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No one is arguing against the idea that we should teach the good and the bad. What people are arguing against is the idea that we should teach a slanted version to demonize one side over the other. Why should kids feel shame for what people they didn't know did generations before they were born?
I didn't own slaves. My daddy didn't own slaves. His daddy before him didn't own slaves. Don't know anyone who did. In fact as I've mentioned before, my daddy plowed fields staring at the butt end of a mule because his daddy was a sharecropper. I grew up in a mill town. Great equalizer. Black, white, everyone was the same. You either worked in the mill or worked one of the service businesses, or farmed. Dad worked a lot of odd jobs to pay the bills. Drove a trash truck. I was so proud to ride with him when school was out to pick up people's trash. Guess I was just too dumb to know it was supposed to be a dirty job, I thought we were doing something important for the community. Dumb me. The only way out of a mill town was to join the service. For me it was the Air Force. Got experience, and college education, and then master's degree. Dad never finished high school but got to see me get a masters.
So, what exactly is it that I owe?
What did I say in my post? "as a white American I do not feel personal guilt about it". I'm not suggesting we should feel personal guilt about it. But for those who want to take personal pride in an American history they personally had nothing to do with, well, for them, they should take on the burden of the negative stuff, too.
We teach children the United States had slavery and hundreds of thousands of Americans died in the Civil War to end slavery. We teach children there was Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s ended Jim Crow.
That is how you teach history in an objective way.
So there was nothing bad about slavery or Jim Crow. Just an honest mistake.
In the People's Republic of Vermont, a local school board has gone full on BLM (they are all mostly white BTW). It was decided that the BLM flag should fly at the school to show solidarity with people of color, but there was never a policy made about it and parents who don't support this (along with the assignment of certain racially inflammatory reading material) are not getting the answers they want from the school board (like what exactly is the flag policy? The state says on the VT state flag and the US flag at schools.) The parents who don't support the flag are considered racist oppressors (I am kinda like not even kidding....the activists are simply ridiculous.) Poor school performance and some apparent misconduct by a couple of teachers around the racial issues (singling out a white student for example) appear to be ignored (based on my viewing of their school board meetings).
I have this idea that maybe you're one of these people who are against big brother government but think local government is the most desirable. Well.
A few? A few? Are you trying to be deliberately inflammatory by negating the suffering of millions of Africans who were victims over many centuries, of the Arab slave trade?
I'll grant that today in 2022 there are only "a few" Arabs who are involved in the slave trade, but the Indian Ocean slave trade was every bit as lucrative and eagerly practiced as the Transatlantic trade was, and the Arab slave trade actually lasted longer. Furthermore it was mostly white Christians who brought about the end of both major African slave trades.
I don't hold Arabs responsible for the slave trade today, just as I don't hold present-day Americans or Europeans responsible. It is something that happened, that does not (or should not) happen anymore.
One more thing: Slavery is endemic to all cultures. It was not invented in 1619 or in 1492. It existed for thousands of years, probably since the Dawn of Man.
I don't care how endemic it was. That didn't make it right. And it doesn't make what we did in this country right. This is how elementary children act (to bring this back to school). "Well Johnny did it first!"
Slavery was/is wrong. Period. Jim Crow was/is wrong. Period. Some of you have an awfully difficult time saying that, and it appears as if you certainly don't think that should be taught.
Thanks for the reply. I realized after I posted my question, that I had phrased it wrong all along. That's why I edited and expanded it.
So Randi Weingarten is correct when she says "CRT is not being taught" in public schools, but she is also being disingenuous because of the carefully parsed language. And concerned parents are correct when they smell a rat.
I don't think actual CRT is being taught. I do think there are places where individual teachers take improper conclusions from poorly written sources and use them, but that's not teaching CRT, that's teaching poorly written garbage that's been incorrectly accepted as truth by someone who isn't thinking critically.
I don't care how endemic it was. That didn't make it right. And it doesn't make what we did in this country right. This is how elementary children act (to bring this back to school). "Well Johnny did it first!"
