You're bashing a strawman. I don't doubt your sincerity (as I was of a similar perspective when subject to this), but it is still ultimately a strawman. Because what "Black author" actually means is picking books written from the perspective of the Black community. Which to a parent or student not familiar with that culture, of course feels foreign and unnecessary. It also doesn't help that analysis of such books inevitably focuses on race relations (tedious social science), because that's where it crops up. But if education should aim to encompass the entirety of American culture, of which the Black community was and is still a significant part of, then this type of thing is probably the best we can do despite it seeming trite and forced. Quick: name a historical Black scientist who didn't work with peanuts.

> Quick: name a historical Black scientist who didn't work with peanuts.

I like to think of myself as an educated person, and I’m struggling with this. I’d struggle also to name an Indian or Chinese or Russian historical scientist. This reflects a White Western English bias in educational system imo. Also my own responsibility to do something about as well.

I'm pretty sure the first line by the teacher would be something like - your kid needs to read a book by Maya Angelou or they would name some other specific black author.

Or maybe they might say something like in order to diversify our reading we will be bringing books by black authors into the curriculum, authors like Maya Angelou.

But I doubt they would say your kid needs to read a book by a black author.

Because then I guess the kid could just choose the read The Three Musketeers, which actually I would think that a kid choosing to read that had their head on right but probably that is not what the teacher is hoping for.

> I'm pretty sure the first line by the teacher would be something like - your kid needs to read a book by Maya Angelou or they would name some other specific black author.

No, they absolutely are talking about people like this, they say that kids needs to read books by black authors, then the teachers reads this and adds books because the authors are black:

> The push to modernize reading lists is challenging traditional definitions of literature. Surprise: Not everyone is happy about it.

https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/ed/19/08/hooked-classics

>then the teachers reads this and adds books because the authors are black

maybe the teacher finds appropriate authors who also happen to be black.

Ok, the example wasn't clear enough. Lets take the more real world example:

Teacher Organization: Kids should be forced to read books by black authors.

Parent Organisation: I don't think you should do that, it isn't a good way to pick books.

Teacher Organisation: We are doing this to fix a historical problem, your pushback is just because you don't want your kids to read books by black authors, stop being such racist bigots! I really hate racist parents! Society shouldn't tolerate people like you!

Why do you think this a more “real world” example? This is messaging coming from a teacher organization? Which one? Have you heard this in the real world personally? Or can you point us to where this conversation actually occurred, if it’s a real world example? Or is this something that just happens on Twitter?

What makes this conversation more real than the other one, which you claimed happens often. Does that one not happen often after all?

I’m just looking for the real world basis of this model conversation you have written for us here. What has given you this perception? Facebook? Twitter? Your personal experience with teachers associations (which ones)? Your friends and family?

It is "more real world", not "real world". The example is exaggerated to make a point.

But your point is that this exaggerated thing is happening. We all understand the caricature you're trying to paint. I'm trying to get at the real world thing underneath of that. Get rid of the exaggeration. What's really happening?

Ok I read the link to the article above, it was sort all over the place but a major part of the article was about a teacher who found that some of their non-white students thought it lame to always be reading about white people, so the teacher mixed their curriculum with books that they thought would appeal more to their students, which had black characters in them.

It was not specified in this part that the books added by the teacher were written by people of any particular racial profile, although that is probably the case it is not certain given that writers such as Ursula K. LeGuin were white but often had non-white protagonists.

Yes, as you noticed the article is written by a liberal and is pro adding more books by black authors. My point wasn't to show that this is a bad movement, but to show that the movement and a resistance to the movement exists. My view is that those who argue that resistance to such movements shouldn't be tolerated are making society worse. There are good reasons to be against such movements, meritocracy has a point, but social justice and diversity also are good points, so I see no reason to forcibly reject either side.

Do you think that teacher’s first line is actually “often” the way such a controversy starts?

