Mountain Brook’s Failure Goes Beyond its History Lesson
by Ranty Em | Published February 11, 2022
Mountain Brook Schools (Mountain Brook, Alabama) have started 2022 entangled in a new anti-Semitic controversy. In a lesson about how symbols change, a high school history teacher decided to demonstrate the Bellamy salute and encourage his students to stand and demonstrate it as well. The only Jewish student in the class, Ephraim Tytell, filmed (or received footage of) his teacher and classmates recreating the salute, shared the footage on social media, and then his school punished him for “making Mountain Brook look bad.” Needless to say, the images went viral. Over the last three weeks, the story has been covered in the news nationwide.
What is the Bellamy Salute?
If you’re unfamiliar with the Bellamy salute, James Upham created the gesture in 1892 to accompany the American Pledge of Allegiance. It was justifiably retired in 1942, with the rise of a nearly (if not completely) identical salute — you guessed it — the Nazi salute.
Although the Nazis are said to have appropriated the Roman salute, historians have stated there is no evidence Romans had any salute resembling this gesture. With that said, I’ve included descriptions of both the Bellamy and Roman salutes. These descriptions can also be found in the links I’ve included above.
Bellamy salute: Right hand lifted, palm downward, to align with the forehead and close to it.
Roman salute (Nazi salute): Arm is fully extended, facing forward, with palm down and fingers touching.
Mountain Brook’s Lesson Wasn’t the Problem
It’s the same salute. This is what makes the history lesson of interest. If the gestures weren’t indistinguishable, they wouldn’t be relevant to a lesson on how the meaning behind symbols can change. The lesson itself isn’t problematic. On the contrary, there is tremendous value in learning how symbols and language aren’t static. Awful, for example, originally meant “to inspire great awe.” Girl used to be a gender neutral term for a child. Text used to primarily refer to writing meant for study — now more than 180 billion texts are sent every month, and rarely are these messages worth studying. What is language if not a collection of symbols to which we’ve assigned shared meaning to help us better understand each other and the world around us?
If you’re familiar with my work, then you know I’m all about context. Using the Bellamy and Nazi salutes to illustrate his lesson on symbolic changes makes sense. Demonstrating it for his class makes less sense. Insisting the students stand and demonstrate it makes no sense. What does recreating the Bellamy salute — that again, looks identical to the Nazi salute — add to the lecture? Wouldn’t showing photographs from each era communicate the point just as well, if not better? Whether or not any of his students were Jewish, he made a questionable choice.
Ignorance and Excuses Escalate the Outrage
Let’s assume the history teacher simply didn’t consider how his demonstration would affect the Jewish student in his class. I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt that his intentions were good. Mountain Brook Schools could have used this incident as an opportunity. They could have acknowledged the misstep and used the feedback Jewish and civil rights organizations provided to inform future lessons. No reprimands. No firings. No need for this blog.
However, Mountain Brook released a (predominantly) defensive statement and punished Ephraim Tytell for making the school look bad. Even though they recognized the sensitivities associated with the Holocaust and addressed the instructional strategy with the teacher, they still chose to retaliate against the student. It should have been no surprise that at least one student would have been shocked and uncomfortable witnessing classmates and a teacher reenact a salute that has become intrinsically linked to Nazis.
Mountain Brook: Ephraim Tytell didn’t make you look bad. Your teacher made you look bad. Does it mean he’s a bigot? No. Should he be fired? No. But Tytell should not have been reprimanded. He shouldn’t have been ordered to apologize to the teacher whose lesson you admitted was inappropriate. It is why the backlash increased following your reaction. It’s why you released a second statement. And while that statement is better and should create in me a sense of optimism, this isn’t the first anti-Semitic controversy in Mountain Brook.
Which brings me to…
Nothing Happens in a Vacuum
In 2020, Mountain Brook High School students filmed themselves laughing while painting Nazi symbols on one of the students. Despite calls for and attempts to implement anti-bias and diversity training in the 97% white affluent community, Mountain Brook abandoned their plans to implement the ADL’s No Place for Hate (NPFH) educational program. Why? A small, vocal group of parents objected to critical race theory (CRT), despite 1. The NPFH program does not address CRT and 2. CRT is not taught in any Alabama K-12 schools. Mountain Brook School District opted for inaction based on misinformation, seemingly accepting that anti-Semitism would just be a part of their community. The school district repeatedly stated they oppose bigotry and find the hate-based actions captured on video “disturbing,” but these claims remain hollow. Without meaningful effort to address their community incidents, it’s unlikely things will change.
The ADL responded to Mountain Brook’s decision to abandon the anti-bias training by stating, “In a time of soaring anti-Semitism and hatred across the nation, we are deeply concerned about the Mountain Brook Schools district’s decision to disassociate from ADL and our education initiatives. Particularly for a city that has had many issues of anti-Semitism and hatred over the past several years, the district’s intentional and unexplained distancing from ADL—the nation’s leading voice on anti-Semitism—is very troubling.”
Eighteen months later, and here we are again.
What Next?
Mountain Brook is hardly the only community where bigotry is condemned with words but ignored in actions. I’d love to say there’s one remedy that can be universally applied. There’s not. Oversimplification creates a false narrative of only right vs. wrong. Even if we all agreed that bigotry is wrong, we’d still struggle to agree on how to best address it. There isn’t one solution because the root causes vary. So I’ll say it again. Context matters. While we don’t have the answers today, here’s where we can start:
Listen and learn. Gather all the facts before reacting. Maybe don’t react at all. You never know what context you’re missing. There’s no shame in taking time to process an incident.
Respect expertise. Look to the experts and their responses before relying on your instincts. Gut feelings have their use, but they’re no replacement for knowledge and experience.
Prioritize positive outcomes. Rarely will a knee-jerk reaction return the best result. Don’t sacrifice true progress for the fool’s gold we see when outrage proliferates our online spaces.
Additional Resources