This seems to be driven by commercial interest as much as anything.
It is not surprising that many of the people pushing this are contemporary authors, particularly YA authors, the very YA authors whose books would have the chance to bought en masse by school systems. There is a lot of money to be made in the selection of which books get read by schoolchildren.
Cluess wasn't just canceled for pure and noble social justice reasons; she was canceled because she was threatening the latest sales strategy in a struggling industry in which she is a competitor.
I think in general "cancellations" are so brutal in fields like fiction writing and academia because these fields are so competitive and there is a massive glut of particularly mediocre aspirants. "Social Justice" and "identity" have become a powerful tool to build a brand, develop a following, and knock off rivals, and to do so with the patina of moral superiority. We should not be surprised when people flagrantly exploit it. (And it should not surprise us that those who lack inherent "Identity" currency will try to create some for themselves; I think a lot of the growth in straight middle class white girls declaring themselves "non-binary", vaguely "queer," and #ActuallyAutistic is because they feel pressure to create for themselves the foundation for an #OwnVoices or Diversity platform, or as a post hoc defense of one after being "called out".)
Diversification of literature is good. We have an extraordinary body of excellent, complex, and worthy literature written by writers of color and writers from cultures or experiences that are not well represented in "The Canon" to integrate into education programs. Doing so would strengthen both education and "The Canon."
Regarding the W.E.B. DuBois quote and Dumas, readers may be interested to know, if you didn't already, that Dumas Pere's grandmother was an African slave by way of the Caribbean. His father was a "raised man" in Napoleon's army, eventually rising to general.
Regarding the article, we are seeing the same thing in live theatre. The movement in many quarters for 50/50 gender representation among playwrights means that male playwrights compete with Shakespeare, Chekhov, and all the rest, while female playwrights usually compete with...each other. So half our performed plays come from only one generation of authors.
Spot on. Diversification of available literature is ALWAYS a good thing, but doing so at the expense of preventing access to the classics is manifest error and will be seen twenty years from now as just another ridiculous intellectual fad.
Thank you. #DisruptTexts seems to reflect such a dull, plodding unimaginative, literal-minded approach to literature that it's almost laughable. Mr. Gradgrind is apparently alive and well in this cohort. Side note: Ralph Ellison also liked and admired the work of Faulkner. This is what happens when the proudly uncreative, those lacking entirely in nuance and subtlety, are in charge of literature.
It seems to me that the only way out of this increasingly hopeless situation is that the grassroots level. I don’t believe that the majority of parents have any idea what is going on as far as curriculums content and if they were to be made aware of it I am guessing they would be opposed. School superintendents and school board members serve at the behest of the electorate and can be dismissed. But first there has to be awareness of the issue
This hurts so much. I try to imagine my life without my relationship to Jane Austen’s mind. Occasionally I bump into a painful reference to colonized peoples. But Oh what I would have lost if she were kept from me because of that. The most closely observed minute observation of human character that I am aware of. This reminds me again that the most important principle of real growth is, “transcend and include.” Anything that does not follow this pattern is not growth, but regression. The language of this movement, as you relay it in the piece, is pure Maoism.
As with most controversies the truth/best course of action lies somewhere in between. I was late to the joys of reading. What may have helped me at a younger age (other than my parents and siblings being readers themselves) would have been teacher guidance according to my tastes and for that matter abilities. It’s less what we teach but how we teach.
I'm currently homeschooling my daughters; I try to strike a balance between giving them the books that they easily love, which encourage them to read on their own, and more classic or complex books that might require a little more effort from them to rise to. When I offer them or teach them more challenging things they sometimes love it, they sometimes hate it. But at least they have been exposed to their wider culture and are learning to make informed and discerning choices about literature.
And there is nothing at all wrong with kids reading commercial or "trashy" books that they enjoy. Kids should read all kind of books. Reading easy commercial books that they can "relate" to can spur a love of reading that, as they grow, becomes the foundation for reading the really good stuff. That is definitely how my own love of reading came about; I probably would not have ever made it to Lord of the Rings without David Eddings or Terry Brooks, or to War and Peace without years of dimestore historical fiction and romance novels.
(And also, there is nothing wrong with just being entertained for the sake of being entertained.)