Yes. How else would it start? The teacher decides that the kids needs to read a book for racist reasons, eg because the skincolor of the books author is what the teacher wants it to be. Teachers associations often writes such goals in their agenda, this isn't a conspiracy theory, they say that this is why they do it openly themselves. Then when people protest that the protesters gets called racists. Maybe there are some real racists out there, but I believe that this version is overwhelmingly more common. I have seen it many times, so I have no reason to believe that the "racism" the author refers to anything more than this sort of "racism".

Edit: Can you give a single case where teachers first didn't pick a book because the author was black but instead that it made the most sense to use that book, and parents still complained in the past 5 years?

Can you provide a single case to support your position? You can’t ask someone to prove a negative. But you have told us this this is happening “often”. In fact it’s so prevalent you can’t even imagine an alternative conversation.

You presented a specific conversation. Did you hear that conversation personally? If not, who told you this conversation happened or where did you read about it happening? I’m not doubting you, I just want to get more hard facts into this thread.

You said that teacher associations have “often” written this into their “agendas” so it’s not a conspiracy theory. What are these associations and do you have a copy of these agendas into which they have written this? Since it happens often and it’s written down, you should show us and we can have a more substantive discussion about what they actually wrote versus your interpretation of what they wrote.

> Can you provide a single case to support your position?

There is plenty, this article gives a good view, apparently people have been pushing for things I claimed for 50 years according to this article. I have no reason to believe all these "racists" described here aren't just people who push back against these movements. I'm not saying that such movements aren't warranted, however I would not say that people who are against them are racist. There is a huge leap between "I don't want to read a book just because it was written by a black person" and "I refuse to read any book written by a black person no matter what the book is about".

> It’s been more than 50 years since literacy experts first stressed the need for more diverse books in the classroom, and yet reading lists look surprisingly the same as they did in 1970.

https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/ed/19/08/hooked-classics

I read the article. I don’t see a basis for the conversation you presented, nor the assertion about teachers associations, nor any information on the specific training teachers and professors are getting. I’m interested specifically in these claims you made in this thread. You are saying the basis for them is this article? Did you hold these beliefs before reading this article, or did it convince you of these beliefs. If the former, then what is the foundation of that belief? Personal experience? Research? TV?

The article states that there is a movement pushing literature by diverse authors into classrooms. The article also claims that there is a great pushback against that movement. Those two is what I am referring to.

People happily label pushback to such movements as "racist parents" and similar. I believe that people pushing back against movements shouldn't get rejected by society, this is the controversial part.

Okay, but a push for more diverse authors into the classroom is not the same as what you are presenting here.

What you’ve linked is not saying “we must read these authors because their skin is black”. It is saying “their black skin has caused them to live a life different from other authors, which has caused them to write something different from other authors, and we want to know about that.”

Based on our back and forth here, it seems you have presented a conversation you claim happens “often” that you’ve neither heard personally nor can cite an instance of it. This conversation is a strong caricature of teachers calling parents “racists” for not agreeing with their book choice.

Meanwhile the evidence you’ve linked to shows nothing of the kind. TFA doesn’t support it, nor does the article you linked.

What the Harvard article says is that the topics contained in literature written by white men who are now dead are not relatable to a diverse classroom. Unsurprisingly, people write what they know, and as is true with all people, straight white male people don’t know a whole lot about the lived experience of people who are not them e.g. gay, black, and women etc. One way to get this perspective is to read books by authors in those demographics.

Again, this is not the same as saying “we must read these authors because they are black.” There are many black authors who are not being suggested, and it’s not black authors to the exclusion of everyone else. What they have to say in their books is how the books get chosen. We are talking about content, not color. Does the color of the author change the content? Yes. And that’s the point, but it’s not racist to recognize that and want to learn from it.

So again I ask: where is the conversation between parents and students that you’ve heard often happening? I really want to know the answer to this and It’s concerning you are evading that question.

> What you’ve linked is not saying “we must read these authors because their skin is black”. It is saying “their black skin has caused them to live a life different from other authors, which has caused them to write something different from other authors, and we want to know about that.”

