN interview indulging my own outrage and constructing a commentary that would eviscerate all book ban supporters and signal to the rest of the world that I, too, am pissed off. It would feel good to give into the outrage, the indignation, the snark.
But I let the outrage pass over and through me because I live here. We live here. These are our people, our schools, our kids. We spend our days relying on the trust and goodwill of our neighbors to make a life here. Neil Gaiman doesn’t shop at the Food City downtown. Trevor Noah doesn’t volunteer with the local United Way. CNN isn’t interested in solutions journalism and outrage is where relationships go to die.
There’s no cure for opportunism. With each op-ed from another coastal publication, Tennessee becomes more alienated, and our public officials dig their heels in deeper. And those of us dissenting locally are left to bridge the gap, trying to figure out how to protect our hometown and organize for change.
As I lay awake, I remembered that the only side I’m on is the one that keeps the door open to a relationship, and one day, community transformation. When the rest of the world tires of tweeting, expounding and publishing op-eds about this ban, I’ll still be here: raising a family, living, working, organizing, and praying in a community that has my heart. I’ve got to be on the side of holding that together.…
The American Library Association says the number of attempts to ban school library books was 67% higher in September 2021 than in September 2020, fueled in large part by conservative activists organizing at a national level with an eye toward influencing local politics. This isn’t a McMinn County problem or a rural problem. We aren’t a novelty. We sure as hell shouldn’t be the scapegoats for deeper rifts in our national and global fabric.
If you must write about us, at least give a damn about us. Outrage is the quick and easy response if you’re not committed to the sum of us; that is, if you’re only committed to signaling which side you’re on and don’t really care about communities outside your bubble.
If you want to signal to the world that you’re on the side of solutions and repair, then write or tweet as a repairer of the breach.
Write about the donations that have poured into our local library these last days, both monetary and in the form of copies of the books! Look at the people who have been inspired to run for the school board. Talk about how one local parish is hosting a community-wide book discussion and conversation about the history of anti-Semitism in the Christian church. Celebrate Maus flying off bookshelves and selling out on Amazon. Find opportunities to deliver copies to kids in our community and around the world.
After reading her article, I went to the library website. I saw that every copy of MAUS had been checked out and had a hold on it when it was returned. I made a donation to the library. You could too.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Because of this ban, I have unloaded a banned books mini-unit for my juniors these past two weeks with “Maus” as the focal point along with viewing the 2018 iteration of “Fahrenheit 451,” in addition to using the board minutes, interviews, and whatnot with essential questions asking why books are banned to begin with, why do those in power feel censorship works, explaining the “ethics” behind censorship/book banning, etc. We also showed footage of the now-infamous book burning, also held in Tennessee (what the hell is happening in Tennessee, for pete’s sake?!?!?” My students are pumped and pissed that this is happening.
may kids across the nation continue to communicate with each other daily as “grown ups” try to silence unwanted voices
This is a wonderful essay. Outrage and derision do us no good here. Mencken tried that in the 20s and all he got for it was Bryan College and a retrenchment of the very ideas he hated. If you make it obvious that you hate people for their ideas, you will never change them. The result of that is that those of us who live among these people with who we vigorously disagree are forced to live with their intensified spite.
How do you say to a person: “I value as a friend, but your ideas are so wrong that I cannot agree with you.” ? As a thinking individual surrounded by sheep, I have this experience on a regular basis.
So what do we do? Our ideological opponents are moving to red states like mine from California and Colorado at huge rates, deepening the hold of idiocy on my state (NPR morning edition this AM). Perhaps we should wait for their children. It is surprising how many of their children find information contradictory to their parent’s way of viewing the world through their strange combination of glasses that are both rose-colored and narrowly focused.
Outrage and derision made Trump President and almost succeeded in destroying democracy (and it may yet do so).
If you think about it, Republicans have no policies except cutting taxes on the rich and outrage and derision. That’s been the case for a long time, and Trump just was better at it than the other Republicans he ran against in the primary.
When did Rush Limbaugh take over the airwaves? Outrage and derision was his calling card in the late 1980s, ushered in by the end of the fairness doctrine.
Maybe it would be best to take out the “you are so wrong” piece. What would you do if that’s how someone tried to express their feelings to you? Even about the very same issue? Just gonna say most humans would shut right down. I know when I say that to my husband or he to me, there is no chance of a productive conversation.
You’re a much better man than me, Roy. I could in no way value anyone as friend if they had bigoted views of people, believed lies they knew to be lies but would never admit it out loud, supported candidates who banned books, or supported candidates whose goal is to replace our federal system with one based on preferential treatment based on one’s political views. No way, no how.
