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      Removing Black lawmakers is voter suppression – and the US has done it for centuries

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      When Tennessee lawmakers expelled two Black legislators from the state’s Republican-dominated house of representatives, pundits described the decision as “stunning” and “historic”. Joe Biden called it “shocking, undemocratic and without precedent”. The New York Times characterized it as “an extraordinary act of political retribution”.Sorry, have you met America?This tragic comedy always has the same theme: Black voter suppression vs white power. In the comparatively short arc of this country’s political history, this display of unapologetic whiteness is as unusual as water being wet and fire being hot. It is the most preposterous narrative to say the partisanship that defines this political climate is new or even remarkable.In 1869, the Georgia supreme court ousted Chatham county’s Black superior court clerk Richard W White from office. The three-judge panel noted that White “received a majority of the votes” and was “eligible, and qualified by law for said office”. Nevertheless, White was removed. Theconstitution didn’t matter. Votes didn’t matter. All that mattered was whiteness. So, instead of naming their decision White v Clements, the Georgia supreme court rejected the usual naming conventions and opted instead for the more candid title Can a Negro Hold Office in Georgia?On 10 January 1966, Georgia’s house of representatives refused to seat the civil rights activist-turned-legislator Julian Bond after he signed a statement opposing US involvement in the Vietnam war. Bonds’ majority district went without representation until the US supreme courtunanimouslydecided that the first amendment protected Bond’s right to speak out on public issues.The fact that Justin Jones has been reinstated by a vote of Nashville’s council and Justin Pearson probably will be by a similar vote doesn’t mean the opposition party will stop using tricks from which democracy, common decency and even the rule of law offer no shelter.The decision to subvert the will of the voters and evict state representatives is not unprecedented – it is a great American tradition. And when placed in the context of white history, the theme that emerges has more to do with America’s racial binary than it does two-party politics.All politics is about power and there can be no real conversation about American politics that ignores the single, most common characteristic of the people who wield it. The weaponization of white power is a poltergeist that has haunted every significant political decision ever made, from the drafting of the constitution to the picking of presidents. It defined American citizenship, catapulted a toddler country into an economic superpower and created the bloodiest war in the history of this continent. In fact, racism might be the most bipartisan part of politics.Republicans whose historical knowledge is limited to eighth-grade social studies books love to tout that they’re the party of abolition and Reconstruction. They therefore blame the totality of the post-civil war racial terrorism on “the Democrats”.Even though it would be more accurate to attribute this political and social violence to southern conservatives still wistful about the lost cause of the Confederacy, these history buffs conveniently forget how the success of Black Republican candidates outraged the party’s white members, sparking the “Lily White Republican movement” that lasted for half a century, until the 1930s. This anti-Black GOP movement began in Texas, but soon Republican committees in North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama and nearly every southern state banned Black candidates from running for office. Lily White Republicans were willing to sacrifice their party’s political power to preserve the racial hierarchy.While Julian Bond, Black Republicans and the Tennessee Three may have lost their elected positions, there is a far longer list of Black officials who were murdered in order to remove their authority.Returning to 1868, Georgia’s Black voters had already registered to vote in droves. Buoyed by a turnout rate (74.8%) twice that of their white counterparts (38.4%), the newly freed electorate sent 30 Black state representatives and three African American state senators to the Georgia legislature in that year’s election.By 1869, every one of the duly elected Black lawmakers known as the “Original 33” had already been ousted from the state assembly and a quarter of them had already been killed, threatened, beaten, or jailed. Hundreds of African Americans had been massacred by terrorist groups. By the time the state’s highest judicial body determined, in the Can a Negro Hold Office in Georgia? case, that state law “does not confer upon the colored citizens of this State the right to hold office”, white conservatives had already gained control of state politics and reasserted the government-sanctioned system of white supremacy.This story repeats and repeats.In 1898, a lynch mob unseated Lake City, South Carolina’s new postmaster, Frazier B Baker, by shooting Baker and his two-year-old daughter Julia dead. White vigilantes shot the South Carolina state representative Simon Coker in the head as he prayed – he was one of at least two dozen Black Republicans murdered in his state on that day. The civil rights attorney Robbie Robertson won his seat on the Savannah, Georgia, city council with 80% of the vote and lost it to a 1989 mail bomb.Murder of Black representatives is the purest form of voter suppression. It exposes the myth that there is a conservative “pro-life” movement that doesn’t believe in “cancel culture”.And to be clear, the historical effort to suppress Black political power has nothing to do with ensuring the supremacy of the white race. If the powerful white people in the Tennessee legislature were truly concerned about the collective wellbeing of white people, they would have protected white children by helping the legislators they ousted to pass gun control laws. If they truly wanted white kids to succeed, they wouldn’t condemn their constituents to perpetual ignorance with a whitewashed version of history.More than 160 years ago, the Tennessee state senator William H Barksdale, speaking from the same building Pearson and Jones were removed from, exposed the entirety of this strategy. “Our slaves are true and faithful, we fear not them,” he said, defending a bill “for the expulsion of Negroes from this state” in 1860, “but this free, combustible material, this fire brand, let us prepare for the future and hurl it out of the camp.”They do not care about white people; they care about white power, and anti-Blackness will continue to be the most reliable tool for maintaining their authority and control. More