A good teacher can meet children where they are, take their hand, and lead them somewhere higher. The job of a teacher is not just to be "relevant" to the kids, but to broaden children's range of what is relevant to them, to widen their "temporal bandwidth" as Alan Jacobs calls it.
This "bandwidth" I think is such a vital part of becoming an educated adult in a free and democratic society. It is a foundation for being able to deal with complexity and showing empathy to a wide range of people, and its development is a big part of the purpose of the liberal arts in education.
The problem with the #DisruptTexts, and the pervasive attitude in general that we should just give the kids what they want (or worse, that we "learn from the children") is that it completely abdicates any attempt to widen "temporal bandwidth" and traps children in a very narrow, narcissistic, and immature present, without the tools to develop the habits of thought or empathy necessary for living in a complex and free society.
Thank you for this piece. I don't understand why the objective is to destroy rather than build up. Why isn't there a choice for students? Shakespeare's work has lasted because he was a genius topped by no one ever with the possible exception of Bob Dylan. Are we going after Einstein next? I would not stand for this if I were a parent.
I am a parent, I should say, but my daughter is grown. She attended a very "woke" public high school but there is no way I would have kept her in if they were teaching her that Shakespeare was a colonialist and therefore not worth her time.
Isn't being able to acknowledge when both sides have a legitimate point without being called a traitor supposed to be one of the things that makes liberalism better than conservatism or leftism?
Reading should widen your world, broaden the scope of things you are capable of imagining, give you a window into the soul of someone unlike yourself. We deprive children of the chance to become fully human if we deprive them of the best that literature has to offer. We should absolutely look far and wide to every time and place for “the best”, but limiting such a search based on a political agenda would be a tragedy.
The fact that this was written by someone affiliated with the opinion side of the Wall Street Journal tells me all I need to know: another article that demonizes the mythical "woke left," and fights the culture wars yet again, by using exaggerated and cherry-picked examples. And not one single mention of the chilling effect of groupthink on the "unwoke right"-- the folks who believe QAnon or take whatever Pres. Trump, the Fox News commentators and the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal both literally and seriously.
I respect the fact that there are extremists on the left who want to focus on ONLY anti-racism or who want students to study ONLY "approved" texts. But how can we have this discussion without also discussing the extremists on the right who see everything through the prism of Christian nationalism or who believe that grievance and victimization are okay for folks on the right? (As they see it, folks on the left are "whiners"... whereas those on the their side have a cause worth fighting for-- after all, the folks on their side are trying to restore culture to the way it was in the "good old days.")
I am a media historian who teaches at a very liberal university and nobody has ever told me what to teach, or how to teach it. But as a professional, of course I want to have a diverse group of readings. This should not be controversial. However, I also want to avoid "presentism"-- retroactively applying the standards of today to folks from, let's say, 100 years ago. I can teach what people believed in previous times without necessarily agreeing. But in order to actually teach critical thinking, one needs to compare and contrast, and one also needs some context-- such as WHY did people believe X, did anyone challenge that dominant belief, what happened, what changed, and how did we get to where we are today.
I find it profoundly disappointing that we'd be debating yet another culture war issue without looking at the history of white nationalism and white Christian victimization culture, which has invaded and taken over conservative talk radio and right-wing pro-Trump commentary programs on TV and online. I am fine about disagreeing on how many "dead white men" should be taught, but this piece is a distraction, yet another way for my conservative friends to demonize and mock the left for the very worthy goal of creating a more just and equal society. By making it seem as if the "woke extremists" are taking over (a common discourse on the right), the author can once again feel satisfied that her side would never do such a thing. Except... they would. And on January 6th, they did.
Donna, I just think that people speak from experience. The author's experience is with #DisruptText the way mine is with documentary. We don't' have a problem in documentary with white nationalism or fascism, we have a problem with the overwork brigade and it is becoming pervasive and oppressive to even us liberals who work in the field and would more or less agree. I am glad that no one has told you what to teach, because they are certainly telling me what kind of films to make right now.
