Texas School Official Advises Teachers to Offer Books With Opposing View of the Holocaust. You Know Slavery Is Next

There are times when hearing the other side can be helpful, and then there are times when no one gives a shit about the other side.

Getting a flat tire is a good example of this. I don’t need to know about the roads, and how the city hasn’t passed laws to fix potholes or why the roads haven’t received new paving; the tire just needs to get fixed so you can move on.

R. Kelly’s trial is another example of not caring what the singer has to say.

But when it comes to atrocities suffered in this world, I never thought that would ever come a time when someone would want to hear Hitler’s side of the Holocaust, and not only want to hear it, but want it available for students.

But the flux capacitor got all fucked, Trump was voted president, and here we are.

In an audio clip obtained by NBC News, Gina Peddy, the executive director of curriculum and instruction for Carroll independent school district in Southlake, advised teachers with books on the Holocaust in their classrooms to offer books with an opposing viewpoint to comply with a new state law meant to ban the teaching of critical race theory.

“We are in the middle of a political mess, and you are in the middle of a political mess, and so we just have to do the best we can,” Peddy said, NBC News reports.

Here’s how the Guardian explains it:

The training came after the Carroll school board had reprimanded a fourth-grade teacher after parents complained about a book on anti-racism in her class. And it followed the passage of a new Texas law that requires teachers who discuss “widely debated and currently controversial issues of public policy or social affairs” to examine the issues from diverse viewpoints without giving “deference to any one perspective”.

At the training, Peddy advised teachers to remember the requirements of the new law, according to the audio. “And make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust,” she said, “that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives,” which prompted a teacher to ask how one could oppose the Holocaust.

Nigga. You already know what’s coming next?

What’s the over/under on how long it takes for Texas schools to start carrying A Slave Master’s Guide for Dummies?

A district spokesperson told NBC News that teachers were only trying to comply with legislation as educators were in “a precarious position with the latest legal requirements.”

“Teachers are literally afraid that we’re going to be punished for having books in our classes,” an elementary school teacher told NBC News. “There are no children’s books that show the ‘opposing perspective’ of the Holocaust or the ‘opposing perspective’ of slavery. Are we supposed to get rid of all of the books on those subjects?”

Meanwhile, state education experts noted that the bill does not deal with classroom libraries.

This whole thing started when Nikole Hannah-Jones came through and shook the table with her award-winning, 1619 Project. It literally got Texas Gov. Greg Abbott so fucked up that he and his folks pushed for a law that would abolish the teaching of critical race theory, which was never taught in schools in the first place. Imagine being so uncomfortable with the role your ancestors played in history that you want to ban history.

And here we are. I give it a week before Texas schools mandate the “we’ve got to hear both sides” argument on why slavery was wise for landowners who were looking to cut labor cost.