A bill requiring that Missouri teach its schoolchildren about the Holocaust is moving through the Legislature with strong bipartisan support. Aren’t these lawmakers worried that this topic is too divisive? Or that it will make kids of German ancestry “feel bad about themselves”?
Of course, no one is making those silly arguments against this worthy legislation — yet many of the same lawmakers who support the measure are making exactly those silly arguments in separate bills attempting to ban discussion of racial issues from the classroom.
As the Post-Dispatch’s Grace Zokovitch reports, legislation by Rep. Adam Schwadron, R-St. Charles, would create a “Holocaust Education Week” in Missouri schools to highlight awareness of the German Nazis’ genocidal campaign against European Jews during World War II. Some 6 million Jews were systematically murdered, largely in concentration camps created under Adolf Hitler for that purpose. A national survey in 2020 discovered a disturbing lack of knowledge among Americans today regarding those and other details of one of the worst crimes against humanity ever committed.
The measure (House Bill 2000) has been moving through the Legislature without a single vote against it. This is unsurprising, given that most people understand how important it is to remember the Holocaust, both as a means of ensuring it is never repeated and to counter modern-day antisemitism. As Rep. Doug Clemens, D-St. Ann, put it: “We need to lock in vital remembrance of our history and the harm that our species is capable of doing to each other.”
That sound rationale should also apply to another great crime of history: slavery, often regarded as America’s original sin. Just as the Holocaust is still relevant today in the form of various neo-Nazi movements in America around the world, the legacy of American slavery still affects society today in the form of structural racism in job markets, real estate, policing and more. But that hasn’t stopped conservative legislators in Jefferson City from filing a deluge of bills that could have the effect of scrubbing virtually any discussion of race from public school curricula.
What began as a movement against critical race theory — an advanced law school concept that generally isn’t even taught in primary or secondary schools — has morphed into legislation that could be interpreted as prohibiting any discussion of race at all. Language common in many of the pending Missouri bills would ban so-called divisive concepts from being taught, as well as anything deemed to cause students “discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” on account of race or gender.
Teachers who see wording that broad could easily conclude that the only safe way to address issues related to race is to steer clear of the topic entirely. Just as silence regarding the Holocaust could only allow antisemitism to flourish, silence regarding race in America is a recipe for more racism.
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