Podcasts

Thank you for listening to Brown Mama Bear hosted by Shanera Williamson. Today on the show, Shanera welcomes Revida Rahman, a public school mom who co-founded One Willco, an advocacy group to build support for racial equity in our schools. Revida provides practical steps for getting involved in bringing real change to your community.

Banning books from classrooms and school libraries is nothing new, but it's recently become a topic of considerable political debate. How should parents react to this news, and to the books their children are reading?

In this episode of NPR's senior editor Barrie Hardymon and Traci Thomas, host of The Stacks podcast, joined guest host Ayesha Rascoe to talk about banned book lists.The three talk about why it's important for kids to discover books freely, even if that means starting a hard conversation with them. They also discuss their favorite — and least favorite — books that often show up on banned book lists.

Critical race theory is a legal framework developed decades ago at Harvard Law School. It posits that racism is not just the product of individual bias, but is embedded in legal systems and policies. Today, it's become the subject of heated debate on Fox News and in local school board meetings across the country.

School board members across the country are being intimidated and threatened. Now the National School Boards Association wants the federal government to step in. The group said in that acts of school board harassment and confrontations seem to be coordinated.

The online newsletter Popular Information has written about .

NPR Ed correspondent travelled to Gwinnett County, Georgia, where school board members have been targeted with threats. Read more in her story, .

NPR White House Correspondent has also reported on why .

Critical Race Theory has become the right wing’s new boogeyman, but no one seems to know how to even define it. Leading scholar Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw and producer CJ Hunt join host Roy Wood Jr. to break down what CRT actually is, why it’s necessary, and how ignoring the blowback could endanger years of progress. #DailyShow #BeyondTheScenes

Conservatives in America have a habit of citing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to score a variety of political points. Some have even used his words to undermine antiracist education and critical race theory. In this episode, Dr. Ibram X. Kendi and Daily Show writer Randall Otis join host Roy Wood, Jr. to discuss how conservatives pervert MLK’s words, why he’s so central to America’s civil rights education, and how to properly honor his legacy.

A discussion about schools, teachers, and school boards with Crystal Freeman and Anne McGraw, co-leaders of Williamson Strong

A discussion with Williamson Strong about our local school board and the controversy surrounding Wit & Wisdom.

School boards have quickly become one of the main frontlines for pushing far-right ideas into the zeitgeist. This episode we discuss how online organizing is accelerating the acceptance of violence at these meetings.

In part two we look at the modern origin and continued organizing efforts against "critical race theory", vax/mask mandates, and anti-LGBT+ presence in schools.

It seems almost every big culture-war battle of the moment—from "Critical Race Theory" to COVID mandates—is being fought in America's schools. Meanwhile, Democrats, anxious about a midterm rout driven by angry Republican parents, too often are conceding these battles to the right, adopting their rhetoric and their terms of debate, and have been for a long time—despite supposedly being the party of teachers' unions. Does it have to be this way?

We put that question, and many more, to our guest Jennifer Berkshire, the coauthor (with Jack Schneider) of and co-host of the education podcast . Jennifer guides us through the recent history of conservatives' war on public education—fights over desegregation, the Reagan administration's A Nation at Risk, the "parents' rights" movement of the 1990s, Obama-era ed reform, and the CRT gag-orders sweeping the nation today. Along the way we tease out some illuminating contradictions in the right's nationalist coalition, which seeks to cultivate a shared, sanitized story about American history while simultaneously dismantling the only system by which that narrative can be imposed. We also cast a critical eye on the triangulating, moderate Democrats who have utterly failed to provide a galvanizing, alternative message about the purpose of public education. As Jennifer makes brilliantly clear, the crisis of American education is real; the question is, who will be empowered to solve it?

The movement to ban books from public school reading lists is not new, but lately it's been gaining momentum throughout the country. In part, because fights over children and schools is a tried and true political tool.

Revida Rahman, with , discusses efforts to ban books in her children's school district in Williamson County, Tennessee and how this just the newest iteration of parental outrage on display.

And , staff writer for The Atlantic, explains the political benefit of arguments over masks, critical race theory and book bans at schools. Especially as the U.S. nears midterm elections.