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      Ousted Tennessee lawmakers say move is ‘attempt to crucify democracy’

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      Two Tennessee state lawmakers who were expelled from the legislature after partaking in a gun control protest outside the chamber to which they were elected have called the move an unprecedented act of political retaliation as well as an “attempt to crucify democracy”.During an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Easter Sunday, Justin Jones said his and Justin Pearson’s removals from the Tennessee house of representatives would “not go on unchallenged”.“The Tennessee house Republicans’ attempt to crucify democracy has instead resurrected a movement led by young people to restore our democracy,” said Jones, who – like Pearson – is a Democrat.Pearson echoed Jones’s sentiments, which seemed to evoke the imagery of Easter, when Christians mark the resurrection of Jesus after his crucifixion.“The reality is an institution filled with people who are more concerned about supporting [gun access advocates] than it is protecting the [free expression] right to children and teenagers to be able to come to the capitol and advocate for gun violence prevention laws,” Pearson said to Chuck Todd, the host of Meet the Press.Jones and Pearson were ousted from the Republican-controlled Tennessee house after a vote on Thursday prompted by the two Black, first-year lawmakers’ roles in a gun control protest held outside the chamber days after a shooting at a school in Nashville killed three nine-year-old students and three staffers.Jones condemned his and Pearson’s ousting from posts to which they were democratically elected, saying: “This attack against us is hurting all people in our state.”“Even though it is disproportionately impacting Black and brown communities, this is hurting poor white people,” Jones added. “Their attack on democracy hurts all of us.”During the interview, Pearson pushed back against the Republican Tennessee house speaker, Cameron Sexton, who called the youth-led rally for gun control at the state capitol an “insurrection”.“It’s that type of language, it’s that type of political ideology that is destructive to our democracy,” Pearson said. “And what ends up happening is the perpetuation of systems of injustice like patriarchy, like white supremacy that lead to the expulsion of two of the youngest Black lawmakers in Tennessee.”He went on to describe the work environment in the house as “toxic … where you have people who make comments about hanging you on a tree … as a form of capital punishment”.The remarks seemed to allude to one of the most common ways that white supremacists historically lynched Black people, particularly in the US south. In February, a Republican state lawmaker suggested adding “hanging by a tree” to a bill concerning methods of execution in Tennessee.“They’re really sending signals that you don’t belong here,” Pearson said, adding: “It’s about us not belonging in the institution because they are afraid of the changes that are happening in our society and the voices that are being elevated.”Jones described his and Pearson’s expulsions as a result of a “system of political hubris … an attempt to silence our districts, predominantly Black and brown districts who no longer have representation”.He added that when he and Pearson went outside the statehouse to support the gun control protests, their voting machines were turned off so they could not be able to vote on the chamber floor.“The speaker … runs the capitol like it’s his private palace and so there is no democracy in Tennessee,” Jones said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe expulsion of the two Black Democrats have prompted nationwide outcry.Tennessee’s state legislature opted against expelling a Republican representative accused of sexual misconduct in 2019. Those the body had previously expelled included one lawmaker accused of spending federal nursing school grant money on a wedding and another who allegedly had improper sexual contact with more than 20 women in four years in office.Joe Biden called the expulsions “shocking, undemocratic and without precedent”.“Three kids and three officials gunned down in yet another mass shooting,” the president said. “And what are GOP officials focused on? Punishing lawmakers who joined thousands of peaceful protesters calling for action.”A third Democrat, Gloria Johnson, also joined in on the calls for increased gun control and narrowly avoided expulsion by one vote. Johnson is a white woman, and she has said she believes she was spared only because of her race.County commissions in the districts Jones and Pearson were elected to represent are now tasked with picking their replacements to serve in the newly vacant seats until special elections can be held. Jones and Pearson remain eligible to run in those special elections and could also possibly be appointed by the county commissions to stay in their seats until those contests, though the commissions have reportedly been facing Republican political pressure to choose interim replacements.After the deadly shootings at the Covenant school in Nashville on 27 March, the US Senate’s chaplain, Barry C Black, called on federal lawmakers to offer more than just platitudes after deadly mass shootings.Last month, Black opened the legislative session by asking senators to move beyond “thoughts and prayers” – words that critics say are used by opponents of substantial gun control to deflect the responsibility to take action after mass killings.Black on Sunday told CBS’s Face the Nation: “I have been hearing, ‘You have my thoughts and prayers’ … But I also know that there comes a time when action is required.” More

