Critical race theory (6 Viewers)

[DaveXA]

Frankly, I'm completely ignorant when it comes to the Critical Race Theory curriculum. What is it, where does it come from, and is it legitimate? Has anyone here read it and maybe give a quick summary?

If this has been covered in another thread, then I missed it.

 

[Bigdaddysaints]

For the herp derp "I don't see race" or "racism only exists if you talk about it" crowd.

Ok, i'd like to know who in Congress was born before 1844? Did i misread something?

 

[Optimus Prime]

Ok, i'd like to know who in Congress was born before 1844? Did i misread something?

Born before 1938

When some current members of Congress were born there were still former slaves still living including Michelle Obama’s ancestor

 

[DaveXA]

The lady who was a maid for my grandparents had worked on a plantation when she was a young girl. She had quite a story to tell. We used to pass by that same plantation and she showed me the tree where she'd sit in the shade during breaks. The thing is, I wish my kids could have met her. And I wish I knew her story better, but I only remember bits and pieces of it today. I would have liked to share that with my kids.

I did take them to see the tree and share that little bit with them though. We're not as far removed as we might think, but, it is getting to that point where there's fewer and fewer second hand accounts. At least we still have written and video history of those historical accounts. So it's not completely lost.

 

[insidejob]

The lady who was a maid for my grandparents had worked on a plantation when she was a young girl. She had quite a story to tell. We used to pass by that same plantation and she showed me the tree where she'd sit in the shade during breaks. The thing is, I wish my kids could have met her. And I wish I knew her story better, but I only remember bits and pieces of it today. I would have liked to share that with my kids.

I did take them to see the tree and share that little bit with them though. We're not as far removed as we might think, but, it is getting to that point where there's fewer and fewer second hand accounts. At least we still have written and video history of those historical accounts. So it's not completely lost.

The lady who was the housekeeper for basically my entire maternal side of the family was the daughter of slaves, but she was born years after they were freed. She has a dozen brothers and sisters who were all born after they were freed except for the eldest, and he was lynched in his early 20's in Mississippi. We tried to get her to leave for Katrina but she wouldn't. We finally were able to track her down and she had managed to get out after the storm and made it back to where she still had a lot of family in Mississippi. She was in her 80's already back then and was a pack a day smoker, so I doubt she lived all that much longer. That woman practically raised me and my sister after my parents divorced. She was uneducated but one of the smartest women I've ever met. She had some hard life wisdom that you can't gain any other way. She could tell stories for what seemed like forever but kept you hanging on every word. My God, that woman HATED Ronald Reagan. She blamed him (correctly) for losing the job she'd had for a long time as a cafeteria worker.

That little trip down memory lane has me all sentimental. I gotta find a Farb post to get slapped back to reality.

 

[dtc]

The lady who was a maid for my grandparents had worked on a plantation when she was a young girl. She had quite a story to tell. We used to pass by that same plantation and she showed me the tree where she'd sit in the shade during breaks. The thing is, I wish my kids could have met her. And I wish I knew her story better, but I only remember bits and pieces of it today. I would have liked to share that with my kids.

I did take them to see the tree and share that little bit with them though. We're not as far removed as we might think, but, it is getting to that point where there's fewer and fewer second hand accounts. At least we still have written and video history of those historical accounts. So it's not completely lost.

I wish your kids could have met her just the same as the lady who literally raised me. I've mentioned her before here, but when I was a little boy growing up in NOLA, I ate at restaurants that still had signs refusing her service. I wish my daughter could have met Oleander. She was a wonderful woman and having known her likely gave me the perspective to have the beliefs I do today about our nation's history and racial issues.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Colleges fighting back
==================
Appalled at efforts to limit what they can teach about race and other sensitive subjects, faculty leaders at prominent public universities around the country have rallied in recent weeks behind resolutions to reaffirm academic freedom and denounce legislation that would undermine it


These declarations show that the heated debate over state regulation of lessons on race, centered so far largely on K-12 public schools, is rapidly expanding onto college campuses.

In this case it pits politicians, mainly Republicans, who depict themselves as guardians of objectivity concerning “divisive concepts,” against professors who say the state has no business meddling in the content of lectures, syllabi and seminars.
The latest skirmish has erupted in Texas.


On Monday, the Faculty Council of the University of Texas at Austin approved, on a 41-to-5 vote with three abstentions, a resolution rejecting “any attempts by bodies external to the faculty to restrict or dictate the content of university curriculum on any matter, including matters related to racial and social justice.”

The resolution said the council will “stand firm against any and all encroachment” on faculty authority, including by the legislature.

Afterward, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) denounced the resolution. “I will not stand by and let looney Marxist UT professors poison the minds of young students with Critical Race Theory,” he wrote in a tweet.

“We banned it in publicly funded K-12 and we will ban it in publicly funded higher ed.” On Friday, Patrick said he would support ending the job-protection measure known as tenure for professors who teach critical race theory……

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/02/19/colleges-critical-race-theory-bills/

 

[Optimus Prime]

Article on increase of homeschooling of black students
=================================

For Shari Rohan, it was a social-studies lesson that described enslaved people receiving “on-the-job training.” For Zanetta Lamar, it was the fact that her son was the only Black student in his grade. For Andrea Thomas, it was realizing just how little she had learned about Black history while attending both public and private schools.