Of course. I am not denying that some people have had different experiences from mine, nor am I intending to diminish what has been happening to you and some others. And yes, during my career, I've absolutely seen certain companies imposing conformity on everyone, and criticizing anyone who dared to want something different-- whether it's filmmakers or professors or authors or whoever else. I'm just saying it's not always a matter of blaming liberals, or attributing everything to "cancel culture."
I've seen a sort of group-think setting in on a number of occasions over the years, and it was often motivated by capitalism, rather than liberalism. For example, I've seen the leadership at certain companies deciding that they alone knew what people really wanted and what would sell-- even if the assessment turned out to be wrong. When I was in radio, there was a period of time when record companies only wanted to put out disco records, and artists were being told they had to record a disco song-- whether they wanted to or not. In the end, it was a miscalculation and it led to a severe backlash among fans who hated all the disco songs and wanted more variety. So, while right now, I am not being told what to say or what to teach, I've seen times when that wasn't the case. But many times in my own career, I've found it was conservatives who insisted that everyone go along with their perspectives. (Speaking of that, don't get me started on how 95% of talk radio became right-wing, pro-Republican, and pro-conservative, to the near-total exclusion of any other point of view. But I digress!)
Thank you white men for curing Polio, defeating Hitler, inventing automobiles,writing David Copperfield, Romeo & Juliet, 1984, War and Peace, and taking us from living in caves to landing on the moon.
To Kill a Mockingbird is an extremely important book that teaches children about the inequality black people faced at this time and place in America. I struggle to name a text that is more influential in educating us on the mistaken ideas of the past. Going away from To Kill a Mockingbird seems like a great way to have a MORE racist society, not less. I'm deeply disappointed.
Thank you Ms. Cox Gurdon. The same thing is happening in my field documentary, where recently our preeminent industry magazine published an article titled "Canons Must Fall". In the article the author equated the racial exclusivity of the traditional documentary canon as akin to genocide. And because she knew it would sound preposterous to most she went out of her way to say the comparison was not an "exaggeration but rooted in fact". What's more, the industry outpouring of support for the article with little apparent pushback was disconcerting. I am fully supportive of expanding the canon, or not even having one (I am unsure of how the canon is formed other than by popular opinion anyway) as there are so many great films that have been overlooked by our gatekeepers. I just have little tolerance for the ever in vogue idea that works made by white people are in and of themselves harmful to non-whites. As a non-white voracious consumer of art and literature myself I can say affirmatively that John Steinbeck has done more good than bad. Thank you for articulating what is going on with #DisruptTexts so very well.
There's at least two issues at play here: the relevance of the traditional canon and the book-burning inclinations of The Woken. The latter is not interested in art or the broad humanistic reasons for teaching the canon. Zombie fashion, they simply attack everyone and everything that doesn't fit their narrow world view. They need to be opposed, intellectually. Unfortunately for the Rational Resistance, the traditional canon may not be a hill fit to die on. Kids have entire industries now that that tell them stories they can relate to. It's difficult to get an adult interested in Shakespeare or Homer, much less a child. I personally find Homer and many famous works unendurable. A taste for Shakespeare required a major effort on my part, while in my mid-twenties, to acquire.
It’s not on your account per se. I just find it to be absolutely insane that Persuasion hasn’t published anything on the most significant event in America since 9/11. How am I suppose to care about Shakespeare and “wokeness” when I just read an article from the Boston Globe about Ayanna Pressley’s panic buttons being ripped out of her office before the storming of the capitol? I don’t doubt your intentions are pure and that your article makes points that I might find interesting in a time when our democracy wasn’t hanging on by a thread, but I simply do not care right now and find it unacceptable.
