The New York Times posted a story about the editorial ethics of the Wall Street Journal. It asked why the WSJ ran Alito’s response to ProPublica before the latter had published its article. Worse, the Times said, the WSJ said that the article in ProPublica was “misleading” even though no one at the WSJ had read it. How can anyone honestly say that an unpublished article is “misleading”?
It sounds like the WSJ is out to protect Alito without knowing or caring about all the facts.
The Wall Street Journal faced criticism on Wednesday after its highly unusual decision to let Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. pre-empt another media organization’s article about him by publishing his response in its opinion pages.
The essay by Justice Alito in The Journal’s opinion section, which operates independently of its newsroom, ran onlineon Tuesday evening with the headline “Justice Samuel Alito: ProPublica Misleads Its Readers.”
An editor’s note at the top of the essay said two ProPublica reporters, Justin Elliott and Josh Kaplan, had emailed questions to Justice Alito on Friday and had asked him to respond by noon Tuesday. “Here is Justice Alito’s response,” the editor’s note said.
ProPublica published its investigation into Justice Alito several hours later on Tuesday, revealing that he took a luxury fishing trip in 2008 as the guest of Paul Singer, a billionaire Republican donor, and had not disclosed the trip nor recused himself from cases since then that involved Mr. Singer’s hedge fund.
Stephen Engelberg, the editor in chief of ProPublica, said in a statement on Wednesday that ProPublica always invited people mentioned in articles to offer a response before publication. ProPublica has run several articles in recent months about possible conflicts of interests among some Supreme Court justices.
“We were surprised to see Justice Alito’s answers appear to our questions in an opinion essay in The Wall Street Journal, but we’re happy to get a response in any form,” he said.
“We’re curious to know whether The Journal fact-checked the essay before publication,” he added. “We strongly reject the headline’s assertion that ‘ProPublica Misleads Its Readers,’ which the piece declared without anyone having read the article and without asking for our comment…”
Bill Grueskin, a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, said that while essays on opinion pages usually got some form of fact-checking, The Journal would have been unable to do so in this case because the ProPublica investigation had not yet been published…
Rod Hicks, the director of ethics and diversity for the Society of Professional Journalists, said that “it’s quite uncommon for a news outlet to allow an official to use its platform to respond to questions from a different outlet.”
“And it’s totally unheard-of to post that response before the other outlet even publishes its story,” he added. “If not ethics, professional courtesy should have restrained The Journal.”
It seems that we are in an era when ethical standards are crumbling. The Supreme Court ignores conflicts of interest, rationalizes them, overlooks lavish gifts and doesn’t care whether they are disclosed.
And a major publishing outlet disregards ethical norms.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We could also substitute “The Supreme Court” with “The Republican Party” and add a few words.
The Republican party ignores conflicts of interest, rationalizes them, overlooks lavish gifts and doesn’t care whether they are disclosed, unless you are Democrats, who are always guilty even for alleged crimes with no evidence.
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It’s hard to remember how outraged Senate Republicans were by Nixon’s behavior during Watergate. Howard Baker of Tennessee asked, “What did the President know and when did he know it?” Those ethics are gone.
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Wow. Yes.
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You seem to think that the WSJ “editorial” page’s practice of lying, shamelessly and repeatedly, is news. The WSJ editorial page has been a cesspool of conservative mendacity for decades.
Those familiar with the endless pursuit of bullshit that was Whitewater knew well that facts were like Kryptonite to the WSJ editorial page. I would suggest that anyone wanting to read further about the destructive and vicious modus operandi of the WSJ editorial pages should start with Gene Lyons’ Fools for Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater, and Lyons’ and Joe Conason’s The Hunting of the President. As a (very) lowly foot soldier in the Clinton Wars, I watched firsthand their campaign of libel and slander against Vince Foster, the longtime Clinton friend and deputy White House counsel who committed suicide in Fort Marcy Park. In a note found in Foster’s briefcase, he said of the WSJ, “[Their] editors lie without consequence.”
While at the time the news division of the WSJ was excellent and objective, the editorial page lied serially on an almost daily basis, rancid, rotten stuff.
They haven’t changed one bit. Pure scum, capable of anything. The same is true of the Republican Party. This is their m.o., it’s what they do. Never believe a word they say.
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The National Review as well.
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Mr. Shepherd,
I know that you are very left-wing, but you are also the only regular commenter here who ever offers more than personal attacks against people you disagree with. So it’s disappointing that you disparage National Review, a publication that you seem to have inaccurately pigeonholed based on what they published decades ago when William F. Buckley ran that magazine. These days NR is conservative, but they long ago banished the nutcases among their writers, and the standard for what they publish is very high. They have published hundreds of very analytical essays on the shortcomings of Donald Trump; Trump’s acolytes hate NR. They have been steadfast in their support for Ukraine in their war with Russia.
There are several issues where I have a different opinion from NR writers, but I respect thoughtful advocacy wherever it originates. I often learn more from articulate advocates with opposing views than I do from people I already agree with. A great example of this dynamic is what Ruth Bader Ginsburg said of her close friend (and ideological opposite) Justice Scalia after he died. She said that if there were any weaknesses in her draft opinions, Scalia would find them. She consequently revised her opinions to make them stronger, while still voting opposite Scalia on the case at hand. We can all learn from RBG’s gracious example.
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Well spoken. I am not a regular reader of the National Review. I am basing my opinion on a number of egregiously extremist articles from the NR that I have read in the past few years, many of them posted here as examples of balanced, informative analysis. I’ve consistently found these to be shocking, extremely partisan, characterized by cherry-picking and sins of omission, and subtly racist and classicist and nationalistic even to the point of jingoism. However, your argument is so eloquent, so well made, that I shall give them another look. Next time I pass a newsstand, I’ll pick up a copy.
I haven’t any idea what “very left wing” means. If it is what people in America or readers of the Wall Street Journal of Oligarchical Apologetics call a pretty standard issue European style Social Democrat, then I am that. LOL.
Thanks be to all the gods that the NR supports the people of Ukraine and has not jumped on the Putinist bandwagon with the Trumpanzees. That’s a good thing indeed in a Repugnican Party that finds itself supporting censorship of school libraries, locking up drag queens, and reducing taxes on the richest in a time of unprecedented income and wealth inequality. Historically, the rich always push their toy until it breaks.
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cx: classist, not classicist, ofc
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Mr. Shepherd,
The best way to read National Review is to go online to Nationalreview.com. BTW, my all-time favorite political publication was The New Republic from many years ago. They never endorsed Republican candidates for President, but they had a diversity of thoughtful liberal and conservative (mostly moderate liberal) writers who jousted with each other at a high intellectual level. Alas, they have become hopelessly partisan under different ownership.
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Agree about the old New Republic. OK, I will add NR online to the list of publications I read. I try to read across the political spectrum.
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Here’s a wonderful article from National Review, on top of their website right now! Such a high intellectual level! See how civil?
https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/06/justice-alito-has-done-nothing-wrong/
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GregB Me thinks Alito protests too much. CBK
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GregB,
That essay actually is written at a high level by an attorney, but you are way too partisan to give credit to anyone who doesn’t agree with your opinions. The writer has written dozens of essays strongly critical of Trump and refused to support him in 2020 (see link below for an example). People who actually read NR know these facts.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/06/donald-trump-is-a-waste-of-the-rights-political-energy/
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I opened NR and the first two articles I saw were defenses of Justice Alito taking expensive gifts from a billionaire and not reporting them.
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Alito is an extremist, a radical. What he has in mind for our country is scary indeed. He has written a blueprint for overturning much of the basis for our current legal system.
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jsrtheta
Spot on, even if the language was a bit too mild.
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I’m trying to mellow in my old age.
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Haaaaa!
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Well said, jsr!
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jsrtheta,
Thank you for invoking two of the writers I have admired for decades: “Gene Lyons’ Fools for Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater, and Lyons’ and Joe Conason’s The Hunting of the President.”
I also watched (from afar) what the WSJ did back then, but I expected it from their right wing editorial page. It was the so-called liberal media who were worse, and a few of the most reprehensible purveyors of those right wing lies are still around now. I’m looking at you, Jeff Gerth, the rabidly pro-John Durham stenographer/reporter who specializes in amplifying and legitimizing false right wing narratives. More recently, Jeff Gerth has claimed that the rabidly “pro-Clinton FBI” (and I have a bridge to sell Jeff Gerth but he will only buy it from me if I’m a powerful Republican!!) victimized poor Donald Trump who never, ever did anything wrong and whose campaign had absolutely no ties to Russia (which he knows because he trusts Russian intelligence that John Durham told him to believe over his own lying eyes.) Why would Gerth think that Trump’s campaign official giving polling data to Russian intelligence, or Trump’s son and highest campaign officials inviting Russians offering to help the Trump campaign into a Trump Tower meeting matter, when Durham told him it doesn’t matter because Trump was victimized by having his wrongdoing investigated?
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I first became aware of Gene Lyons when Harper’s ran the article that led to the Fools for Scandal book. Through him I met Joe on a visit to Little Rock. I admire both of them tremendously. Haven’t talked to either of them in some time, though.
Gerth’s coverage of Wen Ho Lee was similarly clueless and libelous, to the point that both Bill Clinton and Lee’s federal trial judge apologized to him for his treatment by the federal government.
Publishing anything by Gerth is just asking for trouble, yet he continues to find work. Republicans love him, though..
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It’s very cool you got to meet both of them! And it’s depressing how far mainstream journalists have lost their way. Jeff Gerth was honored and feted recently by the Columbia Journalism School’s dean Jelani Cobb and the editor of the Columbia Journalism Review Kyle Pope, who treated Gerth as the ideal role model for all aspiring journalists who study at the J School. Depressing to know that a new class of journalists are being taught to believe that they should aspire to the sycophantic journalism of Jeff Gerth because their teachers and deans at Columbia J School admire and celebrate the lousy journalist who destroyed Wen Ho Lee. No wonder journalism has lost its way.
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And he feels no shame. His recent critique of the New York Times and the Russia investigation smacks of revenge on his former employer, not journalism.
As the man who invented Whitewater, Gerth has a lot to answer for. He refuses to do so. He obviously refuses to acknowledge the truth that he alone was responsible for putting the Whitewater “scandal” into the news stream by failing to even TALK to the people he libeled, thereby allowing Republicans to flood the news with phony allegations he should have known, had he done his job, were completely false.
And CJR should be ashamed of abetting this incompetent stenographer.
If you want to understand how the Republican Party lost its mind, and birthed the monstrosity it has become, scour the internet and used book stores for a copy of The Hunting of the President. The madness didn’t start with Trump.
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I agree 100%! The right wing got away with it in 1998 thanks to complicit reporters like Gerth. And it only emboldened them to be worse and worse, knowing that sycophants like Gerth from the so-called “liberal media” would always help them legitimize whatever false narrative helped them gain power. Columbia J School now teaching their reporters how to practice “both sides” stenography instead of journalism.
PS – Marcy Wheeler at emptywheel.net is a pretty good successor to Conason and Lyons. And so is Dahlia Lithwick at Slate.
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Marcy Wheeler is amazing.
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It would be difficult indeed to tally up the damage that Rupert Murdoch has done to our country.
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What an evil ____.
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I think the words “Wall Street” pretty much telegraph what to expect …
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#TodaysAcronym ☞ #OUSOB
Otherwise Unoccupied Seat On Bench
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Alito bit of fishing never hurt anyone.
(Hat tip to Bob for “Alito bit”)
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And Alito bit of squid pro quo never hurt anyone either (cept the squid, that is)
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I’ve never seen Squid Games. Is this part of the plot?
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haaaa
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I see Alito silhouetto of a man,
Scaramouch, Scaramouch,
will you do the Fandango!
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HAAAAA!!!
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Richard Nixon overheard in purgatory: “Why didn’t I think of doing a preemptive op-ed in the WSJ?”
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Greg,
Nixon is muttering “Why didn’t my own party stand by me as they do now?”
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republicans had Americans in their party back then. Today they only have Muricans.
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Now, now, Greg. He showed more than Alito bit of restraint in that WSJ letter, never once quoting Kramer’s Malleus Maleficarum or Mather’s Wonders of the Invisible World in support of his indulgences (God saw fit to open up this seat on this airplane and my mind to the positions of the one offering the seat, but these were completely unrelated manifestations of His will).
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Apparently there were no 13th century “experts” available.
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haaaaa
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Alito hates those 14th century free thinkers looking forward to the 15th, singing, “Tonight I Shall Party As Though It Were 1399.”
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Haaaaa!
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Greg, one of your best lines! “Party like it’s 1399!”
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Greg, that’s freaking hilarious.
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Before they became SCOTUS judges, Alioto and Thomas worked for the law firm of Dewey, Cheatham & Howe.
Or as a friend of mine long ago said — “Judges are politicians in black robes.”
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Fred Smith You recall your friend saying: “Judges are politicians in black robes.”
I think this is true and even pithy. However, the problem is: it doesn’t go far enough, and it can imply that judges are necessarily ONLY political.
Certainly, when one’s politics aligns with the general rules and laws governing their decisions, not to mention their oaths, judges will be happy about it. However, judges’ (1) political alignment and (2) the rules and laws governing their work may not be so well-attuned. In that case, they can and do judge differently than what would satisfy their own political leanings.
I sub-refereed a soccer game once where my son was playing, when the ref didn’t show up. (I held a ref license at the time.) I was crucially aware of my son’s presence and could have leaned towards making calls that favored him and his team; but I didn’t because I was committed to being fair under the framework of referee and game rules I had agreed to.
That’s a simple example; and judges’ decisions are much more complex than that. However, I hope it illustrates the point.
The recent SCOTUS events illustrate both moral and character “slippages” and the fact that rich people are constant moral hazards in deliberately or innocently (ha!) helping to blur or even erase the differences between judges being merely political animals in black robes, or being persons who uphold their oath and who can think in a-political terms . . . “a-political” meaning: to be able to think and make judgments that are based on given principles, even while ultra-aware of the political, including one’s own, and yet they still can and must expect themselves move beyond the merely political plane in their helping to steer our country according to its foundations. CBK
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Before this gets too far along, people should refrain from generalizing about “judges”, and especially lumping the thousands of judges in the country into the same hat as Supreme Court justices.
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Jsrtheta,
You are obviously a lawyer and I appreciate having your knowledgable voice here. I remember in college learning that Marbury v.Madison was one of the great advances in law because it gave SCOTUS the power to overturn Congressional actions. Now that SCOTUS has a reactionary majority, what do you think about Marbury?
