They Came for the Schools: One Town’s Fight Over Race and Identity, and the New War for America’s Classrooms

In a meticulous debut exposé adapted from the Peabody Award–winning podcast Southlake, Hixenbaugh recaps how the recent conservative war on the teaching of material concerning race, sexuality, and gender kicked off in Southlake, Tex. He begins in 2018, when the “high-end suburban utopia” was propelled into the national spotlight over acrimony surrounding the school district’s proposed diversity plan. Meant to address repeated incidents of harassment directed at LGBTQ students and students of color, the plan faced opposition from conservative parents and local activists, who eventually reinvigorated a defunct political action committee, or PAC, to fund a takeover of the school board. The new board scrapped the diversity plan, relaxed the anti-bullying disciplinary code, banned books, and sanctioned teachers. Southlake became a national model for the right, as local groups across the country took similar steps to win school board seats. Hixenbaugh traces the web of conservative media figures and think tanks who promoted this activism, and he tracks how it developed hand in hand with a new wave of right-wing Christian radicalization that echoes the 1970s and ’80s campaign against “secular humanism” in schools spearheaded by evangelical leaders Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. What emerges is an extraordinarily detailed analysis of current conservative thought and political activity. It’s a vital work of reportage. (May)