Laws restricting lessons on racism are making it hard for teachers to discuss the massacre in Buffalo
In Texas, a teacher told her students she was required by law to provide them with multiple perspectives on the racist conspiracy theory that allegedly motivated the deadly attack.
Elizabeth Close spoke to her high school ethnic studies class in Austin, Texas, about the Buffalo shooting.
Two days after a white gunman opened fire and
killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store, teacher Elizabeth Close began her high school ethnic studies class in Austin, Texas, by reminding her students about a new state law that requires her to provide balanced perspectives on “widely debated and currently controversial issues.”
Close told her students that under the law, one of several recently implemented across the country that limit the ways teachers can discuss racism and current events, she was obligated to inform them that there’s more than one way to view Saturday’s mass shooting.
On one hand, she explained that authorities are investigating the killings as a racially motivated hate crime carried out by an 18-year-old who reportedly
wrote of his belief in a conspiracy theory that white Americans are being “replaced” by people of color through immigration, interracial marriage and integration.
“But I’m also supposed to tell you that that’s just one perspective,” Close recalled telling her students. “Another perspective is that this young man was out defending the world — or his kind — from being taken over.”
Close waited for her comment to fully register with her students, then added: “If you guys want to know why I’m thinking about quitting at the end of the year, it’s because of these types of policies — the fact that I have to have this conversation with you.”
Close said she was being intentionally provocative, trying to shock students into thinking critically about the Buffalo shooting as well as the Texas law. But she was also venting a frustration shared by many social studies teachers nationwide.
“I think we’re all just tired,” she said.
Books in Elizabeth Close's high school ethnic studies class in Austin.
This week, educators are once again grappling with how to discuss a mass shooting that appears to have been motivated by bigotry, just as they did
in 2019 after a shooting rampage targeting Mexicans at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas;
in 2018 after a massacre at a synagogue in Pittsburgh; and
in 2015 after a white gunman killed Black parishioners at a church in Charleston, South Carolina.
This time, however, teachers and education experts say these already difficult classroom conversations are being complicated or suppressed under a wave of state laws and school board policies that restrict the ways educators discuss racism. Fearing for their jobs, teachers in some communities are avoiding the conversation altogether, said Anton Schulzki, a high school social studies teacher in Colorado Springs and president of the National Council for the Social Studies.
“If a student brings up Buffalo, the teacher will simply say, ‘Sorry, I can’t talk about that,’ or ‘We’re not allowed to talk about that,’” said Schulzki, noting that educators have been
disciplined or
fired after discussing racism, sexuality and politics with students. “And ultimately what that does, unfortunately, is we’re actually depriving our students of an important discussion.”
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After Buffalo shooting, new laws are making it hard for teachers to talk about racism (nbcnews.com)