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      The American civil war ended on this day. It should be a national holiday | Steve Phillips

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      April 9 should be a national holiday in the United States, but the wrong people are celebrating. On this day in 1865, Confederate Gen Robert E Lee surrendered to Union forces – marking the effective defeat of the Confederacy and the triumph of those who opposed the idea that this should be a white nationalist nation where Black bodies could be bought and sold on the open market. Yet rather than celebrate this seminal milestone in defending and creating a multi-racial democracy, the country’s leaders ignore the occasion, creating a vacuum into which the champions of white nationalism happily goose-step.Boiled down to its essence, the civil war began because the presidential candidate sympathetic to African Americans, Abraham Lincoln, won the election of 1860, and the losing side refused to accept the election results (sound familiar?). That defiance of democracy led to eleven states seceding from the Union and forming the Confederacy, which was founded, in the words of Confederate vice-president Alexander Stephens, “upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition”. The civil war was a truly existential conflict that raged for four years of killing and carnage that resulted in the deaths of 2% of the country’s residents – the equivalent of 7 million people, based on today’s population.April 9 not only recalls the defeat of the white supremacists, but the beginning of the first faltering steps towards making the country a multi-racial democracy. During Reconstruction, laws were passed, land divided, and institutions created to foster education and public health for people of all racial backgrounds. In the words of the writer Nikole Hannah-Jones, “the years directly after slavery saw the greatest expansion of human and civil rights this nation would ever see”.One would think that such a landmark achievement would be annually remembered, recognized and cherished. But one would be wrong. It is in fact the Confederates and their ideological and genealogical heirs who regularly nurture the memories of those who fought for legalized white supremacy within our borders.Organizations such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy and Sons of Confederate Veterans promoted and defended the creation of hundreds of monuments to Confederate leaders across the country and continue to do so to this day. (You can buy shot glasses, belt buckles and bars of soap honoring Confederate heroes online.) Hollywood showered huge sums of money on creating films such as Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind that sanitized mass murder and human bondage. To this day, Texas offers a paid holiday to state employees so that they can celebrate Confederate Heroes Day and honor the white supremacists Jefferson Davis and Robert E Lee.For the health of our democracy, the education of our children, and the elevation of the vision and values that this is a nation where people of all racial backgrounds are cherished, we should launch a movement from coast to coast to make April 9 a holiday.There is a reason that the rallying cry about the Holocaust is “Never Forget.” People around the world recognize the importance of preserving the memory of one of the great atrocities in the history of humanity so that it doesn’t occur again. Nazism is predicated on the same kinds of white supremacist beliefs that precipitated the civil war, and an institutionalized reminder of the threat and defeat of that threat will help create guardrails to defend the democracy in the future.Modern-day Confederates are well aware of the importance of what children are taught about this country’s racial history and contemporary realities. That is why leaders in former slave-holding states such as Florida, Virginia, and Texas have passed legislation and taken aggressive action to whitewash their curricula through attacks on so-called Critical Race Theory.Public support for racial justice requires an understanding and appreciation of the persistence and prevalence of racial injustice. Formalizing the recognition of what the civil war was, which side won, and where we currently stand will deepen young people’s understanding and commitment to continuing the vigilance needed to foster racial justice and equality.As much as the holiday itself, the debate over establishing it will educate the country and affirm our values. We don’t have to wait for a divided Congress to act. School boards, city councils, boards of supervisors, and state legislatures can all pass resolutions marking the occasion and declaring a local holiday, thereby creating momentum for a federal holiday. And introducing a bill in Congress will force members to go on record, creating a basis for ads and campaign materials challenging voters to choose a side between white nationalism and multi-racial democracy.The only reason not to proceed is lack of courage – and bad math skills. The ideological descendants of the Confederacy will get mad, no question; but they are not the majority. Forcing people to choose will reveal that the majority want a multi-racial democracy, and if that is in fact the case let’s set aside the 9th of April as a day of national celebration.