Right, and the parents aren't saying "I refuse to let kids read any books by black authors", they are saying "don't put books into the curriculum just because the authors are black". I know the way I presented them wasn't 100% accurate, but I'd argue that it is way more accurate of their position than their representation of the parents position.

Now, the point isn't which of those sides are right. The point is that one side here argues that the others should get rejected by society since their position shouldn't be tolerated. I believe that side shouldn't do that. I believe the people who argues like that are way more damaging to society than the side they are arguing against.

When school districts are coming up with lists of books by black authors or with civil rights subjects to ban them and cancelling black author appearances, and parents are explaining that they support such measures because they don't want their kid to feel guilty for being white or that it's all Critical Race Theory, it's a bit disingenuous to pretend that the only objections being voiced by parent groups is that selecting black authors is a bit arbitrary. (Funnily enough I don't see such massive pushback when teachers set kids the objective of reading a book with a European author, or a book written over 100 years ago...)

> When school districts are coming up with lists of books by black authors or with civil rights subjects to ban them and cancelling black author appearances, and parents are explaining that they support such measures because they don't want their kid to feel guilty for being white or that it's all Critical Race Theory

But that is about banning topics, not being upset because your kid came home with a book by a black author. I agree that is bad, but that wasn't what this discussion was about.

> (Funnily enough I don't see such massive pushback when teachers set kids the objective of reading a book with a European author, or a book written over 100 years ago...)

Yeah, some of the pushback will be motivated by racism, but labelling all pushback as racism wont do you any favours.

When some parents are banning books by black authors, other parents are getting angry about their kids being allowed to or even encouraged to read books by black authors, and no parents are getting angry at teachers for any reading suggestions not related to things culture warriors really hate like the suggestion that black people are normal and racism is a thing, it seems pretty absurd to suggest that the pushback is unlinked to the parents' views on race.

Perhaps a small minority of parents picketing the first black kids to arrive at their kids' school, did so out of sincere belief that race had no more place in determining catchment areas than admissions (and the whole all white status quo from carefully drawn districts was just something they incidentally sought to protect), but anybody arguing that the real intolerance wasn't the people pushing back against black kids arriving at their kids' school but the people who suggested the pushback was mainly driven by racism would obviously be arguing in bad faith...

> Right, and the parents aren't saying "I refuse to let kids read any books by black authors", they are saying "don't put books into the curriculum just because the authors are black".

Let me tell you my point of view. I am an educator, and so I have bigger stake in this issue than most here on HN, who I would think are by a large majority in the tech field. I don't know what your profession is, but could you imagine if you found out what you say is happening between teachers and parents were happening in your field? You would want to know exactly where that was happening, right? Because as a person in this field, you would have some power and authority in that community to affect real change. To stamp out that behavior. Right? That's where I am at now. If what you're saying is true, I'm really upset by that, because it reflects directly on my profession and myself, and I'd like to use my position to stop it from happening.

So when you tell me that a conversation is happening like you described, I want to know specifics. What organizations, what teachers? I'm trying to understand if this is a perception you have of the issue through the lens of social media, or if you have actual knowledge since you wrote a specific conversation down that you said happened many times. I was wondering if this conversation was rooted in your experience, or if you had some other source as the basis for this conversation. I'm eager to get to the actual substance because then we can see where the nuance lies.

For example, as proof of your assertion that teachers are choosing books for racist reasons, you linked to a source that shows just the opposite -- that books were chosen because they provide perspectives not present in the existing curriculum. You further claimed that parents are saying "don't put books into the curriculum just because the authors are black", but your own evidence shows that is not happening. So maybe this is where the discrepancy lies. One group has a misperception about the motivations of the other. That's something we can work to solve.

So where is the evidence it is happening? What is leading you and others to claim it is? Because again, as an educator, I want to attack that directly. I can't attack that with vague anecdotes. You don't like it either, right? Help me help you.