Alabama has banned the teaching of “divisive” concepts. Does that mean that teaching about slavery is no longer legal in the state?
If you watch MSNBC, or read what the ACLU has to say, you would think that teaching about the horrors of slavery has been banned in the state. Of course – that’s nonsense.
On March 20, Alabama governor Ivey signed into law anti-DEI bill SB 129, a law that, among other provisions, bans the teaching of “divisive” concepts. When I first heard about the law on a news report on MSNBC, I was flabbergasted. Banning the teaching of anything potentially “divisive” could mean that public schools in the state could no longer teach ANYTHING about slavery in America, could teach nothing about slavery in the Arab world or within Africa, nothing about the holocaust, nothing about evolution, etc. etc. etc. With such a law in place, it’s hard to imagine what COULD be taught in Alabama public schools.
So – I did what I suspect very few people who hold opinions about the law have done — I read the law. The law DOES ban teaching “divisive” concepts – but includes a very specific set of criteria for deciding if a concept is divisive. The law does NOT ban teaching about slavery, does not ban teaching about the holocaust, does not ban teaching evolution, and basically, does not ban teaching ABOUT anything else! What the law DOES ban is PROMOTING certain BELIEFS about race, religion, and sex.
I encourage anyone reading this posting to spend the couple of minutes required to read the actual law (it’s not long, and much of the language is sufficiently repetitive to make it a fairly breezy read). Maybe you will then agree with my take on the law. Maybe you won’t. But in either case, your views will then be informed by what the law actually states rather than by the way the law has been represented (in some cases — grossly misrepresented) by the media and others.
The law will take effect on Oct. 1. In terms of what may no longer be taught in public institutions in the state after that date are concepts like teaching that members of one race actually ARE superior to members of any other race. An instructor CAN teach that certain people in the past (or even in the present) BELIEVE that one race is superior to all others. All that is banned in this context is the instructor teaching that one race actually IS superior to all others.
In several ways, the actual law that was passed shares a number of features in common with the anti-CRT (critical race theory) law that was passed in Florida in 2022:
1. Most, and perhaps all, of the provisions of each law would probably be considered to be quite reasonable, and probably desirable, by most people in the country. For example, as was noted above, both laws ban teaching students that one race actually is superior to all others. Who, other than hardcore white supremacists, would disagree with that provision? And both laws ban teaching that children of one race today should be blamed for the actions of people of that race two hundred years ago. My guess is that most people would be outraged if they learned that their children WERE being taught that.
2. Both laws are likely to be deeply misunderstood by parents, resulting in an increase in complaints from parents when teachers discuss concepts that it’s clearly permissible to discuss under the laws — but which parents may think the laws ban. In the specific case of the Alabama law, the fact that the law does use the vague term “divisive concepts” (before defining the term in very specific ways) is likely to lead many parents to think that the law bans much more than it really does.
3. Because of the potential of each law to prompt an increase in complaints from parents about the teaching of material that is permitted by the law, it seems likely that each law will have (and in the case of Florida, seems to already be having) a chilling effect on the willingness of teachers to discuss any kind of controversial material. I think all Alabama teachers should be required to read the law so that they know what really is, and isn’t, permitted, and they would be well-advised to xerox lots of copies of the law to be handed out to parents who might complain about any teaching of a controversial topic. But I also fully acknowledge that unless a public school teacher is being backed up by the school principal and the county school board in doing something like that, knowing what the law really says may do little to protect teachers from parents’ wrath, and if I were a public school social studies teacher in Alabama, I’d be really really concerned and might modify what I would (quite legally) otherwise teach. Moreover, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it is this CHILLING effect that is, for some (and perhaps most) of the legislators who voted in favor of the Alabama law, what they hope will be the outcome of having passed the law.
Misrepresentation of the law by the media (and others)
Just a couple of examples:
1. This is how the ACLU has characterized the teaching-related provisions of the law in their press release: “The bill prohibits the teaching of “divisive concepts,” a term defined in the legislation under a wide-ranging and vague criterion.” And according to the ACLU, Alabama senate bill 129 is “an anti-truth bill which curtails an education on systemic inequities, racial violence, and the historic efforts to gain civil rights and civil liberties for marginalized communities throughout our nation’s history.”
