Tag: black history
In Virginia, A New Governor's Bullying Big Brother Overreach

In Virginia, A New Governor's Bullying Big Brother Overreach

I’m so old I can remember when people calling themselves “conservative” thought “Cancel Culture” was a bad thing.

Oh wait, that was last week.

More recently, the brand new governor of Virginia—whose own children are safely ensconced in an exclusive Washington prep school—has opened a telephone snitch line enabling citizens to inform upon teachers committing “Thoughtcrime” in the Commonwealth’s public schools.

“We’re asking for folks to send us reports and observations,” Glenn Youngkin said, “and we’re going to make sure we catalog it all … And that gives us further, further ability to make sure we’re rooting it out.”

“It” being the dread Critical Race Theory, otherwise known as Black history. While there’s scant evidence of CRT in Virginia school curricula, there’s evidently more Black history than Trump-leaning parents want their children hearing about, what with Virginia being America’s cradle of slavery, beginning at Jamestown in, yes, 1619.

Can’t have that.

A country club moderate to outward appearances, Youngkin has turned out to be rather fiercer than advertised during his 2021 campaign. And right on schedule too. Book-banning and purging subversives have become all the rage among Republicans nationwide.

But then I can also recall when many public schools in Virginia remained segregated, when my wife and l lived there in the years following Brown vs. Board of Education. Change came slowly. Prince Edward County closed its public schools for five years rather than allow Black and white children to share classrooms.

At the rural Black high school where I was an occasional substitute, they used rocks for bases on the baseball diamond. But they did have tattered, second-hand books, desks, and blackboards—more than could be said for a lot of segregated schools. At the white county high school where my wife taught, she got summoned before the school board to answer a parental complaint about a “dirty” novel—Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men”—she’d given her students.

It was the only book she ever got most of them to read.

The aggrieved parent had highlighted her child’s copy with magic marker, particularly objecting to the allegedly pornographic phrase “blue ball” to describe a child’s toy.

The board apologized to Diane for wasting her time.

Then there was the memorable meeting regarding the length of teacher’s skirts, prompting an exasperated assistant principal to remark: “If y’all don’t mind them boys shooting beavers, I don’t reckon I do.”

But speaking of nostalgia, here’s how the official state social studies textbook, “Virginia: History, Government and Geography” described the institution of slavery:

“Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, uncivilized and unemployed Negroes were given free passage on cruise ships from Africa to America with a stopover in Jamaica. Upon their arrival, after their time spent in the tropics, they were welcomed by white people who were happy to give them a new home. Jobs were provided along with a lifetime of free room and board. Here in America, they learned to speak English, sing hymns, and revel in the glory of God through the Gospel of Christ in place of their heathen savagery.”

Oh, happy day!

The novelist and law professor Garrett Epps, who grew up in Richmond, cites another Virginia public school textbook informing children that “[a]bove all the Colony was determined to preserve the racial purity of the whites. This determination is the foundation upon which Virginia’s handling of the racial issue rests, and has always rested.”

Which is not to say Glenn Youngkin endorses any of these ideas, nor that things haven’t changed for the better in Virginia and everywhere across the South. Nor even to say that parents who find the violence and sexual brutality of, say, Toni Morrison’s Beloved too heavy for high school kids are motivated by bigotry. I find her novels unendurable myself.

But Youngkin grew up in a culture marinated in Confederate grievance, as did many Virginians responding favorably to his attacks upon public school administrators and elected school boards. As a prep school graduate who has never attended a public school at any level, Youngkin campaigned as a genial moderate interested in “parents’ rights.”

He has chosen to govern as a bully.

The courts will decide whether or not gubernatorial fiat can override state law and local school boards in the matter of mask mandates. I suspect not.

Youngkin’s “Big Brother”-style attack upon the intellectual freedom of beleaguered public school teachers, however, has taken it several steps too far. Already, smart alecks are filling the governor’s tip line with allusions to “The Simpsons” and Cardi B, among others. Black parents are reminding him that they have rights too.

I think Washington Monthly’s Bill Scher has it right: Youngkin’s “I-know-best” gambit “has all the hallmarks of a misread mandate and classic overreach.”

Most Virginians, I suspect, have little appetite for loyalty investigations, and even less in becoming Ground Zero in a televised culture war.

Late Rep. John Lewis with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

Students Don’t Need The Disney Version Of Our History

Reprinted with permission from Roll Call

The White House issued a proclamation last week, of the sort that most presidents have issued about historical events that deserve commemorating, but that were missing, for the most part, during the Trump reign.