“I did not want my children to have that same experience,” says Thomas, who, along with Rohan and Lamar, is now homeschooling her children, becoming part of a movement that once was seen as the domain of white, conservative families. “I wanted them to have a deeper understanding of history and the flaws within our history.”

Homeschooling increased nationwide after the pandemic disrupted in-person learning; among households with school-age children, the percentage who reported homeschooling them rose from 5.4% in April 2020 to 11.1% in October 2020, the last week for which those figures are available, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.

The increase was most significant among Black families, about 3.3% of whom were homeschooling in spring 2020. By fall 2020, 16.1% were homeschooling, according to the survey. And as that population has grown, so have the curriculum resources and support groups.

While COVID-19 was a catalyst, many Black parents, concerned about racism in schools and frustrated by the prevalence of white-washed history lessons, have also turned to homeschooling as a way to take control of their children’s education and give them an unvarnished version of U.S. history, even as such efforts come under attack in school districts around the country.................

MSN

 

[MT15]

Optimus, this cannot be true. I’ve been told repeatedly that all of the public schools are completely “woke” and that they do nothing but teach black history and shame white students every single day, all day long.

{sarcasm}

anyway, this sorta blows a hole in the contention that public schools are lefty doesn’t it?

 

[bird]

Those who control the past, control the future.

 

[The moose]

Those who control the past, control the future.

Exactly that is the only way old tricks work over and over again.

Same can be said for the media. When the fairness doctrine was repealed under Ronald Reagan it started this whole media shirt show we have now that got then whole internet supercharger nobody knew was gonna happen.

The fairness doctrine was exactly put into law after we figured out how Hitler got shirt done.

 

[Optimus Prime]

From the article.

Counting down to only state approved homeschooling curriculums count in 3, 2, 1......
=====================================

Since she started teaching her kids at their Richardson, Texas home in 2020, Thomas has used a U.S. history curriculum from Woke Homeschooling, a platform created by Delina Pryce McPhaull, who struggled to find a history curriculum she liked when she first began homeschooling nearly 10 years ago. She found that most had a conservative bent, included religious teachings and leaned heavily on the perspectives of white people within U.S. history........

 

[Optimus Prime]

Good article
=============
Virginia lawmakers pledged to “protect” K-12 education from critical race theory (CRT), the new public enemy No 1.

Fortunately, the House of Delegates-passed bill appears to have died Thursday in the state Senate. But the issue is not likely to go away.
CRT opponents fear the theory has infiltrated public schools, creating divisive discussions.

Some argue the real fear is of historically accurate education that challenges current societal views. The CRT debate threatens the ability to teach critical thinking skills.

It does not matter what we believe, but a student’s ability to analyze facts is essential to the educational process. We cannot limit access to facts or hinder the critical thinking process. Period.


The commonwealth is no stranger to controversy surrounding education. The state of Virginia responded to the Brown v. Board of Education decision with the “massive resistance,” designed to maintain segregation in schools.

In Virginia, it took more than a decade to achieve desegregation and to remove the impact of slave-era state laws and public intimidation. The negative impact of separate but equal was maintained through state-endorsed efforts.


Waging war on CRT is waging war on critical thinking. The efforts are focused on preventing concepts that they claim will distract and, subsequently, diminish high academic standards.

Lawmakers claim to battle violations of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, thus preventing any curriculum that declares “one race, ethnicity, sex, or faith as being inherently superior” to another. Such allegations have come forward without any real evidence that CRT is taught in public schools.

In fact, our current curriculum overwhelmingly disregards the contributions of underrepresented communities. In a curriculum that ignores such contributions, why are lawmakers suddenly concerned about “inherently divisive” teachings, when the curriculum is already inaccurate?

The real problem arises with the regulation of relevant information, which, in turn, limits the critical thinking process……….

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/04/war-critical-race-theory-virginia-is-really-war-critical-thinking/

 

[Optimus Prime]

If you're saying the exact same things Jerry Falwell said in the 80s and are saying the exact same things that were said in the 60s about school desegregation maybe, just maybe you are on the wrong side of history
==============================================

A conservative leader found fault with how “respect for our nation’s heritage” had been mostly stripped from the textbooks of public schools.

“From kindergarten right through the total school system, it almost seems as if classroom textbooks are designed to negate what philosophies previously had been taught,” the conservative leader lamented. “[M]any textbooks are actually perverting the minds of literally millions of students.”

A teachers organization shot back, saying the underlying motive for some attacks against books has “unquestionably been racial.”

This might sound like a back-and-forth from recent debates over removing books from school classrooms and libraries. Often, critical race theory – an academic framework for understanding racism – has been at the center of these debates. But in reality, both quotes are more than 40 years old.

