“The history, all the subject matter that they want to ban, it’s happening in the world.”
Zany: Ruby Bridges calls them out. The party of freedom and free speech banning books is a new level of hypocrisy for the GOP.
Civil Rights icon Ruby Bridges is an integral part of U.S. history lessons in classrooms nationwide, given her status as the first Black child to integrate an elementary school in the South. But to the right-wing culture warriors behind efforts to ban books about American history—including systemic racism and discrimination against LGBTQ people—Bridges has become something else: a threat.
Books recounting Bridges’ story—several of which are authored by Bridges herself, including one published in January—have been banned or challenged by schools in Pennsylvania, Texas, Iowa, and Tennessee. And last year, a school in Florida stopped showing a Disney film about Bridges’ life after a parent complained it might make kids think white people hate Black people.
On Sunday, Bridges, 69, told Kristen Welker, host of NBC’s Meet the Press, that she sees such efforts as “ridiculous.”
“The excuse that I’ve heard them give is that my story actually makes, especially White kids, feel bad about themselves,” Bridges told Welker, adding that children from all around the world regularly reach out to her to tell her what her story means to them.