      Steve Phillips is the founder of Democracy in Color and a Guardian US columnist. He is the author of How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good More

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      Trump keeps accusing Black prosecutors of being ‘racist’. Coincidence? I think not | Tayo Bero

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      The last several months have seen former president Donald Trump dust off his tired strategy of stoking white nationalist sentiment, and this time he’s taking on the prosecutors.He started with the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who is currently bringing charges against Trump over alleged hush money paid to former actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 elections.Earlier this month on Truth Social, Trump declared: “The Racist Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, who is presiding over one of the most dangerous and violent cities in the US, and doing NOTHING about it, is being pushed … to bring charges against me for the now ancient ‘no affair’ story of Stormy ‘Horseface’ Danials [sic], where there is no crime and charges have NEVER been brought on such a case before.”Next, he took aim at Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton county, Georgia, for working to stop potential state legislation that would undercut the discretion of DAs like her. Interestingly, Willis is also looking at filing racketeering and conspiracy charges, based on Trump’s role in pressuring Georgia lawmakers after his 2020 loss.“The Racist District Attorney in Atlanta, Fani T Willis, one of the most dangerous and corrupt cities in the US, is now calling the Georgia Legislature, of course, RACIST, because they want to make it easier to remove and replace local rogue prosecutors who are incompetent, racist, or unable to properly do their job,” Trump wrote on 5 March.The bill in question would create an oversight board within the Republican-led Georgia legislature that could punish or remove local prosecutors based on a seemingly vague set of criteria. Critics – including Willis – recognize the bill as an effort to stifle and push out prosecutors that Georgia Republicans deem too liberal.The irony of Trump calling Willis racist – because she was calling out racism – feels almost too ridiculous to be real, but it’s the kind of legal, racial and political theater that has marked his most recent return to public politics.Then there’s Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, who Trump took aim at after she announced a $250m lawsuit against him for fraud. “There is nothing that can be done to satisfy the racist attorney general of New York state, failed gubernatorial candidate Letitia James, or the New York state courts which are biased, unyielding and totally unfair,” Trump said in a statement. “This is a continuation of the greatest witch hunt in history, and it should not be allowed to continue.”Trump’s accusations have a few things in common: none of them are supported by any kind of real evidence of racism; in all cases, he alludes to some kind of larger conspiracy; and, of course, all of the attorneys he is maligning are Black.Black people can’t be racist. They simply do not possess the political, social or material power to enact the violence that racism seeks to do to those who suffer under it. Trump probably knows that. Still, one of the impacts of this rhetoric of anti-white racism is that it invites everyday Americans to see themselves as victims of a Black takeover.This isn’t just absurd, it also lends credence to the far-right “white replacement theory” that underpins Trump’s political strategy.Only about 6% of district attorneys in the country are Black. Trump is inflating the legal discretionary power of this handful of people, then extrapolating it to all Black Americans, effectively saying: “Watch out for those Blacks; they’re coming to get you.”The political and racial maneuvering here is obvious, but that doesn’t make it any less dangerous. In remarks late last month, Trump called prosecutors in New York, Atlanta and Washington “radical, vicious [and] racist”.Now that’s a major projection if I’ve ever heard one.
      Tayo Bero is a Guardian US contributing writer More

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      This Wisconsin judicial election could decide the next US president | Andy Wong

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      The Wisconsin supreme court election – which has been described as the most important election this year – takes place on 4 April, in less than three weeks, and is already the most expensive of its kind in US history. In this race, voters of color will once again be the key to electing a candidate who can safeguard our democracy.The question of whether Trump or another Republican election denier will have a second chance to try to disrupt a democratically decided election – and this time perhaps succeed – could be determined by this one judicial election in the midwest. Recognizing what is at stake, both sides have spent a staggering $27m so far on this race.The election will probably be tight and every vote will count. Wisconsin is majority white, at around 80%, but the state is also at least 20% people of color, according to census data. If Democrats fail to prioritize investing in mobilizing voters of