Again, your mileage after reading the actual law may vary, but I do not see where the bill prohibits what the ACLU says the law prohibits. Indeed, the law very specifically states that it does NOT prohibit “the teaching of topics or historical events in a historically accurate context.”
2. Last evening, I watched an interview by Ali Velshi on MSNBC with a Democratic state legislator from Alabama discussing SB 129. Below is a partial — annotated by me — transcript of parts of that interview (as usual — my comments are in standard font, while the quoted statements of the legislator [L} and Velshi [V] are in italics).
The segment begins with a video of some Alabama students protesting the passage of SB 129. Then, in reference to a particular student’s comment about the history of racism in the state:
[V] “Spring 1963. Thousand of students gathered to protest segregation in Alabama. They face firehoses, police dogs, and arrests, while calling for the diversification of classrooms in one of the most segregated cities in the country. That was just 61 years ago. And today it became that much harder to learn THAT history and to diversify classrooms in Alabama.”
First, the students in 1963 were NOT protesting for “diversification”, which does not mean the same things as “integration”. Velshi used that term here to try to link the past protests with the wording of the current law. But the students in 1963 were protesting for integration, and nothing in the new law talks about integration. Second, as was noted above, the law very explicitly states that it is legal to teach THAT history. Again, maybe the law will have a chilling effect such that the real history of racism in Alabama won’t be taught, but teaching about the history of racism in Alabama and the rest of the country is very clearly and explicitly NOT what the law prohibits.
[L] “This bill takes me back, this is a rollback beyond Brown vs The Board of Education. This takes me to Plessy v Ferguson. ... Affirmative action was put into place in this country for a reason, to give individuals who have been marginalized in this country an opportunity, a fair shot. To me, this is racism 101, to me this is beyond Jim Crow on steroids.”
For the record – and as the Alabama legislator surely knows – it was the recent supreme court decision that banned race-based affirmative action nation-wide (and therefore — in Alabama), not Alabama SB 129. Relating SB 129 to that is a red herring. And to call the provisions of SB 129 “beyond Jim Crow on steroids” perhaps may be excused as a rhetorical flourish, but obviously bears no real resemblance to reality. SB 129 does not mandate segregation. Jim Crow laws did. And the legislator knows that. She should not have made that statement (which she repeats later in the interview) because it is patently ridiculous, and Velshi should not have let such a ridiculous claim stand.
[V] “It seems there are a lot of conservative thinkers and think tanks that are behind this movement to ban DEI — the same ones who think there’s been censorship on university campuses and claiming there is not enough free thought — and yet this concept of learning about things like 1961 and 1963 and black history in American and wondering and being curious about what reparations and what fixing it would look like — is actually being shut down by people who complain that their speech is being shut down on other fronts.”
Jeesh. Actually, there HAS been censorship on university campuses. But more to the point here, Alabama SB 129 does NOT prohibit teaching about 1961, or 1963, or in fact, ANYTHING about black history in America. If the law produces a chilling effect such that teaching about what happened in 1961 or 1963 does not take place in Alabama public schools, that would be a gross disservice to Alabama students. But the lesson is that it is incumbent upon educators in Alabama to know what the law actually states. And I challenge Velshi to reference where influential conservative groups who have weighed in on the issue of campus free speech have also claimed that public schools should not teach about the history of racism or slavery or lynching in America. I don’t doubt that some parents may not want some of those topics taught, but that isn’t what Velshi is claiming here.
OK. I could go on, but that’s enough I think. And BTW – although this posting may read like a spirited defense of Alabama SB 129, that is not its intent. Rather — it’s a defense of basing discussions of laws on what the laws actually state, rather than on what people unfamiliar with the laws claim the laws state. And I hope it is also read as a criticism of over-the-top hysterical misrepresentations by the media. Claiming that Alabama has banned teaching about slavery may make effective click bait, but it simply is not true.
And finally, FWIW, maybe I think Alabama SB 129 should have been passed. Maybe I don’t. Not relevant to this discussion.
Again — here’s a link to the actual text of the law for anyone interested.