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| https://abc11.com/lt-governor-mark-robinson-racism-social-studies-schools/10254732/ |
A Sense of Doubt blog post #2542 - SCHOOL BOARDS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THE TOOLS OF WHITE SUPREMACY: CENSORSHIP WEEK
Turn back the clock.
Hi, welcome to post #3 of CENSORSHIP WEEK on the blog.
I added some other things here, too, such as the Jackie Robinson plaque riddled with bullet holes set to be displayed at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum as a reminder of the racial hatred Robinson suffered in his life as the first African-American player to cross the color line and play in the (at the time) all-white Major Leagues.
I have never heard anyone espouse the idea that little white kids should hate themselves or their parents or even their country because of the history of racism.
And the picture farther below of people screaming at a school board meeting is truly frightening.
If teaching the truth about racism and gender discrimination is anti-American, then what these people are really saying is that education should not be about the truth. It should be about the truth according to fragile white people absolutely terrified of living in reality in which they are complicit in racism and racist practices, enjoying privilege, without even being aware of it because that's just normal life for their sheltered little 1950s bake off sit com worlds.
It continues to be true. Trump's words at his rally. But not for what he thinks. WE who want truth and reality and freedom and no censorship and safety and equality and empathy and compassion and justice and fairness and all those things, WE HAVE TO FIGHT LIKE HELL or we are not going to have a free country anymore with free elections and in which the reality of history is taught in our schools.
NC Lt. Governor Mark Robinson slams media company for cartoon depicting GOP as KKK members
RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) -- On this second day of Black History Month, an editorial cartoon published on WRAL.com, owned by Capitol Broadcasting, had Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson so upset he called a news conference.
"Depicting the first Black lieutenant governor as Ku Klux Klansman. It's something we cannot stand for, folks. It's something I'm not going to stand for," Robinson said. "What I want to know from WRAL is that who you are? Is that who you want to represent yourself to be in this state?"
The cartoon by Dennis Draughon stems from the state board of education's upcoming meeting regarding K-12 social studies curriculum.
Last week, members of the North Carolina Board of Education discussed whether the concepts of systemic racism, systemic discrimination and gender identity should be discussed in class.
Robinson, a Republican who made history as the first Black man to hold the office, took a strong position against it.
"To call our system of government racist, that is an untruth as far as I'm concerned. I truly believe that is an untruth as far as history is concerned and it does a disservice to our students. It puts the idea in the mind of our children that they live in a nation that has promoted racism," he said at the time.
The cartoon published this week shows the Elephant Klansman representing GOP board members who are against the use of those words.
The elephant's caption reads: "We prefer a clean sheet."
Robinson is also accusing Capitol Broadcasting of bucking its own diversity and inclusion standards. He called the hypocrisy mindnumbing.
During the weekend, the North Carolina National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) president the Rev. T. Anthony Spearman rallied for board members to include the words in the curriculum.
But Robinson said we should be teaching history and the horrible things that took place from a victorious perspective.
Should NC social studies courses address systemic racism? One board member says it will stir 'anti-American' ideas
"These standards lead to the wrong direction. They lead to an anti-American sentiment," Robinson said. "If we want to teach children to embrace a system, tell them to embrace a system that ended slavery, that ended Jim Crow, that gave women the right to vote."
Garner 6th grader addresses race, women's empowerment in 1st published children's book
But as Robinson slammed Capitol Broadcasting, he again was questioned about his own controversial private Facebook posts that went viral last year, as he ran for office.
In previous interviews, Robinson has refused to apologize or walk back those posts, saying instead that he is not ashamed of them.
"When I made those posts as a private citizen, I was speaking directly to issues that I'm passionate about. But as a public servant -- and I said this to you -- as a public servant, I have to put those opinions behind me and do what's right for everyone in North Carolina," Robinson said.
Capitol Broadcasting's opinion editor Seth Effron released a statement in response to the controversy:
"Editorial cartoons are creative and provocative, using hyperbole and satire. No one believes Republicans on the State Board of Education are members of the Ku Klux Klan. The editorial cartoon by Dennis Draughon is meant to point out that these members of the State Board are trying to wipe out from the social studies curriculum the record of racism which includes the Klan and the segregationist practices that were imposed in our state and nation's history."
Robinson does not want the state school board to make a decision this week on the social studies standards. He said the topic is too divisive and more time is needed to speak to people on both sides of the issue.
He said he has talked to the NAACP and those talks have been respectful.
Vandalized Jackie Robinson plaque set to be displayed at Negro Leagues Baseball Museum
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/33186645/vandalized-jackie-robinson-plaque-set-displayed-negro-leagues-baseball-museum
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A plaque honoring baseball legend Jackie Robinson that was vandalized in Georgia is coming to Kansas City's Negro Leagues Baseball Museum to be put on display.
