Middle-Grades Miseducation: White Supremacist Lies in Conservative Historical Fiction

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Seventeen
  In Roundtable Session: When Blackness Speaks: Languaging Race in Ways That Disrupt How We Read Text (Table 3)

Abstract

In response to this year’s AERA theme, “Interrogating Consequential Education Research in
Pursuit of Truth,” we explore the ways that conservative historical fiction for middle grade
(grades 3-5) readers upholds particular lies about the history of the United States. Framed by
James Baldwin’s understanding of “the lie,” a series of untruths about “America to avoid facing
the truth about its unjust treatment of black people and how it deforms the soul of the country”
(Glaude, 2020, pp. 8-9), this critical content analysis examines the five texts in conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh’s Rush Revere series and their implications for the teaching and
learning of U.S. history during this contentious political moment.

Authors

• Andrea M. Hawkman, Rowan University
  Presenting Author

• Noreen Naseem Rodriguez, Michigan State University
  Presenting Author

• Sarah B. Shear, University of Washington - Bothell
  Presenting Author

• Acelynn Perkins, University of Colorado - Boulder
  Non-Presenting Author