KU professor lumping witches in with racial minorities demeans our actual struggles | Opinion

It is hard to overestimate how out of touch universities are with the taxpayers who fund them and the parents who send their children there to be educated. The latest example to cross my computer screen is a press release about the witch who teaches a class about witches writing a book about how witches should be given more “respect” in the dramatic arts.

Jane Barnette, an associate professor of theater at the University of Kansas, allows that green skin is still OK, (Oz fans can sigh in relief) but she told me that real-world witches should have a role in making films and plays about witches so that messages affirming witchery can be inserted in entertainment to make real-world witches who are watching feel better about themselves. That’s in much the same way that LGBTQ portrayals did so in the years before queer civil rights took hold. Indeed, she argues, the rise of Christian nationalism that threatens both makes the cause ever so urgent.

But in a world where kids’ time and attention, as well as the taxpayer dollars that support the professor’s school, are limited, I doubt that many Kansans wish KU would address the “minoritized” situation witches find themselves in socially, dubbed by some as the “broom closet.”

Don’t get me wrong here: I am not pining for a revival of the Salem witch trials. Like anybody else, I want the witches among us to be free to live their lives of capturing toad’s breath, casting spells and cavorting on magical brooms as they see fit.

However, there’s something sinister, even witchy, about turning every group that feels misunderstood into an official minority whose history of oppression must be addressed.

First off, in the case of witches, those most famously oppressed by accusations of witchery were not, you know, witches to begin with. In her book, Barnette acknowledges the inconvenient fact that accusations of being a witch were more likely to be aimed at so-called uppity women who lived their lives differently than the magically gifted children of muggles.

Second, we’re not even close to done dealing with the far bigger wounds of our past with respect to “other minority identities,” as perfectly-named University of Kansas press release writer Rick Hellman called them.

Today, Donald Trump alleges that unwelcome immigrants “poison” our nation’s blood. American media struggle to honestly and fully report on urban gun violence for fear that gargantuan racial disparities will undermine civil rights gains, as in Kansas City’s recent Super Bowl parade gunplay.

A nation still digesting recent expansion in LGBTQ acceptance is roiled by boys who are girls and where they can go to the bathroom or with whom they can compete in sports. Going by queer advocates’ claims, lives are in the balance.

Adding witches to the mix on par with the “folks of color” whose ancestors were enslaved based on their race is more likely to inspire laughter than empathy. Moreover, it demeans the struggle to deal with race in a country where drawing lines of color is our nation’s original sin.

Witches have been on a roll in pop culture anyway. In the late 1990s, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” brought tales of complex and ultimately good witches to the small screen and comic books, while the Harry Potter books made broom riders like Hermione Granger into heroes. Both remain popular parts of childhood today.

While Barnette fears the role of rising Christian nationalism in our future politics, as I watch popular culture, it is Christians who have an image problem. When our clerics are not raping little boys, their leaders are the most ardent purveyors of every oppressive idea in our history. Sure Christians on TV and in the movies never have green skin, but too often they might as well worship the devil.

David Mastio, a former editor and columnist for USA Today, is a regional editor for The Center Square and a regular Star Opinion correspondent.