Alabama Classroom Nazi Salute video has a darker backstory

The 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama — where Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, and Denise McNair were murdered in a 1963 bombing before any of them got to see their 15th birthday — is a 10-minute drive from where I grew up. I don’t believe I ever heard their names in any class I ever attended. I never learned about Ruby Bridges or Emmett Till. I didn’t read “Letter from Birmingham Jail”I moved out of Birmingham in the last few years. I’m sure I read Truman Capote, but I wouldn’t have been told he was gay. I was taught that Civil War was about “states’ rights”Instead of slavery, and that slavery would have made it a stupid thing to wage war on. Most slaves were well-treated by their owners. I was once told by someone that Abraham Lincoln was America’s worst president. To be fair, there were one or two teachers who tried to push back against this false narrative (I did read Toni Morrison), but I don’t remember racism ever being named explicitly. It would surely have been regarded as a bygone of history if it had been. We now live in a colorblind society in which the elimination of race and ethnicity is regarded as a virtue.

Mountain Brook High School is an institution where intention is expected. It is currently the second-highest-performing public high school in the State and one of the highest-performing public high schools. By the time I graduated, I knew my sines from my cosines, could read music by sight, had a solid grasp on the theory of relativity, and possessed almost all the academic tools I’d need to function in the world and succeed in college, where roughly 98 percent of my classmates were headed. My education was exceptional in every way, except one.

Right now we’re in a manufactured national panic over what happens when students are given an anti-racist education, often and insidiously mislabeled as “critical race theory.” But I know from experience that we should be far more worried about what happens when students aren’t given anti-racist education. This is what it feels like to be denied this kind of education in a school. I feel the costs. And — most importantly — so do the students at that school who continue to suffer for it, whether they know what they’re missing or not.

My hometown was brought to the nation’s attentionAfter a Mountain Brook High School history teacher invited students to recite and perform the Nazi salute, the class did so in January. The class had supposedly been discussing the fact that raising one’s arm in such a way had once been called the Bellamy salute and used by Americans up until the 1940s when it was discontinued for obvious reasons. The context doesn’t explain why the teacher asked his class to perform a salute that will forever be associated with a fascist, genocidal regime. Only a few students stood up and did what was asked. “I was shocked and confused why people would do this,”Epps Tytell was the only Jewish student in my class. He was too stunned not to move.

Epps sent Mariya a text message on January 18th, just after he left history class. “We didn’t really believe him because it seemed too crazy to be true,” Mariya recalls. One of Tytell’s friends had the wherewithal to pull out his phone and video the incident, but even after he showed his parents the video, “My husband and I were inclined to give the teacher the benefit of the doubt. We thought he just did something stupid, and that could happen to any of us. We’ve met that teacher before. We like him. We were more inclined to overlook this incident — until the next day.”

Tytell was called out of class the next day and summoned to a meeting with the assistant Principal and the history teacher who had initiated the salute. They had mistakenly assumed that one of the Jewish students present had taken the video. “My vice principal said how I’m making Mountain Brook look bad,” Tytell explains. “He told me to apologize to my teacher. I didn’t apologize because I didn’t think there was any need to.”Tytell would also not reveal the identity of the student who took the video. “They wanted the victim to apologize to the wrongdoer,”Mariya. “And we had to hear [about] it from our child who was very shaken up and upset.” For her, that meeting was the point at which the school had really crossed a line, the point at which the poor decisions that had been made weren’t just accidental.

Mountain Brook is a place where very few things happen by chance. She is a 2017 New York Times Magazine article, “The Resegregation of Jefferson County,”Nothing else than 1619 Nikole Hannah Jones pointed out Mountain Brook, Alabama as the first suburb to address the call for the author. Brown v. Board of Education The ruling was to withdraw from Birmingham completely, and create a plan by which other white wealthy suburbs can avoid desegregation attempts by incorporating into new cities. Today, Mountain Brook is the richest suburb in the state — and over 97 percent white.

In other words, it is a place in which racial and socio-economic diversity is almost a theoretical notion — and a place that was designed as such. It is also a place that shows the negative effects of not offering anti-racist education for children at a school founded on racist principles. Mountain Brook was not the only place where there were alarming incidents. Not even close.

In May 2020, I started hearing from my friends about a viral video that featured teens drawing large swastikas. Also included was the word “heil”on the back of an unclothed Mountain Brook boy. The school established a diversity committee to address the issue. The committee recommended that the school district partner the Anti-Defamation League. This national organization has provided anti-racist resources for schools since 1980s. Its anti-bias training can be used by hundreds of schools in the United States, including many here in Alabama. The Mountain Brook Schools superintendent signed a contract in February 2021 with the ADL. By mid-June, at least 500 teachers had attended an ADL workshop. “No Place for Hate.”