The first quote came from a 1981 book by the Rev. Jerry Falwell titled “Listen, America!” Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority, was one of the leaders of the book-banning efforts of the 1980s. It was during this period – with Ronald Reagan in the White House – that Christian fundamentalists became a growing influence in conservative American politics.

The second quote comes from a 1981 publication of the National Council of Teachers of English, “The Students’ Right to Read.” The council was one of the major groups opposing Falwell and other conservatives.

The attacks on books in the 1980s bear similarities to the current attacks. Both object to the critical teaching about race and racism, historical as well as contemporary. Both accuse schools of tearing down America and weakening patriotism. Both object to teaching about gender roles, sexual orientation and alternative models of the family. Conservative institutions like the Heritage Foundation have been involved in both periods.

There are also important differences between the two periods. The 1980s bogeyman was secular humanism, because it argued that human beings can define their own morality without the use of religion. Falwell and others claimed that public schools were anti-Christian because they taught students that they didn’t have to use the Bible as a standard for right and wrong. Chaos would result, the Christian fundamentalists asserted, if everyone had to determine their own morality.

In a way reminiscent of the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925, conservatives objected to the teaching of evolution as a fact, rather than a theory. Instead, they wanted biology textbooks to give equal space to the so-called scientific theory of creationism, which holds that God created the universe............

MSN

 

[Optimus Prime]

You should be willing to die to prevent Black history from being taught in schools
============================

Former President Donald Trump called on his supporters to "lay down their lives" to fight against critical race theory (CRT) during his rally in Florence, South Carolina, on Saturday night.

The former president rallied his base by criticizing Republican lawmakers who have opposed him, and doubled down on his hardline conservative positions including CRT, which is the study of institutional racism in the legal system. The subject has emerged as a hot button issue for conservatives who argue it is divisive and shouldn't be taught in schools. Others, however, say the concept is only taught in higher education.

During the rally, Trump invoked CRT as being a "matter of national survival," calling on his supporters to fight to keep it "out of our schools."

"We have no choice. The fate of any nation ultimately depends on the willingness of its citizens to lay down and they must do this—lay down their very lives to defend their country," he said. "If we allow the Marxists and commies and socialists to teach our children to hate America, there will be no one left to defend our flag or to protect our great country or its freedom."…..

Trump Says Supporters Should 'Lay Down Their Very Lives' to Fight CRT

The former president called standing up against critical race theory as a "matter of national survival."

www.newsweek.com

 

[MT15]

It’s dangerous and invokes violence against educators. If you would vote for this man for any public office you are a dangerous person who is anti-American.

 

[Optimus Prime]

I'll put this here
=============

San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors recently ushered in the Year of the Tiger by passing a resolution of apology to “all Chinese immigrants and their descendants who … were the victims of systemic and institutional racism, xenophobia, and discrimination.” The cities of Antioch, San Jose and Los Angeles had earlier issued their own formal apologies to Chinese Americans. And New Jersey recently joined Illinois as only the second state to require public schools to teach Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) history.

Many hope that these steps of apology and history education will help to combat the surge in anti-Asian hate. But as important as it is to teach the history of discrimination against people of Asian descent in America and how they have risen above it, it is also essential to teach the history of Asian American prejudice against others and the system of White supremacy that has enabled it. Presenting Asian Americans in all of their complexity as they have sought to negotiate the American racial order can help communities learn from past mistakes, counter model minority stereotypes and build solidarity.

Race in America has tended to operate hierarchically, with groups “ranked” based on their proximity to Whiteness. The stereotypes assigned to different groups effectively work as a divide-and-conquer strategy that can keep non-White groups apart as they contend for access and power. The model minority myth, for instance, places Asian Americans adjacent to Whiteness and has been used as a wedge to prevent interracial solidarities from forming.

But race in America can also operate in a binary that has religious roots in the division of the “heathen” vs. the Christian. The heathen category flattened racial hierarchies by grouping different people together as the “unsaved.” Some classified as heathens found solidarity with other so-called heathens against White Christian colonizers. But others sought to escape the category by claiming a higher position on a civilizational ladder, sometimes deploying racist tropes themselves in the process.............

MSN

 

[SystemShock]

So, how do we feel about the mock slave auction at J.S. Waters School in NC?

A mother says her son was sold in a mock slave auction. School district votes unanimously on action plan | CNN

A North Carolina school board voted unanimously Monday to approve an action plan after reported racial bullying in the district, including a student-organized mock auction of Black students.

edition.cnn.com

 

[MT15]

So, how do we feel about the mock slave auction at J.S. Waters School in NC?

A mother says her son was sold in a mock slave auction. School district votes unanimously on action plan | CNN

A North Carolina school board voted unanimously Monday to approve an action plan after reported racial bullying in the district, including a student-organized mock auction of Black students.

edition.cnn.com

This belongs in the racism thread, if I am reading that short article correctly. It doesn’t give a whole lot of context but it appears that black students were “sold” and that racial bullying was going on.

This would point out the need for diversity education, at least to me.

I found another article from a local ABC station - it apparently happened on the ball field during baseball practice. No mention of where any coaches were. There has already been retaliation by one of the white students against the team member who told his parents about it. Not a good situation at all.