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I do support Marbury. This country is governed by a ratified Constitution. As such, because legislatures and presidents cannot rule by fiat, there must be SOME means of determining if a law or state action (“state” here includes the federal government) is consistent with the Constitution.
The alternative is that a president decides…until the next president overrules him/her. Or, cast your eye on the House of Representatives as it is today. Would you want that motley collection of right-wing numbskulls, most of whom can barely spell, having the final word?
More to the point, do we want the Constitution to drastically change its meaning after every election?
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Marbury: did the Founders ever imagine that the Supreme Court would be stuffed with ethically challenged justices who have no respect for precedent?
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They were well-acquainted with men of bad faith.
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jsrtheta I was saying that all judges in this country and culture are called to rise to the level of a-political thought; and they all take an oath to the U.S. Constitution. In that respect, they are all alike. CBK
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My apologies if I misunderstood.
I was a county court judge for four years, and I can tell you that nothing raises a judge’s hackles like being accused of “politics”.
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jsrtheta That’s good to hear about judge’s attitudes when being accused of playing politics, especially in today’s environment. When I listen to “guests” on TV who are also long-term people in the law and/or government, I get the same sense . . . integrity matters. CBK
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It does. I appreciate you saying that. Lawyers have long been disparaged and the butt of jokes. That’s okay. They just don’t know, or they ran into a bad one.
During the 2008 recession I ran into a local attorney at a 7-11. He was, like everyone, feeling the economic pain and was wondering how he would meet his support staff payroll. But then he said, “But I could never leave the law.”
Real lawyers love the law, like my friend at the 7-11. It’s a calling. It matters more than anything. It’s not just a job.
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The WSJ is a division of Dow Jones, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Any more questions about why WSJ ran Alito’s take?
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exactly
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Murdoch bought the WSJ in 2007.
The WSJ had been lying about and slandering the Clintons since 1992.
The WSJ didn’t turn rotten because of Murdoch. He was simply a fan. Libel and slander was already the WSJ’s m.o.
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In moderation/response to Fred Smith. CBK
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Re: political discourse and civility.
Yes, it’s Apple, but I do love Apple Music. One of the feature it has, which I’m sure they all do, is keeping a list of the most listened songs of a year. In early 2022 I accidentally found a band in Chicago, Into It. Over It., who had a song that ended up becoming the one I most liked that year, Courtesy Greetings. The chorus is the best distillation of our political culture of which I am aware, writers, pundits, and fellow commentators here:
We’re fallin’ apart, but insisting that everthing’s fine
Sharing courtesy greetings confirming
We’re nice, but not kind
People who squawk about the lack of civility today, it seems in my experience, say the vilest things in the most polite language and never seem to equate the raising of their voices, the insults with craziness and cruelty, with any kinds of civility. They will call it out when they feel offended, but never do the same with themselves or any of their allies. Ever.
Let’s take some contemporary examples. How am I supposed to respond “with civility” to someone who claims homosexuality, being a Democrat (or at least not in the cult), or some other invented category is equivalent to practicing or supporting pedophilia? How am I supposed to do that? Please explain. Or when someone intentionally spreads intentional lies they know not to be true? Or someone who wants to distort history for political ends? I just went to YouTube to find a random example and look what came up. How can one respond with civility to this? The use of public office to spread lies and hate? I forgot, that’s what they want!
The fact is the political Right has historically supported violence and lies. Every instance of political violence that has taken place with Congress or state legislatures was instigated by reactionaries, the forebears of today’s cult. What this country needs is not more faux civility, it desperatly needs civic courage. Lies with civility are the worst kind. They’re told by people who smile in your face while stabbing you in the back.
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We’re all doing the schismogenesis rag.
And rage.
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But one side is consistently lying. Calling Harvey Milk a pedophile? Ignorant, stupid, and evil.
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So, thank you, Greg. I agree. “What this country needs is not more faux civility. It desperately needs civic courage.”
THIS
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Whoops, meant civil courage, but you get the point.
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civic courage works
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I’m thinking, for example, of the parents around the country who have gotten up the courage to go to school board meetings and shout down the American Taliban book burners.
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GregB,
Yes, yes, yes! As someone who is constantly accused of being “uncivil” by people who blatantly lie and smear others and then profess to be too “distraught” by my uncivil response to defend their lies (but demand that we believe their nasty lies because when they bully and try to destroy innocent people, they do so in a a way they insist is “civil”), I agree.
Lying is never civil. And calling out those who lie is the absolute hallmark of a civil society. Making lies acceptable and claiming it is “uncivil” to call them out is the absolute hallmark of the end of democracy.
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NYCP: One gentle critique, if I might. You have a habit of responding to right-wing posts by ascribing positions to the commenters that they have not taken. You have a tendency to write things like: “You probably think that. . . .” and then saying something that the person you are responding to never claimed.
This tendency in your posts undercuts what you have to say and sometimes makes your posts not about the questions at hand but just part of a generalized left-right food fight. The problem there is not one of civility but of accuracy.
Yes, call out lies. Present evidence to the contrary. By all means. But I would gently suggest that you not attribute to other commenters positions that they have not espoused.
So, for example, a recent comment on this blog called me an atheist. I have never–not once–made the claim on this blog that there is no god. In fact, I think that, for epistemological reasons, atheism is NOT a defensible position. Arguing about whether God exists is, I think, like arguing about the average length of the gestation period of a unicorn.
I just happen not to believe in any particular tribal god, including that of the Christians. But I am not an atheist. I don’t think that the proposition “There is/is not a god” is intelligible. So, calling me an atheist attributes to me a position I have not taken, and it is not only uncivil (I’m fine with that) but also wrong. If someone is going to attack me, I think, it should be for something I have in fact claimed, not for stuff attributed to a generalized Other.
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Bob,
You make an excellent, dead-on critique of NYCP. She constantly ascribes opinions to commenters when she has no way of knowing whether they actually hold those opinions. She did this recently in response to a CPA who raised valid questions about both Trump and Joe Biden. He – Mark Jackson – right away stated that Trump is not trustworthy, and later on he stated that the Biden’s suspicious business activities should also be scrutinized. She launched into a bitter attack on the CPA with assumptions that she couldn’t possibly support. I’ve seen her do this dozens of times. She comes across as a fanatic, and as you say she undercuts whatever valid points she might have.
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Bob,
I would never sling terms like “atheist”.
“I would gently suggest that you not attribute to other commenters positions that they have not espoused.”
I don’t ascribe “positions”. I simply call out what their ugly and nasty innuendo actually says. Maybe the fact that they get so defensive and go on the attack when they could simply clarify their position, as I do, should be a hint to you that their positions are exactly as I am describing.
Bob, I respect you a lot, but you got really defensive about my pointing out that there IS implicit racism in TKAM and it is taught as if it is a model of everything that is anti-racist. You attacked me for saying there was implicit racism in how the author wrote the book and that today’s high school students don’t need lessons in the kind of white savior racism stories that the most right wing Republicans embrace (Republicans love TKAM because it doesn’t challenge ANY of their current racist narratives).
You kept discrediting all of my criticisms while making vague allusions to the book not being perfect. But when I asked you how the book isn’t perfect, you didn’t answer. I seriously have no idea whether you think there is implicit racism in TKAM or not, because you have never done anything but tell me my concerns are invalid. If a goo9d teacher like you can’t explain it to 2023 high school students, then imagine how the book is taught by less talented teachers.
If you simply reply by attacking my “style” for being uncivil, that makes me case.
If you don’t think there is any implicit racism in TKAM, a book written by a white woman in the south in 1960, then just say that. I happen to think there is a reason that Uncle Tom’s Cabin is no longer part of the canon of required books that should be taught in every high school. That doesn’t mean it is “banned”. It means that it is unlikely to ever be taught to students without its serious flaws and weaknesses included. When I was a kid, UTC was taught as a “classic”, not as a flawed piece of literature that had an important historical impact but also reflected the very real racist views of the author. It is HOW a book is presented by a teacher that is important. And I really expected you to acknowledge the implicit racism in TKAM, and instead you just kept discrediting my examples without offering your own BETTER examples of implicit racism in the book. So I was left wondering if you actually saw any implicit racism in the book.
It took me a long time to stop being defensive about the fact that I had implicit biases. Having implicit biases doesn’t make me a bad person — it makes me human. But trying to think about them and how they might influence my thinking is necessary, in my opinion, and getting knee jerk defensive and denying that I have any makes the problem worse.
We may disagree about some of this, but if you just call me “uncivil” or claim I am ascribing motives to you that you don’t have instead of engaging in the discussion, then maybe you are as uncivil as you believe I am.
I very well may have gotten something wrong here. And I welcome a thoughtful reply that addresses it. But a general attack isn’t helpful. Nor are the people who attack me for being “too wordy” or writing long posts when my intention in writing long posts is to try to clarify instead of offering platitudes or snide attacks.
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NYC-
Given the refusal of the right wing to recognize ethics which includes why it is wrong to lie (Barrett’s Roe “settled law”) and, when they support liars (Kevin Mccarthy in the George Santos case) and people trying to topple democracy (Thomas taking gifts from Harlan Crow; Josh Hawley on Jan.6), I believe that ascribing to them some positions whether they state them or not, is reasonable. When a political party courts racists and sexists, the other people associated with that party should expect to be judged by association.
As a Democrat, I don’t want to be associated with Manchin but, he is an outlier in the Party. Based on research polls, the most offensive politicians in the GOP are reflective of the mainstream Republican.
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Wendy Waite, fan of the National Review, says that I am too uncivil.
Wendy Waite, I have been critical of Jimmy Carter and Bernie Sanders, so BY YOUR STANDARDS that means that if I write something critical of Alito – like the truth that
Alito is morally and ethically compromised – you must read it with an open mind and not disagree.
Now some people will attack me fror ascribing “motives” to you that you claim you don’t have.
So I give you a chance to describe your motives when you tried to shut down a critic of a National Review writer who believes Alito is honorable and upright by saying that writer was critical of Trump.
Wendy says: “That essay actually is written at a high level by an attorney, but YOU ARE WAY TOO PARTISAN to give credit to anyone who doesn’t agree with your opinions. The writer has written dozens of essays strongly critical of Trump and refused to support him in 2020”
You don’t make “civil” arguments. You just get angry when anyone points out the flaws in what you believe and go on the attack.
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Linda,
Thank you. I know you often get the same treatment that I do. And I appreciate that you try to engage and offer substantial evidence-based argument for your views, instead of just calling people “uncivil”.
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The teaching of TKAM has gone a long, long way toward combating racism in this country. The argument that TKAM is “racist” because Atticus is some sort of “white savior” is utterly ridiculous because HE DOESN’T AND CANNOT SAVE TOM. People who make the argument that the book is racist simply cannot read well, and they are totally ignorant of what the teaching of this book has done, throughout the country, for decades, to expose racism and teach kids to be anti-racist. Ignorant, uninformed attacks on this book–more book burning–threaten one of the most powerful tools we have had, as teachers, to combat racism–a tool that has been, over the decades, extraordinarily effective to that end. The book works brilliantly because the reader falls with Scout and then learns with Scout a powerful lesson about stereotyping people (Boo, Tom). It works particularly effectively because kids identify with it, and the book is extremely accessible. Again, the argument that Atticus is presented as some kind of “white savior” is just DUMB. I give that reading a D minus, with the note, “Did you read the freaking book?”
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ATTICUS IS A WHITE SAVIOR (who doesn’t and can;t save anyone).
Yeah, that makes A LOT of sense. [Face palm]
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NYCP, you asked whether Jackson, the bank auditor, covered up for criminals. YOU HAD NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER FOR SUCH AN EXTREME SUGGESTION. NONE. It was breathtaking that with ZERO evidence of this you would suggest such a thing. You were impugning his ethics based simply on his saying that as an auditor, it seemed to him that the Burisma thing stank to high heaven. Well, it does stink. Hunter Biden is not some sort of expert on fossil fuels. Bank officials live in fear and dread of auditors because these are the folks who are there to keep them honest. Suggesting that he covered up for criminal behavior is BEYOND THE PALE. It goes to the heart of and impugns what he does for a living. It’s like saying randomly, to a doctor, how many patients did you let die because you didn’t like their looks?
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NYC
Civility is what people like Tucker Carlson demand/expect from Democrats. But, what they really think, is evident in the labeling of the left, as snowflakes.
If and when you reject being civil in response to racists, sexists and social Darwinists, my respect for you, increases. In general terms, there’s a long history of people who inflict their lack of compassion on the vulnerable and expect others to remain silent and/or civil.
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Bob,
The tone of your reply speaks volumes.
Just to clarify, you do not believe there is any implicit racism in the book TKAM?
You set up a straw man: “The argument that TKAM is “racist” because Atticus is some sort of “white savior” is utterly ridiculous because HE DOESN’T AND CANNOT SAVE TOM.”
And you are right that Atticus doesn’t and cannot save Tom.
You have distilled the complicated critiques of the portrayal of different characters in a book written by a southern woman in 1960 into “Atticus doesn’t and cannot save Tom” and “they are totally ignorant of what the teaching of this book has done, throughout the country, for decades, to expose racism and teach kids to be anti-racist.”
How can you not even consider that both those can be true and that in no way means you don’t even have to consider the possibility that there might be implicit racism in a book written in 1960 by a white southern women?
As a Jew, I would be pretty offended if Laura Hobson’s book “Gentleman’s Agreement” (also made into a Gregory Peck movie) — was presented as a classic to 2023 students as an IDEAL way to teach them about anti-Semitism. But it was considered that way. Having a Christian person go undercover as a Jew was fine in 1950. But it really should not be presented as some definitive book to teach all high school students about anti-Semitism. It was important at one time, but that doesn’t mean it is “important” to teach Jewish children and children of other religions NOW.
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I recently taught high school in southern Florida. Many of my students’ parents, as might be expected, were racists. But one had to look long and hard to find a racist among the students themselves. They HATED racism. They didn’t get it. They easily made friends and dated across racial lines. This surprised and delighted me.
And nationwide, the same is true. The kids coming up are anti-racist, and this really upsets Repugnicans. They’ve lost the kids. The kids don’t share their white supremacist views.
Why? Well, the fundamentalist, nationalist, white supremacist cretins are right about one thing: SCHOOLS HAVE DONE A LOT TO TURN THIS AROUND, to change attitudes, and that’s reflected in polls of our young people.