That’s around the time that word reached Alabama that critical race theory was the latest offensive in the liberal attack on decent, God-fearing capitalists and their innocent offspring. Remember that CRT is an advanced study of the intersection of race and institutions. As the schoolyear ended, many school board meetings across the nation were hijacked as Fox-watching parents seemed to be convinced that CRT had indeed succeeded. “trickled down”In all forms diversity, equity, inclusion training. Someone was trying to mind-control their child by telling them that bias is real.

Soon, I was Zooming in to these meetings to find that my alma mater had, predictably, become one of the culture war’s new battlefields. Some parents spoke out about the harassment and discrimination they were experiencing with their LGBTQ+ and Jewish children. Others reacted. “No Place for Hate”It was also the notion that their children could be hateful. The ADL was considered a liberal propaganda agent, eager to indoctrinate young white Christian minds in critical race theory. This taught them to hate their own bodies, to feel guilty about events that were not their control, and (horrors), to ally with others. “My impression from the [ADL] training was that it was grounded in a worldview that embraces premises and theories concerning implicit biases and privilege as fact,”A former English and American Studies teacher disdainfully addressed the city council last June. “But the bigger problem for me during the training itself was really how it focused on something they called the ally, how to be an effective ally and the kind of culture I think it would create in the classroom. According to the ADL, an ally is someone who helps to stand up against prejudice and biases as the ADL defines them. A true ally cannot be someone who is colorblind, but must be someone who is willing to question and challenge and confront those they perceive as making these microaggressions.”This was something the teacher found abhorrent. After she had finished speaking, the teacher was cheered and applauded for taking a bold stand against taking a position.

The school did nothing. The ADL was released. In summer 2021, promises were made to the community that they would develop an in-house diversity, equity and inclusion program. But, nothing had happened until fall. Mountain Brook Families, a conservative lobbying organization disguised as a non profit, had created a vocal anti-mask coalition.

Meanwhile, Tytell can’t even get many of his peers to admit that doing the Nazi salute was wrong. “I don’t think any of them are fully anti-Semitic. But just them not seeing a problem with it and following along?” He sighs deeply. “When I complained about it to some other kids, they’re like, ‘He’s just teaching.’ No one sees a problem with it.”

If Alabama’s lawmakers have anythingIt is not up to you. The August resolution by the state board for education banned the teaching of any material that could be harmful to the students. “indoctrinate students in social or political ideologies that promote one race or sex above another,”Detractors claim that this is a weak way to ban critical race theory and any anti-racist teaching. The seven white (Republican) members of the board — including Governor Kay Ivey — voted in favor of the resolution; the two black (Democratic) members voted against it. The NAACP condemned the resolution, but it was codified in October by another vote along similar racial lines. Eric Mackey, Alabama Superintendent said the resolution’s language was so vague that parents have contacted his office complaining that acknowledgments for Black History Month are not in compliance with it. “You know, ‘Why do we even have Black History Month? We’ve moved beyond that now. We should just incorporate everybody’s history,’”He said.

In language and intent, Alabama’s resolution is similar to the more than 90 bills that have recently been introduced in at least 34 states attempting to restrict what teachers can say about race, gender, and religion and to combat the idea that any person or institution is inherently racist. Many prohibit or limit discussion of “divisive concepts.”Many advocate for harsh punishments for teachers and school districts that fail to comply with the law, such as heavy fines or dismissal. Perhaps most disturbingly, the bills are written under the pretext of acknowledging differences as racist or biased. “They tend to be phrased in these ways that — if you’re not really reading between the lines — sound positive,”Carey Andrzejewski is a professor of education at Auburn University, who specializes in preparing teachers to teach diversity. “Like ‘Students should not be made to feel that because they’re in a particular group, they’re less capable.’ Well, of course they shouldn’t. But when you dig a little deeper, what you realize is, ‘Oh, wait, this is actually meant to silence diversity, equity and inclusion work. That’s what it’s meant to do.’”

This means that the miseducation that I received was the one that legislators across the country are trying to codify.It is a frustrating prospect for educators, who have to deal with daily the clear results of educational, social, and political policies. “divisive concepts”They would not be expected to discuss. “CRT is a distraction,” says Andrzejewski, who has testified about the prevalence of CRT — or lack thereof — for the House Education Policy committee. “It’s an important theory, but in the context of K-12 education, it has totally taken over our time and energy when we have really serious problems to tackle. Black and brown children in this state underperform their white peers on virtually every measure you care to mention. Whatever label we put on it, we are systematically serving some kids a lot better than we serve others. And this conversation takes us away from thinking about what we need to do about that.”

