State of Illinois proposes to mandate racist books for all public school students

The State of Illinois' General Assembly has issued a bill for consideration that would, if passed, mandate that specific books about racism be taught in every public school in the state for the coming school year.

The mandate, which would be "effective immediately," would require that these "books about racism" be part of curriculum across the state. HB0080 which would implement all of these requirements was introduced by Rep. Mary E. Flowers. These books include bell hooks' Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, Ta-Nehisi Coates memoir Between the World and Me, as well as books about hidden biases, and police brutality.

While the list includes storied and classic American author James Baldwin who wrote in the mid 20th century, the curriculum mandate also has as required reading books that are recent releases. These include Ibram X. Kendi's racist screed aptly titled How to Be an Antiracist, as well as antiracist activist Layla F. Saad's Me and White Supremacy.

Race-baiting attorney Ben Crump's Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People would also be required reading by the Illinois General Assembly for age-appropriate students. Journalist Ijeoma Oluo's So You Want to Talk About Race is also on the mandated reading list.

So is Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, and This Book is Anti-Racist, by Tiffany Jewell, illustrated by Aurelia Durand. Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People, by Reni Eddo-Lodge, also makes the cut of 20 non-fiction books about how white people are basically horrible oppressors who don't even know their own minds and perpetrate unwitting racism simply by existing.

An additional nine fiction books are on the required reading list. While it contains notably brilliant books, such as for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf by American author and playwright Ntosake Shange, novels by Toni Morrison and Harlem Renaissance notable Zora Neale Hurston, it also contains works that are way too recent to be considered classics that merit a required reading by all public school students in Illinois.

Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad may be a compelling exploration of the question what if the underground railroad was an actual train, and Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart was called "A true classic of world literature" by Barack Obama, are these merits enough for the Illinois General Assembly to demand that all children in the state read them?

Many of these books are simply too new to be considered essential reading. The Illinois General Assembly is attempting to mandate, by law, the literary canon. The establishment of a literary canon, books that are considered classics, that make their way onto must read lists, is not something that ought be done by an arm of the government.

The push to indoctrinate students with anti-racist literature as a means to make them not racist has not been proved to be effective. This is especially concerning as much of what passes for anti-racist is primarily anti-white. In 2021 America, whiteness is an immutable condition that renders the afflicted person unable to overcome the biases that come from having lived their lives with a pale skin tone.

In anti-racist literature, whiteness is revealed as a culture and a race that causes the bearer of that skin to oppress, both intentionally and unwittingly, anyone with a darker skin tone. According to many of the best-selling tomes the state of Illinois will demand students read, whiteness is problematic and there is no cure for it. The work of atoning for one's whiteness is never finished, and the perspective of racism comes with the skin—for both Kendi and DiAngelo, for example, there is no escaping the sins of whiteness.

Teaching that a student bears guilt for the ills of society as a consequence of their race, religion, ethnicity, or skin color is wrong in every conceivable way. That it is being mandated by the state of Illinois is disturbing and terrifying.