And part of this–a very large part of this GREAT SUCCESS–has been the many hundreds of thousands of hours that English teachers have spent teaching kids to be anti-racist via To Kill a Mockingbird.
So, get a clue about that.
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Racism is a toxic brew made from fear and ignorance. Not knowing and fearing what you don’t know. THAT’s what TKAM teaches so CLEARLY, so ACCESSIBLY in the parallel stories of Boo and Tom. One of the reasons why English teachers have been so successful in creating young anti-racists is that they had this great book in their arsenal. Almost every kid in America has now had the marvelous opportunity to sit in classes where this book was used to teach them to be anti-racist.
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Bob,
I can’t believe you are now attacking me for calling out “Mark Johnson” for his comment on Heather Cox Richardson’s evidence-based and thoughtful distillation of Hunter Biden.
“The public deserves to know if Joe was paid off to do things not in the best interest of the country. It’s long past time for the mainstream media to do its job, even if doing so hurts politicians they favor.”
Mark Johnson, in impugning criminal behavior to Joe Biden without an iota of evidence, SPECIFICALLY CITED his expertise because he claimed to be a CPA with a big accounting firm who was well-versed in the type of criminal and corrupt behavior he was certain Joe Biden himself had benefited from. It was Mark Johnson who was IMPUGNING Joe Biden and claiming that Biden’s corrupt behavior had never been investigated.
In other words, “Mark Johnson” was a right wing troll. I intentionally responded to him in the only way that trolls should be responded to if we hope our democracy can survive.
I think that GregB gets it. Every time I see someone here treating a right wing troll as if they are making good points instead of engaging in the kind of pernicious right wing propaganda that they are doing, I weep at how easy those trolls get smart people to legitimize them.
Both GregB and Joel and Diane Ravitch recognized “Mark Johnson” for what he was. You joined him in attacking me for being “uncivil.”
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NYC. I mentioned that Atticus is not a “white savior” because that was your major reason for dismissing the book as racist. If you will simply go back and look at your comments about the book, you will see that, clearly, that was your primary argument against it. And it’s a ridiculous argument.
Again, this has been an extraordinarily powerful tool for teaching ANTI-RACISM. I don’t go around calling tools for teaching anti-racism racist. That’s just dumb.
Are there things in the book that might make someone somewhere uncomfortable? I SHOULD FREAKING HOPE SO.
Now that’s a Repugnican argument for you. TKAM portrays racism (and other forms of stereotyping based on ignorance and fear). So, is there racism in the book? Yes, there is. IT PORTRAYS RACISM as based on ignorance and childishness and fear and hatefulness and envy and other terrible human emotions. Should we protect kids from that portrayal because it might make someone feel uncomfortable? Emphatically not. THE DEMONSTRATED SUCCESS OF THE TEACHING OF THIS BOOK IN COMBATTING RACISM–success that has been demonstrated literally hundreds of thousands of times across this nation for decades–argues for the importance of its continued use in our curricula. Arguments to the contrary are made IN TOTAL IGNORANCE OF THIS SUCCESS AND OF HOW WIDESPREAD IT HAS BEEN AND IS.
Argument from ignorance.
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Bob,
Really?? You are giving TKAM credit for young people’s anti-racism?
Schools have been teaching TKAM since I was a kid and I am practically a senior citizen. The movie was already an “oldie” when I was a kid. It has been read by students since the 1960s! TKAM was likely required reading when the parents you are referring to as “racist” were in high school.
From what I can tell from my own kids, who came of age when students read Ta-Nehisi Coates and perhaps never read TKAM, I doubt very much if young people today aren’t racist because of TKAM. It is because they have read many other books that have taught them that not being racist is more than saying “I’m not racist” as the Republicans do. FYI, no Republican politician will ever admit to being racist. And I bet they all praise TKAM. They don’t praise books by Black authors that challenge their idea of what a good book to teach about racism (TKAM) is.
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Bob and NYC public school parent I’m not in this argument. However, I am also “older” (76) and offer below a reminder of a little bit of history.
I remember when there were NO Black people in almost ANY place of authority (or women, for that matter/all white males), Few or NO mixed neighborhoods, NO Black people on TV; and when on film, it was mostly stereotypical, like Gone with the Wind. I also remember the more recent movie “Crash” . . . which I think rightly depicted racism and sexism as still with us, again, based only on my own experience.
Also, I have always thought, with nothing but my own assumptions, that one of the reasons we have experienced SOME movement towards inclusivity is because of the slow and gradual acceptance by White people of Black people, other races, and women, on television and movies, in serious roles that broke with the stereotypes of the times and helped many (I think, like myself) become comfortable with the otherness I and, I assume many others, experienced as White people who lived in those times.
Literature of course was part of it, and even for myself, the TKAM movie helped me move further out of what I had early accepted in my own upbringing . . . not OVERT racism (if it was present, I have no memory of it), but COVERT precisely because of the absence of common threads of inclusiveness in my surrounding culture (it was all White), and because I was pretty-much isolated well into my 20’s from being around anyone who wasn’t a cliched White person. Racism and sexism (even women about women) were solidly a part of the culture in those days, even without being said. A long journey from then to now. CBK
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There are just shy of 5 million 9th-graders in the United States. Every year, ALMOST ALL OF THEM are in English classes where they are SUCCESSFULLY taught ANTI-RACISM using TKAM. It is one of the most powerful tools in our arsenal for teaching kids how racism works, what its causes are, how insidious it is, and why it is so evil. Arguments against teaching this book are made based on a) ignorance of the book and b) ignorance of the breathtakingly overwhelming success English teachers have, EVERY YEAR in teaching these things to millions of kids, ignorance of all these millions and millions of EXISTENCE PROOFS of the value of the book for COMBATTING racism.
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The brilliance of this book, TKAM, is that it uses the parallel stories of Scout’s fear of Boo and the town’s fear and hatred of Tom to demonstrate, extraordinarily clearly, the MECHANISM OF RACISM–how it works. It’s about FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN OTHER. And it demonstrates this foundation of racism in IGNORANCE as well via the presentation of the Ewells as the archetypical racists. The insidiousness of racism is demonstrated by the parallels between Scott’s feelings about Boo and the townsfolks’ feelings about Tom. The reader identifies with Scout AND FALLS WITH HER. It’s the same artful technique that Milton uses in Paradise Lost, where the most attractive character, in the opening books, is Satan, causing the reader TO FALL WITH HIM and require redemption. The beauty of TKAM is that Scout learns better. She learns how racism and other stereotyping works and why it is so wrong. And so do the kids–the millions of kids–who study this ESSENTIAL BOOK every year.
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Bob,
I commented below. I absolutely recommend reading that PBS Newshour conversation that I linked to:
“NewsHour Weekend anchor Hari Sreenivasan spoke with the National Book Foundation’s executive director, Lisa Lucas, about the book’s place in the canon today, at a time when Black people are clamoring to be at the center of the story.”
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In your very first attack on TKAM on this blog, NYC, and repeatedly thereafter, you claimed that TKAM was a racist book because it presented Atticus as a white savior. If you will simply go back and look at those posts, you will see that this is the case.
Here is you commenting on November 20, 2020:
[T]he author chose to make every African American character into a stereotype where they [sic] are incredibly grateful to their savior, Atticus Finch.
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I got no dog in this hunt. Never read the book or saw the movie. Yes, people like me exist. Always had a bit of an aversion to Southern literature. Now, can you two show some civility? 😘
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Bob, I don’t get it.
You define “white savior” in such a way that you deny it could possibly be true that anyone could criticize anything about TKAM.
I suggest you read the NPR discussion.
“You know, I think that we always want to think about how to assign books that explicitly hit things on the head, right? “OK, I want to see a book that shows something horrible being done to a Black person and a white person challenging that horrificness and feeling really good and teaching their children that this is the way that we treat all people, right?” That feels great. But it hasn’t at any point humanized that which has been dehumanized culturally. It doesn’t change our hearts and minds in the same way that simply spending 150 pages or 350 pages with a Black family makes us realize that there are similarities. It’s like, how do we pivot it and take it away from the white gaze and actually make it about trying to understand race relations through looking straightforwardly at people of color?”
Tell me why you disagree with that statement because it seems to me that you are teaching TKAM as some ideal way to teach your students not to be racists when maybe that was true 50 years ago but not true anymore.
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This is an interesting discussion. As a southern man, I would like to place To Kill a Mockingbird in its proper historical context. Coming 6 years after Brown vs Board? Lee’s little novel packed in it, the memory of an entire epoch of white supremacy juxtaposed with the inability of anyone good, white or black, to combat the evil of assumptions in society. Beyond race, it began a march toward an era from its publication right up to the Reagan Revolution during which people increasingly called out injustice. To do otherwise became a social evil.
As such, therefore, Mockingbird should be considered very important historically. Moreover, since a Mockingbird is an aggressive competitor in literal avian reality, it was a good image for the book and for the aggressive response it, and its era, inspired.
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In related news:
https://boingboing.net/2023/06/22/moms-for-liberty-defends-use-of-hitler-quote.html
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FYI, (from New Republic, June 21, 2023):
“Democratic presidential candidate and rabid anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has decided to take his 2024 campaign to new, extremist levels.
Kennedy will be a guest speaker at a Moms for Liberty gathering in Philadelphia next week, an event dubbed the “Joyful Warriors National Summit,” the nonprofit announced Tuesday.
Moms for Liberty has been labeled an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC, for disguising its attacks on schools, teachers, and the LGBTQ community as “parental rights.” The group is especially famous for pushing bans on books that discuss identity issues, including race, gender, and sexuality, or have sexual content; chapters of the group have run (sometimes successful) campaigns in schools across the country. It’s a broad ambush, “seeking to undermine public education holistically and to divide communities,” the SPLC’s Rachel Carroll Rivas told NPR earlier this month.
So why is Kennedy, who purports to care about issues of censorship, speaking at the summit? Perhaps because he’s running on the wrong ballot.
Other guest speakers at the Moms for Liberty summit include some of the top 2024 Republican candidates: twice-impeached and twice-indicted former President Donald Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, and anti-woke multimillionaire Vivek Ramaswamy. In fact, Kennedy appears to be the only Democrat on the list of guest speakers, which also includes far-right conspiracy theorists and the president of the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation.”
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You are right. RFK Jr. Is running in the wrong party.
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OMG. Kennedy and these Moms for “Liberty” kooks are made for one another. Thanks for sharing this, NYCPSP.
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Raw Story reported today that the Indiana Chapter of Moms for Liberty is scrambling to explain why their very first newsletter included a Hitler quote.
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Kennedy is a grifter, a liar, and likely responsible for many negative health outcomes including many deaths.
We I was a prosecutor, we had form entitled “Petition to Destroy a Worthless Person”. It was a joke, of course.
But if it wasn’t, I’d be tempted to file one on RFK, Jr.
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Once again, public school parent, you have no clue what you are talking about here. You haven’t read the book. You haven’t taught the book to black and white 9th-graders. You evince no understanding of how realist fiction works. Did you follow AT ALL, my detailed explanation of how the book’s parallel plot structure works to teach kids about racism? OBVIOUSLY, you did not.
CLUELESS.
DON”T WRITE ABOUT MATTERS YOU KNOW NOTHING WHATSOEVER ABOUT. And certainly don’t go on and on about them, piling error on error, endlessly. It’s extraordinarily foolish to write about matters that you don’t know about and do not, at all, understand.
Oh, sorry, my bad. Do go on and on some more explaining to the hundreds of thousands of teachers who have successfully used this book to teach kids to be antiracist your far superior understanding of this matter based on ZERO EXPERIENCE OR RELEVANT KNOWLEDGE OR TRAINING.
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I wonder how many kids have gotten sick and been maimed for life or killed because their parents listened to Robert Kennedy, Jr.
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Now THERE’S a literal menace to society. And way past the “well-intentioned but ill-informed” category. He’s found his grift and he’s milking it for every dime he can scam.
Give me an armed robber any day. No BS with an armed robber.
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Amen, jsr!
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Speechless.
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Media is reporting that Alito had a trip to Rome paid for by the Notre Dame Religious Initiative. Reportedly, the group has submitted briefs in cases before Alito. The trip was to attend/speak at one of the group’s galas. The event was held shortly after the overturn of Roe.
It’s surprising that media didn’t refer to it as a Christian college religious group.
The right wing justices never say no to gifts and recusing themselves would defeat the point.
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Linda,
I didn’t think that trip to Rome was a big deal. Alito got expenses paid, no honorarium.
Getting a flight on a private jet and a vacation in a luxury resort,paid for by a billionaire who has cases before SCOTUS, is way worse.
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In my opinion, it’s either the same or worse. Marginal issues might relate to whether he disclosed it in filings, whether the trip included time for vacation and if it did, if he paid taxes for the gift.
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The court’s decision robbed women of a fundamental right.
It was a step backward from other developed nations and it ushered in a return to a chattal-like time. Alito took a victory lap to the seat of power for the Roman Catholic Church. He didn’t crow about the success of his Church in the U.S. which is where citizens lost a right they had had for 50 years.
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Media report, the leader of Notre Dame Religious Initiative bought Barrett’s home after she was confirmed- the appearance of influence.
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He took a victory lap. Well put, Linda.
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Reply to Bob Shepherd so our TKAM discussion stops hijacking the Alito discussion:
Bob, this is an excerpt from what I wrote above that started this:
“Bob, I respect you a lot, but you got really defensive about my pointing out that there IS implicit racism in TKAM and it is taught as if it is a model of everything that is anti-racist. You attacked me for saying there was implicit racism in how the author wrote the book and that today’s high school students don’t need lessons in the kind of white savior racism stories that the most right wing Republicans embrace (Republicans love TKAM because it doesn’t challenge ANY of their current racist narratives).
You kept discrediting all of my criticisms while making vague allusions to the book not being perfect. But when I asked you how the book isn’t perfect, you didn’t answer.”
I regret even mentioning the words “white savior” because you seem focused ONLY on that and missing everything else, and I was using that as a GENERAL term for the type of “Republican-approved” narratives about race that they like.
“You know, I think that we always want to think about how to assign books that explicitly hit things on the head, right? “OK, I want to see a book that shows something horrible being done to a Black person and a white person challenging that horrificness and feeling really good and teaching their children that this is the way that we treat all people, right?” That feels great. But it hasn’t at any point humanized that which has been dehumanized culturally. It doesn’t change our hearts and minds in the same way that simply spending 150 pages or 350 pages with a Black family makes us realize that there are similarities. It’s like, how do we pivot it and take it away from the white gaze and actually make it about trying to understand race relations through looking straightforwardly at people of color?”