Why would you need ANOTHER piece about something that is saturated every last corner of the country's media? It's everywhere - mass hysteria - of the kind we never saw all summer long while there were uprisings everywhere. Anyone who sees this as a 9/11 is not getting the bigger picture. That is what Persuasion is about - stopping this from happening in the first place. Our extreme polarization is what brought us to this point. Calling all Trump supporters white supremacists, treating them like human garbage to be feared, thrown out or put into re-education camps, an unfair media that tells only one side of the story and paints his entire movement with the same brush as whatever those terrible monsters who broke into the Capitol. But Trump supporters don't beat up cops. They pride themselves in being nonviolent. They never got any credit for that. So the situation is completely reversed from how the right covered the BLM movements - refusing to see that they were mostly peaceful and painting them all with the brush of the ones who turned violent, murdered people and looted stores. Both sides are screaming at each other and dehumanizing each other. Whomever broke into the Capitol are not stopping -- the reason being, it wasn't for Trump they were attacking government. They were attacking government because they believe government is now their enemy. It's been a long slow rise from 2008 - with the Occupy movement, the Tea Party movement - Trump and Bernie Sanders and to an extent BLM. America is rising up into protests and riots. It's time to stop making them partisan and ask ourselves why this is and what is really going on. I refuse to listen to any liberal who sounds just like your average conservative barking about that protest and pretending it was all on Trump. It isn't. It's much bigger than that and Jan 6 was likely only the beginning of whatever is coming next.
Some of the things you said were true, others I strongly disagree with (Trump supporters literally murdered a cop one week ago). But your comment is exactly why I want persuasion to talk about this - it is nuanced and there’s lots of blame to go around, so let’s talk about it. Pretty sure they’ve covered the “wokeness” topic pretty damn well so far!
Yep that's why I personally have doubts they were Trump supporters because they don't kill cops. I hope we find out the exact ingredients of just who they were. I suspect Q'anon -- the pizza gate types who believed they were fighting a child molestation right and China...
You’re both right and wrong. You’re right that there was a big Qanon presence, but you’re wrong to assume Qanon believers aren’t Trump supporters. They believe Trump is the one who is going to expose the truth and validate their delusions, which is why Trump and Trump world generally has refused to condemn it.
Like, this publication is called Persuasion, so can we please for the love of god discuss how we’re going to de-radicalize the fascist wing of the Republican Party?
I'm late to the party on this, but I can't help but see this response, and that of Donna Halper below, and wonder why you think this argument does not help to deradicalize the Republican party?
The radicalization of the left partly causes, and most certainly reinforces the radicalization on the right. Moderate Republicans (however many may be left at this point) and independents see "the progressives are banning Shakespeare" (which is how this action reads to the right) and they see just how scary the progressives really are. Arguing against the more radical and problematic impulses of the woke left *to* the left at large may be one of the most powerful tools available to moderates and progressives to de-escalate radicalism on both sides.
This argument is not stated explicitly in Ms. Cox Gurdon's piece, but 1) I do not think every piece needs to recapitulate the litany of ills of the far right as a backdrop, and 2) the arguments the article makes are effective on their own merits already.
Finally, I prefer to read articles making arguments about which the author is both passionate and expert. I would rather not read an essay written simply because an editor or magazine deems that there must be "something" written about it. (Incidentally, I do not mean to imply the Ms. Cox Gurdon is neither an expert in, nor passionate about the events of January 6 or Republican deradicalization; I merely mean that this essay satisfies my two most important criteria as it exists.)
My comment was directed towards Persuasion as a publication, not towards Ms. Cox Gordon. And if the argument you just made was stated explicitly in this piece, I would not have made the complaint. However, it was not, and so my complaint stands. The amount of attention this publication gives to the “woke left” heavily outweighs the amount of attention it gives to the fascist right. I believe this is a mistake and it bothers me, so I voiced my opinion. Some of what you said may be true, but none of it addresses my concern.
I agree that I'd like to see a Persuasion piece on the insurrection. I was reacting to the portion about deradicalizing the fascist right (both you and Ms. Halper below). I posited that this piece helps to do what you are asking for, even if it didn't make the link explicit, and also wanted to make the point that turning every single piece into how to deradicalize the Republicans is not my preference. I'd say that this publication, given its left slant, is more capable of reducing radicalism on the left than on the right, so I think its emphasis is well-placed.
That said, I understand your anger with and existential fear of the radical right. They are the elephant in every room.
This seems to be driven by commercial interest as much as anything.
It is not surprising that many of the people pushing this are contemporary authors, particularly YA authors, the very YA authors whose books would have the chance to bought en masse by school systems. There is a lot of money to be made in the selection of which books get read by schoolchildren.
Cluess wasn't just canceled for pure and noble social justice reasons; she was canceled because she was threatening the latest sales strategy in a struggling industry in which she is a competitor.