color and inspiring them to turn out to vote, they may lose.Typically, this type of judicial election would barely register as a blip in Wisconsin, let alone gain this much national attention. But the stakes in this battleground state are sky-high, not only because Wisconsin’s future hangs in the balance when it comes to abortion, voting rights, redistricting and elections policy, but also because the judicial seat could be crucial to ensuring a fair presidential election outcome in 2024.In 2020, the Wisconsin supreme court rejected by a one-vote margin an effort by Trump allies to challenge the election result. The state’s seven-member court has been controlled by conservatives since 2008, and the winner of this race will serve a 10-year term.The progressive Milwaukee county circuit judge Janet Protasiewicz is up against conservative Daniel Kelly, a former state supreme court justice who lost his seat in 2020. Kelly is a Trump ally who provided legal support to an effort by Republicans to overturn the 2020 election results through the use of “fake electors”.On the surface, Protasiewicz may seem to be in the better position, funding-wise. According to AdImpact, Protasiewicz campaign has spent $9.1m in the past few weeks on TV ads, and outside groups supporting her have spent $2m.But forces on the right – namely conservative billionaires like Barre Seid, Trump’s “judge whisperer” Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, and the Uihleins shipping supply magnate family – are expected to inject millions for Kelly, most likely in TV ads painting Protasiewicz as soft on crime. Already $3.9m has poured in for Kelly from these and other outside funders, and there’s plenty more where that came from.Yet Democrats might sleep on properly investing in mobilizing voters. How do we know? Because national Democrats failed to truly step up when it came time to support Mandela Barnes’s US Senate campaign last fall.Groups on the right spent $62m on behalf of Republican Ron Johnson, compared with the left’s $41m for Barnes. The right’s $29m last-minute attacks included unabashedly racist ads against Barnes, who is Black. In the end, Johnson – a skeptic of Covid-19 who was tied to a 2020 Republican scheme to have the state’s Republican-dominated legislature choose Wisconsinites’ presidential electors – won narrowly, 50.5% to Barnes’s 49.5%.With the fate of access to safe abortions on the line, Protasiewicz’s campaign, as well as the Democratic and progressive ecosystem at large, will understandably focus on turning out pro-choice white women voters, mostly via ads. Her campaign’s messaging is heavily centered on protecting abortion rights and painting Kelly as an anti-abortion extremist. Yet there’s reason to be concerned that very little of Protasiewicz’s campaign funds, or any money raised from the outside, will be spent on targeting and mobilizing voters of color.According to the census, Wisconsin is about 7% Black, 3% Asian, 7.5% Latino, and 1% Native. Republicans in Wisconsin are well aware of the power of voters of color, and of the fact that they tend to vote Democratic. That’s why Wisconsin Republicans have been working hard to suppress voters of color and to create division between white voters and voters of color, especially in Milwaukee, which is home to close to 70% of the state’s Black population.In an example of saying the quiet part out loud, the Wisconsin elections commissioner Robert Spindell, a Republican, gloated after the 2022 election about depressing Black and brown turnout in Milwaukee. Spindell was tacitly admitting that when the multiracial Obama coalition turns out, Republicans lose.Democrats and progressives must increase investing in on-the-ground grassroots organizations with track records of turning out voters of color – especially Black voters – and fast. The work of organizations such as Souls to the Polls, Voces de la Frontera and the Workers Center for Racial Justice can make all the difference in this year’s most important election. Our democracy can’t afford to continue to overlook voters of color.
      Andy Wong is president of PowerPAC, a non-profit advocacy and political organization dedicated to building political power within communities of color and supporting progressive candidates of color More

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      Baldwin v Buckley: how the ‘debate play’ made a riveting resurgence

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      James Graham’s play Best of Enemies recently brought to life the gladiatorial televised clashes between Gore Vidal and William F Buckley Jr in the lead-up to the 1968 US presidential election. Tucked inside that drama was a fleeting mention of the historic debate between the white, conservative Buckley and the Black American civil rights activist James Baldwin. It felt, potentially, like it could make a play in its own right.A new production stages just that momentous confrontation in verbatim form. Debate: Baldwin v Buckley re-enacts in full the Cambridge University Union head-to-head from February 1965, when it was recorded and broadcast by the BBC.First re-created on screen during the lockdown of 2020, it has since been staged off-Broadway and now makes its UK premiere at Stone Nest in London’s West End. Adapted and directed by Christopher McElroen, it features Teagle F Bougere as Baldwin and Eric