“Literature apartheid”: School board dumps Shakespeare as “racist” — but that’s not the real reason EZRA LEVANTREBEL COMMANDER
The Peel District School board in Ontario is getting rid of Shakespeare.Because, they say, he’s white, and many students in the class are visible minorities.
So, obviously, they can’t read him.
Because we now have literature apartheid. You’re only allowed to read people from your own race I guess. Probably only those from your own sex, too. And your own sexual orientation.
Other than the Bible itself, is there any work of literature grander, and more universal than Shakespeare?
If you answer yes, you’re obviously racist.
Any fool who thinks banishing Shakespeare is acceptable in schools is someone clearly who does not understand Shakespeare’s role in our language, our culture, our thinking:
“As good luck would have it” — he invented that phrase. “Bated breath.” “Be-all and end-all.” “Brave new world.” “Dead as a doornail.” “Eaten me out of house and home.” “Forever and a day.” Even the phrase “for goodness’ sake.” The phrases “full circle,” “good riddance,” “heart of gold,” “In my heart of hearts,” “in my mind’s eye,” “Kill with kindness.”
And he just plain old invented words from scratch:
Addiction. Amazement. Bedroom. Buzzer. Epileptic. Eyeball. Gloomy. Fashionable. Champion. Gossip. Puking. In all, 1,700 words.
WATCH and I’ll introduce you to the bureaucrats with fancy job titles behind this.
These “educators” aren’t teaching literature. That’s not even their goal anymore. They’re teaching racial identity politics by practising it. They’re teaching young, optimistic, excited, equal Canadians not to think of themselves as being part of our country and our traditions.
Shakespeare, by the way, had black heroes, like Othello. And Jewish heroes, like Shylock, in The Merchant of Venice. Yes, they were flawed — Othello was jealous; Shylock was greedy. But they were utterly human, too.
Shakespeare marshalled the English language like no-one had done before or after. But he marshalled it to the purpose of exploring the human condition — universal conditions, like love and hate and ambition and jealous.
And you thought the TV show Modern Family was edgy? Imagine a black, Muslim hero marrying a white, Christian woman, 400 years ago. That’s Othello. The hero was flawed; he was tragic; but he was a hero.
Do you not think the story of jealousy and paranoia is universal?
Yet these know-nothings would ban it.
I think I know why. Yes, it’s because of their pathological race-based identity politics. Yes, it’s because they despise our western traditions and our western heritage of literature and culture.
But I think there’s something else behind it:
Teaching Shakespeare is hard.
If you’re a school bureaucrat too stupid to understand its importance to our literature, you’re probably too stupid to teach it. That’s the real reason these school boards are banning it. |
