An upcoming line of textbooks around the #BlackLivesMatter movement has been criticized by Fox News as "going too far." Conservative black radio show host Larry Elder said on Fox and Friends Weekend that the textbooks, which are designed for middle and high school classrooms, teach black people they are "victims" and "indoctrinate" children.
"I haven't seen this kind of mass lack of critical thinking since perhaps the O.J. Simpson verdict," said Elder. He goes to, ironically, to criticize activists who protest the deaths of young men like Michael Brown, rather than anything the book says.
"Have we forgotten that Ferguson was built on a lie?" he asked. Elder attributes the rising crime rates in cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia to a "passive" police force, and points to black-on-black crime and left-wing politics hurting black families as the real problems at hand. He wonders, at one point, why Black Lives Matter activists aren't in "Compton or South Central, where I grew up," talking to gang members.
ThinkProgress spoke to the books' authors — journalist Sue Bradford and American studies professor Duchess Harris — about Elder's reaction to the textbooks, which have not been released yet. Harris didn't seem to bat an eyelash, saying "They do not have a copy of the book, so they have not seen the book."
Instead, Harris said she hopes the books will help other people, including her white friends who've reached out to her for guidance, to facilitate conversations about black deaths in America. "I'm black, my husband's black, my kids are black. They don't need a guidebook. It's those other parents who do."
[via Fox News, ThinkProgress]
