Republicans in the Texas House passed a bill Tuesday that effectively bans public school teachers from talking about racism, white supremacy or current news events.
Source: Texas GOP Passes Bill To Stop Teachers From Talking About Racism | HuffPost
Texas is awash in bills aimed at fending off critical examinations of the state’s past.
Source: Texas Eyes Laws to Limit Teaching Slavery in Classrooms – The New York Times
“A flurry of proposed measures that could soon become law…try to reframe Texas history lessons and play down references to slavery and anti-Mexican discrimination that are part of the state’s founding.”
— Clint Smith (@ClintSmithIII) May 21, 2021
Obscuring history is the same as lying about it.https://t.co/ewSBu1K6OA
There is a state sanctioned effort to prevent students from understanding that the contemporary landscape of inequality didn’t just emerge out of nowhere, but is the direct result of a history that created it. https://t.co/ewSBu1K6OA pic.twitter.com/Qr7XC2FGNT
— Clint Smith (@ClintSmithIII) May 21, 2021
These people are so desperate to uphold a white supremacist mythology about this country that they are literally introducing bills that would, in essence, compel teachers to straight up lie about how racism shaped our current society. https://t.co/ewSBu1K6OA pic.twitter.com/ZF2hBc4rz6
— Clint Smith (@ClintSmithIII) May 21, 2021
The Republican Party habitually inverts American history and the moral universe while quelling speech about actual American history. I grew up in Texas public education. We learned the Southern Strategy, the Confederate Catechism, the Lost Cause, and the Traditional Segregationist Discourse. We were taught a pile of racist, revisionist nonsense. I still recall a 7th grade history teacher yelling at us for saying the Civil War was about slavery, drilling “states’ rights” into us instead. Texas schools teach such white supremacist mythology to this day.
Critical Race Theory, a bogeyman and straw man for White evangelicals and the GOP, is rooted in Traditional Civil Rights Discourse. Both are necessary parts of K-12 curriculum. “The Front Porch” has a great series on CRT framed for White Christians that I wish my toxic Christian representatives would read in good faith.
- The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 1: A Survey of the “Traditional Civil Rights Discourse” : The Front Porch “Traditional Civil Rights discourse predates and dispels allegations of cultural Marxism.”
- The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 2: The Segregationist Discourse and Civil Rights Retrenchment : The Front Porch “To tell the story of the rise of critical race theory historically, we have to consider the segregationist and anti-Civil Rights context that spawned it.”
- The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 3: A Bridge: Dr. Derrick Bell : The Front Porch “Bell’s work signaled a return to the more “radical” elements of W.E.B. Du Bois, Oliver C. Cox, Stokely Carmichael, and even Dr. King.”
- The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 4: Alan Freeman and the Contribution of CLS : The Front Porch “Laws reflect dominant social morality and power distribution. That’s why our laws are more likely to legitimize racism and racist systems than remedy them.”
But there is not a drop of good faith in my Republican representatives, nor in groups like the College Republicans, who direct the conservative outrage machine against institutions who haven’t hardened against it, resulting in the firing of journalists, teachers, and professors.
https://twitter.com/Lollardfish/status/1389544292687958023
My statement on my termination from The Associated Press. pic.twitter.com/kf4NCkDJXx
— emily wilder (@vv1lder) May 22, 2021
If you belong to, report on, or teach about a marginalized group, you’re an “activist” who will be harassed and hounded out of work.
Every trans journalist who reports on trans issues gets labeled an activist by newsroom managers. https://t.co/mJBxBPMBgQ
— Katelyn Burns (@transscribe) May 21, 2021
Like not even in the past. Just the act of reporting on your own community gets you labeled an activist.
— Katelyn Burns (@transscribe) May 21, 2021
A survey by AAUP of professors who were subject of articles in Campus Reform in 2020 found that 40 percent were subsequently threatened with harm, including death. Black professors were “disproportionately targeted” by the site https://t.co/MSvPwMbIV5 Story by @ColleenFlahert1
— Scott Jaschik (@ScottJaschik) May 4, 2021
Institutions must harden against Republican bad faith and protect us as we tell the truth and lay bare the mythology.
While there are politicians attempting to prevent teachers from telling the truth about this country, one thing I’m certain of is that there are so many teachers out there who will redouble their efforts to help their students understand this history & we’ll all be better for it.
— Clint Smith (@ClintSmithIII) May 22, 2021
It's crazy that editors are still falling for these bad-faith campaigns from right wing media https://t.co/FQ6nvo0ABJ
— Will Sommer (@willsommer) May 20, 2021
https://twitter.com/Lollardfish/status/1353343306986643456
https://twitter.com/prof_gabriele/status/1353342764377919489
media outlets need actual, written out policies on how they will handle it when an employee becomes a target of a media dogpile. those should be public. and they should ideally be enforced by union contracts.
— Noah Berlatsky (@nberlat) January 24, 2021
https://twitter.com/Lollardfish/status/1276503549778841601
https://twitter.com/Lollardfish/status/1271052428071374848
https://twitter.com/AsheeshKSi/status/1388829693240123396
https://twitter.com/susieneilson/status/1396172161472110593
https://twitter.com/Lollardfish/status/1302638275610451970
Previously,
- The Segregationist Discourse
- The Long Southern Strategy and the Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity
- White Resentment: The Grand Bargain of White Supremacy
- The Breathtaking Bigotry of Unreconstructed America
- Spiritual Warfare and the Politics of Paranoia and Providentialism
- “Those Burning Crosses Are Symbols of Evangelicalism”
- Trinity of Toxic Nonsense: White Supremacy, Misogyny, and Purity Culture
- I Cannot, and Will Not, Believe in That God: Libraries as Candles in the Dark
- Purity Culture, the False Gender Binary, and Abuse at Heritage Christian School
- Empty the Pews of Toxic Christianity
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