White privilege is real, and white students do have advantages, but you can’t tell them that if you want to teach in Tennessee.
Matthew Hawn (photo, left), a tenured high school teacher who taught a social studies class on “Contemporary Issues” in Kingsport, found that out the hard way (read story here).
His offense? He “assigned essays and videos that conveyed Black perspectives” and told the class “white privilege is a fact.”
You wonder why he ran such a risk, because it’s so freakin’ obvious that it doesn’t need to be said.
The first guy to go after him doesn’t even have kids. He just doesn’t think race should ever be mentioned in schools. (Which would eliminate an awful lot of American history.)
Maybe the real reason Hawn was fired is because his assigned reading included a Ta Neshi Coates essay in the Atlantic essay that a parent complained “painted Trump in a negative light.” (Coates wrote, “It is often said that Trump has no real ideology, which is not true — his ideology is white supremacy,” which is so obviously true it’s not even necessary to write about it.)
It doesn’t appear Hawn intends to sue the school board that fired him. Even so, I have a question for all the “woke” conservatives out there: Doesn’t this violate his First Amendment rights?
Seriously, the belligerent aggression of conservatives as they attack public school curricula, reading lists, and personnel is becoming a serious problem in our country. We simply mustn’t let these bullies dictate what is taught — and can’t be taught — in schools and colleges. Now that Trump has transformed the GOP into an overtly racist party with a white supremacist agenda, more enlightened voters have to keep Republicans off school boards or this is what they’ll get.
The Tennessee school board ostensibly fired Hawn for not teaching both sides of the issue, but that’s a sham. They’re not going to fire any teachers for not presenting Black Lives Matters perspectives, or not teaching about the evils of slavery, or not telling kids that Christopher Columbus was a bad guy. We all know what’s going on: They’re sucking up to the “critical race theory” mob.
Hawn is a superb teacher (read about him here). Because he has deep ties to Kingsport, his hometown, he may not be willing to relocate. He should consider it, though. Not everywhere is like Kingsport. It doesn’t deserve a teacher like him, and plenty of communities that do would treat him more decently. It’s tough to pull up roots from a place you’ve known all your life and start over where you’re a stranger, but sometimes pursuing a career may require that.
Hawn shouldn’t call it quits on teaching. He should call it quits on Kingsport, and do like Coach Norman Dale.