The above is from an excellent discussion on PBS Newshour that it worth reading to better understand my POV:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/reevaluating-to-kill-a-mockingbird-60-years-later
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Not only does this discussion repeat the utterly ridiculous “white savior” critique of the book (again, Atticus cannot and does not “save” Tom, as anyone who has freaking read the book knows, and he is NOT presented as the be-all and end-all of goodness and understanding), but the other major criticism that it makes FUNDAMENTALLY MISUNDERSTANDS HOW LITERATURE WORKS. Yes, TKAM presents a racist culture. Duh. And it presents that racism AS EVIL. And it explains where the evil comes from. The novel is primarily a realist medium. TKAM is very much in that tradition. It portrays a time and place AS IT WAS, and it CONDEMNS HOW IT WAS.
Are people supposed to write about racism in the past but somehow simultaneously pretend that the culture wasn’t racist, that people weren’t forced into stereotypical roles? Are we to have a literature that is like that approved by the Soviet censors in the old days that portrays every factory is populated by hardworking workers selflessly devoted to increasing production quotas for the good of the motherland?
ONCE AGAIN, every year in the US, MILLIONS of kids learn anti-racism from some English teacher guiding them through TKAM. I would venture to say that this has been our most effective tool to that end. Why? Because everyone gets the instruction. Because they all spend a lot of time, in connection with study of this book, discussing the root causes of racism and the evil that results from it.
I would say, at this point, what I think of would-be book burners, but Diane does not allow such language on her blog.
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Why is this book so powerful for teaching 9th graders about racism?
First, it is extremely accessible. Even challenged readers can get through it.
Second, it is extremely (to use current kid vernacular) “relatable.” Kids identify with the main character. THIS IS IMPORTANT because. . . .
Third, the reader FALLS with the main character that he or she identifies with into the trap of fearing a person who is something “unknown,” and thus becomes guilty of the very thing that is the root cause of racism–fear of the unknown Other.
Fourth, the reader is redeemed when identifying with a Scout who learns that lesson–who learns that it is wrong and dangerous and stupid to fear the unknown Other.
So, novel is so powerful for teaching anti-racism because the young reader LEARNS FROM VICARIOUS EXPERIENCE not to think in that racist, stereotyping way. Vietnam vets used to say, “You wouldn’t know because you weren’t there, man. By using this parallel structure of the stories of the prejudice against Boo and Tom, and causing the identification with Scout, the novel takes the reader, the student, there, man. He or she lives it and learns from it.
That’s why it has survived the crucible of actual experience in the classroom. Teachers know that they can depend on it to reliably teach antiracism. And yes, I am aware that I split that infinitive just now.
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And, ofc, it’s a gripping story. Kids actually want to finish it.
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Turning criticism of a book into “book burning” is beneath you, Bob.
TKAM is perfect. No criticism is allowed. It’s the reason why students in 2023 aren’t racist, but it is absolutely not the reason why their elders who had to read the book in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s are (but insist that they are not racist at all because they admire Atticus).
Just consider that by 1980, students didn’t need to read Uncle Tom’s Cabin to “learn” that slavery was bad.
And consider that in 2023, students don’t need to read TKAM to understand that the kind of OVERT racism that Atticus fights against is bad. Even Republicans believe it is wrong.
And consider that “white savior” is NOT a term that is supposed to be taken literally. It doesn’t refer exclusively to a person who LITERALLY saves a person of color’s life.
It’s a lot more complicated, and I am surprised you dismissed that PBS discussion as worthless.
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That PBS discussion was just shy of mindless.
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And hmm, where have I heard, we should remove this from the curriculum because it contains stuff that might make someone uncomfortable before? Oh, yeah. Moms for Liberty. DeSantis.
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Bob Shepherd Imagine how uncomfortable it makes a young Black person to find out how his/her relatives were treated. I haven’t read everything pertaining to this issue, but what I have heard is all related to how White people feel. CBK
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My friend Dan taught this to mostly black students. I taught it to mixed race students. Millions of teachers, black and white, have taught this to white, black, and mixed-race classes. I can tell you how it made my black students feel. It made some of them mad (at the racists in the book). It led some of them to say, yup, that’s how it was or that’s how it is still.
Again, none of this is theoretical. This book is taught to millions of 9th graders every year. People write about this as if it were not a known phenomenon.
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One of the reasons why I devoted a lot of my life to making African-American lit anthologies for use in US schools is that I did not want this history hidden, CBK. I wanted people to face it, to know it. There is a reason why the DeSantis’s and the Abbots and the Aarnes and Trumps and their ilk do not want that history taught. For the same reasons that we should never forget the Holocaust, we should never forget the horrors visited upon the indigenous of the Americas and our Asian and African-American brothers and sisters.
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What is it that the Reich-wing book burners are writing into legislation all across the country right now? Oh, can’t teach that uncomfortable thing. Must never do that. Do that, and we will fire you.
I emphatically disagree that that’s what we should be doing.
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Bob Yes, that’s the point. As you know, discomfort is the price we pay for knowing history. It’s a necessary price, and it’s really a spark for our growth because we can walk in another’s shoes, and it sets us up to question who are we and what’s right and wrong, with all the nuances in-between. And it puts our present into the context of the past, and with some real hope for defining our future because we are less likely to just thoughtlessly drift through it. It makes us realize that what we think and do is important.
I was born in 1946, just after the war. by the time I was 5 or 6, the movies were showing trailers for cartoons . . . of war photos of children in the concentration camps and Dr. Mengele’s patients. I identified with those children, and I’m pretty sure that’s when I first became a liberal. CBK
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xoxoxoxo
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xoxoxo
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But that isn’t book burning either, huh?
IT’S FREAKING THE SAME PHENOMENON.
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Back before we decided to let the feds and state departments of education micromanage education via the standards and testing regime, teachers made their own curricular decisions. And here’s how that worked: They had department chairpeople and department meetings, and they pretty much fell back on the tried and true, ON WHAT WORKED. Well, TKAM works. It works to create antiracists.
The last thing we need is book burners telling people they can’t teach it any more.
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“it hasn’t at any point humanized that which has been dehumanized culturally. It doesn’t change our hearts and minds in the same way that simply spending 150 pages or 350 pages with a Black family makes us realize that there are similarities. It’s like, how do we pivot it and take it away from the white gaze and actually make it about trying to understand race relations through looking straightforwardly at people of color?””
Does TKAM humanize the Black characters? Does it really make sense in 2023 to teach about racism by reading a book where the Black characters aren’t humanized? Or is that irrelevant?
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I absolutely agree that it is extremely important to have kids read materials in which they have, vicariously, the experiences of characters of various ethnic and “racial” backgrounds. (I put racial in quotations because it is a cultural not a biological concept.) That’s why I devoted a lot of my life to preparing for middle and high-school students anthologies of African-American literature. That’s why I spent a lot of time familiarizing myself with and including in hardbound lit anthologies, materials from many cultures within the US and across the world.
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You speak as though there were no discussion at all going on the classrooms, NYC. One of the most common issues for discussion of TKAM is the portrayal of Calpurnia. Kids love her. So, they are attracted to this black character. But the teacher then raises all the issues related to the role to which she is relegated–what she has to do for a living, how she pushes back against the external controls, the fact that she is not referred to with a last name, etc. The whole point of the scene in which she takes the kids to church is to BLOW UP the prejudices about the lives of black people. There Scout experiences something incredibly vibrant, warm, loving, profound, wise, wonderful, including the donation scene, in which people who have little dig deep to help out another of their community who is in distress. The scene further clues the kids in to the inequalities in their milieu and humanizes the Other.
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As is true of most book burners, I suspect that most of the folks lobbying to remove TKAM from our curricula HAVE NEVER READ THE BOOK. The ridiculous “Atticus is a white savior critique,” which you led with and repeated over and over months ago, NYC, is probably based on people’s memories of the movie with its heroic portrayal of Gregory Peck. If they had read the book, they would know how stupid that critique (which is the most common one) is. And simply thinking clearly ought to make them realize that if you want to show how ugly racism was, you have to show how ugly racism was. Duh.
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was and is
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I am passionate about this because TKAM is too valuable a tool for teaching anti-racism for us to lose it. It’s bad enough that we have to defend it from the increasingly common attacks by Moms for “Liberty” types, but to have to defend it from self-styled antiracists who have NO FREAKING CLUE WHAT A POWERFUL TOOL THIS BOOK IS TO THAT END is, well, exasperating.
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Just what we need. Book burners on the right AND the left telling teachers how to do their jobs AS THOUGH THEY HAD A CLUE.
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“TKAM is too valuable a tool for teaching anti-racism for us to lose it.”
Why? It’s 2023, not 1980. And it is exactly that attitude that I find troubling. It’s a book about what racism was in 1960, just like UTC was a book about what slavery was like.
Anti-racism today is not the anti-racism of 1960. That’s why Republicans adore TKAM. It is a very safe book, not one that challenges today’s racism. As a tool for “teaching anti-racism”, there are better books. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have some literary merit. I find it questionable that you would say that a book written entirely from the white perspective by a 1960 southerner is such a valuable tool for teaching anti-racism in 2023 that it can’t be “lost”. What exactly is the important “anti-racist” message you believe a book that doesn’t care about or give much insight about the lives of its black characters teaches?
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WHY? Because it works. It worked, for example, for my friend Dan who taught it to his 9th-graders last month. It works for hundreds of thousands of teachers every year. It does an important job and does it well. It is TRIED AND TRUE.
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NYC Parent Maybe we could forget about the history of sexism or the Holocaust. It might make the closet sexists, Nazi’s, and anti-Semites among us uncomfortable, especially while trying to pass their attitudes down to their children while those damn teachers in public education teach stuff like Anne Frank or To Kill a Mockingbird. CBK
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Thanks, CBK. I agree. We not only should teach the uncomfortable, we must.
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Republicans do not adore TKAM. That’s jsut deeply UNINFORMED.
It is one of the most common targets of Repugnican book burning/censorship PRECISELY BECAUSE it targets racism.
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Have you even read it?
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Doesn’t care about or give much insight about the lives of its black characters?
Are you kidding me?
White savior. Doesn’t care about or give insight into black characters.
Yep. Clearly, you haven’t even read it.
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You are talking about something you know nothing about, and that should have been obvious enough from when you first started about this Atticus the white savior stuff on this blog months ago.
Book burning doesn’t become you
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^^and yes, let’s be done with this discussion.
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“WHY? Because it works. It worked, for example, for my friend Dan who taught it to his 9th-graders last month. It works for hundreds of thousands of teachers every year. It does an important job and does it well. It is TRIED AND TRUE.”
Has your friend Dan taught his 9th graders any books about racism written by Black authors, or do you already know that they would not work nearly as well as TKAM? Has your friend Dan done a study that proves those books written by Black authors that focus specifically on Black characters just don’t “work” to teach kids in 2023 about racism the way TKAM does?
TKAM has been taught for decades and decades. Did it work then?
It’s a book. It’s not some magical spell.
You clearly know more than I do so I will have to take your word that there is a vast movement of right wing Republicans who have criticized TKAM for being too woke. Because I have seen no evidence of that myself. I only have seen Republicans refer to Atticus in a positive way.
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NYC, my friend Dan is a scholar of Rap music. He is an inner-city B-ball player. And yes, he teaches lots of work by Black authors. Why would you imagine that he doesn’t? If you would have a look at a contemporary hardbound literature text, you would find that it is filled with authors of every ethnicity and race.
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Plucked from the news
A school board’s decision to remove To Kill a Mockingbird from eighth grade curriculums in Biloxi, Mississippi, is the latest in a long line of attempts to ban the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee. Since its publication in 1960, the novel about a white lawyer’s defense of a black man against a false rape charge by a white woman has become one of the most frequently challenged books in the U.S.
According to James LaRue, director of American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, challenges to the book over the past century have usually cited the book’s strong language, discussion of sexuality and rape, and use of the n-word.
“The most current challenge to it is among the vaguest ones that I’ve ever heard,” he says. The Biloxi School Board “just says it ‘makes people uncomfortable.’” LaRue finds this argument unconvincing, contending “the whole point to classics is they challenge the way we think about things.”
One of the earliest and most prominent challenges was in Hanover County, Virginia, in 1966. In that instance, the school board said it would remove the book from county schools, citing the book’s theme of rape and the charge that the novel was “immoral.”
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Why on earth would you imagine that people aren’t teaching black authors because they are teaching TKAM? That makes ZERO sense.
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Hundreds of thousands of teachers have found that the book works magic. It turns kids into antiracists. That’s WHY the book is so commonly challenged by racists. Because it works.
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I just shared with you, NYC, a little article about some current right-wing attacks on TKAM and about the long history of those. The Reich-wingers have long targeted this book ostensibly because it deals with the aftermath of a rape but really because they don’t like that it portrays racism as really ugly (the Ewells) and insidious (it can do a number even on someone like Scout) and systemic (it’s everywhere–in domestic relations, in courtrooms, even in church). It is one of the top most banned books BY THE RIGHT.
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The article I shared about that history of right-wing banning of the book is in moderation.
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Harper Lee herself once sent a check to a school board that had banned her book as a contribution to ensuring that the board get a first-grade education.
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I only have seen Republicans refer to Atticus in a positive way
OMG. ROFL.
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TKAM is one of the most-banned books. The most common reason is “use of inappropriate language”–i.e., profanity and the n-word. I just did a count. The n-word appears in Huckleberry Finn 212 times. Should we ban this novel too? Because someone might be uncomfortable? Even though it is a great classic of world literature the primary message of which is that racism is juvenile and stupid and breathtakingly cruel?
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https://www.history.com/news/why-to-kill-a-mockingbird-keeps-getting-banned
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Bob,
THANK YOU!! The article at the link above really expresses some of my views better than I am able to:
“Writer Kristian Wilson argues that although the novel shouldn’t be banned from schools, its use as a teaching tool should be reassessed.
“Lee’s is not the best book to teach white kids about racism, because it grounds its narrative in the experiences of a white narrator and presents her father as the white savior,” she writes.
Atticus Finch, the father and lawyer at the center of the novel, received a lot of attention in 2015 when Lee’s only other novel, Go Set a Watchman, was controversially published several months before her 2016 death, at age 89. In the book, seen as something of a follow-up to To Kill a Mockingbird, the main character Scout is shocked to spy her father at a Ku Klux Klan meeting.
