It is a national disgrace what is happening at the Nashua BOE meetings, and at other school districts across New Hampshire and the country, with angry disruptive people accusing our public schools of indoctrinating our children. These lies about our public schools are an affront to the hard work and professionalism of our teachers and an assault on our traditional public school system.

These angry assemblies have been enabled and fueled by poor leadership by Republicans such as Sununu who passed the divisive concepts law here in New Hampshire. The divisive concepts law is based on the lie that white people can now somehow become victims of discrimination if they are taught about atrocities committed against African-Americans and people of color in our country. White people are not victimized if we learn about these atrocities, even though it might make us upset or uncomfortable. I tried to explain this to the audience at the July 26 BOE meeting but was disrupted by angry people yelling at me. They wanted to know what this had to do with educating our children.

My answer is that this has everything to do with educating our children.

When I was growing up in the 1960’s, I learned the story of Emmitt Till who was 14 years old when he was murdered by white supremacists in 1955. As I was a teenager when I learned this, it upset me, but I was in no way a victim to learn the truth, Emmitt Till and his family, friends, and community are the true victims. Thousands of innocent African-American citizens who were lynched without any justice being served are the true victims of systematic racial discrimination in the US. We still do not have an anti-lynching bill in the US, the Republicans in the senate blocked the last attempt to pass such a bill, which was named in memory of Emmitt Till.

Now, Republicans are attempting to bring a new issue to the forefront regarding the question whether the US is or is not a racist country. I believe that the majority of White Americans, Republican, Democratic, or independent, do not want our country to be racist or discriminatory, but many of us are unable or unwilling to be uncomfortable or upset by learning and acknowledging the truth about systematic racism against people of color. The divisive concepts law, enacted by shifty politicians like Sununu, who have their own anti-public school agenda, inhibits our ability to do the hard work it takes to understand the facts about systematic racism in America.

The first step in solving the problem of institutionalized racism is education, despite that it might make us uncomfortable or upset. Sununu’s divisive concepts law hinders our public school teachers from doing their job, which is educating our children and indeed threatens their livelihood. If you think your child will be upset about learning the story of Emmett Till, as I had as a teenager, just think about how Emmett Till’s mother must have felt. There is no comparison.