This November, elections are up for members of a local school board, and unfortunately, my area is not immune to the epidemic of right-wing infiltration into such positions. On a community social media platform I follow a post titled “ Sick of woke schools?” caught my attention. The post went on to ask citizens to vote for a certain candidate who would “restore excellence in the classroom.”

You can imagine that the responses were varied, some mentioned indoctrinating children with the candidate’s “Christian principles,” and others lauded the candidate and the need to protect children and parents from the malevolent attack on families and the “twisted” form of woke indoctrination in our schools. 

Let’s call a “spade a spade” as my father used to say: Ultra conservatives want to prevent students from learning about race, gender, and the more nefarious aspects of American history and current events through censorship, restrictions, and right-wing indoctrination. 

Right-wing political leaders and their supporters across the U.S. are launching attacks on public education by placing restrictions on what instructors can teach about gender and racism by demonizing the rights of culturally, racially, and religiously diverse students and teachers. Organizations such as Moms for Liberty have called to ban such classics as Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Farenheight 451 by Ray Bradbury, and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.

The irony is deafening. 

Such efforts to ban books deemed “inappropriate” are egregious attempts to politicize, censor, and weaken all aspects of public education, from K-12. The entire cultural war against all things “woke” is a core aspect of right-wing conservatism, and they’re trying their best to take this war to the classroom. 

So what is “woke” anyhow?

According to Wikipedia, the term “woke: is “an adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English(AAVE) meaning “alert to racial prejudice and discrimination“.Beginning in the 2010s, it came to encompass a broader awareness of social inequalities such as racial justice, sexism and LGBT rights.

To me, woke is a good thing: Recognizing that yes, there is racial prejudice and discrimination against LGBTQ+ individuals, and yes, social inequalities and sexism are indeed very real in our culture. Shouldn’t our children be taught the facts? Facts are needed in order to find solutions: You can’t fix problems without the facts.

So why do far-right conservatives have such an issue with the truth?

Assaults on Black studies, queerness, and “socialist” ideas are nothing new in the U.S. We can look at the red scare of the 1950’s, and the wave of McCarthyism targeting people and color and the LGBTQ+ community, branding them “communists” for wanting to be treated equally as human beings. Today, under Trump’s shadow, the right’s assault on education is an age-old attempt to preserve a social hierarchy that continues to marginalize certain groups, while elevating others. 

And what better way to get people’s blood boiling than to bring children into the picture? In my opinion, this is a cheap shot meant to create a visceral response of moral outrage. What will our children think when public schools teach about slavery, the Holocaust, the Trail of Tears, sexism, the murder of Matthew Shepard and George Floyd?

The answer is the truth.

My message to white-wing theocrats who are running for school boards: Our children deserve to know the truth about our culture and our history, and stop using them as a tool to enable your dominance in both the social and political spheres. Our children need to know the facts, and anything less is an insult to both them and their intelligence.