Though many readers were dismayed, scholars have long argued that if you read To Kill a Mockingbird from a racial justice perspective, it’s clear that Atticus’ defense of Tom Robinson, the black man wrongly accused of rape, doesn’t mean that he favors changing the status quo of segregation. And in fact, his sympathy for the KKK is already present in the first book.
“Way back about nineteen-twenty there was a [local chapter of the] Klan, but it was a political organization more than anything,” Atticus tells his children at one point. When asked if he is a radical, an implicit question about his commitment to civil rights, Atticus says he’s “about as radical as Cotton Tom Heflin”—a white supremacist senator and member of the KKK.
Again, this doesn’t mean that To Kill a Mockingbird shouldn’t be taught in schools. But it does suggest that teachers should encourage their students to think critically about Atticus, not just the men who oppose him.”
If you think that the 5 million 9th graders required to read TKAM are learning that Atticus is a racist, white supremacist who in no way views the Black people he knows as his equals, that would be good. Because I don’t think that 9th graders today are always taught that Atticus is a prime example of a white supremacist who is fine with the status quo – although he does believe that the courts should be fair to Black defendants. And he does express sadness that they are not. It seems to me that Atticus is more frequently presented as a role model to white students. Hopefully I am wrong and that is not true anymore.
But I agree with this line from the link you provided: “Lee’s is not the best book to teach white kids about racism…”
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Again, this critique FUNDAMENTALLY MISCONCEIVES how literature works. Anyone who would make such a RIDICULOUS ARGUMENT should get a check from Harper Lee to go back to First Grade. LOL. OF COURSE THIS BOOK PORTRAYS A RACIST SOCIETY AND RACIST CHARACTERS. It is not freaking fantasy. IT IS REALIST ANTIRACISM. DUH.
Freaking book burners. Sickening, whether they come from the right or the left.
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And again, based on your comments, I STRONGLY suspect that you have not even read the novel, that you have been going on and on and on for months here about a topic THAT YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT EXCEPT VIA HERESAY.
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Atticus is a white man living in a small, rural town in southern freaking Alabama in the 1930s. He has some racist inclinations. What a surprise! That’s up there with, I bet he hasn’t even seen Game of Thrones!
What an utter stupid criticism of the book. It’s a book about the mechanism and ugliness of racism that portrays the mechanisms and ugliness of racism. How dare it do that! OMG. I don’t know whether to howl with derision or cry that such ignorance is to be found here.
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But please, do tell, NYCPSP, how hundreds of thousands of English teachers so fooled themselves into thinking that they were teaching antiracism in discussions of one of the greatest novels that our country has produced. GO TO IT. SET THEM ALL STRAIGHT.
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CBK,
I want the history of the Holocaust taught and the history of racism in this country taught.
I don’t think the ideal way to teach Christian students about the Holocaust and anti-Semitism is to have them read a book about a Christian German family whose honorable and upright father doesn’t view Jews as equals but does object to them being exterminated in concentration camps and teaches his children that it is wrong. wouldn’t it be better to teach students about the Holocaust and anti-Semitism by seeing it through a Jewish child’s eyes instead of a German Christian child’s eyes? Is that really a necessary book to teach students about the Holocaust in 2023? There might have been a time when that was acceptable, but not now.
Diary of Anne Frank is the perspective of a young Jewish girl. If it was about a young German girl who writes down her feelings about how sad she is that all her Jewish friends are being treated so badly, I would find that a pretty objectional way to teach students about the Holocaust.
TKAM has a lot of literary merit and faithfully describes what life in the south was like for the Finch family . At the time it was published, it broke ground in addressing issues of racism. It doesn’t have to be banned but I don’t think it merits the moniker of “great anti-racist book” anymore.
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NYC public school parent You often have things to say that I appreciate. This is not one of them. I think it’s a matter of understanding the import of history as such, and of an adequate way to bring it forward for all students (any color or race and, in this case, the history of racial discord) . . . a way that brings its comprehensive meaning and import to their particular lives, families, and distinct cultures, all within the dynamism of a democratic political climate.
Again, I appreciate many things you say here, but I think this one needs a better pair of glasses, and perhaps a better aim as you test the pulse of the history you are writing about . . . a great loss if we lose that text and one’s like it for the same shallow and either/or explanations.
Also, in today’s way of putting things, if I were to rewrite that note, I would say about the White mob in To Kill a Mockingbird that they wanted to break the law and lynch a man who happened to be Black, because he was Black. CBK
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Bob,
That quote is from the link that YOU recommended!
Why did you even bother to post the link when you believe it is full of nonsense?
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I never claimed to agree with the stuff in that article, NYC. I only sent it as an example of the various reasons why the book has been banned. It is possible that I posted the wrong piece. Whatever. That argument is utterly moronic. OMG. Atticus has racist inclinations. WHAT A SURPRISE! Can you even imagine that this might be possible in a white male character in rural Alabama in the 1930s? ROFLMAO.
These are the very matters that are discussed, NYC, when the book is taught. WHEN IT IS TAUGHT SUCCESSFULLY AS ONE OF OUR GREATEST TOOLS FOR CREATING ANTIRACIST KIDS, tried and true, by hundreds of thousands of teahers, with millions of kids.
But please, you WHO HAVE NOT EVEN READ THE BOOK, tell them all how confused they are. LMAO.
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Tell them all how much more you know about the book and teaching it and what effects it has on kids than they do. Aie yie yie.
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https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/book-burning
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Let’s add TKAM has a white savior and portrays racism to that list in the video. LOL.
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I read the article at the link you provided and cited a portion of it positively, and you attack me.
The quote from the article that YOU recommended I read was actually from an article in BUSTLE (Oct 16, 2017) whose title is this:
“‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ Shouldn’t Be Banned, But Students Do Deserve Better”
Bob, I am tired of having an argument where you accuse all critics of TKAM to be book banners and book burners.
THIS IS FROM THE ARTICLE THAT IS NOT “banning” TKAM:
“To Kill a Mockingbird is a fantastic work of literature, and removing it from a school’s curriculum because it makes white readers uncomfortable misses the point entirely. With that being said, Lee’s is not the best book to teach white kids about racism, because it grounds its narrative in the experiences of a white narrator and presents her father as the white savior, in spite of the fact that he fails miserably at saving the man he was contractually obligated to rescue.
The literary canon is unbearably white, especially the narrow part of it taught in compulsory education. If we want white children to understand how racism affects black individuals and families, and to understand that black experiences matter, then we should have them read those experiences as written by black writers. Otherwise, we’re presenting the same old perspectives that we haven’t managed to learn from yet.”
Bob, you have repeatedly accused me of wanting to burn or ban TKAM because I disagree with your absolute certainty that students in 2023 can best learn about racism by reading a book from 1960 written by a white southerner about a white family.
Students can learn about life in the south for white people by reading TKAM. But if you want to teach students about racism, it’s preferable to let them see racism from the perspective of Black characters. Not from the perspective of white characters.
“OMG. Atticus has racist inclinations. WHAT A SURPRISE! Can you even imagine that this might be possible in a white male character in rural Alabama in the 1930s? ROFLMAO.
These are the very matters that are discussed, NYC, when the book is taught. WHEN IT IS TAUGHT SUCCESSFULLY AS ONE OF OUR GREATEST TOOLS FOR CREATING ANTIRACIST KIDS, tried and true, by hundreds of thousands of teahers, with millions of kids.”
“Racist inclinations”?? Really, that’s how you describe it?
If TKAM was “our greatest tool” for creating antiracist kids, then it should have worked for the last 50 years because it has been part of the “canon” for at least 4 decades. Maybe 5. And all those racist parents who read TKAM in the 1960s, 70s and 80s would already be antiracist. Isn’t it far more likely that what created the current population of antiracist students and made them different from their parents who ALSO read TKAM is that today’s students read more recent books written by authors who weren’t white that had the perspective of characters who weren’t white and show what racism looks like TODAY?
That link in Bustle lists some of those books, which I am glad my kid got to read. TKAM can be read as literature, but too often it is presented just the way you do, as some ideal antiracist book, and I don’t understand why there is such an attack on everyone who dares to point out that a book that only shows racism from a white character’s perspective may no longer be the ideal antiracist book.
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NYC. You said that you weren;t aware of right-wingers calling for bans on TKAM. I said that it has long been one of the most banned books, and I posted that link FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE of illustrating some of the reasons why the book has been so often banned, including its references to sex and rape, which offend the fundy nutcases.
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The literary canon is unbearably white, especially the narrow part of it taught in compulsory education.
Again, this is people talking about matters about which they know absolutely nothing. This was true in 1965, but it is definitely NOT true today. Literature textbooks and school libraries today are full of multicultural selections, so this is ANOTHER EXAMPLE of someone talking about something that he or she is clearly entirely ignorant about.
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Racist inclinations. Yes. That’s how I describe it. There are degrees of this disease. Atticus has a mild case COMPARED TO many of the townsfolk and to old man EWELL, though he definitely has the disease.
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It certainly was not taught in every 9th grade class in the 1960s. It was taught in some in the 1970s and early ’80s. By the late 80s and 90s, it was pretty standard,
And from that point on in our culture, the public acceptability of overt racism dramatically declined, until Trump, that is. And part of this, I’m sure, is because every freaking 9th grade student in the country, almost, was reading TKAM and getting a big dose of antiracist classroom discussion surrounding it. So, that’s a terrible argument TOO.
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it is presented just the way you do, as some ideal antiracist book,
That is because, NYCPSP, if you knew anything about this, you would know that for several decades now, almost every 9th-grade English teacher has taught this book EXPLICITLY for the purpose of treating this powerful theme in a way that has proven to be extraordinarily effective. It’s an extremely accessible book that kids find gripping and that teaches them about the history of racism in this country, about its systematic nature, about how it works psychologically, about how evil and stupid racists are, about how pernicious and insidious racism is, and how much damage it does.
I see that you have now come off your previous positions that it presents a white savior and perhaps from the position that it should be removed from the curriculum. That’s some progress, I guess. But why you would imagine that because people teach TKAM they don’t also teach other literature by members of many nonwhite groups–that I just cannot figure out. It’s just not a sensible notion, and it’s UTTERLY WRONG.
There are schools right now in this country where the book banners have provisionally removed all the multicultural books from the classroom and school libraries. And after they’ve done that, those shelves are almost bare.
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It works, ONCE AGAIN, so freaking well because the kids identify with Scout, and Scout has this irrational fear of Boo, which develops into antipathy, and then proves to have been totally unjustified. So, via this identification, they go through the stages of falling into the stereotyping trap themselves AND THEN LEARNING BETTER. Its brilliant, and it WORKS. It works really, really, really well. It is tried and true in the crucible of classroom experience, repeated literally hundreds of thousands of times. But please, you know so much better. Please straighten all those poor benighted clearly implicitly racist teachers out, including the black ones who teach this book and have for decades now.
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One of the challenges of being a teacher is that everyone thinks, based on little or no relevant experience or education, that he or she knows better how to do it than you do. Moms for Liberty. Folks who are shocked, shocked that there might be a racist character in a book about racism set in southern Alabama in the 1930s.
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I have devoted a lot of time to this because it really matters. And I fear the network effects of the spread of misinformation and disinformation about the teaching of this book, which is so important, so valuable, so useful.
It is particularly shocking that these critiques are made by people who haven’t even read the freaking book and certainly have never taught it and so don’t have any clue what they are talking about.
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“The literary canon is unbearably white, especially the narrow part of it taught in compulsory education.”
Utter poppycock. This does NOT describe the canon as it is presented in mainstream contemporary K-12 textbooks. It hasn’t for decades now. It'[s fascinating that people think that they can pontificate about contemporary public education without knowing anything about it, really. I am reminded of David Coleman when he introduced the Common [sic] Core [sic] crying out that we need to start teaching substantive texts. Little did he know that ALMOST EVERY SCHOOLCHILD IN AMERICA IN GRADES 6-12 was working his or her way, each year, through a big, hardbound literature anthology from McDougal, Littell or Prentice Hall or Scott Foresman or whoever full of–guess what?–substantive literary works from the canon. He was particularly incensed that kids weren’t being asked to read foundational works like the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address. But guess what? These were in every seventh-grade and 11th-grade history text and in every 11th-grade American literature text. He was also incensed that they weren;t reading Shakespeare. But guess what? Every 9th grader was reading Romeo and Juliet. Every 10th grader was reading Julius Ceasar. Every 11th grader was reading Macbeth. At least those. So, the fact was, David Coleman, chosen by Gates to be the decider for the rest of us, for all the country’s English teachers, DIDN’T HAVE TEH SLIGHTEST IDEA WHAT HE WAS TALKING ABOUT. He didn’t have the slightest clue what was actually being done in US English classrooms.
Just as these critics of the teaching of To Kill a Mockingbird have no clue what happens when this book is taught, why that is, in fact, pretty darned miraculous, why it is so essential, why Atticus isn’t some sort of white savior, why the fact that the book has racist characters and people forced into stereotypical roles IS THE POINT because the book’s purpose is to depict and undermine racism, a purpose it achieves extraordinarily well.
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Following the whole Boo Radley parallel plotline and identifying with Scout, the student reader falls into the trap of stereotyping based on ignorance of the Other and fear of it because of that ignorance. So, this BRILLIANTLY parallels and demonstrates how easy it is to fall into stereotyping, into the very modes of irrationality that give us racism. And it does this while being both accessible to 13-14-year-olds and holding them on the edge of their seats. So, is there rare magic in this? Well, the actual experience of hundreds of thousands of English teachers with millions of kids says, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
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NYC public school parent I thought when I read it and saw the film, and still do, that the book, though “written from the perspective of a white person,” portrayed all of the Black people as “regular” human beings reacting to awful human situations in a way that expresses integrity and that draws sympathy for people going through those situations.
. . . it’s realist in that portrayal in the same way such realism would be portrayed for any group of persons in history that, of course, has its good and bad people in it, and everything in between. And so, the book is not only about “life in the south for white people.”
However, that’s not the way many White people in that time period actually thought, nor in our own. To me, and in that time period and ours, TKAM helps racist-prone readers break through the ridiculous attitudes and ideas that are still with us, namely, that all Black people are bad people, and somehow not as human and deserving of our common political identity as “we” are.