I think in general "cancellations" are so brutal in fields like fiction writing and academia because these fields are so competitive and there is a massive glut of particularly mediocre aspirants. "Social Justice" and "identity" have become a powerful tool to build a brand, develop a following, and knock off rivals, and to do so with the patina of moral superiority. We should not be surprised when people flagrantly exploit it. (And it should not surprise us that those who lack inherent "Identity" currency will try to create some for themselves; I think a lot of the growth in straight middle class white girls declaring themselves "non-binary", vaguely "queer," and #ActuallyAutistic is because they feel pressure to create for themselves the foundation for an #OwnVoices or Diversity platform, or as a post hoc defense of one after being "called out".)
Diversification of literature is good. We have an extraordinary body of excellent, complex, and worthy literature written by writers of color and writers from cultures or experiences that are not well represented in "The Canon" to integrate into education programs. Doing so would strengthen both education and "The Canon."
But this movement is not that.
Exactly.
Regarding the W.E.B. DuBois quote and Dumas, readers may be interested to know, if you didn't already, that Dumas Pere's grandmother was an African slave by way of the Caribbean. His father was a "raised man" in Napoleon's army, eventually rising to general.
Regarding the article, we are seeing the same thing in live theatre. The movement in many quarters for 50/50 gender representation among playwrights means that male playwrights compete with Shakespeare, Chekhov, and all the rest, while female playwrights usually compete with...each other. So half our performed plays come from only one generation of authors.
Spot on. Diversification of available literature is ALWAYS a good thing, but doing so at the expense of preventing access to the classics is manifest error and will be seen twenty years from now as just another ridiculous intellectual fad.
Thank you. #DisruptTexts seems to reflect such a dull, plodding unimaginative, literal-minded approach to literature that it's almost laughable. Mr. Gradgrind is apparently alive and well in this cohort. Side note: Ralph Ellison also liked and admired the work of Faulkner. This is what happens when the proudly uncreative, those lacking entirely in nuance and subtlety, are in charge of literature.
It seems to me that the only way out of this increasingly hopeless situation is that the grassroots level. I don’t believe that the majority of parents have any idea what is going on as far as curriculums content and if they were to be made aware of it I am guessing they would be opposed. School superintendents and school board members serve at the behest of the electorate and can be dismissed. But first there has to be awareness of the issue
Michael Niemanjust now
This hurts so much. I try to imagine my life without my relationship to Jane Austen’s mind. Occasionally I bump into a painful reference to colonized peoples. But Oh what I would have lost if she were kept from me because of that. The most closely observed minute observation of human character that I am aware of. This reminds me again that the most important principle of real growth is, “transcend and include.” Anything that does not follow this pattern is not growth, but regression. The language of this movement, as you relay it in the piece, is pure Maoism.
As with most controversies the truth/best course of action lies somewhere in between. I was late to the joys of reading. What may have helped me at a younger age (other than my parents and siblings being readers themselves) would have been teacher guidance according to my tastes and for that matter abilities. It’s less what we teach but how we teach.
I think this is a definitely a both/and issue.
I'm currently homeschooling my daughters; I try to strike a balance between giving them the books that they easily love, which encourage them to read on their own, and more classic or complex books that might require a little more effort from them to rise to. When I offer them or teach them more challenging things they sometimes love it, they sometimes hate it. But at least they have been exposed to their wider culture and are learning to make informed and discerning choices about literature.
And there is nothing at all wrong with kids reading commercial or "trashy" books that they enjoy. Kids should read all kind of books. Reading easy commercial books that they can "relate" to can spur a love of reading that, as they grow, becomes the foundation for reading the really good stuff. That is definitely how my own love of reading came about; I probably would not have ever made it to Lord of the Rings without David Eddings or Terry Brooks, or to War and Peace without years of dimestore historical fiction and romance novels.
(And also, there is nothing wrong with just being entertained for the sake of being entertained.)
A good teacher can meet children where they are, take their hand, and lead them somewhere higher. The job of a teacher is not just to be "relevant" to the kids, but to broaden children's range of what is relevant to them, to widen their "temporal bandwidth" as Alan Jacobs calls it.
