RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – (Opinion) If I were the admissions head of any great university, more than trying to attract high school football or basketball stars, I’d move heaven and earth to recruit students like Paxton Smith, the valedictorian at Lake Highlands High School in Dallas.
“I cannot give up this platform to promote complacency and peace when there is a war on my body and a war on my rights,” Smith said in the courageous speech she had secretly written to replace the anodyne text the school administration had approved.
She was reflecting on a draconian bill recently signed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott that bans abortion as soon as a fetal heartbeat can be detected — as early as six weeks — whether the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest. It is emblematic of a widespread national ‘pro-life’, anti-abortion surge in restrictive legislation. Ms. Smith made her case with strength, dignity, and exceptional clarity. She has more than a good brain. She has the compassion so needed to win today’s culture wars.
“Six weeks. That’s all women get. And so before they realize — most of them don’t realize that they’re pregnant by six weeks — so before they have a chance to decide if they are emotionally, physically, and financially stable enough to carry out a full-term pregnancy, before they have the chance to decide if they can take on the responsibility of bringing another human being into the world, that decision is made for them by a stranger. A decision that will affect the rest of their lives is made by a stranger.”
She ended with a humanistic call to take arms against “a war on my rights. A war on the rights of your mothers, a war on the rights of your sisters, a war on the rights of your daughters.”
To a growing ovation, she thanked the audience for listening and their approval and reminded them of a truth all too often ignored in today’s toxic environment: “We cannot stay silent.”
The response was overwhelmingly positive with her parents leading the praise while her school officials remained neutral. More than 6.7 million people viewed the clip of her speech on Tik Tok and praise came flooding in from around the world, including a tweet from Hillary Clinton: “This took guts. Thank you for not staying silent, Paxton”.
“It’s been a very big shock,” Smith said. “I’m very excited about how much traction the speech is getting because I think it’s a very important topic and it needs to be shared.” Ahead next fall is the University of Texas in Austin and in the future, “perhaps a role in the social justice world”.
Wouldn’t any institution of higher learning wish to have Paxton Smith as a student, an inspiration to the community, a symbol of responsible citizenry in troubled times? The answer, sadly, is almost certainly “no”.
People like Paxton Smith make waves, stir things up, upset the status quo. Ironically, most institutions see change not as integral to the education process but as an unwelcome source of rebellion, a danger to the generous funding on which they depend.
We are living in an era when, says Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, “malign insanity seems all too likely to swallow our nation.” Staying “silent”, while many of those “strangers” give loud voice to big lies and equally monstrous conspiracy theories, is the principal reason.
Brazilian education is not silent about Afro-Brazilian history and culture. Now, more than 16 years after the Federal legislation came into force, the implementation is impressive. “In some history classes when I was around 10 years old, I heard about slavery in Brazil. It had some importance for the future. The teachers told the story and how sad it was. But we didn’t learn about the consequences for the future of black people,” said a black friend, hoping that will change.
What a difference from the many US States where you could easily miss learning anything at all about slavery. CBS reports: ”seven states do not directly mention slavery in their state standards and eight states do not mention the civil rights movement. Only two states mention white supremacy, while 16 states list states’ rights as a cause of the Civil War.”
The American actor, Tom Hanks, something of a history buff, says he became aware only recently of what The Oklahoma Historical Society refers to as “the single worst incident of racial violence in American history.” He had never heard or been taught about the 1921 white mob violence in Tulsa, Oklahoma that just a century ago killed 300 black Americans, wounded 800 more and burned the prosperous black community “Black Wall Street” to the ground. Neither had I, despite excellent schools and a prestigious Ivy League university.
Like so many others both here and in the US, I can’t stop asking myself just what the hell is going on to make our societies and our institutions appear to be falling apart? What are we doing, if anything, to shore them up before they morph from realities to fading memories?
That’s where the Paxton Smiths come in. By speaking out, by bending a knee instead of saluting the flag, by refusing to go to the White House to participate in a cynical politically motivated “picture op”, they are willing to risk their futures to call out the “strangers” who are making often self-serving laws designed to protect their inherited privilege and beliefs.
The University of Texas is fortunate to have snared Paxton Smith. We should move heaven and earth to enable more like her and encourage them not to stay silent.