The sign was erected in 2001 outside the birthplace of Robinson near Cairo, Georgia. Community members there discovered last year that someone had shot the plaque multiple times.
Curator and museum vice president Ray Doswell told the Kansas City Star that displaying the defaced marker is an opportunity to teach the public about Robinson's story and combat hate. Robinson broke Major League Baseball's color barrier in 1947 when he became the league's first Black player.
Robinson's hometown replaced the damaged marker, with help from the league, and added another marker at a library last week.
The vandalized marker is slated to go on display around mid-April, after a display case is built and spot secured in the museum, to coincide with the museum's celebration of the 75th anniversary of Robinson's debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers. The plaque is expected to be permanently loaned to the Kansas City museum for regular display.
Museum community engagement manager Kiona Sinks said in a tweet that the vandalized marker will "serve as a reminder that the ugliness of America's past persists to this day."
School Boards Have Long Been a Tool of White Supremacy
Our history of letting white Americans veto racial progress in schools.
At raucous school board meetings across the country, disgruntled parents have grabbed the mic to represent the political desires of the Republican Party. Once-innocuous local gatherings have become anti–critical race theory caucuses administered by white people.
In July 2021, the Missouri state legislature’s joint education committee held an invite-only hearing on how educators in public K–12 schools teach about racism. “I felt today it was important to hear from people who have tried to go through the official cycle of authority within their districts and have basically been turned away,” said Cindy O’Laughlin, a Republican senator and the committee’s chair. For O’Laughlin, “people” has a precise meaning, as no Black person spoke and the only people allowed to give testimony were opponents of critical race theory. Of course, giving primacy to white speakers has a history far older than CRT. As an 1804 Missouri law said, “no negro or mulatto shall be a witness except in the pleas of the United States against negroes or mulattoes or in civil pleas where negroes alone shall be parties.”
The parallels did not go unnoticed. “It is the height of irony that a hearing to consider censoring curriculum would censor those who are allowed to speak,” said Ingrid Burnett, a Democratic representative from Kansas City who pointed out the hearing’s one-sidedness.
As even the state’s Republican governor noted on social media the day after the meeting, there’s no evidence that CRT, an academic framework for analyzing how racism is embedded in American law and culture, is being taught throughout Missouri. There is certainly no evidence, as O’Laughlin advanced, that local authorities have stymied its opponents. CRT “has no business being taught in Missouri classrooms—but the vast majority of our schools are not doing that,” Gov. Mike Parson wrote. He later elaborated, “Look, the only way critical race theory can be taught in a school—the only way—is if the locals let it happen. That’s controlled by the local school boards.” In short, Parson argued that the system already works for conservatives. Indeed, out of more than 400 districts, the Missouri Board of Education has identified only one with CRT in the curriculum: Kansas City, where 54 percent of students are Black.
But most Missouri districts have starkly different demographics and are represented by local officials who reflect the wishes and anxieties of white people. O’Laughlin lives in Shelby County, where roughly 95 percent of residents and students are white, and which Trump won with 80 percent of the vote. Even in more diverse communities, school boards, thanks partly to decades of attention from conservative activists, lean right. A 2018 Vanderbilt study using data from Ohio showed that school board members are generally “more likely to come from wealthier, whiter, and better educated neighborhoods”—trends that advantage the GOP.
As Missouri’s 1804 law privileging white testimony shows, those advantages are rooted in history—and can be found nationwide. Take Connecticut, where, in 1833, the general assembly enacted the “Black Law,” which prohibited anyone from establishing an institution for the “education of colored persons…without the consent, in writing, first obtained of a majority of the civil authority, and also of the select men of the town.”
That law enshrining local control was passed in response to abolitionist Prudence Crandall’s move to turn the school she ran into one “for young ladies and little misses of color.” Until she admitted 20-year-old African American Sarah Harris Fayerweather, Crandall’s all-white Canterbury Female Boarding School was esteemed by the town.
Fayerweather, considered the first African American to enroll in a white school, was known as a churchgoing young woman of high character. But when she sought admission, Crandall hesitated, knowing the backlash it would bring. Many of her pupils’ parents were members of the American Colonization Society, an organization that wanted to send Black Americans to Africa to settle Liberia—parents who, as abolitionist Samuel May wrote, “would not have it said that their daughters went to school with a nigger girl.”
