Ta-Nehisi Coates attended a school board meeting in South Carolina in a show of support for a teacher who had been ordered to stop assigning one of his books to students, the Associated Press reports.
Coates did not speak at the meeting in Irmo, a town near Columbia, South Carolina. Neither did the teacher, Mary Wood, who had used Coates’ Between the World and Me in her Advanced Placement English class at Chapin High School.
In February, some of Wood’s students complained about the book, which had been assigned as part of a lesson plan on systemic racism, saying that Wood’s lesson made them feel ashamed to be white.
After the complaints, school district officials told Wood to stop using the book, apparently fearing that it would run afoul of a state budget proviso that prohibits funding of schools that teach material that causes students to “feel guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of his race or sex.”
The Daily Beast reports that at the meeting—at which no vote was held—one student addressed the board, saying, “We cannot become critical thinkers without being uncomfortable in some way. If students can’t learn these things in a safe space, like school, how are they—we—meant to make good decisions and think critically?”
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