This one marked the 60th anniversary of the first Freedom Rides, on May 4, 1961, when traveling on a bus meant risking your life, if you were with an integrated group, sitting in a spot of your choice. Those southbound heroes were willing to face beatings and the unknown at the hands of fellow citizens intent on stopping progress by any means necessary. Angry and afraid, the violent white supremacist mobs refused to acknowledge the humanity of African Americans or the validity of any law that looked forward not back.

It's the reality — and not the myth of uncomplicated greatness the country has told the world and itself for far too long.

And it's not always pretty.

For that reason, many Republicans want to "cancel" it, to use a word today's conservatives have been misusing with reckless abandon. They'd like to erase the history and the essential lessons that reveal so much about how and why America is so divided and its systems — of health care, housing, education, and more — so inequitable in 2021.

Why? Because for all the chest-thumping toughness so many Americans brag about, apparently white students are too fragile to hear the truth, or see the pictures on prized postcards that treated lynchings as entertainment for the whole family, an indictment of more than a few rogue racists.

Black students, of course, subject to disproportionate school suspensions, stereotypical assumptions from teachers, and keen scrutiny by law enforcement on their way to and from, and sometimes in, the classroom, know all too well that the problems they face stretch back 400 years and more. But the laws being passed and pushed in states across the country — no surprise — don't have them in mind.

Alternate Reality

For those making and debating these rules, in states such as Idaho, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas, creating an alternate reality, a version that resembles a Disneyfied diorama, is fine even if it is false, as long as it accommodates white feelings and gives in to white fears.

How will these laws be enforced? Government monitors? Would a fine be imposed if a teacher steps over some vague line? Well, yes, in Arizona, the penalty could be $5,000. If a curious student asks a question, will the teacher no longer be allowed to answer?

The late Rep. John Lewis, brave and persistent, who endured brutal beatings as a consequence of his civil rights activism —including his part in the Freedom Rides — would seem to be someone America's students could look up to. But I'm doubtful his march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 would make it past the curriculum censors since his attackers were agents of the state, enforcing unjust laws that prevented African Americans from voting, from living a free life.

Can you imagine? Students might make a connection between those troopers and Derek Chauvin, a murderer in a uniform, and want to learn about the racist history of policing in America. Plus, calling that day "Bloody Sunday" just wouldn't do.

It's no coincidence that the defenders of a white-washed version of history are in many cases the same legislators rushing through laws that criminalize the protesters who are the spiritual sons and daughters of Lewis.

Do these arbiters of education think that if students don't learn about Jim Crow, they won't see anything shameful about "Jim Crow 2.0" laws that restrict voting rights and harken back to post-Reconstruction rules enacted to crush the progress of those who, once unshackled, achieved elective office and thrived?

It's clear from the twisted views of America's past held by many of the staunchest defenders of the anti-history movement that a more inclusive curriculum is overdue, and they should sign up for a makeup class.

Get the dunce cap ready for Martha Huckabay, president of the Women's Republican Club of New Orleans, who defended Louisiana GOP state Rep. Ray Garofalo's words on teaching about the "good" parts of enslaving men, women, and children and offered choice thoughts of her own. Huckabay opined that slavery resulted in "hard working ethics" and that "many of the slaves loved their masters, and their masters loved them, and took very good care of them, and their families." Was she talking about the torture, the rape, or the selling of children away from moms and dads?

Tennessee Republican state Rep. Justin Lafferty somehow interpreted the three-fifths compromise in the original Constitution, which counted the enslaved as three-fifths of a human being, as a step toward ending slavery.

Colorado GOP state Rep. Ron Hanks said the three-fifths compromise "was not impugning anybody's humanity" — after he made a lynching joke. His Republican colleague, state Rep. Richard Holtorf, called another colleague the racist stereotype "Buckwheat," and insisted it had nothing — nothing — to do with race.

CNN contributor Rick Santorum has tried and failed miserably to explain his comments that "we birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes we have Native Americans, but candidly there isn't much Native American culture in American culture." Why, when he was a senator from Pennsylvania, could Santorum not be bothered to stroll to the National Museum of the American Indian? Was he too lazy or just incurious, either way not an example for school kids of any age?

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has weighed in on the debate. He seems fine with teaching the words of America's founding documents — the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution. Does he want to stop there, leaving out how, when and why the country failed to live up to the lofty principles in those documents until forced to by true patriots? He has said the year 1619, when the first enslaved Africans arrived in colonial Virginia, means little to him. Considering his slave-owning ancestors benefited from trading and "owning" human beings and, presumably, passed the wealth on to family members, you'd think McConnell would be a little more "woke."

