Burning Down the Mythic Past: Or, Why We Shouldn’t Censor “Uncomfortable” Parts of Our History

Ray Bradbury is one of my favorite short story writers and novelists. And Fahrenheit 451 is widely considered his masterwork. Published in 1953, the novel depicts a dystopian future in which books are illegal and no one can read.

The society Bradbury envisions doesn’t happen overnight with a sudden wave of state-sponsored censorship and violence. It begins on an individual level, with people slowly insulating themselves from ideas and revelations found in books and history that make them “uncomfortable.”

I’ve been thinking about Fahrenheit 451 a lot recently as I’ve read about many states and school districts censoring curriculum, banning certain books from the libraries, and setting up “hotlines” for parents to report teachers — especially as it relates to something called Critical Race Theory (or CRT).

According to law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw (who helped coin the term in the early 1980s), Critical Race Theory is “a way of looking at law’s role platforming, facilitating, producing, and even insulating racial inequality in our country.”

If you’re encountering CRT in a classroom, you’re probably a graduate student in law school. CRT is one of many legal frameworks used to evaluate the law’s impact on…