Doubling down on the board of education resolution, Alabama House Bill 312 was read to the House on February 8th — the same day the Mountain Brook Nazi salute incident was widely reported — joining three other anti-CRT bills that were filed this past summer. Teaching is prohibited by HB8, HB9 and HB11. “divisive concepts”Or “certain concepts regarding race or sex, such as critical race theory.”The HB312 law provides for the termination of employment of teachers who have such a policy. It was voted out by committee on March 15, in a voice-vote that lasted only 45 seconds. It was approved by the Alabama House legislative on March 17. It is expected to be voted on by the Senate this legislative session — and it is expected to pass. HB312 won’t solve a real problem by creating an imaginary one.

Epps Tytell is an expert in compoundingWhat it feels like. He understands what hurts, not only through discrimination but also denial of its existence. The principal had to wait over two weeks before he could meet with his family following the Nazi salute incident. “He said he was too busy to meet with us,” Tytell’s mother tells me. “I found that to be very hurtful because if he doesn’t have time [to address] Nazi salutes being performed in his classrooms, then what else is going on at the school that’s even more important than that?”

It’s unclear if and when Mountain Brook will institute diversity, equity, and inclusion education, and unclear what that education would even look like under HB312. But when I asked Tytell what he thought could have prevented the incident from happening, he answered that the diversity program the school had considered implementing — and ultimately abandoned — “definitely could have helped.”

Mountain Brook is a place I grew up in, so I can only agree. While the state-mandated curriculum may be better than it was twenty years back when it comes acknowledging achievements of Black and LBGTQ+ people, I doubt that it recognizes the fact that the school system and its de facto segregation are evidence of structural racism. I don’t think students are expected to apply the critical-thinking skills the school develops to the specific social environment in which it is located. “We attest that much of the curriculum and culture of MBS, intentionally or not, obscured historical facts about race and racism and avoided addressing racial discrimination as an ongoing reality,”A 2021 open letter was written by former students to the Mountain Brook Board of Education. “Beyond curriculum, we were implicitly taught that it is normal to attend schools with nearly all white children, nearly all white teachers, and all white leaders. As we graduated from MBS and went on to forge professional lives and careers, we experienced the negative impacts of this mis-education (and of the lack of diversity in the community in which we were raised), and we had to find ways to seek out the education that we were denied.”The letter has been signed to date by more than 2,000 students and alumni. Students and alums from American schools could attest to similar mis-education in hundreds of thousands or even millions of other American schools.

So many of the proposed anti-CRT bills, and so many of the heated school board meetings around the issue, mention guilt, a fear that white children will be harmed in some way by being invited to reckon with the truth of America’s past and how it is still playing out in the present. But I am here to say that it’s not the knowing that’s brought me guilt; it’s the amount of time I spent not knowing. It’s how I had to leave Mountain Brook to even learn what I still needed to learn. It’s my past belief in an alternate reality, one in which nuance was stripped and cruelty was relegated and outright lies were told — and in which I might still believe if people hadn’t taken it upon themselves to actively re-educate me despite the fact that it wasn’t their job to do so. “You’re not the least racist person I know, but you’re definitely the one who has come the furthest,”One time, my college best friend told me that she was a woman from color who works in diversity education. It wasn’t a compliment. It was an acknowledgment and truth. This is why she said it. It didn’t divide. It brought us together.

The Tytells did not reach out to or speak with the media outlet that reported the Nazi salute incident. They don’t know who did. They don’t know by what means their story became known to the national media. But the day that happened, some of the community rallied around them, and some of the community didn’t. Epps were threatened with beating them up and their home being burned down by the evening. “They are saying that I’m making Mountain Brook look bad,”Epps told me that Epps spoke to him at night with a quiet but firm voice. “I had someone come up to me and say, ‘Do you understand what you’re doing? We won’t be able to get into frats in college.’”He shakes his head. “I mean, yeah…There’s nothing really to say.”

What is left to do? It seems likely that Alabama schools won’t be able to implement laws that would restrict them from doing so. Mountain Brook’s only move since the Nazi salute was to ban the use cellphones in classes. When it comes to the truth of what’s happened and what’s happening, the message is clear and consistent: it’s simply best not to know.