History Repeats

"The past is never dead. It's not even past," wrote William Faulkner. The depressing proof can be seen in the tiki-torch-carrying white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia., chanting, "Jews will not replace us!" You have to wonder if avowed neo-Nazi James Fields Jr., serving life in prison for the killing of Heather Heyer, would even be charged under new laws that give a pass and winking approval to drivers who mow down protesters blocking a roadway?

Just months ago, on January 6, violent, hate-filled mobs — cousins in crime to those who greeted the Freedom Riders — stormed the U.S. Capitol, attacking police with the same weapons of batons and bats, hoisting Confederate flags, erecting gallows, hunting for lawmakers and endangering democracy itself.

South Carolina, where Lewis was viciously attacked and left in a pool of blood at the Rock Hill stop of the original Freedom Rides, on Monday officially observed Confederate Memorial Day, honoring traitors who fought to split a nation over the issue of slavery.

This Monday.

How will the next generations do better if they are forbidden from learning the history they must not repeat?

Mary C. Curtis has worked at The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Charlotte Observer, as national correspondent for Politics Daily, and is a senior facilitator with The OpEd Project. Follow her on Twitter @mcurtisnc3.

5 Shows That Should Be On Sarah Palin’s ‘Rogue TV’

5 Shows That Should Be On Sarah Palin’s ‘Rogue TV’

If you can’t get enough of Sarah Palin on Fox News, or her new show Amazing America on the Sportsman Channel, talk to your doctor. Then get ready for her new digital cable channel, Rogue TV!

Capital New York reports:

The channel will be available through Tapp, the digital video service founded by former CNN chief Jon Klein and former NBC Universal entertainment executive Jeff Gaspin. Subscriptions will cost $10 per month…

Palin’s channel will feature video commentaries from the former Republican vice-presidential candidate, discussing current events and political issues…

This sounds a bit vague. Herman Cain’s Cain TV — launched after the 2012 presidential election the former pizza mogul vowed to win — has come and gone, despite programming that featured a CGI dinosaur that loves family, and a show called Funny Stuff.

But Sarah Palin isn’t just good for grifting from conservatives. Her snake-oil machine is an essential element of Democrats’ chances of holding on to the Senate, with her endorsements of Tea Partiers like Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle.

So in hopes that Rogue TV will be a success, here are five suggestions for shows that will keep the new channel lining Palin’s pockets for months.

Between Two Guards With Dinesh D’Souza

Conservatives need their own late-night show for the people who can’t stay up past O’Reilly. In the video above, conservative “filmmaker” and accused campaign fraud Dinesh D’Souza shows that he is capable of appearing on camera and reading jokes that someone told him are funny.

If convicted, the always resourceful D’Souza could broadcast from his jail cell. If exonerated, his co-hosts could be his ex-wife and his fiancée, who cost D’Souza a job as president of a Christian college when he appeared with her at a conference before announcing his divorce.

That One Sandra Fluke Joke

Conservatives love to pretend that Sandra Fluke wants them to pay for her birth control. Ha! As if a treatment that’s used to fight hormone imbalance, endometriosis and prevent abortions were actual health care that should be covered by health insurance, the way the consequences of obesity and impotence are.

Plucked from the pages of Twitchy, the website that questions the notion that a post should make more sense than the comments section, a conservative “activist” is invited each day to say that s/he doesn’t want to pay for Sandra Fluke’s birth control. The host would then say something like, “Oh snap!” and give the guest star a high-five.

This show will be best viewed following Rogue TV’s That One Teleprompter Joke.

Scared Straight

You knew this one was coming.

With Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) finishing her last term, she’ll have time to team up with her husband of 35 years — Marcus, a family therapist — to take on the real bullies: the gays, employees who would like birth control coverage or “equal pay,” and poor people who would qualify for Medicaid expansion in red states. The Bachmanns will take turns playing “good cop” and “bad cop” as their multiple costume changes will delight those conservatives who miss the glamour of Donny and Marie or TheLawrence Welk Show.

Black History — Up Until 1965

586px-Palin_nowhere
Did you know that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican!? Did you?

Then you can skip the first five episodes of Black History — Up Until 1965, hosted by notorious history nut Sarah Palin. The other two episodes document the wicked racism of Southern Democrats right up until the day Republicans helped Lyndon B. Johnson pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

What happened to those Southern Democrats after 1965? It’s a mystery bigger than Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on Rogue TV.

Image: Provided by Bob Weinstein

Creationist Cosmos

The evolutionists won’t get equal time here.

Faith-based scientist Kirk Cameron explores the science behind the Bible and confounds non-believers to explain where both babies (Spoiler: The stork) and bananas come from. It’s an experience 6,000 years in the making, 800 of which Abraham lived through, as you’ll learn!

Cameron also will star in Rogue TV’s first sitcom, The No-Bang-Until-Marriage Theory.