Message (not explicitly) sent, but message received

I was whiling away a Sunday evening with an amusing Salon.com article about knuckleheads in the US Senate. Then a commenter bracingly reminded the blogosphere of the serious public-affairs moment we're in:

Is the civil war over yet?

I couldn't even be bothered to read the article-we have, as a country, bigger fish to fry. I received an automated phone message from my daughters' school earlier tonight telling parents that they will not allow Obama's insidious "stay in school and work hard" address to be broadcast.

I have never been more ashamed of, or afraid for, my country than I am right now.

I'm a veteran educator, and despite my political leanings, I never censored an address to my students by George W., nor was I ever instructed to. His views were appropriately the subject of intellectual discourse between a teacher and her students. They never knew who I voted for...instead, I thought my job was to guide them to analyze the current issues seriously without imposing upon them my own opinions.

And now this. I'm disgusted and I'm frightened. Frankly, I think it's all about race. Maybe we are as stupid, and as racist, as the rest of the world thinks we are. Shame on us.

I agree. The protest blowup about Obama's first-day-at-school speech to students is to a great extent about race. Many comment boards debating the issue have been filled with people who don't want the president's speech broadcast in school and who also say it's not about race.

Then what's it about?

Fears of leftist indoctrination? – A commonly stated point of opposition by the no-Obama-in-school crowd. Since when has the American left been skilled enough with indoctrination to warrant fear? I'd argue that in the last 50 years the left's one prevailing effort of national-scale youth indoctrination has been civil rights and racial tolerance.

A disruption of school time? An unprecedented use of the presidential bully pulpit? – Won't even dignify these. Thankfully, others have been willing to do the thankless debunking work.

It pains me that parents protesting the speech have said they'd take their kids out of school on September 8 in order to keep them from being exposed to a direct address from the president. Even worse is their (in many cases successful) pressuring schools not to show the speech. A crushing rebuttal to this strain of thought(lessness) can be found in a quote from Alan K. Simpson, the former Republican senator of Wyoming:

“Any education that matters is liberal. All the saving truths, all the healing graces that distinguish a good education from a bad one or a full education from a half empty one are contained in that word.”

The "liberal" Simpson refers to has nothing to do with US politics. He's talking about exposure to the world of ideas, not a cherry-picked subset.

Bottom line: I just don't believe the Obama school-address protesters who say it's not about race. At the depths of it – maybe so far down it's hidden even to the people who say it's not about race – it's about race.

For various reasons – including my own reason, the wish we'd just get past this crap – most of us don't want to put race front and center of public affairs. But, reading between the lines of the national discourse, I think race is the big complacency-shattering issue bubbling up beneath a bunch of platform issues such as the economy, health care and the environment.