That it comes from a White perspective makes it more, not less powerful because it sets the paradigm for White readers by showing how a White person need not and doesn’t share that old and pervasive perspective as a matter of course; while also showing an example of the worst-case of group racism, as well as those who undergo being shamed (by a child, no less) for wanting to (1) break the law and (2) lynch a Black man.
To me, and despite its hollow praise of TKAM, . . . hollow in view of the rest of the article, which reveals its own unhistorical attitude by also presenting an “either/or” view, . . . the below quotes and your view from your note provide some of the most ignorant ideas about the meaning of literature, and the purveyance of racism, I have ever heard or read about. Of course, we need books written from Black and other perspectives. But not at the cost of the history of either American and/or world literature as such, or such fine literature as we find in reading TKAM or seeing the film. The rest is quoted from your note. CBK
“Lee’s is not the best book to teach white kids about racism, because it grounds its narrative in the experiences of a white narrator and presents her father as the white savior, in spite of the fact that he fails miserably at saving the man he was contractually obligated to rescue. …
“The literary canon is unbearably white, especially the narrow part of it taught in compulsory education. If we want white children to understand how racism affects black individuals and families, and to understand that black experiences matter, then we should have them read those experiences as written by black writers. Otherwise, we’re presenting the same old perspectives that we haven’t managed to learn from yet.”
“Bob, you have repeatedly accused me of wanting to burn or ban TKAM because I disagree with your absolute certainty that students in 2023 can best learn about racism by reading a book from 1960 written by a white southerner about a white family.
“Students can learn about life in the south for white people by reading TKAM. But if you want to teach students about racism, it’s preferable to let them see racism from the perspective of Black characters. Not from the perspective of white characters.“
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CBK, I appreciate you and Bob’s perspective. You are welcome to it. But I am tired of having my views misrepresented. I have never said TKAM should be “banned” nor “burned”. If something I wrote months or years ago gave you or Bob that impression, then blame my poor writing, but why keep attacking me when I have already said multiple times that was not what I believe?
“Students can learn about life in the south for white people by reading TKAM. But if you want to teach students about racism, it’s preferable to let them see racism from the perspective of Black characters. Not from the perspective of white characters.“
That statement seems pretty reasonable to me, sorry. Not going to retract it no matter how much Bob and you attack me for saying it.
Here is how Bob sees TKAM: “ALMOST ALL OF THEM are in English classes where they are SUCCESSFULLY taught ANTI-RACISM using TKAM. It is one of the most powerful tools in our arsenal for teaching kids how racism works, what its causes are, how insidious it is, and why it is so evil.”
But TKAM has been taught to students for 40 or 50 years! There was a time when it did teach students “how racism works”, but in 2023, to refer to TKAM – a book about a white family – as “one of the most powerful tools in our arsenal for teaching kids how racism works, what its causes are, how insidious it is, and why it is so evil” is a huge red flag to me. But I definitely agree that it is STILL being taught that way.
I find this perspective worth considering:
“You know, I think that we always want to think about how to assign books that explicitly hit things on the head, right? “OK, I want to see a book that shows something horrible being done to a Black person and a white person challenging that horrificness and feeling really good and teaching their children that this is the way that we treat all people, right?” That feels great. But it hasn’t at any point humanized that which has been dehumanized culturally. It doesn’t change our hearts and minds in the same way that simply spending 150 pages or 350 pages with a Black family makes us realize that there are similarities. It’s like, how do we pivot it and take it away from the white gaze and actually make it about trying to understand race relations through looking straightforwardly at people of color?”
I don’t understand why the quotes I included from people questioning whether TKAM should still be perceived as “one of the most powerful tools for teaching kids about racism” in 2023 makes people so angry.
We haven’t had a discussion. There is only one “right” view: To Kill A Mockingbird is “one of the most powerful tools in our arsenal for teaching kids how racism works, what its causes are, how insidious it is, and why it is so evil”.
No one can question that truth.
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NYC You act like students will only get one book to read. I challenge your either/or view; and I never said “ban” or “burn,” but loss. It’s just a plain loss of the way literature and history work. And your statement that “it hasn’t at any point humanized that which has been dehumanized culturally” is dead wrong.
No one that I know thinks one book can do it all? which is hinted in your narrative. But the Mockingbird book shows the horrors of dehumanization while at the same time breaking the “Blacks are not human” stereotype and so breaking through the historical paradigm that was present at the time and that still exists in the corners of some minds.
I think you are right about the value of students reading writers who write from their experience of cultures that differ from one’s own. And breaking the White-only value system has been a long time coming and still needs work.
It’s not a competition between books to assign, however. And to leave such works as TKAM behind, or even as a second kind of choice, seems to me more reactionary than wise. It’s to miss the most important insight about understanding one’s own historical context (in this case, Black and/or White) . . . about how things were before we got to where we are now and how some people experienced and fought to make that change occur. CBK
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CBK,
We all have implicit biases. TKAM is a fine book. So is Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath and .
I don’t think that in 2023, holding out TKAM as an absolutely essential part of the canon because it does a better job than any other book to teach kids antiracism, is true. And I think some day that will sound as absurd as the folks who said that Uncle Tom’s Cabin must remain in the canon because it is so important to teach kids about slavery and racism. It WAS that. It isn’t anymore. Just like Gentleman’s Agreement is no longer the book that must be in the canon to teach kids about antisemitism.
This isn’t about what TKAM or UTC or Gentleman’s Agreement was IN THE PAST, nor the good lessons they taught IN THE PAST.
I thought we could have a discussion about NOW. About 2023. About why there is still this knee jerk reaction to any criticism of TKAM as the ideal book to teach kids antiracism. You set up straw dogs as if my point is to “protect” kids from reading about the horrors of racism when I am doing no such thing. It is important to read books that are set in that time that show that history. But teaching TKAM – a book about a white family – as a great antiracist novel in 2023 is questionable. Antisemitism today isn’t like Gentleman’s Agreement and racism today isn’t like TKAM. Both books show what those were like decades ago from the perspective of white and Christian people.
The headline of the Bustle article is “‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ Shouldn’t Be Banned, But Students Do Deserve Better ”
I think yours and Bob’s answer is NO, students don’t deserve better because TKAM is the ideal book to teach antiracism.
“And to leave such works as TKAM behind, or even as a second kind of choice, seems to me more reactionary than wise.”
TKAM must not be a second choice. It must always be the first choice. It is certainly presented that way and taught to chldren that way. Why wold a book by a Black writer be a first choice to teach about racism when there is TKAM, the perfect book about a wonderful white family led by their upright and honorable nonracist father?
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NYC “I think yours and Bob’s answer is NO, students don’t deserve better because TKAM is the ideal book to teach antiracism.”
Straight from your own interior blinders. (You may have “looked at” my note, but you obviously didn’t read it . . . a great irony, considering this context.) CBK
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NYC public school parent: You have NO CLUE what you are talking about on this subject. You haven’t even read the freaking book, clearly, and you have never taught it, clearly, and you have no idea how kids respond to it, clearly. There is an extremely impolite phrase that captures the kind of UTTERLY UNINFORMED expression of opinion that you have indulged in here that readily springs to mind. If Lauren Boebert tried to explain set theory, it would sound a lot like your rants about this book you haven’t read.
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TKAM is a SUPERB book foir teaching antiracism. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of hours of actual classroom experience have taught that this is so. Is it ideal? OMG. ROFL. Conceptions of geometric figures are ideal. Things in the real world are not. Duh. This book is tried and true for this purpose, but please,go right ahead, PSP, and explain to the nation;s English teachers how confused they are about that, how they’ve actually been doing this terrible thing. ROFL. That is just about the dumbest stuff I have read outside a speech by Ted Cruz or Donald Trump.
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I also think there is an unspoken subtext here where it is assumed that white students would learn about racism better by seeing it from the perspective of a white family instead of Black characters. I know that was once the accepted truth, but it shouldn’t be any longer.
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NYC What don’t you get about “both/and”? CBK
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Again, simply not true.
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I JUST FINISHED explaining to you that many of us have spent DECADES filling literature anthologies and supplemental libraries with texts from extraordinarily diverse persons and points of view. I JUST DID THAT. Aie yie yie.
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CBK, posted reply below.
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https://www.tiktok.com/@humanrightscampaign/video/7241240823113747758
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Don’t be disingenuous, NY PSP. Repeatedy on these pages you have called To Kill a Mockingbird a “racist” book and have called for it to be replaced in the curriculum. It sounds ridiculous when you deny what you have done over and over and over again, ad nauseam. This is EXACTLY the MO of Moms for Liberty, Charlie Kirk, Ron Ron DeSantis, and so on. And even for the same reason. These people are always calling for books to be removed from the curriculum because they are “racist.” Exactly what you have done here, again and again and again.
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And given the breathtaking low quality of the “reasoning” in your arguments about this book, it is doubtless the case that that reasoning would NOT IMPROVE based on actually having read the book and actually having sat in on an entire series of classes in which the book is taught to 9th graders. You have NO CLUE WHATSOVER WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. It’s like listening to Matt Gaetz explain quantum mechanics or Jim Jordan taking a crack at explanation of Kantian aesthetics.
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Bob,
I have spent way too much time trying to elaborate on my view and especially, quote from other people who I thought expressed it better than I did.
Your only response is to constantly hurl insults and tell me I am wrong. And tell me that the people I quoted are just as idiotic as I am. If you don’t get how you are the one acting like the Republicans, then look in the mirror.
This discussion started out because you allowed no criticism of TKAM. You kept dismissing all the criticisms that I made and that others made as pure idiocy – mostly ranting about how we wanted to ban and burn the books.
When I asked you – as I did months ago – to tell me if there was anything to be critical of in TKAM, you didn’t really offer anything. All I know is that you believe this book about a white family is the IDEAL book to teach antiracism as if the fact that young people today are far less racist than their parents who ALSO read TKAM is entirely because of the book.
We will have to agree to disagree that this white author’s 1960 novel is uniquely responsible for today’s young students’ antiracism. I think the antiracist students today understand that Boo Radley’s situation where he is perceived by people as an “other” is not the same as the town’s institutional racism that affects the entire Black community.
Why isn’t TKAM simply perceived as good literature with the same casual implicit racism that is often found in books written 60 years ago? Why does it have to be presented as the ideal book to teach antiracism to students in 2023? I hope your answer isn’t “because TKAM is the ideal book to teach antiracism to students in 2023” but if it is, then maybe you should ask yourself why TKAM is that indispensable “book to teach antiracism” instead of one of the more recent novels that actually show what racism is like from the perspective of a Black person instead of a white one?
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Ideal? What on earth is THE IDEAL? Some sort of Platonic fantasy? This is a great book. It works extremely well. It is perfect for 9thgrade kids. That’s why it survived the crucible of actual classroom experience to become almost universally taught in 9th grade without ever having been MANDATED. Think of that. Hundreds of thousands of English teachers said, yeah, this really works. I’m going to keep doing this. Do you have ANY CLUE how significant that is? Or do you, like David Coleman, think that you know better than all those English teachers do?:
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And once more, you seem to imagine, to fantasize, that somehow, because TKAM is taught, kids are robbed of experiences with literature from black points of view. Are you freaking kidding me? Have you looked at a school lit anthology lately?
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Your suggestion taht because TKAM is being taught, kids are being robbed of experiences by black authors is, again, based on lack of knowledge of the topic you are writing about. And it’s an aspersion on those of us in the textbook industry, on people like me, how have literally spent decades ensuring that the canon is inclusive and representative.
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So, you don’t get that fear of the unknown Other is the root cause of both? Racism = ignorance + fear
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There is very little to disparage in TKAM, It is extraordinarily well made. A masterwork A little gem. There is a reason why it is considered on the “classics” of American literature.
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The brilliant and hilarious Wanda Sykes, btw, doesn’t seem to agree with you that we should replace (but somehow not call that banning) TKAM in the curriculum.
https://www.tiktok.com/@humanrightscampaign/video/7241240823113747758
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OMG! I love Wanda Sykes! She may be the funniest person alive!
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IKR?
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Note on James Joyce’s icebox:
–Pick up collars from cleaner.
–Stop at apothecary.
–Pay landlady.
–Forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race
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diane Wanda is an artist. She has feelers deep in the same ground that all artist do . . . only her expression of that ground concerns humor.
Go Wanda! CBK
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I’m not calling for the book to be banned. *I just want it not to be part of the curriculum. HAAAAA. OMG. ROFL.
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But yes, I am hard pressed to find anything wrong with TKAM. It’s a great little book. Like Slaughterhouse-Five and House on Mango Street and Catcher in the Rye and Invisible Man and Wuthering Heights, it deserves its place in the curriculum, a place it won because of the admiration English teachers have for it and the success they’ve had with it, not because someone told them they had to teach it
But please, continue. Set those poor, benighted, dumb teachers straight, PSP.
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When I asked you – as I did months ago – to tell me if there was anything to be critical of in TKAM, you didn’t really offer anything.
And then you went on to lecture me about the racist depictions and characters in the book. OMG. What a surprise. A book that describes and interrogates and condemns the racist society of a small town in Southern Alabama in the 1930s has racist characters in it. The only more outlandish critique I read was the one that you started with, that somehow Atticus, who does not and cannot save Tom, is presented as a “white savior.” Ridiculous, both lines of “reasoning. “
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Again, quite literally, on this topic, you DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT, and you have made one ludicrous claim or criticism after another., each of them a further illustration of your not knowing what you are talking about.
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“That PBS discussion was just shy of mindless.”
Ok, then our discussion is done. There was no mention of censorship or banning TKAM in that discussion. But it didn’t treat TKAM – a book that makes almost no attempt to humanize or understand the Black characters – as an untouchable part of the canon.
The discussion did not ascribe to a book totally disinterested in its Black characters lives as having some magic power that in 2023 turns young people into anti-racists.
I question your assertion that a 16 or 17 year old who isn’t racist would cite TKAM as the reason. Maybe it’s because I am in NYC and you are in the south, but the total absurdity of that astonishes me. Those kids learned not to be racist long before reading TKAM and they are more likely to see the book as long ago history and NOT a book that gives them some insight about what racism looks and feels like today. I am SO glad my kid read authors like Angie Thomas and Jacqueline Woodson and didn’t have to “learn about racism” by reading TKAM. Which my kid did read in school. Which I didn’t object to. But I DO object to people who insist it is superior to other books and MUST be read so today’s young people aren’t racist. So ridiculous.
