I've been thinking a lot about how we handle race and race relations in this country. Last year the entire nation watched in horror and disgust as a police officer kneeled on the neck of a black man for approximately nine minutes.  We watched someone die. The collective shock and trauma and grief we felt at that moment was a moment of unification. People, on lockdown due to a pandemic, took to the streets to protest police brutality. 

Black people and Brown people and White people - American people took to the streets by the thousands and protested the murder of yet another unarmed black man, but this time there was no denying, no excusing. Young people, old people, moms, and teachers took to the street. City and suburban people took to the street and to social media in the biggest public outcry since . . . ever. I don't think there has ever been this much support for something.

Black Lives Matter became the heroes of the protest as the organization felt vindicated by the murder of George Floyd and others who were unjustly killed by law enforcement. BLM was painted on our streets and printed on lawn signs and in store windows. 

Police were making attempts to heal their communities. Talking to protesters. Standing with protesters. Kneeling with protesters.

It was something that could have (should have) brought this country together, but that was short lived. 

Protests became riots. Arson, looting, and all manner of crime took over the mostly peaceful protests. The disrupters, both physical and virtual, took control of the narrative. Riots erupted and the "language of the unheard" was heard. Opportunists started looting -- they weren't protesters, they were criminals. The peaceful protests of the day became the violence disruption of the night. Vigilante justice was condoned by police. Police officers recanted their support and returned to their violent, militant posture. Proud Boys and 3%ers inserted themselves into the protests creating more chaos and violence. Left-wing media showed officers shoving, shooting, and gassing protesters while right-wing media showed shops on fire and pretended cities were burned to the ground. It was two Americas and business as usual. And law enforcement continued the murder of unarmed POC while the entire nation watched - half in horror, half posting their Thin Blue Line flags and Blue Lives Matter comments. 

And where are we now? Nowhere. We are still two Americas. We argue back and forth about what is truth and we get no truth. 

One place we tried to get these truths is in our classrooms. We tried to find ways to talk about the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor (a Black woman killed in her bed by police using a no-knock warrant which turned out to have the wrong address). We tried to find ways to talk about BLM and the protests that we thought would finally bring us together - one nation, indivisible. We tried to find ways to teach the truth instead of the whitewashed version of history we had been presenting for far too many years. But, we were thwarted by misinformation and propaganda. 

Once again, statues became history and facts were relegated to the dustbin of history. Columbus was a hero to be venerated on one side while on the other side he was a brutal dictator who was, in fact, stripped of his power by the king and queen of Spain and stood trial for crimes against humanity. Somewhere between these two models - hero or villain - is the actual truth. Next thing we knew, the radicals on the left were calling for all statues of anyone in history who ever remotely had a hand in the systemic racism evident in our society (Jefferson, Washington, even Lincoln) to be removed. Meanwhile, the radicals on the right started narratives about cancel culture and rewriting history and Critical Race Theory.

The big push now is to demonize Critical Race Theory which is basically a body of research that seeks to ferret out how racism has infiltrated our institutions and policy. They actually have people believing that we teach students to hate their race and that white people should be held responsible for every wrong in this country. In that vein, Texas just outlawed teaching MLK's "I Have A Dream" speech along with a host of other parts of our history that have made the United States that "more perfect union" that our Founders set up for us in our Constitution. So, no teaching about women's suffrage, labor movement, civil rights, slavery, just to list a few things that Texas lawmakers are trying to ban from our schools.

What should have been a pivotal moment in race relations and policing in the United States became just another duck season-rabbit season political fight.