T Miller as Buckley.Baldwin and Buckley have half an hour a piece to make their case for or against the motion of the debate: “The American Dream is at the Expense of the American Negro.” We follow their logic without interruption in the debating chamber, Baldwin arguing for civil rights and for America to acknowledge the sins of its past, while Buckley makes the case for white conservative values.McElroen says the decision to stage the debate this way came after the murder of George Floyd, in the midst of the Black Lives Matter protests. “It addressed the racial conflict that the country was navigating yet again.”Political theatre has a long and fine British tradition, from Shakespeare’s history plays to David Hare’s work and Graham’s own oeuvre – which includes This House and The Vote. But the “debate play” is something apart; drawing on the ancient Athenian art of rhetoric and persuasion, it speaks to us directly of issues in our world. It is, by comparison, a rarity these days but we see it in such highly compelling instances as Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, whose courtroom debate was arguably its strongest feature. There is also David Mamet’s recently revived and volcanic two-hander, Oleanna, which is not formally constructed as a debate but presents two oppositional viewpoints on political correctness in university campuses with immense force, and allows us to view its subject from both sides.An even more current example is the New Diorama’s musical, After the Act, which features parliamentary debate around Section 28 (which legislated against teaching homosexuality in British schools) and manages to bring satirical comedy to the debate form.In the case of McElroen’s production, nothing extraneous is added to the words exchanged between Baldwin and Buckley. Unlike Best of Enemies, which couches the infamous debates within greater fictive material, this is a pure reconstruction of the original. “To frame the debate within a bigger story would be like killing a fly with a sledgehammer,” says McElroen. “The material is James Baldwin and William F Buckley Jr – two amazing intellectuals on opposite sides of the political spectrum. The conflict is inherent in that, you don’t need to do anything to it.”The setting is modern, apart from an old TV that replays some of the original footage, and there is no use of theatrical lighting or sound. Yet it is utterly captivating. The fierce eloquence and intellectual rigour of Baldwin and Buckley’s arguments have not lost any of their power. There is an argument to suggest that the most powerful part of Best of Enemies is Vidal and Buckley’s debates themselves, which offer a ferocious sense of spectacle – and that the fiction is secondary.The fact that Buckley airs such critical, even offensive, views on the civil rights movement and effectively mobilises a defence of white supremacy, brings its own questions. Would this debate ever be sanctioned now at a university union, in our era of de-platforming – and should it be?Yes, says McElroen, because the divided politics are still there. After every show there is a live discussion with the audience, and in some venues the after-show conversations are proof of how some have moved on from this debate around race while others remained entrenched. The first venue in which Baldwin v Buckley played live was the Women’s National Republican Club in New York. “They identified strongly with Buckley’s arguments,” says McElroen, “and they identified the Black Lives Matter movement to be a radical group not dissimilar from the way Buckley viewed the civil rights movement.”The other issue it raises is whether we have lost the art of civilised debate – and more specifically, if the demand for “total” agreement is eroding the space and permission for true debate and disagreement. If this debate were taking place today, McElroen thinks, Buckley would have stopped Baldwin by his third or fourth word and the discussion would have descended into chaos.If a more recent political debate were given similar verbatim treatment in dramatic form – such as the televised Trump and Biden presidential face-offs – it might be highly entertaining to watch for the heated interruptions and put-downs. But contemporary political debates rarely allow the opponent the time and breadth to make their argument, uninterrupted, in the way that Baldwin and Buckley did.There is a strain, in debate drama, that it is striving to be more than just theatre, and that it is ultimately trying to galvanise the audience towards a change of heart or mind outside the auditorium through its act of persuasion.McElroen is staging his play across the US – from Tennessee to southern California – in the lead-up to the next presidential elections, travelling out of the “liberal bubble” and into Republican heartlands. “To the extent that a piece of theatre can affect change, we hope to use this to spark dialogue. What we try and do at the end of the performance is to focus on civility, and on what actually unites us as opposed to the things that divide us,” he says.“The odd thing about the debate between Baldwin and Buckley is that they find consensus in their arguments about the value of America and the American way of life. We need to do better collectively to hear what the other side is saying. If we do that, we’ll be surprised at how much consensus exists.”