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then our discussion is done
Well, THAT’S A RELIEF
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https://www.tiktok.com/@humanrightscampaign/video/7241240823113747758
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I just watched this show. Very funny.
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She is awesome.
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CBK,
What don’t you get about it not being acceptable for TKAM to be a second choice?
Why can’t it be a second choice? Or a 3rd choice. How about reading a long novel by a Black author and an anthology that includes white writers?
Why can’t TKAM be a good novel but not one that is held up as the absolutely ideal way to teach students in 2023 about racism that absolutely must be part of the canon?
When I was growing up, everyone (at least in my neck of the woods) read “A Light in the Forest”. We read “Johnny Tremaine”. Now kids rarely do. I don’t think they are “banned”, there are just other books that are more likely to be assigned reading. Kids can’t read everything. TKAM is a long novel and I find it weird that people are not allowed to question why it must be the FIRST choice to teach students in 2023 — not 1980 — about racism. It is a book about a white family where the fact that the character held out to be the most honorable and upright has “some racist inclinations” is minimized because there are other white characters who are far more overtly racist. Imagine a book written by a Black author where the main characters are Black and their perceptions of an upright and honorable man who only has “some” racist inclinations instead of being overtly racist are part of the story. Students today, fortunately, often DO get to read “better” books to learn about racism. I don’t get why TKAM is untouchable. Why it has to be “first choice” always. If you want to make that argument on literary terms, fine, but I don’t believe that presenting TKAM as the ideal way to teach students in 2023 about racism is a very good argument when there are much better books.
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NYC, You HAVEN’T EVEN READ THE BOOK. You haven’t taught it. You haven’t sat and observed black and white 9th graders as they progress through the book in their English classes. You clearly don;t understand how realist fiction works. You clearly did not bother to try to follow my quite clear explanation of how TKAM is structured to work, psychologically, to teach kids about racism–what makes it so powerful for that purpose. You clearly do not grok that this has been tested in the crucible of actual classroom experience by hundreds of thousands of teachers. You haven’t worked in the industry of supplying textbooks and supplemental reading, such as novels, to English teachers for decades, as I have. You seem to imagine, to fantasize, that somehow, knowing nothing about this matter, you are some sort of expert who should tell the nation’s teachers what to do. Hmmm. I bet David Coleman would have a job for you.
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Even the details you get wrong. TKAM is a short novel. It is not quite a novella, but its not much longer. In the standard HarperPerenn8ial/Modern Classics edition, it is 322 pages long, including front matter. Furthermore, the book’s Lexile level is 790L. It is almost universally taught in the US in the 9th grade. According to Lexile itself, kids in the 9th and 10th grades should be able to read materials at 1050L through 1335L. So, it is quite easy reading, and its accessibility to almost every kid is one of the reasons why it is so SUCCESSFUL, one of the reasons why it has survived the crucible of ACTUAL CLASSROOM experience to become a non-mandated yet almost universal part of the curriculum. But, hey, don’t let facts get in the way of your superior opinions.
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Bob,
I repeat, TKAM has been taught for 40 years and it’s not as if the antiracist students you teach are the first group of students lucky enough to get those ideal antiracist lessons learned by readers of TKAM. People who are now over 60 read that book in 1970s high school. The movie based on the book came out in 1962! TKAM didn’t disappear for 20 years and reappear in the 1980s.
You are right that I have never taught it and you have. So I will have to defer to your expertise that no book written by a Black author from the perspective of Black characters instead of white characters could ever begin to teach the lessons of antiracism the way TKAM does by telling us the story of how a white family led by an honorable, upright and admirable man fighting racism perceives their world.
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NYC TKAM is not even a choice, like a supermarket item or a favorite dress. It’s a way to understand history as the continuum that it is. In this case, it’s the continuum of the history of literature, and of specific themes in it like racism or sexism. It’s also a cultural glue, so to speak, because so many people have it in their memory. (If that doesn’t mean anything to you, I cannot help you. It’s difficult to explain an absence.)
Understanding it in this way, however, is to understand the import of both tacit developmental movements going forward, and how a feedback loop works in human understanding.
In the light of its several-generations of readers, and of teachers choosing it, not to mention its awards or the hearty endorsement of a long-time teacher with long-time experience teaching with THIS BOOK, your question about why THIS book should be WHY NOT this book? Why ignore decades of evidence of its value?
I think, and have long thought, perhaps the real value that, indeed, has been brought to literature by diverse readers, and that counters the “white only” bias that’s been around for so long, is done damage by such an oversight of such a book by (apparently) just changing to another extreme implicit bias of the day.
I see no valid reason to set it aside or diminish its importance in the curricula of today. On the contrary; and in the hands of an historically savvy teacher today, the very conflict surrounding it can be a highly educational point to offer to one’s students . . . such teaching can combine history and literature in a way that newer writings cannot, on principle.
Let’s give it a break? CBK
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CBK,
I still don’t understand why TKAM can’t be perceived as a good novel but not one that is held up as the absolutely ideal way to teach students in 2023 about racism that absolutely must be part of the canon.
But whatever. It seems to be of vital importance that I accept the view that TKAM is the ideal way to teach students in 2023 about racism and does so in a way that is far superior to any book written by a Black author from the perspective of Black characters. I don’t accept that view, but I am tired of arguing the point.
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NYC I don’t think you are reading these notes, at least not thoroughly. I answered your most recent questions in my last note to you. CBK
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CBK,
I did read your note again.
It didn’t answer my question as far as I can tell.
Should TKAM STILL be considered the ideal book to teach students in 2023 about racism? There was a time when it was perceived that way. I think that time has passed.
It is important – as you acknowledge – when literature shows truthfully the racism of the time. But if that literature does that EXCLUSIVELY from the perception of a white family, it isn’t the ideal book to teach students in 2023 about racism.
TKAM has been given some extra meaning where no one seems to be allowed to criticize anything about it. Just look at Bob’s all caps attacks on me. I am questioning the value of TKAM as an antiracist book so I am “micromanaging” teachers and all the other evil runious things he accuses me of doing in all caps.
TKAM isn’t perfect. It isn’t the reason that young students today are more antiracist than their parents who were required to read that book in the 1970s or 1980s or 1990s. Apparently I now need to be censored and banned because freedom of speech does not include criticizing TKAM.
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NYC You responses are somewhat mechanical. You are just repeating the same words with the same set of assumptions in place. . . . a prescription for continuing to misunderstand what’s being said to you. In this case, I did answer your questions in my last note.
I don’t know what else to say except perhaps to try to bring some trust back into your analysis. . . openness and a trust that many people might understand something worthwhile that you seem unable to understand . . . yet. . . . about the value of staying in dialogue with the past, especially with something that has so many intricate and relevant meanings. In my experience, it’s a huge, even life-changing insight to get hold of. And as any teacher knows, insights cannot be forced, or even self-forced. But they do often just occur on their own, in the shower or on a walk, and we move to a different, might I say higher, view of things. CBK
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CBK,
It’s weird that you couldn’t just answer yes or no to my simple question. Should TKAM STILL be considered the ideal book to teach students in 2023 about racism? There was a time when it was perceived that way. I think that time has passed. I have no idea what you think.
I am only repeating myself because I thought it would be easier for you to say yes or no instead of typing a long reply in which you tell me you already answered it and you don’t want to repeat yourself. But whatever. I assume you don’t want to answer. I get it. I’m getting a lot of flack because I am challenging the idea that TKAM is the IDEAL book to teach students in 2023 about racism. And I think it is an huge problem when it is presented as such a book because then it becomes MORE important than a book that might teach about racism from the perspective of Black characters instead of white ones.
But if Bob once again mischaracterizes this as BANNING, he isn’t the person I thought he was. Wow, just wow.
Don’t bother to reply – I already know my question isn’t one you want to answer.
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NYC As long as you can only think in either/or terms, you will never understand what’s going on here. Yes or no is a screwed-up answer when the question itself is screwed up. CBK
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CBK,
got it. Loud and clear. Shame on me for criticizing this perfect book which I must now dutifully acknowledge is the ideal tool for teaching students about racism in 2023, 2033, and for all eternity.
(I have yet to hear you or Bob offer even ONE criticism you would make of the book, but Bob has helpfully made a couple dozen posts telling me that every single one of the criticisms of TKAM made by other people that I cited – including those in an article he linked to here – is idiotic).
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NYC Such criticisms, in this particular case of To Kill a Mockingbird, do show a lack of understanding, which leads those who understand that to take a harder look at other critique. I think the work is so thematically rich, however, any criticisms of it pale in the face of that richness.
On the other hand, and more to your own critique, I think it would reveal a bad case of cultural regression if, in our time, all literature concerning race were still written by White people and from a White person’s point of view.
The historical context of a work, however, is not the same thing as the quality of that same work based on literary principles or the sterling treatment of all sorts of human and cultural conditions. CBK
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Bob,
I am right now looking at the paperbook version (Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group USA) of To Kill A Mockingbird that my kid used in school some years ago. Even has some old (illegible to me) post-it notes in it! It is 376 pages and to my aging eyes the type is pretty small. Years ago, when my kid read it, I picked it up and read it again, although very likely I didn’t do so with the same attention a student would and while I have no specific recollection of “skimming”, I probably was guilty of doing so.
But I am not a teacher and you know the book 1,000x better than I do.
I still don’t understand why I am making you so angry.
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I AM SICK TO DEATH OF
PEOPLE WHO DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT TELLING ENGLISH TEACHERS AND CURRICULUM DEVELOPERS WHAT THEY SHOULD OR MUST DO
OF ATTEMPTS TO MICROMANAGE CURRICULA IN OPPOSITION TO WHAT ENGLISH TEACHERS HAVE DECIDED THEY SHOULD BE DOING
OF PARENTS SHOWING UP AT SCHOOL BOARD MEETINGS SEEKING TO BAN BOOKS (THAT IS, TO GET THOSE BOOKS REMOVED FROM THE BOOKSHELVES AND/OR THE CURRICULUM)
OF ANACHRONISTIC ATTACKS ON SUBSTANTIVE, VALUABLE, IMPORTANT WORKS FROM THE CANON PROVEN TO BE SO IN THE CRUCIBLE OF GENERATIONS OF EXPERIENCE
OF THE FREAKING LANGUAGE POLICE ON THE RIGHT AND THE LEFT
OF PEOPLE ARGUING THAT WE HAVE TO PROTECT CHILDREN FROM ANYTHING THAT MIGHT BE EVEN A LITTLE UNCOMFORTABLE AT THE EXPENSE OF THE ACCURATE, TRUTHFUL HISTORY SO IMPORTANT TO DEMOCRACY
OF LISTENING TO PEOPLE WHO HAVE NO IDEA HOW LITERATURE WORKS MAKE MIND-NUMBING COMPLAINTS ABOUT THE ATTITUDES OF CHARACTERS, WHICH IS ONLY ONE STEP UP FROM WRITING LETTERS TO CHARACTERS IN NOVELS TO WARN THEM NOT TO GET INVOLVED WITH THAT GUY
OF PEOPLE UTTERLY MISCHARACTERIZING WHAT IS GOING ON IN CLASSROOMS AND CURRICULA TODAY
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And, I have devoted much of my life to expanding the canon to be more inclusive, to fighting against racism, and I emphatically do NOT want people to STEAL FROM US ONE OF THE MOST IMPORANT TOOLS THAT WE HAVE HAD TO FIGHT RACISM IN THIS COUNTRY, one that has functioned INCREDIBLY SUCCUESSFULLY, behind the scenes, for many years. toward effecting that change, toward recruitment of antiracists, among millions of our children. You better believe that I will fight HARD to keep ignorant misreadings and misunderstandings from leading to what would be a tragic loss, an enormous setback in the struggle toward racial equity in this country.
And, it’s a great book. It richly deserves its reputation as one of the great American novels. I don’t like watching people desecrate great works of art.
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And I am extremely grateful to CBK’s wise, carefully reasoned, thoughtful, informed comments on this issue. She understands how valuable this book is and why, and she expresses that understanding most eloquently. Bowing low here, to that eloquence.
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Bob I share your frustration over what is, as I see it, a gross misunderstanding of history, of human understanding, and of biases as such.
Even in the physical sciences and mathematics, for instance, scientists don’t throw out Newton Mechanics and “replace it” with Einstein’s physics or quantum physics. Rather, Newton’s insights are drawn up, so to speak, and understood anew in the light of new insights. (She should read Kuhn on this on the history of scientific revolutions.)
BTW, the U.S. Congress is full of people who think, because they don’t already know X, then either it’s not worth knowing, or it’s a fiction born of someone else’s fantasy. Their horizon of meaning, in this case, historical and literary meaning, not to mention human developmental meaning, is the only horizon. CBK
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Again, well observed and thought out, CBK.
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It’s so important to know where we’ve been. because that explains what led us to where we are (and suggests what alternate paths might have been taken).
In my high-school, admin had a contest for a theme for decorating the hallways of the school. I suggested that every hallway become a timeline for one period of world history.
They went with Baseball: Knocking It Out of the Park.
Lord forbid that they choose an intellectual topic like world history as a theme in a freaking school. What can I say. Southern Flor-uh-duh.
Aie yie yie
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Bob You’re welcome. The rest is gone to moderation. CBK
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Yeah, I have comments on other threads in moderation now too. WP does this from time to time. [shrugs]
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Nothing in moderation anymore.
I just watched a hilarious Wanda Sykes special: “I am an Entertainer.”
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Thank you, Diane.
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And to folks who don’t understand who their allies are, like antiracists who want to ban TKAM, all I can say is, “Seriously? You are freaking nuts and hurt your own cause.”
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And to folks who equate criticism with banning and censorship, I suggest that you have a lot in common with Bari Weiss. She also tried to silence critics by mischaracterizing them as “banning” her. It’s a favorite tactic of the far right.
But I’m done. TKAM may not be criticized. It’s place as the most ideal book to teach students about racism is sacrosanct.
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Again, you have consistently called for removing this book from the curriculum and replacing it with something else. That’s banning the book. You can pretend that it’s something else, but it’s not. If, instead, you are NOW now calling for removing this book from the curriculum (i.e., banning it), then we have made some progress.
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No one here has argued that the book cannot be criticized. We have argued that it should not be removed from the curriculum and replaced by something else. We have also argued that the critiques you’ve put forward are meritless and at times worse. That’s the nature of literary criticism. Critics should not expect that their readings of books will go unchallenged. But you have done FAR more than put forward TERRIBLE, UNINFORMED, and often RIDICULOUS critiques of this book; you have also called for removing it from our curricula and replacing it with something else, not once, not twice, but NUMEROUS times. That’s book banning. It’s interference with curricula, and that is why we have both responded so strongly to your statements.