This "bandwidth" I think is such a vital part of becoming an educated adult in a free and democratic society. It is a foundation for being able to deal with complexity and showing empathy to a wide range of people, and its development is a big part of the purpose of the liberal arts in education.
The problem with the #DisruptTexts, and the pervasive attitude in general that we should just give the kids what they want (or worse, that we "learn from the children") is that it completely abdicates any attempt to widen "temporal bandwidth" and traps children in a very narrow, narcissistic, and immature present, without the tools to develop the habits of thought or empathy necessary for living in a complex and free society.
Thumbs up to all of this.
This is ludicrous. There was no one more of an equal opportunity creator of villainy in the English language than William Shakespeare.
Male, Female, King, Queen, Prince, Knave, Tart, Black, White, Son, Daughter, Wizard, Sprite, Uncle, Mom, Brother, Nephew, Sister, actor...friggin’ everybody got into the act of being deliciously treacherous.
Thank you for this piece. I don't understand why the objective is to destroy rather than build up. Why isn't there a choice for students? Shakespeare's work has lasted because he was a genius topped by no one ever with the possible exception of Bob Dylan. Are we going after Einstein next? I would not stand for this if I were a parent.
I am a parent, I should say, but my daughter is grown. She attended a very "woke" public high school but there is no way I would have kept her in if they were teaching her that Shakespeare was a colonialist and therefore not worth her time.
Isn't being able to acknowledge when both sides have a legitimate point without being called a traitor supposed to be one of the things that makes liberalism better than conservatism or leftism?
Reading should widen your world, broaden the scope of things you are capable of imagining, give you a window into the soul of someone unlike yourself. We deprive children of the chance to become fully human if we deprive them of the best that literature has to offer. We should absolutely look far and wide to every time and place for “the best”, but limiting such a search based on a political agenda would be a tragedy.
The fact that this was written by someone affiliated with the opinion side of the Wall Street Journal tells me all I need to know: another article that demonizes the mythical "woke left," and fights the culture wars yet again, by using exaggerated and cherry-picked examples. And not one single mention of the chilling effect of groupthink on the "unwoke right"-- the folks who believe QAnon or take whatever Pres. Trump, the Fox News commentators and the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal both literally and seriously.
I respect the fact that there are extremists on the left who want to focus on ONLY anti-racism or who want students to study ONLY "approved" texts. But how can we have this discussion without also discussing the extremists on the right who see everything through the prism of Christian nationalism or who believe that grievance and victimization are okay for folks on the right? (As they see it, folks on the left are "whiners"... whereas those on the their side have a cause worth fighting for-- after all, the folks on their side are trying to restore culture to the way it was in the "good old days.")
I am a media historian who teaches at a very liberal university and nobody has ever told me what to teach, or how to teach it. But as a professional, of course I want to have a diverse group of readings. This should not be controversial. However, I also want to avoid "presentism"-- retroactively applying the standards of today to folks from, let's say, 100 years ago. I can teach what people believed in previous times without necessarily agreeing. But in order to actually teach critical thinking, one needs to compare and contrast, and one also needs some context-- such as WHY did people believe X, did anyone challenge that dominant belief, what happened, what changed, and how did we get to where we are today.
I find it profoundly disappointing that we'd be debating yet another culture war issue without looking at the history of white nationalism and white Christian victimization culture, which has invaded and taken over conservative talk radio and right-wing pro-Trump commentary programs on TV and online. I am fine about disagreeing on how many "dead white men" should be taught, but this piece is a distraction, yet another way for my conservative friends to demonize and mock the left for the very worthy goal of creating a more just and equal society. By making it seem as if the "woke extremists" are taking over (a common discourse on the right), the author can once again feel satisfied that her side would never do such a thing. Except... they would. And on January 6th, they did.
Donna, I just think that people speak from experience. The author's experience is with #DisruptText the way mine is with documentary. We don't' have a problem in documentary with white nationalism or fascism, we have a problem with the overwork brigade and it is becoming pervasive and oppressive to even us liberals who work in the field and would more or less agree. I am glad that no one has told you what to teach, because they are certainly telling me what kind of films to make right now.