      At Stone Nest, London, until 8 April. More

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      We get 28 days for Black History in the US – but every month is White History Month | Steve Phillips

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      We get 28 days for Black history in the US – but every month is White History MonthSteve PhillipsConservatives are blocking a more inclusive version of history – even as our Capitol contains statues of white supremacistsWelcome to White History Month! While February – the shortest of months – is typically associated with a 28-day acknowledgement of the historical contributions of African Americans, the truth of the matter is that this month, and every month, is actually a celebration of white history.This particular February is noteworthy because of the controversy surrounding revisions to the first-ever advanced placement (AP) course in African American history. (It is worth noting that the College Board, which administers AP courses, has been in existence since 1900 and is only now getting around to offering a class on African Americans.) The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, has seized on the occasion to fan the flames of white racial fear and resentment by having the Florida department of education very publicly reject the course because they claimed it “significantly lacks educational value”.DeSantis’s corporate donors under fire for ‘hypocrisy’ over Black History MonthRead moreIn a profound profile in cowardice, the College Board removed references to topics such as Black Lives Matter and reparations from the curriculum after Florida raised its complaints. (The New York Times documented the process of capitulation in an article this month.)DeSantis’ antics are nothing new. He is merely following the well-worn path of prior champions of white racial grievance, such as the 1960s segregationist and Alabama governor George Wallace, the 1948 Dixiecrat presidential candidate Strom Thurmond, the Confederate president Jefferson Davis, and many, many others. Wallace most clearly discovered and articulated the political power of white racial resentment when he told a journalist: “I started off talking about schools and highways and prisons and taxes – and I couldn’t make them listen. Then I began talking about [N-word] – and they stomped the floor.”What DeSantis has discovered is that in Florida, attacks on so-called “critical race theory” get many white people to stomp the floor. Last year, he pushed through legislation that seeks to shield white children from facing the facts of white supremacy – mandating that a “person should not be instructed that he or she must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress for actions, in which he or she played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race.”Although the modern-day Confederate outrage machine would have you believe that America’s children are being bombarded with Philip Kan Gotanda plays, Dolores Huerta speeches and James Baldwin books, the truth is actually the opposite. California is the only state in the country to mandate ethnic studies as a graduation requirement and that law doesn’t take effect for two more years. Arizona just elected as its state superintendent of instruction a man who in 2010 championed a law banning ethnic studies instruction in Tucson, Arizona. (A federal judge later threw out the law, saying that it was “motivated by racial animus”.)The round-the-clock white nationalist propaganda machine is not restricted to the country’s classrooms. The 1939 film Gone With the Wind glorifies the Confederates and depicts white nationalist mass murderers as dashing leading men and charming leading ladies. The movie is still the highest-grossing film of all time (adjusted for inflation), and a 2018 PBS poll found that the novel is the sixth-most popular book of fiction in the country, ahead of Charlotte’s Web and The Chronicles of Narnia.The year-round white history celebrations operate in our nation’s capital as well. Dispersed throughout the Rotunda of the US Capitol – the citadel of the nation’s democracy – are 100 statues which, according to the original 1864 legislation, are intended to showcase leaders “illustrious for their historic renown” and “worthy of this national commemoration”, allowing each state two statues.Among the statues that greet the children, families and visitors to the Capitol are “19 statues, busts and paintings of Confederates.” Every day of every month of the year, these white marble monuments to white supremacists stand proudly and defiantly, mocking the notion that America is anything other than a nation for white people. (The law authorizing the placement of statues was actually passed during the civil war, when there were no Confederates in the Congress, but after the war the Southern states rushed tributes to white supremacy into the Capitol building.)Cognizant that Germany has no monuments to Nazis for a reason, Senator Cory Booker, representative Steny Hoyer and other members of Congress have tried in recent years to pass bills cleansing the Capitol of the visible stain of racism, but, tellingly, these bills have never become laws.I recently did a reconnaissance mission to the Capitol to assess the situation. While the building does try to restrict access to the most famous racists, such as Jefferson Davis, his lower-profile yet equally white-supremacist comrades are still there, front and center, greeting visitors from across the country every day, every month – teaching, celebrating and honoring white history. Trying to do my small part to highlight the fact that many of these statues actually pay homage to white supremacists, I put together a short video on my recent trip to DC.DeSantis ramps up ‘war on woke’ with new attacks on Florida higher educationRead moreWhile enraging, none of this is surprising. The marginalization of the history, cultures and contributions of people of color has been going on for centuries. The dichotomy between Nikole Hannah-Jones’ 1619 Project and the one lonely month devoted annually to Black history highlights the country’s contradiction.Hannah-Jones and the editors at the New York Times set out to “reframe American history by considering what it would mean to regard 1619 as our nation’s birth year. Doing so requires us to place the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are as a country”. (The 1619 Project is now also a documentary series on Hulu.)The revolutionary power of that proposition is that all of US history has to be rethought, but, instead, we settle for one month a year paying lip service to Americans with more melanin.So, with the days ticking down on Black History Month, if we really want to teach the truth, we should confront the fact that every month is White History Month and we should have a national debate about how we feel about that. And then, perhaps we can make real progress on creating a multiracial curriculum that tells the truth about US history to the American people and our children, so that they can make it better in the future.
