Only in Texas

At George Dawson Middle School in Southlake, Texas, they have censored the autobiography of George Dawson.

Yes, the same George Dawson.

They are doing this, because in his memoir, Dawson described a lynching, and in the Southlake Carrol Independent School District (ISD), they have a long and contentious history of racism, including videos of students chanting the N-word, discriminatory discipline, etc., so they don't like the idea of their students being shown what their ancestors did.

F%$# them:

You name a new school building after a man or woman, and decades later few remember who that person was. In the case of the late George Dawson of Dallas — he of George Dawson Middle School fame in Southlake’s Carroll ISD — the reason his name is on a school is something of a miracle.

Yet now we learn from Dallas Morning News Education Lab reporter Meghan Mangrum that a committee of district educators reviewed Dawson’s book to check for, in the words of Superintendent Lane Ledbetter, “age and content appropriateness for students.”

Students can still read most of the book. But for seventh graders any discussion of the most important chapter must instead be overseen by a teacher as part of a guided discussion. To me, it sounds like the book’s key chapter might not get read at all, but instead be summarized by the teacher.

Critics call this a book ban. The Carroll district, already suffering image-wise from a slew of battles over race relations in its schools, fights this labeling. I’d say it’s more of a book censoring than a banning. Is there a difference? I’m not sure.

………

It’s a remarkably embarrassing situation for one of the state’s premier school districts. If ever a book’s story needs to be told, it’s this — Life Is So Good, by George Dawson and Richard Glaubman.

"One of the state’s premier school districts?" Yeah, maybe.  I have been told that the schools were remarkably good in Omelas* too.

What they are banning is the autobiography of a man, the grandson of slaves, who was abandoned by the Texas education system in his youth and only learned to read when he was 98 years old.

A friend oh his was lynched on the basis of false accusations, and he writes about this, but in the Carrols ISD, there can be no mention of this, because any reference to the evil that was done by the parents and grandparents and great-grandparents of the white citizens of the district must be suppressed.

It must be suppressed so that students can continue to chant the N-word.

I guess that they think that anything else is "Critical Race Theory."

Can we please give Texas back to Mexico?

^*You don't get the reference? Seriously? Read a book occasionally, or at least this short story.