Slavery was/is wrong. Period. Jim Crow was/is wrong. Period. Some of you have an awfully difficult time saying that, and it appears as if you certainly don't think that should be taught.
What's this "you" business? I never said anything good about slavery or Jim Crow.
I think you are arguing with a straw man who thinks slavery was right because "everyone was doing it". The fact that nearly every culture in history has at one time been slaveowners or slaves, or both, means that no single culture is better or worse than another based on this single metric.
The point is, we should be teaching the following:
1. Slavery was and is evil.
2. Americans banned the slave trade in America because it was evil.
3. Americans fought a war to end slavery altogether because it was evil, but only in America.
4. Americans continued to work, and continue to work to this day, to end slavery worldwide because it is evil and have been largely but not completely successful which is why we need to keep working on it.
Too hard? It shouldn't be any harder than blaming America for thousands of years and 6 continents' worth of slavery.
Reportedly people are leaving school boards in droves, just because it's not worth the aggravation - or the threats.
How to Make School Board Culture Wars Even Worse
Many people would look at the spiraling circus and think: This is bad. Low-level, nonpartisan school boards are not where these radioactive political issues should be hashed out. Someone should find a way to reduce the heat on these public servants. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/23/o...tennessee.html
This thread is understandably going into the weeds a little. Understandable because anything involving children brings out the emotions in most people.
The OP started this thread because the NYT published an op-ed that complained of school board members resigning over arguments and harsh language at meetings (I think that's what it said; I was unable to get past NYT's paywall).
Well, it turns out school board members aren't the only ones facing harsh treatment. Parents who spoke out in the interest of their children at public meetings were targeted by the FBI, and the Attorney General of the United States lied about it. Culture War, anyone? https://news.yahoo.com/whistleblower...012737548.html
When you have to lie, as Merrick Garland did, or shade the truth as Randi Weingarten did, then you are losing the culture war. Also, it's not a real war; it's just elections, for goodness sake.
I was a teacher in a former life. Here's what I think about presenting any material to students.
It should be honest with reliable resources.
Both sides of issues or pros and cons should be presented.
In no way should a teacher try to impose a values system on the material that is being presented.
Children should be learning how to analyze that material and make those decisions for themselves. It's also "critical." Critical thinking.
Telling children, "This is good" or "This is bad" is indoctrination, stifles creative thought and individuality and is best left to parents and churches.
I realize that this liberating, but not new idea, is the antithesis of what our political leaders want to do. They want us all thinking alike - the way that they do. That terrifies me. It's the beginning of absolute power.
"Institutional racism, also known as systemic racism, is a form of racism that is embedded in the laws and regulations of a society or an organization.
There is no racist law or regulation embedded in the laws of the USA; any historical laws/regulations are non-enforceable.
Wikipedia goes on to say:
Quote:
[Systemic racism] manifests as discrimination in areas such as criminal justice, employment, housing, health care, education, and political representation."
Regarding manifestation:
There is no discrimination in criminal justice in the USA.
The discrimination that does exist in employment is positive discrimination. If you need some examples, I'll be happy to elaborate.
There is no discrimination in housing.
There is no discrimination in health care.
There is no discrimination in education.
The discrimination that exists in political representation is positive discrimination and is a result of courts who decided they want to draw district boundaries on the basis of race.
The following is my personal thoughts on the matter, without having read very deeply into the various resources.
CRT is an upper level theoretical framework that looks to find the reasons why, 160+ years after the Civil war and the enactment of the Reconstruction Amendments, people of color, Blacks in particular, have not achieved any real semblance of equality with Whites in a number of areas.
Clearly a racist doctrine. CRT explicitly rejects the notion of meritocracy. CRT clearly rejects the idea that individuals make individual choices and must take responsibility for their choices. CRT rejects the idea that individual achievements are the result of individual efforts plus randomness (sometimes called luck), and randomness is uniformly distributed.
Last edited by moguldreamer; 05-12-2022 at 03:45 PM..
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