But Crandall, a Quaker, came from an anti-slavery family. (In 1835, her younger brother, Reuben, would be prosecuted for possessing abolitionist literature and contracted a fatal case of tuberculosis while jailed.) She also believed in the power of education and was moved by Fayerweather’s plan to become a teacher in her own community. After Fayerweather enrolled, the school made a quick shift in course, taking out an ad in the Liberator, the nation’s abolitionist paper of record, spreading word that it would exclusively serve young Black women—and seeking applicants from all corners.
A week later, a town meeting was convened where Crandall’s new project was denounced. At the vanguard was Andrew Judson, an officer of the American Colonization Society, a member of the Connecticut House of Representatives, and a man of good standing in the anti-Black community. Judson was incensed at the idea of a “school for nigger girls” and insisted “there shall not be such a school set up anywhere in the State.” That opinion was widely voiced at the meeting, which barred Crandall’s few supporters from speaking. A series of resolutions against Crandall passed, warning that the school would result in “incalculable evils” and letting her know that the reimagined institution “meets with our unqualified disapprobation, and it is to be understood, that the inhabitants of Canterbury protest against it, in the most earnest manner.” A committee was formed to convince Crandall of the “injurious consequences that would inevitably result from the introduction of colored children into the town,” as abolitionist Henry Benson, who attended the meeting, wrote in the Liberator. He summarized the crowd’s objection: “Her unpardonable sin lay altogether in her wish to elevate the moral and intellectual condition of the blacks, and attempting to carry her plans into operation, without consulting them.” The Black Law soon gave the town’s sentiment teeth, nominally entrusting it and all other Connecticut localities with the power to ban such schools.
This is the “local control” that Gov. Parson favors, where a “select” group is given legal authority to rebuke the evils they are convinced critical race theory will impart on white society. Throughout history, the “unpardonable sin” of educators moving toward racial progress without white consent has been atoned for in the same way: disgruntled white people band together on a school board or committee to erase unwanted Black people, texts, and consciousness. Today, it is happening even where CRT cannot be found but where attacks on it hang like a specter. Texas school librarians have pulled books by Black authors, hoping to preempt controversy after legislators assembled a list of titles they sought to ban; a Black principal there was fired by his school board after pushing back against false accusations he had promoted CRT. In January, Florida lawmakers backed by GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis advanced a bill outlawing lessons that might make students feel “guilt” or “discomfort” about their race.Recent polls show that Black parents are far more receptive to the teaching of the tenets of critical race theory than white parents. But across the country, parents in favor of interrogating America’s racial history have been disregarded. “It seems as though Black and Brown voices were ignored, and the voices were centered on White parents and their concerns,” Rakelle Mullenix, a Black mother of two in Annandale, Virginia, told the Washington Post for an article on how the debate over teaching racial injustice powered Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s 2021 election. “I’m constantly hearing, ‘Oh, no, suburban women, suburban moms and their vote.’ And when I look around me and see these suburban moms and housewives, a lot of them look like me. But when I hear the conversations on the news, it doesn’t sound like they’re talking about me.” (Youngkin’s first executive order tasked education officials with rooting out CRT and other “inherently divisive concepts.”)
Despite the town’s opposition, Crandall’s school went ahead and enrolled more than 15 Black girls from Boston, Philadelphia, and Providence. Store owners refused to sell Crandall and her students food, clothing, and supplies. The well near Crandall’s house was filled with manure, her house battered with stones and rotten eggs. Citizens of Canterbury made attempts to prosecute Crandall’s teenage students using an obsolete 1750 vagrancy law that threatened whipping and weekly fines. One 17-year-old student was arrested after receiving a warning; wealthy Crandall supporters responded by bankrolling a $10,000 fund to fight such arrests, preventing Canterbury’s authorities from punishing the students.
Crandall was arrested and tried twice under the new Black Law. In the first trial, the jurors could not agree to convict her even though the presiding judge endorsed the law as “constitutional and obligatory on the people of the state.” A second before the state’s Supreme Court was dismissed on a technicality. But legal success offered no protection. After a failed attempt to burn down Crandall’s house, her windows were smashed. For safety, supporters told Crandall to abandon her mission. The school closed in September 1834.
As a local historian later wrote, “If the Canterbury people had quietly accepted the situation and left them in peace the difficulty would soon have ended.” But the town’s racists would not quietly acquiesce to anti-racist education. What animates much of today’s white backlash to critical race theory is the same germ that caused anxiety over Black education in Canterbury. And formal bans on CRT or similar anti-racist teachings—now law in eight states—have again created an environment of intimidation. As Crandall’s loss and similar indignities targeting today’s educators show, that force can have a power even greater than law.
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| https://iowaculture.gov/history/education/educator-resources/primary-source-sets/reconstruction/union |
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2202.02 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2406 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
