On this day in 1950, the Supreme Court banned segregation in dinning cars on railroads.
But since then has anything changed?
OMG! We can’t have Black children learning about Black history they might get uppity!
In the link cited to Education Week it reported that even in blue Connecticut the Republicans ...
In another Education Week article reports,
The new Jim Crow 2.0 is not just about racism but encompasses all the “ism” and they do it in the name of “Parental Rights” or as “Parental Choice” but in reality it is a way they are trying to get around the non-discrimination laws… we didn’t ban talking about racism but rather we banned it because it made some children feel uncomfortable. We didn’t ban the book because it has gay boys in it but rather it was pornographic.
Boy and a girl kissing = okay.
Boy and a boy kissing = obscene and banned.
TeenVogue writes,
The Republican ultimate goal? Is to create a white Christian nation… you don’t believe me? Well read Project 2025 that is their playbook!
I asked my favorite AI… Perplexity AI: “What does project 2025 say about racism?”
But since then has anything changed?
Unfortunately with this Supreme Courts it is anyone’s call what they will do.Educators wrestle with new limits on teaching Black history
Axios
By Russell Contreras and Sommer Bruga
February 1, 2024Schools and universities are marking the start of Black History Month today, as many educators across the nation wrestle with increasing limits on what they can teach about racism and history.
Why it matters: New laws in at least 14 states and various restrictions elsewhere — or the threat of them — are leading many teachers to simply mention important figures in Black history without getting into the racism they faced.
Zoom in: In all, lawmakers in 30 states have proposed new restrictions during the past year on what schools can teach about the nation's racial history, according to an Axios analysis of National Conference of State Legislatures data.
Under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida has been among the most aggressive states in limiting what educators can teach.
In 2022, DeSantis signed a bill that effectively prevents teaching certain concepts related to race, national origin or sex that could make students uncomfortable, calling that discriminatory.
The Florida State Board of Education also approved a rule change in 2021 prohibiting teachings that "distort historical events."
Florida's ban includes material such as The New York Times Magazine's "The 1619 Project," which drew criticism from many conservatives. They saw the project's focus on Jamestown as a starting point for the U.S. slave trade as a slap at America's origin story. Texas has a similar ban.
Black history is under attack across US from AP African American Studies to ‘Ruby Bridges’
USA Today
By Alia Wong
August 23, 2023It wasn’t until his senior year of high school that Dylan Holley began to learn about all the facets of Black history. Not just snippets focusing on pain and suffering and victimization but full stories also featuring the contributions, triumphs and joys of, as he put it, “people who look like me.”
“In U.S. history (class), we’re taught to view ourselves a certain way,” said Holley, 17, a recent graduate of Maynard Holbrook Jackson High School in Atlanta.
Last fall, then a rising senior, Holley signed up to take the Advanced Placement African American Studies course, which was being tested out at Maynard Jackson High as part of a national pilot.
“I learned a different narrative when it comes to the history of my people,” he said. This narrative highlighted the African kingdoms that thrived before slavery and colonization, for example, as well as the activists who’ve challenged systemic racism through the modern Black Lives Matter movement. It highlighted the nuances of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech – and the stubborn persistence of the racism that speech 60 years ago described.
OMG! We can’t have Black children learning about Black history they might get uppity!
Opportunities such as these to learn a more inclusive version of the country’s history are, after decades of advocacy and activism, becoming more common in the nation’s public schools. And already, they’re being stamped out.
Republican political leaders in all but a few states (44 total) have since 2021 proposed legislation or policies restricting lessons about race and racism in the United States – what many inaccurately decry as a graduate-level framework called “critical race theory.” As of June, 18 states had such laws on the books, according to an Education Week analysis.
A bill proposed in 2023 that would have prevented schools from teaching any curriculum that included "biased political ideology" or made students feel "discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual's race or sex" failed to pass.
But the Republicans don’t care what the people think, it is their white Christian nationalist base that they are currying favor for.Many States Are Limiting How Schools Can Teach About Race. Most Voters Disagree
By Ileana Najarro
October 30, 2023A strong majority of voters want Black studies curriculum and the history of racism and slavery and its legacy taught in K-12 public schools, according to new polling data from the Black Education Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Results from a nationally representative phone poll of 1,000 registered voters found that 85 percent of respondents agreed that public school students should learn about the history of racism and slavery in the United States and how it continues to affect us today. (When the question was asked again at the end of the poll, it was 82 percent who agreed.)
The poll was conducted by brilliant corners Research & Strategies in August this year for BERC, and featured a diverse pool of participants by gender, race and ethnicity, age, and geographic location. Thirty percent identified themselves as Democrats, 26 percent as Republican, and 44 percent as independent or other. Thirty percent said their approach to political issues was more liberal and 40 percent said it was more conservative.
Since 2021, at least 18 states have imposed bans or restrictions on teaching topics of race and gender. Within the last year, Florida has particularly drawn national attention after Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican presidential candidate, banned the College Board’s AP African American Studies course and supported new Black history standards that include a clarification to teach “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
In light of such education legislation and policy, the Black Education Research Center wanted to see how a representative sample of American voters truly felt about public education, and its role in teaching about Black history.
Boy and a girl kissing = okay.
Boy and a boy kissing = obscene and banned.
