Tyrant vows to block education
Here’s the tweet:
President Donald Trump is continuing to wage battle against interpretations of history which he claims are un-American.
So the true-American or yes-American interpretation is that slavery was a benign arrangement that worked out very well for everyone, especially the slaves? In other words an enormous lie? That’s affirm-American?
In a Sunday morning tweet, the President said the US Department of Education would investigate whether California schools are using the New York Times’ “1619 Project” in [the] public school curriculum. The Pulitzer-Prize winning collection reframes American history around the date of August 1619, when the first slave ship arrived on America’s shores.
The message came after the President on Friday night banned federal agencies from conducting racial sensitivity training related to “white privilege” and “critical race theory.”
This is the guy who noisily insisted that Obama wasn’t born in the US, the guy who paid for a full page ad in the New York Times demanding the death penalty for 5 Black teenagers for a crime they didn’t commit, the guy who was sued by the federal government for refusing to rent his apartments to Black people. This is the guy who has been using his bully pulpit to incite racism for nearly four years now. This is scum.
The 1619 Project was launched by the New York Times Magazine last year. After the launch, the Pulitzer Center was named an education partner for the project and announced its education team would develop educational resources and curricula for teachers to use. The 1619 Project curriculum is available online for free through the center.
What’s the problem? It tells the unpleasant truth about the history of this country. Trump wants to bury that truth…or more to the point, he wants to whip his fans into a frothing rage about the telling of that truth.
The President and Attorney General William Barr have said that they don’t believe systemic racism exists in the United States.
I’m sure they’d say the same about systemic sexism. Easy for them, isn’t it.
Even Nikole Hannah Jones has said that the 1619 Project isn’t even intended to be history.
So, teach it as literature, journalism, or rhetoric? Sure, you go right ahead! Teach it as history? Nope, hard pass.
It’s like with the Bible, really. Teach it as literature? Sure, have at it! Teach it as history or science? BZZ! Disqualified.
Well, the CNN piece doesn’t say the project will be contributing to history teaching – it doesn’t say what it will be used for at all, at least in the bits I quoted. the Pulitzer Center was named an education partner for the project and announced its education team would develop educational resources and curricula for teachers to use.
In any case, journalism can provide some raw material for history teaching. Journalism (real journalism) isn’t comparable to the bible because it does try to check its facts.