It's become a truism in recent years that the one thing all Americans agree on is a love for Dolly Parton. The country singer-songwriter has woven together a persona that transcends political divisions. But now even Parton can no longer sidestep the escalating right-wing censorship campaign that is tearing through schools.
It was reported this week that school administrators in Waukesha County, Wisconsin barred first graders from singing "Rainbowland," a song Parton performed with her goddaughter, Miley Cyrus, who also wrote the song. The school justified the decision by saying "the song could be deemed controversial." This is a song whose most incendiary lyrics read, "Wouldn't it be nice to live in paradise/Where we're free to be exactly who we are." But such is the current level of paranoia on the right over even a hint of inclusivity and tolerance.
Journalist Jeff Sharlet noted on Twitter that one conservative school board member in Waukesha County told him that "critical race theory" is "intertwined, and it is soft, and it is subtle." Actor George Takei, in contrast, reacted how people who live outside of the paranoid right-wing bubble did: "They banned Dolly‽‽"
They banned Dolly‽‽ https://t.co/gzbxW7SOrH
— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) March 28, 2023
This isn't even the only story this week of right-wing censorship hysteria that's gone national, even international.
Using "parent rights" as a fig leaf for censorship is tough when so few parents wish to even use such "rights." This is why Republicans have landed on this strategy of simply giving a single busybody total veto power over a school curriculum or library.
At the Tallahassee Classical School, a Florida charter school that claims to offer a "content-rich classical education in the liberal arts and sciences," sixth-grade students were shown a picture of Michelangelo's "David." The principal was subsequently fired after a single parent claimed it was "pornographic," because, famously, David has a penis, albeit one in a much different state than one usually expects to see in pornography.
The chair of the school board defended the decision by saying, "Parental rights are supreme, and that means protecting the interests of all parents, whether it's one, 10, 20 or 50."
Notably, this idea of "parental rights" only tacks one way, towards the worst parents in a school. The rights of parents who want kids to learn about the most famous sculpture of the Renaissance must give way to that one parent that every school has, the person so daft the other parents are amazed they had the cognitive powers to even make a baby in the first place.
This kind of idiocy is sadly on-brand for Florida —but Republicans in Congress are working to make sure that no one is safe from the willfuly idiocy of the worst parents at any given school.
Last week, House Republicans passed a bill they misleadingly named the "Parents Bill of Rights." It should be called the "Dumb Parents Empowerment Act." The bill would require the school to allow any parent to "review, and make copies of, at no cost, the curriculum of their child's school." It would also require schools to provide parents "a list of books and other reading materials available in the library of such school."
The rights of parents who want kids to learn about the most famous sculpture of the Renaissance must give way to that one parent that every school has, the person so daft the other parents are amazed they had the cognitive powers to even make a baby in the first place.
As Hayes Brown wrote at MSNBC, it's "a blueprint for the harassment of teachers, administrators and school boards that has escalated over the past three years." It's legislation designed to arm that one busybody who has more time than sense to endlessly complain about everything, making it impossible for the school to teach even basic lessons to the students. Luckily, Democrats control both the Senate and the White House, so this bill has no chance of becoming law any time soon. But it's part of a larger GOP-led movement to signal to the biggest bully in any PTA that he or she should be the sole arbiter of what all the students at a school get to read or learn.
This month, it took just one complaining mother in Pinellas County, Florida to block all teachers across North Shore Elementary from showing "Ruby Bridges," a 1998 Disney movie about the 6-year-old who was the first Black student to attend an all-white school in New Orleans in 1960. Unsurprisingly, most parents for the years they have been showing this movie have been fine with this movie. It's not exactly an obscure part of history. The story of the girl's remarkable courage inspired a Norman Rockwell painting.
Happy birthday to Ruby Bridges, who desegregated William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans at age 6 in 1960. She inspired this Norman Rockwell painting, “The Problem We All Live With.” pic.twitter.com/zoEShieSDn
— Jane Coaston (@janecoaston) September 8, 2020
Judd Legum and Tesnim Zekeria of Popular Info, who have been invaluable in covering the right-wing censorship craze, dug deep into how it is that one mother could shut down movie viewing for a whole school. Parents have always been allowed to deny their children permission to watch a movie when it's shown, but that wasn't enough for Emily Conklin. After keeping her second grader from seeing the movie, Legum and Zekeria report, "Conklin filed an 'Objection to Instructional And/Or Media Material' seeking to ban the Ruby Bridges film for all second graders — and even much older students." Her reasoning, as it were, does not boost confidence that Conklin is a thoughtful person who should be given so much power over an entire school's curriculum.
According to Conklin's objection form, which was obtained by Popular Information, the "theme or purpose" of the Ruby Bridges movie is "racism." Conklin claims the result of a child watching the film would be to "teach them racial slur [sic]" and that "white people hate black people." She objects to the movie being "very aggressive" about "the anger/racism of these white people."
Conklin also admits to only watching the first 50 minutes of the movie.
As Legum and Zekeria note, "decision comes following the passage of the Stop WOKE Act," a bill signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis that bans "content that could make students feel uncomfortable or guilty because of their race." It's caused statewide incidents of draconian censorship, as educators have gone so far as pull all books from the shelf, out of fear that parents like Conklin could make their lives hell with frivolous accusations. Legum and Zekeria also detail how a single complaint from one parent resulted in a district-wide ban of "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison, which is another book that heavily centers around the apparently now-controversial idea that racism is bad.
To be fair, "racism is bad" is really not that controversial an idea, at least among Americans who are still young enough to have children in school. Over 60% of millennials, according to Pew Research, agree that "increasing racial/ethnic diversity is good for society." Add to that fact that most parents are incredibly busy with work and life duties, so even the more conservative ones aren't going to waste energy getting mad that their kids are learning very basic facts about American history. The kind of people who have the time and the desire to wage a culture war on schools tend to be more of the grandparent or even great-grandparent age.
Using "parent rights" as a fig leaf for censorship is tough when so few parents wish to even use such "rights." This is why Republicans have landed on this strategy of simply giving a single busybody total veto power over a school curriculum or library. Any group of people of sufficient size will have at least one person who has the twin personal failings of being both mean and stupid. All Republicans need to do is give that person the tools to harass school officials endlessly, and the result is the increasingly silly bans of once non-controversial ideas, like "segregation was bad" or "self-esteem is good."