And this garbage about not respecting the good people of Tennessee (or fill in the blank) has to stop. The writer berates Trevor Noah-watching liberals and asks how dare they judge her neighbors as she goes on to describe how difficult it is to meet these people in the store. Their views are based on falsehoods, lies, misinterpretations and ignorance. I have those people here, they are everywhere, not just Tennessee. To make this an “us vs. them” argument as the author does just buys into the false narrative republicans eat up.
Yeah, this is Jordan Peterson saying that it’s men who are discriminated against. It’s Trump saying that it’s white people who are discriminated against. It’s just bs. But it sells.
Greg: Did you miss that this author agrees with you? She is on your side in the censorship matter. Her point is that the rhetoric makes “our public officials dig their heels in deeper.” She is not saying these public officials are right, just that blanket condemnation of Tennesseans is wrong. This is precisely how I often feel treated by what she calls “coastal” commentary. Damn that Mencken.
I read it again, Roy, and now I’m even more pissed off about this drivel. I made a couple of points below, so won’t repeat that. But let’s look at another “point” she makes, as you do too. She writes: “With each op-ed from another coastal publication, Tennessee becomes more alienated, and our public officials dig their heels in deeper.” You write: “…just that blanket condemnation of Tennesseans is wrong.”
Just what exactly does “each op-ed from another coastal publication” mean? Where are the examples that support this view? Where are the “blanket condemnation(s) of Tennesseans”? Let’s be specific here. Based on all that I have read, there is no “blanket condemnation of” any amorphous group. There IS consistent condemnation of the policy. There IS consistent condemnation of the board. And there IS consistent condemnation of the voters who would elect such bigotry and ignorance to a school board. I haven’t seen any serious writing about this that says all Tennesseans are buffoons or something to that effect. But you know what? That condemnation would rightly happen it were in Minnesota, Massachusetts, Florida or New Mexico. It’s the act and the people who support it and/or allow it to happen. It’s very specific, but it happens to include a lot of people.
Don’t give me this garbage about “coastal elites” because it completely accepts a false narrative that has been posited by the right for decades. This “flyover” crap coming from purported liberals has to stop. It’s a right wing framing of the issue. I won’t even get into the core reason why people on the left who live in these places feel uncomfortable talking about these issues with their neighbors and still consider them “good” people. That’s another problem entirely.
Maybe it shows the perceptions that some people in rural areas have about outsiders. You can say it’s reverse prejudice about you “elites.”
And I read it again. Just exactly how does she suggest we support local people who are fighting the ban? Other than right-wing tropes of blame, I can’t find one other than send money to our local library. Perhaps if they actually fought the policy and the worked to remove the people who made it, it would give us a reason. Didn’t see one word about that.
I’d contribute to a campaign against the Governor of Tennessee. But as long as the local folk keep electing politicians who want to cut their services, there’s no hope.
Anyone who thinks that all Southerners are dummies is a living, breathing corporeal instantiation of irony.
“..corporeal instantiation of irony..” I could not have written that string if I had eaten cornbread and drank buttermilk.
Well, here’s how it is, Roy. You don’t mess with somebody capable of wrestling a Florida mosquito into submission.
You could always try the Paula Deen approach: drinking corn liquor and eating butter
capable of wrestling a Florida mosquito into submission with his bare hands
But in all seriousness now, Roy, you are an intelligent and deeply decent man, and it’s an honor to know you. And that Southern drawl can be disarming, ofc, to those who underestimate the one who possesses it.
As a former Southerner, can anyone cite a good political idea that was born in the South in the last 20 years? 30 years? The last one I can remember was from Dick Armey when he proposed the base closing commission, arguably the last real original bipartisan big idea. Can’t think of one since then. The arts, yes. Cuisine, yes. Governing? Are you kidding me?
Hmmm. Interesting point. Scratching my head trying to think of one from the South or the Midwest.
But thanks be to all the gods for Tennessee Williams and Zora Neale Hurston and Flannery O’Connor and Kurt Vonnegut, who is in heaven now.
Unfortunately white southerners have a long history of preying on the prejudices of the people they represent and underfunding education to keep the public ignorant of their malfeasance.
I take back one thing about good political ideas coming from the South. To have neglected Stacey Abrams and her work in Georgia was as boneheaded mistake of the highest order as one could make. And I definitely made it. But as stellar as her work and accomplishments have been, they have all be negative in the sense that the work is to fight a regressive system, not to create constructive change. But she has to fight the battle in front of her, a rare something that inspires and motivates during these horrible days.