Of course. I am not denying that some people have had different experiences from mine, nor am I intending to diminish what has been happening to you and some others. And yes, during my career, I've absolutely seen certain companies imposing conformity on everyone, and criticizing anyone who dared to want something different-- whether it's filmmakers or professors or authors or whoever else. I'm just saying it's not always a matter of blaming liberals, or attributing everything to "cancel culture."
I've seen a sort of group-think setting in on a number of occasions over the years, and it was often motivated by capitalism, rather than liberalism. For example, I've seen the leadership at certain companies deciding that they alone knew what people really wanted and what would sell-- even if the assessment turned out to be wrong. When I was in radio, there was a period of time when record companies only wanted to put out disco records, and artists were being told they had to record a disco song-- whether they wanted to or not. In the end, it was a miscalculation and it led to a severe backlash among fans who hated all the disco songs and wanted more variety. So, while right now, I am not being told what to say or what to teach, I've seen times when that wasn't the case. But many times in my own career, I've found it was conservatives who insisted that everyone go along with their perspectives. (Speaking of that, don't get me started on how 95% of talk radio became right-wing, pro-Republican, and pro-conservative, to the near-total exclusion of any other point of view. But I digress!)
Thank you white men for curing Polio, defeating Hitler, inventing automobiles,writing David Copperfield, Romeo & Juliet, 1984, War and Peace, and taking us from living in caves to landing on the moon.
To Kill a Mockingbird is an extremely important book that teaches children about the inequality black people faced at this time and place in America. I struggle to name a text that is more influential in educating us on the mistaken ideas of the past. Going away from To Kill a Mockingbird seems like a great way to have a MORE racist society, not less. I'm deeply disappointed.
Thank you Ms. Cox Gurdon. The same thing is happening in my field documentary, where recently our preeminent industry magazine published an article titled "Canons Must Fall". In the article the author equated the racial exclusivity of the traditional documentary canon as akin to genocide. And because she knew it would sound preposterous to most she went out of her way to say the comparison was not an "exaggeration but rooted in fact". What's more, the industry outpouring of support for the article with little apparent pushback was disconcerting. I am fully supportive of expanding the canon, or not even having one (I am unsure of how the canon is formed other than by popular opinion anyway) as there are so many great films that have been overlooked by our gatekeepers. I just have little tolerance for the ever in vogue idea that works made by white people are in and of themselves harmful to non-whites. As a non-white voracious consumer of art and literature myself I can say affirmatively that John Steinbeck has done more good than bad. Thank you for articulating what is going on with #DisruptTexts so very well.
There's at least two issues at play here: the relevance of the traditional canon and the book-burning inclinations of The Woken. The latter is not interested in art or the broad humanistic reasons for teaching the canon. Zombie fashion, they simply attack everyone and everything that doesn't fit their narrow world view. They need to be opposed, intellectually. Unfortunately for the Rational Resistance, the traditional canon may not be a hill fit to die on. Kids have entire industries now that that tell them stories they can relate to. It's difficult to get an adult interested in Shakespeare or Homer, much less a child. I personally find Homer and many famous works unendurable. A taste for Shakespeare required a major effort on my part, while in my mid-twenties, to acquire.
TH, I urge you to rush to Audible and download Dan Stevens reading the Odyssey. It's magnificent-- I think it will convert you to Homer.
Will do.
Talking about the important matters of the day I see. Still nothing l the 6th. On my way to cancel my subscription.
Please don't on my account! There can be many important matters, simultaneously. This happens to be one of them.
It’s not on your account per se. I just find it to be absolutely insane that Persuasion hasn’t published anything on the most significant event in America since 9/11. How am I suppose to care about Shakespeare and “wokeness” when I just read an article from the Boston Globe about Ayanna Pressley’s panic buttons being ripped out of her office before the storming of the capitol? I don’t doubt your intentions are pure and that your article makes points that I might find interesting in a time when our democracy wasn’t hanging on by a thread, but I simply do not care right now and find it unacceptable.
