I admire Sarah Inama, the Meridian elementary teacher who resigned rather than let a mean-spirited, racist movement stop her from telling children that they are welcome.
Sarah Inama has concluded that the people who control her paycheck–her livelihood–are pushing a racist message. Why else require her to remove a sign that reads, “Everyone Is Welcome,” and shows different colors of humans?
I admire you, Sarah.
You’ve reminded us all that it takes courage to stand up to the powerful forces that control your paycheck. It’s no easy thing, especially when those forces are ascendant.
There’s an Idaho language war that has gone on for a long time. I don’t know when it started but I recall not so long ago (Google tells me 14 years!) when some racist crackpots in Bonner County–who called themselves the Bonner County Republican Central Committee–raised holy hell over the Bonner County Fair’s motto: “Fiesta at the Fair.”
Yeah. They had reasons. DUMB reasons. But it was just mean and racist.
So, 14 years later, those mean, racist folks (who have a legislator who uses her free speech to defend confederate flags) are calling the shots in Idaho’s government. And we have a puny Governor who will never stand up to them.
Fourteen years later and a teacher in Boise is banned from welcoming students of color.
There’s a truism making the rounds on social media that recently caught my eye:
“There has never been a time in history when the people who banned books were the good guys.”
It’s a vicious fire that grows hotter and hotter when the folks who hate start banning thought. They feed those flames with more and more. They fabricate history so people don’t know that the book-banners never stop with book bonfires. In the end, they burn everything until our entire world smolders and finally we start again, battered and singed, trembling from the enormity of how much it cost to relearn what we once knew–yet one more brutal fight with an authoritarian government.
We have no choice. We have to fight to survive. Still, even backed into a corner, that fight takes courage.
Yes. Soon there will soon be an Idaho classroom where the last thing that gets taken down will be a sign that says “Everyone Is Welcome.”
But what survives is a courageous woman who wouldn’t bow to cowardly racist thought control from the people in power.
Thank you, Sarah. Your courage inspires us.