Oh Lord. Yes.
but you did specify ideas, not persons
Bravo!
I agree with her main point, but I’m baffled by her anger. It’s a big country. People in one area often don’t know the details of what goes in other areas. This is true for Tennessee but it’s also true for Chicago and New York City. Do people in Tennessee know the details of every controversy and issue in Chicago? Do they do a nuanced take of all the news they hear out of those places? Of course not, nor would anyone expect them too. I live in a rural area and I regularly hear broad, unfavorable characterizations of cities and the people who live in cities.
“If you must write about us, at least give a damn about us. Outrage is the quick and easy response if you’re not committed to the sum of us; that is, if you’re only committed to signaling which side you’re on and don’t really care about communities outside your bubble.”
It’s great that positive stuff is happening there, though.
Her anger is directed at those who generalize about her area the way people generalize about ethnicity and other categories of humanity.
I have always had a distinct southern drawl, despite my Aunt’s best intentions to train me to the contrary. Often, I have been taken for a rube by those who should know better. So I identify with both her frustration with the book banners and the commentators who paint her community with too broad a brush.
Chiara,
Yes, I was thinking something similar.
Although mostly I was trying to figure out why “outrage” has worked so well for the far right takeover of this country, and the rest of us are supposed to bend over backward not to offend them.
The entire anti-CRT movement was based on manufactured “outrage”. It’s not as if anyone even knew what CRT was, let alone cared about it, until that outrage.
“I live in a rural area and I regularly hear broad, unfavorable characterizations of cities and the people who live in cities.”
Yep, and that “outrage” directed toward urban folks has been the main issue that has empowered the Republicans.
There is a difference between belittling Republican folks — which very few of us do — and being outraged when their leaders are supporting neo-fascist policies.
They abhor us. We abhor some of the policies they support. But no matter what, they are propagandized into believing we are the enemy who hates them.
I agree that people should make an effort to understand local events in other places, but it just isn’t limited to people in cities not understanding people in Tennessee.
I am regularly told that cities are dangerous places full of bad people.
This bias operates both ways.
You see it in ed reform. They regularly assert that all public schools and school boards are some kind of liberal elite bastion- it’s just nonsense. It doesn’t reflect the reality of a very big country- it’s a political and ideological assumption that runs the other way.
How about people in Tennesse make an effort to understand people in Chicago and people in Chicago make an effort to understand people in Tennessee?
Good point.
Ch: I am right there. Last summer I went to Atlanta to see an exhibit at the Pullman, a new community venue in the old shops where Pullman cars were repaired during the heyday of rail transportation. That trip taught me a lot about Atlanta, a city which I previously had experienced only as a driver on a madhouse interstate on the way to see my Florida kin.
All people need to have positive contact so we can understand each other instead of fearing each other.
I live in NYC, and my Texas family fears for my life. I fear for theirs because of guns.
That’s nuts. I feel safer walking around Brooklyn than I do in Houston. In the few places one can walk in Houston (or just about any American city), that is. Actually, I feel safer in Brooklyn and NYC than just about any urban environment in the U.S.
BOB (sighs deeply and thinks of those who argued for understanding and working with the Nazis): Sorry, but I just can’t go there.
History has important lessons to teach us. Maus teaches THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSON of our recent history in a manner immediately accessible to young people. When I first heard of this vote, my immediate thought was, “What sort of person doesn’t see that? How twisted and sick would one have to be for THAT not to be obvious?” My second thought was, “Why Maus, of all things? Perhaps this book hit these board members a little too close to home.”
My guess is that one of the school board members opened MAUS. They just heard about profanity and nudity. I hate to think of a naked mouse.
Social sanction, both positive and negative, is perhaps THE most important driver of social change. I’m old enough to remember an America when it was widely considered OK (by white people) for people in public life–politicians and comedians, and business leaders, for example–to make overtly racist and homophobic and sexist comments. And then people started being called out for these things, shamed in public for them, and many lost their jobs. Look up the story of how Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford’s Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, came to be ex-Secretary Butz.
And lots and lots of events like that resulted in real, positive change.
Polls of young people in the United States show that overwhelmingly, they oppose the reactionary politics of the Trumpy instantiation of the Republican Party. Name an issue–abortion, gun control, single-payer government health insurance for all, gay rights, trans rights, etc.–and they are overwhelmingly on the opposing side. Why?