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Again, as I explained several times, no one made any claim about anything being “ideal” for anything. But yes, it’s place in our curricula for teaching about racism should be sacrosanct.
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And obviously, I mean students in 2023, 2033, 2043, and forever and forever.
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cx: if, instead, you are NOW not calling for removing it from the curriculum and replacing it with something else, we have made some progress
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Again and again and again, you have consistently called for removing this book from the curriculum and replacing it with something else. You have given lots of ridiculous reasons–that Atticus is a white savor (a reason that you put forward MANY times on previous occasions as your major complaint against the book), that the book has racist characters (it’s a realist novel), that it shows white characters (yes, it shows white characters being racist and, importantly, learning how stupid and awful that is), and now that it should be replaced (but not banned, lol) with something else written from a black pov (as though the standard English curriculum today were not full of other books and stories and essays and poems and dramas that meet that description). And now you are suggesting that it is somehow out of date, that its time is done, which sounds like those CHILDREN who say, why do we have to read old stuff by dead people? LOL.
Calling for removing the book from the curriculum is PRECISELY WHAT THE MOMS FOR LIBERTY DO when they show up at school board meetings to rant about naked mice in Maus or witchcraft in Harry Potter. And we RIGHTLY call that attempted book banning. IT”S EXACTLY THE SAME THING.
If you ahve changed your mind and now think that it shouldn’t be removed from the curriculum because of your critiques, well that’s a different position than the one you have been espousing, which is JUST WHAT DESANTIS AND THE MOMS FOR LIBERTY DO–calling for books to be taken out of the curriculum.
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Calling for removing the book from the curriculum is PRECISELY WHAT THE MOMS FOR LIBERTY DO when they show up at school board meetings to rant about naked mice in Maus or witchcraft in Harry Potter. And we RIGHTLY call that attempted book banning. IT”S EXACTLY THE SAME THING.
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Bob, you have made your view loud and clear over and over again, even in all caps. TKAM, a book where the perspective of Black characters is virtually non-existent, is “ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT TOOLS THAT WE HAVE HAD TO FIGHT RACISM IN THIS COUNTRY”, and anyone who questions why a 1960 book about a white family by a white author MUST be presented to students as ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT TOOLS TO FIGHT RACISM must be silenced for the crime of STEALING the opportunity to turn kids into antiracists from teachers. And that will be true for all eternity. Sure a book by a Black author that shows racism from the perspective of Black folks can be included, but the one book that MUST be included and is superior to all when it comes to teaching students about racism in 2023, and 2043, and 2063 is TKAM. And there is absolutely no debate allowed. Teaching TKAM as anything other than THE MOST IMPORTANT TOOL WE HAVE TO FIGHT RACISM IN THIS COUNTRY is simply not allowed.
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Your rants about this are becoming increasingly unhinged, and my all caps were a sign of my utter exasperation about the ignorance and illogic of your arguments.
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And yes, I get testy about would-be book burning. The question is not whether there might possibly somewhere at some time be some book that is better at teaching antiracism to 9th grade students today. The FACT, as I have first patiently and then with increasing impatience tried to get through to you is that vast amounts of experience with this book in the classroom have convinced hundreds of thousands of English teachers that it is a truly outstanding literary work, one of the best in the American tradition, AND a truly outstanding work for teaching about racism. And that’s why they do this. And, of course, those same teachers use OTHER WORKS as well for the same purpose. One of the most common book-length works, assigned like TKAM to almost every student at some point in his or her high-school career, is Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. I myself prepared/edited/wrote the intros and study apparatus and historical notes for an edition of that used in high schools. Why on earth would you imagine, fantasize, whatever it is you have been doing, that people think that any work is “Ideal” for any purpose? THAT IS SIMPLY BIZARRE. Is “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ the IDEAL lyric poem? Is “The Devil and Daniel Webster” the IDEAL short story? Well, these are both extremely conventional examples of their types and thus extremely good examples of the structures and techniques of the lyric poem and the short story, respectively. So, they are great for teaching the STANDARD STRUCTURES AND TECHNIQUES of their respective genres. And they are also both GREAT MASTERWORKS of American literature, so they are both almost universally taught. Same with TKAM.
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Bob,
Just to clarify, teaching TKAM as literature the way one would teach The Grapes of Wrath or Of Mice and Men or The Great Gatsby or Anna Karenina is very different than teaching TKAM as a “one of the most important tools” for students in 2023 (and beyond) to learn about racism. I don’t understand why it’s apparently not allowed to treat TKAM the way other classics are treated, but instead TKAM is given some special place in the canon where its’ value as an absolutely necessary tool to teach students in 2023 to be antiracist may never be questioned. It has led to this knee jerk reaction where you still haven’t come up with a single reason to criticize it as an ideal book for teaching antiracism. You dismissed all my criticisms, offered none of your own, so I can’t help wondering what criticisms of the book you ever discuss with your students.
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As I explained to you above, nothing this side of paradise and outside pure logic or mathematics is “ideal.” So, that’s just silly. And as I also explained to you, I have very few, if any, CRITICISMS of the book. I think it a little masterpiece. I don’t think there is ANYTHING I would change in it. Not a comma. Your suggestion that it be “taught as literature” like any other literary work and not as an antiracist book” is SIMPLY BIZARRE.
OF COURSE the book is always “taught as literature.” It’s a literary work. LOL. So, yes, it is in many respects taught as The Great Gatsby or Anna Karinina or any other extended literary work is taught. And part of teaching literature is dealing with the themes and implied arguments (in the sense in which Milton uses that word in the opening of Paradise Lost) of the works, in this case, the themes treated when this is book is taught as literature (LOL) because it is literature include a) the social roles into which people are forced in racist societies, b) the systemic and intergenerational natures of racism, c) the psychological mechanisms of racism, d) how people in racist societies push back against prohibitions and boundaries, AMONG OTHERS.
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You have an odd habit, NYC PSP, of thinking in either-or terms, often in extremely weird either-or terms, like this is either taught as literature or taught as antiracism. Of course there are works that are taught as literary works that are antiracist. ROFLMAO.
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And again, I have been passionate in my defense of this book because a) it is a great literary work, b) kids love it, c) it is extremely accessible, d) it is extremely useful for teaching kids to be nonracist, e) I emphatically believe that it should NOT be removed from the curriculum or replaced by other works because it is all of these things and has proved itself in the crucible of actual classroom experience. You better believe that I shall PASSIONATELY DEFEND AGAINST attempts to remove or ban it.
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How you could possibly imagine that people don’t “teach as literature” literary works that they teach that deal with themes related to racism is beyond me. OF COURSE, teachers deal with the themes re: racism in TKAM. OF COURSE, they also treat literary aspects of the novel–the parallel plot, plot structure, characterization, imagery, metaphor, symbolism, allusion, and so on. Aie yie yie.
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What I think actually led you to that statement about teaching the book as literature instead of teaching it as a work of antiracism is an attempt to salvage the utter wreckage of the terrible, uninformed, and sometimes extremely odd critique that you have presented of the teaching of the book. When you first started with this, you complained that it presented a white savior. That made zero sense. And that it portrayed racist characters and incidents. That made zero sense as well because it is a realist novel about racism. You are CLEAR in post after post after post that you wanted the book removed from the curriculum and replaced by something else. When I pointed out that that is PRECISELY what Moms for Liberty do and that it’s rightly called book banning and akin to book burning, you backed of that. And now you have grabbed for some last-ditch efforts to save your terrible arguments–claiming that somehow it matters that it is 2023 and that it could just be taught as literature, as though it isn’t a literary work taught as literature by literature teachers who treat the themes of racism in it. You keep backing off and pretending that you never made claims that you clearly made, and these look like last-ditch attempts to salvage some part of a terrible, book banning position.
Yes, we sometimes teach works that were written a long while ago. There is a reason for that. Some of these works are great masterpieces, milestones in the history of world literature, and deserve to be taught. And some of them teach us IMPORTANT STUFF ABOUT THE PAST and about the origins of key ideas and rhetorical and literary techniques. I should not have to explain this to an adult, though I am used to getting this it’s 2023 stuff from kids? Why do we have to read this old stuff?
You know, old stuff, like the Gettysburg Address.
TKAM is IMPORTANT because it is accessible and gripping and a masterpiece and teaches antiracism and shows where we has a society have been. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is important because it also shows us where we have been from a different perspective. THAT”S WHY BOTH ARE TAUGHT.
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Not one instead of the other, but both. Two works almost universally acknowledged to be masterpieces of American literature.
Oh, and about “perspectives.” In today’s ELA classrooms, novels (and many other types of literary works) from many diverse cultures and perspectives are taught. And it is simply ignorant to claim that a literary work is always from the perspective of its author. Authors create speakers, narrators, characters, with perspectives, often ones vastly different from the perspectives of the author. So the argument that this book, TKAM, is from a white perspective is simply ridiculous. As CBK pointed out but you seem to have missed because you simply do not read and process criticisms of your positions, one of the extremely artful characteristics of TKAM is how it treats extremely sensitively and as extremely human a wide variety of characters, including black ones, trying to push against the boundaries of the racist society in which they live, like Maya Angelou’s “caged bird.”
Imagining that a white author cannot present in a literary work an authentic nonwhite perspective is like imagining that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn couldn’t create a believable, authentic gulag camp guard or Kurt Vonnegut an authentic Nazi soldier because these people were not, themselves, gulag camp guards or Nazi soldiers. This is kind of a fundamental fact about literary works. The speaker of Browning’s “Fra Lippo Lippi” is not browning. It’s the monk. The speaker of “My Last Duchess is not Browning. It’s the Duke.
To deny that a white author can create an authentic black character for the sole reason that he or she is white, to deny the same about a female novelist writing a male character, is to deny the very possibility of our coming to understand people who are not the same as us. And that would make actual antiracism impossible. If a man writes a female character badly, then his or her failure can become and object of critique. There are teachers who provide some critiques of how black characters are drawn by the white author of TKAM. But I think that these criticisms are mostly as ridiculous as is the one that calls Atticus a white savior. They simply are not supported by the text or they are anachronistic critiques akin to someone complaining that Roman soldiers should have been taught to synchronize their watches. MIND-BLOWING STUPID, ALMOST ILLITERATE CRITIQUES.
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cx: vast amounts of experience with this book in the classroom HAS convinced hundreds of thousands of English teachers that it is a truly outstanding literary work, one of the best in the American tradition, AND a truly outstanding work for teaching about racism.
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I’ve a currently revising one novel I’ve written and working on another. But perhaps I should go back and cut any of the characters that are not 68-year-old white male ex-teachers and ex-textbook authors because it would be some sort of egregious error that I could presume to write a character who is not me. LOL. But that’s part of what one of your many ridiculous arguments against teaching this book, many of which you now deny, comes to–the notion that a white Southern woman couldn’t possibly, in the 1960s, have written a literary masterpiece that is great for teaching kids now novels work, what our racist history looked like, AND how not to be racist. Somehow, her being white disqualifies her. And then you go on to write as though teaching this book somehow excludes or precludes black perspectives, which just shows almost near-total ignorance of what is taught in ELA classrooms today and what is found in ELA textbooks, including my own anthologies, for high-school kids, of African-American literature that present hundreds of black perspectives, expressed in masterpieces of black literature, over the centuries.
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And this is also Trump’s MO. Make a claim or a proposal. Atticus is presented as a white savior. The book should be removed from the curriculum and replaced with another. Russia, if you’re listening. Just find me 11,780 votes. Then, when you are called out, express shock and dismay and deny you ever said such a thing.
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I would offer just as spirited, just as passionate, a defense against say, removing Harry Potter from school libraries, even though the themes of those books aren’t as important and they certainly aren’t as well written as is TKAM, being, as they are, extremely wordy and redundant and poorly plotted and extraordinarily derivative of better work. Throughout my career, I have offered just such defenses many times, though in far more formal fashion, against book banners around the nation who wanted this or that thrown out of textbooks or wanted texts not adopted because they objected to something in them. Your argument for removing TKAM from the curriculum. The Moms for Liberty arguments for removing Harry Potter. Same MO. Both uninformed based upon ludicrous “reasoning.” Oh, it’s 2023. One doesn’t know whether to guffaw or weep.
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Bob,
I am tired of you misrepresenting everything that I have said about TKAM and every quote I have posted where other perfectly reasonable people have offered thoughtful criticism — not “banning” but criticism — of the implicit racism in how the book is written. Instead you make mystifying arguments in which you turn the reasonable observations that a book in which the lives of Black characters are shown ONLY through the eyes of white characters into some absurd farce where you imply I have been whining that showing the racism of characters in a novel is too racist and that’s why I criticize TKAM.
“If a man writes a female character badly, then his or her failure can become and object of critique.”
If a man writes a book in which every single female character is viewed only through the prism of the male character, and students who read the book never learn anything about what the female characters think about or feel about their lives, except how they are perceived by the male character who comes to understand that those female characters are being abused or exploited, that isn’t “writing about a female character badly”. That is not writing about a female character at all. It is writing about how a male character sees women.
The fact that the male character is finely written and comes to learn many things about not making assumptions about women because his father taught him that women’s lives are hard and they suffer from prejudice can mean that the novel is a worthy coming of age story. It does NOT make a novel about a male character who learns about the plight of women a terrific teaching tool for students to learn about sexism. And shutting down anyone who points that out is wrong. It is censorship of views different than your own. It is an implicit bias toward the familiar, where what ONCE was a groundbreaking view of women (through a male character’s eyes) is not the case anymore, because we have come to realize that women’s stories aren’t best told by reading what a male character thinks of them. No matter how finely portrayed and written that male character is.
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NYC PSP,
I think it’s time for you and Bob to sunset this discussion. As the song in “Oklahoma” goes, “you’ve gone about as far as you can go.” You have your views, he has his. Neither can persuade the other. It’s over. There’s nothing more to be said.
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It’s also ironic, because what is so great about literature is that students have the opportunity to “walk a mile in their shoes” so to speak. But a book about how a male character perceives women is not actually giving students the opportunity to walk in women’s shoes at all. It gives them the opportunity to walk in a male character’s shoes. Likewise with TKAM.
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^^sorry wrote this before I saw Diane’s post. Got it.
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