TeenVogue writes,
Since the unprecedented anti-racism and anti-police brutality demonstrations in 2020, far-right politicians have responded by proposing bills and enacting laws that limit conversations and teaching of race in public schools. The strategic deterioration of the term “critical race theory” by political pundits like Christopher Rufo has had a ripple effect on how race and history are discussed throughout the country. As of January 2024, 18 states have bans against teaching critical race theory while nine states currently have bills or school policies prohibiting CRT teaching going through the legislative process.
The semantic shift around the legal framework has caused CRT to become a negative umbrella term, in some cases, for most topics that involve race. With most anti-CRT laws written ambiguously, it can be difficult for teachers in places where this subject is banned to decipher which topics and concepts they’re permitted to teach and which could cost them their jobs. For Black History Month in particular, this creates a new set of challenges: Historical events like the Civil Rights Movement may be taught, but in places where these bans exist, those lessons will likely lack the much-needed context of systemic racism, and how it translates to today.
The Republican ultimate goal? Is to create a white Christian nation… you don’t believe me? Well read Project 2025 that is their playbook!
I asked my favorite AI… Perplexity AI: “What does project 2025 say about racism?”
Answer
Project 2025 promotes policies that could exacerbate racism and undermine civil rights protections for marginalized communities, particularly Black Americans. Here are some key points about its stance on racism: Civil Rights:
Project 2025 promotes policies that could exacerbate racism and undermine civil rights protections for marginalized communities, particularly Black Americans. Here are some key points about its stance on racism: Civil Rights:
- It calls for the Department of Justice to focus on prosecuting "anti-white racism" by abolishing affirmative action policies and using the Civil Rights Division against governments, institutions, corporations, and private employers with affirmative action or diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies
- This suggests an effort to dismantle programs aimed at promoting racial equity.
- It portrays efforts to address systemic racism, like critical race theory, as "anti-white" and seeks to defund schools that teach it
- It promotes the false narrative of widespread "voter fraud" which has been used to justify voter suppression laws that disproportionately disadvantage Black communities
- Co-author Stephen Moore has a history of making racist and misogynistic comments, such as suggesting Black families are replacing men with "welfare checks" and that increased earnings for Black women make men "financially expendable"
- Trump himself has vowed to fight what he calls an "anti-white feeling" in the U.S., suggesting policies would aim to protect the rights of white people over other racial groups
Perplexity AI: “What does project 2025 say about transgender people?”
Answer
Project 2025 proposes policies that would severely restrict the rights and access to healthcare for transgender individuals in the United States. Here are some key points regarding its stance on transgender people: Healthcare:
Perplexity AI: "What does project 2025 say about a Christian Nation?"
Answer
Project 2025 promotes the idea of establishing the United States as an explicitly Christian nation, with policies and laws based on a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. Here are some key points about its stance on making America a "Christian nation":
Answer
Project 2025 proposes policies that would severely restrict the rights and access to healthcare for transgender individuals in the United States. Here are some key points regarding its stance on transgender people: Healthcare:
- It seeks to block access to gender-affirming healthcare and treatments for transgender people
- It aims to reverse the Biden administration's interpretation that protects transgender people from discrimination in healthcare under the Affordable Care Act
- It wants to prohibit the National Institutes of Health from conducting research on gender identity and transgender healthcare
- It proposes ending the Centers for Disease Control's collection of data on gender identity
- It calls for reforming the U.S. Census Bureau to stop collecting statistics on gender identity
- It promotes maintaining only a "biblically based" definition of gender as male or female assigned at birth, denying legal recognition of other gender identities
- It urges Congress to define gender as strictly male or female assigned at birth
- It advocates for banning any classroom instruction or educational content related to gender identity and transgender experiences
Perplexity AI: "What does project 2025 say about a Christian Nation?"
Answer
Project 2025 promotes the idea of establishing the United States as an explicitly Christian nation, with policies and laws based on a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. Here are some key points about its stance on making America a "Christian nation":
- Defining Marriage and Family Based on Biblical Principles
- It calls for the federal government to "maintain a biblically based, social science–reinforced definition of marriage and family"This would essentially codify only heterosexual marriages as valid, denying legal recognition to same-sex marriages despite the Respect for Marriage Act passed by Congress
- It advocates for federal agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services to emphasize and promote the "traditional nuclear family" based on Christian values
- It seeks to reverse policies seen as undermining these Christian family values, such as access to contraception and gender-affirming healthcare for transgender individuals
- It proposes amending the Fair Labor Standards Act to require workers be paid time-and-a-half for working on Sundays, treating it as a Christian Sabbath
- The justification given is that "God ordained the Sabbath [Sunday] as a day of rest" based on the "Judeo-Christian tradition"
- Under the guise of protecting "religious freedom", it aims to enable discrimination against LGBTQ+ individuals and those not adhering to certain Christian beliefs
- It frames efforts to protect LGBTQ+ rights and promote diversity as threats to the religious freedom of conservative Christians
Overall, Project 2025 outlines an agenda to enshrine fundamentalist Christian beliefs and values into federal law and policy, essentially establishing a de facto Christian nationalist regime that would violate the separation of church and state.
Maya Angelou: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."
Maya Angelou: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."
My wife and I have been supporting our local elementary school library for more than 15 years. Just today I dropped off books on the holocaust, the Navajo Code Talkers, the Negro Leagues, Juneteenth and others. They are all age appropriate as to subject material for K-5. If teachers are prohibited from making kids aware of the past, then it is up to parents to enlighten them. If one does not have a public library in their locale, there is an abundance of material on the Internet.
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