Our Silence Will Not Protect Us . . . and Neither Will J. Edgar Hoover: Reclaiming Critical Race Theory under the New McCarthyism

Abstract

. . . and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid. So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive. —Audre Lorde (2020:283) The Trump administration ushered in a manufactured moral panic against critical race theory and antiracist education that has outlasted his presidency. Education bans enforce collective amnesia. As we battle this new McCarthyism, educators and activists must not forget the lessons of the original McCarthyism.1 In the highly praised “week in the life” biopic Being the Ricardos (Sorkin 2021), the answer to the red-baiting innuendo and outright attacks against Lucille Ball is to call in the big guns—FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover—to issue a dispensation, in the form of a live phone call assuring the studio audience that America’s top comedian had been cleared of all charges of communism. Ball had earlier testified before the Cold War career-crushing House