Gentlemen, my problem with this argument is that they were teaching civics in school during Massive Resistance to Brown; during the violent resistance to the Little Rock 9, racist violent resistance to busing in Boston & to integrated housing in Cicero, IL.
https://twitter.com/strobetalbott/status/1355881567852367874
I’m a proponent of civics - a deeper, richer study of history, democratic governance here & abroad, economics, the rights & responsibilities of citizenship, &!guidance in how to read critically. All undergirded w/the essential foundation of race, gender & class.
Nostalgic Americans should be haunted by the experience described in Beth Roy’s book Bitters in the Honey, of a white student at Central High School in Little Rock as she watched out of her classroom window as a white mob chased a Black reporter.
“I knew that if they caught him they would kill him....I’m watching this , saying the Pledge of Allegiance, hand on my heart, I’m thinking, there’s something wrong here. How can this be happening in a country we’re pledging allegiance to?”
The civics that was taught in the 60s, 70s, 80s produced the 70 million votes to re-up the reign of a boldly anti-democratic, racist, misogynist, cruel man to serve as President. And the civics of the 40s & 50s didn’t stop the injustices that girl saw outside her classroom.
My child’s textbook in HS (yrs ago) was co-authored by John Diluluio as I recall. The entire section on “nullification” failed to mention at all the use of nullification by southern segregationists as rationale for their resistance to the SCOTUS orders in Brown.
Let’s get really ambitious about the civics our children need to function as responsible citizens in a modern, sprawling, geographically vast, federalist, multi-racial democracy with our particular history and experience.
And of course it will still require civil rights laws & enforcement, healthy political debate, ethical standards, strong values within families & communities, an ethic & presentation of fairness, equality & opportunity in our society to make even strong civics lessons stick.
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