      Steve Phillips is the founder of Democracy in Color and a Guardian US columnist. He is the author of How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good
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      Ron DeSantis’ academic restrictions show he hopes to change history by censoring it | Francine Prose

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      Ron DeSantis’ academic restrictions show he hopes to change history by censoring itFrancine ProseFlorida’s Stop Woke Act and ban on African American studies will only deprive students of the right to think and learn For some time now, conservative groups have pressured libraries and classrooms to remove certain “controversial” books from their shelves and their syllabi. These are texts that tell uncomfortable or unpopular truths about our nation’s origins, including inequality, race, history, gender, sexuality, power and class – a range of subjects that a small but vocal group of Americans would prefer to ignore or deny.Ron DeSantis bans African American studies class from Florida high schoolsRead moreThese efforts achieved one of their most notable successes last April when the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, signed the Stop Woke Act, which prohibits in-school discussions about racism, oppression, LBGTQ+ issues and economic inequity. Books that have not been officially vetted and approved must be hidden or covered, lest teachers unknowingly break an ill-defined law against distributing pornography – a felony.On 1 February, these pernicious restrictions on academic freedom spread beyond Florida, when the College Board announced its decision to severely restrict what can and cannot be taught in the newly created advanced placement class in African American studies. Cut from the curriculum (or in some cases made optional) was any discussion of Black Lives Matter, mass incarceration, police brutality, queer Black life and the Black Power movements of the 1960s and 70s. Writers who have been removed from the reading list include bell hooks, Angela Davis and Ta-Nehisi Coates.These decisions are alarming and disturbing on so many levels that it’s hard to decide which aspect is the most damaging and insidious. At risk are our foundational principles of free speech, our conviction that educators – and not politicians – should be writing up our lesson plans and deciding what transpires in our classrooms, our belief that students can (and need to) consider complicated issues.As someone who has taught for decades, I can hardly imagine abruptly cutting off class discussions that have veered (as they inevitably will) into these now forbidden areas. Must we fear that our students will report us as insurrectionists and felons for having mentioned the grotesque racial disparities in our prison populations? I believe that education not only involves the transmission of hard information but also helps students to think for themselves, to weigh opposing arguments and to make informed decisions. How can these goals be accomplished when we are being told to (quite literally) whitewash our nation’s history, to deny that we are walking on appropriated land in a country built by kidnapped and enslaved people, when we are being encouraged to lie about the very ground beneath our feet?Students aren’t as stupid as the Florida legislature seems to think, and by adopting these new regulations, we are only encouraging them to distrust their teachers and the system that so blatantly misrepresents the realities they so clearly observe around them.In the past, authoritarianism – and the indoctrination that sustains it – has used educational systems to further its agenda. We can recall images of first-graders wearing little red kerchiefs and saluting the eastern bloc dictators, of students let out of class to welcome the Führer to town. We know that democracy depends on the free and open exchange of ideas, on conversations that begin early in the life of its citizens – and that fascism thrives when only one point of view is permitted. DeSantis’s rulings, and the campaigns that have engendered them, are inherently anti-democratic.We cannot change history by censoring it. We cannot pretend that we were never a slave-holding society, that racism ceased to exist when Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. We cannot erase the past, or influence a young person’s gender and sexuality by removing a book from the library. Students are not political pawns or ideologues-in-training. They are our future and it’s frightening to imagine a future populated by citizens who were forbidden to argue and debate, to hear about a historical event from multiple perspectives and to learn to make the critical judgments and necessary distinctions that will help them navigate our increasingly complex and challenging world.It’s been noted that Ron DeSantis graduated with a degree in history from Yale, where he was presumably encouraged to engage in – and to learn from – the open debates that he is now attempting to stifle. Presumably, too, he learned what a good education is, what it means to be taught to think – and that is precisely what he is denying students who are less privileged than he and his Yale classmates.It’s a political decision designed to win over the Trump supporters that the governor will need in his bid for the presidency – that is, white working-class Americans who don’t understand that their own children are also being denied the education that will help them overcome the class divisions that perpetuate our economic inequality. Private school students will still be able to study history in depth, to learn to reason, to process and assess the accuracy of what they are being told. It’s the public school kids who will be funneled into the low-paying jobs, the dim futures for which their schooling has (not accidentally) prepared them.‘We’ve moved backwards’: US librarians face unprecedented attacks amid rightwing book bansRead moreUltimately, what’s most troubling about the new restrictions and proscriptions is that historical facts are being recast as snowflake propaganda. The truth is being distorted or omitted at a moment when we, as a nation, have never so desperately needed to maintain our grip on reality.Without being taught to distinguish truth from fiction, without being asked to think, without learning how this country evolved – a history not just of heroism and noble principles but of theft, brutality and crime – our students will be easy prey to every conspiracy theory that comes along. They will find it far more difficult to imagine and implement the important ways in which we hope to become a more equitable, less racist – and better educated – society.
      Francine Prose is a former president of Pen American Center and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
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