begin teaching things like race essentialism. i try not to use the term critical race theory because i don t care, critical race there is only a law school topic. what it is or what we perceive it to be his categorizing children by their race or other immutable characteristics like sexual orientation. todd: how worried are you this move by the district will divide students? whenever you hyperfocus on service-level differences and move away from focusing on common humanity, personal agency and self-determination or move towards let s look at how we are different, let s look at how systems control our outcomes, that is not going to be a
American playwright August Wilson (1945–2005), in New York in 2000
August Wilson had a magnificent ear. His supreme gift as a playwright was for transforming African American vernacular into crystalline poetry onstage. His sense for language was also evident in how he chose to be known. Growing up in the largely Black, poor, and working-class Hill District of Pittsburgh, dreaming of the sort of literary glory enjoyed by his idols Richard Wright and Langston Hughes, the young man must have known that “Frederick Kittel Jr., Great Black Writer” somehow didn’t have the right ring to it. At the age of 20, he rejected being the namesake of his father, a white, German-born, alcoholic baker who was, the playwright would later recall, “a sporadic presence” in his life. “August” was originally his middle name. “Wilson” was the maiden name of his Black mother, Daisy. Put the two together, and you had a moniker exuding steadfast wisdom, a name with gravitas, a name commensur