Here’s my theory: the kids live their lives online. The moment one of them says something in a text message thread or posts something on TikTok that is backward–sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, etc.–other kids pile on. And it doesn’t take very long for people to get the message: this stuff just isn’t acceptable.
This is social sanction at work. It’s what happens in a democracy. If someone doesn’t want to be called a narrow-minded censor of freedom of thought and expression, then here’s my suggestion to him or her: don’t behave like a narrow-minded censor of freedom of thought and expression.
It’s my observation that the younger generation worries about the environment too. What kind of world will they inherit. Floods, earthquakes, droughts, tsunamis, rising tides,foul air…
I had a conversation with a student this week. She told me she had had Covid 3 times since the pandemic started. Her parents will not allow her to get the vaccination (“they are so conservative,” she said drearily).
Somehow, this child, whom I know to be intelligent, has divined a truth counter to what her parents think. A friend of my daughter seems to have arrived at the same place. While I attribute this to being online, I would caution that other kids online are parading around school with “Let’s Go Brandon” shirts (which they are required to cover or change since the school cannot sanction cursing, even in code).
I wonder if the children are not simply using the internet to become more tribal. We do not need more tribal. We need understanding before we get more Nazis. Fight the tribalism.
!!!!
I wish I could believe the Democratic National Committee hears this, but they don’t. the coasts need to stop wringing their hands and need to offer support.
Ed reformers working hard to “improve public schools” again:
“Iowa lawmakers have introduced a bill requiring cameras in public school classrooms so that parents can see what their children are learning, NBC News reports.
“The Iowa bill, H.F. 2177, would require that cameras be placed in every public school classroom in the state, except for physical education and special education classes,” says the NBC story, which also notes, “Last month, Republican lawmakers in Florida introduced a bill similar to the Iowa proposal, H.B. 1055, that would require cameras in classrooms and require teachers to wear microphones.”
Let’s review the work of the ed reform echo chamber since the start of the pandemic.
So far public school students have gotten a massive expansion of private school vouchers, giant and disruptive political fights over masks, vaccines and “CRT” conducted in their schools, and now the latest innovation from this lavishly funded “movement” that employs thousands of adults is video monitoring of every student and teacher in every public school classroom.
Twenty years into this and we’re still waiting for the promised “improvements to public schools” and there are more full time paid ed reformers and ed reform orgs every year.
There are hundreds of ed reform groups now, all with an identical agenda. They return no value at all to any student in any public school anywhere, yet they’re always hiring.
Reblogged this on Lloyd Lofthouse and commented:
Conservative activists are banning books (they are also taking away other freedoms) in what’s supposed to be a country (the United States) where people have the freedom to read what they want. What can the rest of us do to stop those extremists on the right? Well, we can start by reading this re-blogged post from Diane Ravitch’s site.
“As I lay awake, I remembered that the only side I’m on is the one that keeps the door open to a relationship, and one day, community transformation.“
Whitney Kimball Coe is my new hero. In a time when so many are reckless and vicious with their attitudes and their words and behavior, she is rational, levelheaded and just plain smart. Whatever the issue, her approach is life-giving versus destructive. We could all learn a thing or two.
I get all the rejoicing and agree with it, but one thing seems to have been overlooked, or I am the one who missed it, which might well be. As far as I can see, this policy is still in place. As long as it remains on the books, it is a threat. It is a precedent for some warped “legal” mind somewhere. And at least four members of the Supreme Court.
“We aren’t a novelty. We sure as hell shouldn’t be the scapegoats for deeper rifts in our national and global fabric.” Actually, this kind of self-righteous generalization doesn’t help at all. Sometimes it’s worth taking responsibility. Just a little.
You are a novelty. Or at least one of a small group of novelties. What other communities are passing these kind of regulations? Who elected them? Who are their neighbors who influence these kinds of decision? And we aren’t making you “the scapegoats for deeper rifts”. We are calling your community out for letting this particular issue become policy. Trying to shift the discussion to “deeper rifts” doesn’t absolve anyone for one action. There’s a whole lot of talk in this piece and not much about deeds.
Biden’s domestic advisor, Susan Rice, IMO, is wed to Silicon Valley which explains how she got the job. The Democratic Party’s coffers are tied to Neo-liberal Wall Street (the Clintons). “Liberal” mainstream media spins the corporate view.
Democrats are far better for the nation than Republicans. But, the places in between the west coast and east coast aren’t going to get help from two parties that are anti-union and who facilitate the legal theft of main streets’ assets.