Why would you need ANOTHER piece about something that is saturated every last corner of the country's media? It's everywhere - mass hysteria - of the kind we never saw all summer long while there were uprisings everywhere. Anyone who sees this as a 9/11 is not getting the bigger picture. That is what Persuasion is about - stopping this from happening in the first place. Our extreme polarization is what brought us to this point. Calling all Trump supporters white supremacists, treating them like human garbage to be feared, thrown out or put into re-education camps, an unfair media that tells only one side of the story and paints his entire movement with the same brush as whatever those terrible monsters who broke into the Capitol. But Trump supporters don't beat up cops. They pride themselves in being nonviolent. They never got any credit for that. So the situation is completely reversed from how the right covered the BLM movements - refusing to see that they were mostly peaceful and painting them all with the brush of the ones who turned violent, murdered people and looted stores. Both sides are screaming at each other and dehumanizing each other. Whomever broke into the Capitol are not stopping -- the reason being, it wasn't for Trump they were attacking government. They were attacking government because they believe government is now their enemy. It's been a long slow rise from 2008 - with the Occupy movement, the Tea Party movement - Trump and Bernie Sanders and to an extent BLM. America is rising up into protests and riots. It's time to stop making them partisan and ask ourselves why this is and what is really going on. I refuse to listen to any liberal who sounds just like your average conservative barking about that protest and pretending it was all on Trump. It isn't. It's much bigger than that and Jan 6 was likely only the beginning of whatever is coming next.
Some of the things you said were true, others I strongly disagree with (Trump supporters literally murdered a cop one week ago). But your comment is exactly why I want persuasion to talk about this - it is nuanced and there’s lots of blame to go around, so let’s talk about it. Pretty sure they’ve covered the “wokeness” topic pretty damn well so far!
Yep that's why I personally have doubts they were Trump supporters because they don't kill cops. I hope we find out the exact ingredients of just who they were. I suspect Q'anon -- the pizza gate types who believed they were fighting a child molestation right and China...
You’re both right and wrong. You’re right that there was a big Qanon presence, but you’re wrong to assume Qanon believers aren’t Trump supporters. They believe Trump is the one who is going to expose the truth and validate their delusions, which is why Trump and Trump world generally has refused to condemn it.
Like, this publication is called Persuasion, so can we please for the love of god discuss how we’re going to de-radicalize the fascist wing of the Republican Party?
I'm late to the party on this, but I can't help but see this response, and that of Donna Halper below, and wonder why you think this argument does not help to deradicalize the Republican party?
The radicalization of the left partly causes, and most certainly reinforces the radicalization on the right. Moderate Republicans (however many may be left at this point) and independents see "the progressives are banning Shakespeare" (which is how this action reads to the right) and they see just how scary the progressives really are. Arguing against the more radical and problematic impulses of the woke left *to* the left at large may be one of the most powerful tools available to moderates and progressives to de-escalate radicalism on both sides.
This argument is not stated explicitly in Ms. Cox Gurdon's piece, but 1) I do not think every piece needs to recapitulate the litany of ills of the far right as a backdrop, and 2) the arguments the article makes are effective on their own merits already.
Finally, I prefer to read articles making arguments about which the author is both passionate and expert. I would rather not read an essay written simply because an editor or magazine deems that there must be "something" written about it. (Incidentally, I do not mean to imply the Ms. Cox Gurdon is neither an expert in, nor passionate about the events of January 6 or Republican deradicalization; I merely mean that this essay satisfies my two most important criteria as it exists.)
My comment was directed towards Persuasion as a publication, not towards Ms. Cox Gordon. And if the argument you just made was stated explicitly in this piece, I would not have made the complaint. However, it was not, and so my complaint stands. The amount of attention this publication gives to the “woke left” heavily outweighs the amount of attention it gives to the fascist right. I believe this is a mistake and it bothers me, so I voiced my opinion. Some of what you said may be true, but none of it addresses my concern.
I agree that I'd like to see a Persuasion piece on the insurrection. I was reacting to the portion about deradicalizing the fascist right (both you and Ms. Halper below). I posited that this piece helps to do what you are asking for, even if it didn't make the link explicit, and also wanted to make the point that turning every single piece into how to deradicalize the Republicans is not my preference. I'd say that this publication, given its left slant, is more capable of reducing radicalism on the left than on the right, so I think its emphasis is well-placed.
That said, I understand your anger with and existential fear of the radical right. They are the elephant in every room.