Nebraska update, site upgrade, and a new home for our posts on censorship and banning teaching about racism

Hey, it’s a positive update for once! In fact, there are a couple of them to share.

You’re seeing the most obvious one – our new site format. We haven’t updated the site since we created it… IN 2008, and while we value history and being old-school, we felt the time had come. We hope you like it.

We’ve also updated our Pages, most notably to include a one-stop shop for all of our continuing coverage of the anti-democratic attempts to censor K-12 and college education in this country by forbidding people to teach about racism or any other “problematic” features of our past and our present in America.

We hope you enjoy both of these upgrades, and that they help you locate the information you need more easily. Maybe we won’t wait another 13 years to make some changes on the old HP.

Meanwhile, we celebrate a positive update on Nebraska, the most recent state we posted about making attempts to ban instruction about racism and other “divisive” facts: the University of Nebraska Board of Regents voted against regent Jim Pillen’s resolution that critical race theory should not be “imposed” on academic curriculum or staff training.

It was close at 5-3, and undoubtedly another attempt will be made after those who did vote against it are worked over by the press and by lobbyists. Nebraska governor Pete Ricketts “strongly urged” the regents to support the resolution, so this battle is not over–both Ricketts and Pillen have “vowed to continue fighting on the issue”. Pillen plans to run for governor, a race that doesn’t seem to be starting in good faith:

Despite the vote, Pillen expressed optimism that Nebraskans have a better understanding of the issue now and that there will be accountability if critical race theory is imposed on students in the future. When asked, he did not provide any examples of such impositions in the past.

Pillen added that “critical race theory should not be forced on our students and staff as an unquestionable fact. They should be free to debate and dissent from critical race theory without fear of silencing, retribution, or being labeled. They should also be free to avoid the concept of critical race theory altogether without penalty, if that’s what they choose.”

This type of unbearable double-speak is so unbearably common now: people should be free to debate and criticize this theory freely, and also free to choose not to do so, and that’s why I want censorship to step in to take away that freedom to debate and freedom to choose.

This censorship as freedom, censorship as freedom of choice, is only gaining momentum.

But it’s a moment of triumph for Truth in its never-ending battle against Myth, and we have to celebrate it. Here’s what NU president Ted Carter said:

Speaking before the vote, NU President Ted Carter told the regents to hold him accountable if there are problems with critical race theory at the university in the future.
“If something actually is being imposed on our students and it’s wrong, we’ll fix it,” he said.
But Carter emphasized that critical race theory is not required for graduation, and he defended the integrity of the faculty and the ability of the students to deal with the subject appropriately.
“Our students are not children,” he said. “Our students are not at threat of having this discussion. They’re there to think for themselves.”

The Chronicle of Higher Education (no public website to link you to) makes the important note that students who are not white “spoke about the importance of discussing topics of race and racism in the classroom”. It’s maddening that the people who are most impacted by racism past and present are so rarely given the chance to speak to the people making the rules about what they can learn, and how free their speech is.

Stay with us in this new format and this new fight for real history and real democracy.

This time it’s Nebraska: another state to ban teaching about racism?

This time it’s Nebraska. On July 26, Governor Pete Ricketts tweeted (because Twitter is where state policy should be formed and debated) that

I strongly urge the Board of Regents to pass the resolution opposing the imposition of Critical Race Theory on students, so we keep academic freedom alive and well at the University of Nebraska.
Additionally, the University of Nebraska should consider it an honor to be listed on the AAUP’s censure list alongside notable conservative institutions, including Brigham Young University, Catholic University of America, and Hillsdale College.

The AAUP is the American Association of University Professors. Nebraska is only the latest state to join the movement to censor K12 and college instruction:

On March 18 we wrote about the Iowa state legislature working to incorporate the anti-justice language and intent of the Trump Executive Order 13950 of September 22, 2020 (Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping), which we spilled so much ink on late last year. The University of Iowa is being pressured by the state legislature to end diversity education for students and staff.
Then on March 23 we posted about the Idaho state legislature attempting to do the same. Then, just over a month later came the terrible update: they did. On April 29 the Idaho House approved legislation aimed at preventing public and charter schools and universities from teaching critical race theory, which examines the ways in which race and racism influence American politics, culture and the law.
On May 14, we posted about New Hampshire, whose House Bill HB544–“An Act relative to the propagation of divisive concepts”–is yet another move to make teaching Americans about racism illegal.
On June 7, we posted about Oklahoma and Kansas: Oklahoma Governor Keven Stitt signed legislation to ban critical race theory, and department chairs at Pittsburg State received an urgent email summons to “inquire” whether Critical Race Theory is being taught in any PSU classes. “The specific information would be 1. yes or no and 2. if yes which course(s). The response needs a short timeline as I need to have this information to the Dean’s office by the end of the day.”

We believe at this point Nebraska makes 17 states that have passed or are considering legislation to censor instruction. The irony of using censorship to protect freedom is so grating; how can this transparently illogical strategy be so successful every time?

The resolution Ricketts speaks of was introduced by U of Nebraska Regent Jim Pillen. It reads:

Whereas the campus and facilities of a university are places for open reflection, discussion, study, research, and learning and
Whereas America is the best country in the world and anyone can achieve the American Dream here and
Whereas education, free speech, and sound learning are the keys to freedom and opportunity in this country and
Whereas we oppose discrimination in any form and
Whereas Critical Race Theory does not promote inclusive and honest dialogue and education on campus and
Whereas Critical Race Theory proponents seek to silence opposing views and disparage important American ideals
Be it resolved that the Regents of the University of Nebraska oppose any imposition of Critical Race Theory in curriculum.

The vague language is so insulting. “Any” “imposition” of “Critical Race Theory”? What’s an “imposition”? Isn’t any syllabus with required reading on it “imposing” that content on students? The word “any” allows just that–a definition of “imposition” so broad it becomes at once meaningless and an effective total ban on anything that anyone decides is “critical race theory”.

The University of Nebraska has been simmering ever since 2018, when a white grad student teaching adjunct flipped off a white undergrad campaigning on campus for the neo-conservative Turning Point USA organization. The two got into an argument, the grad student gave the undergrad the finger, it was filmed, and all hell broke loose as neo-conservatives claimed it as yet another proof that white Americans are under constant threat and attack on college campuses.

The AAUP censured UNL for suspending Lawton from teaching, and that’s the censure list that governor Ricketts says the state should be proud to be on.

U of Nebraska system president Ted Carter and four campus chancellors have published a defense of academic freedom, which reads in part “Issues around race, equity and the fight against racism are an important part of our country’s story and they have an appropriate place in our classrooms,” which says it as well as we ever could.

Once a term like CRT becomes widespread, it’s pretty reasonable to assume most people using it don’t know what it really means. That’s the way neo-conservatives and white supremacists want it: vague enough to be scary, broad enough to include anything they don’t like.

To allow an individual to define, on his own, what CRT is and does, and therefore to ban it for all, is something we would expect in a dictatorship, like when Viktor Orbán re-writes the Hungarian constitution on his lunch break to confirm his own dictatorial powers.

Our response?

Whereas a crucial component of any claim that America is the best country in the world is an appreciation of the Founders, and
whereas the Founders welcomed and dedicated themselves to open debate, and
whereas the Founders wrote in great detail and great specificity about how they thought this country should be governed, and
whereas the Founders did not hide behind vague wording to hide their agenda, and
whereas the Founders didn’t write threats into our founding documents, and
whereas the Founders didn’t impose censorship to protect any individual agenda,
Be it resolved that all of these vague, threatening censorship laws are un-American, and destroy anything that was great about America.

What makes a country great is its dedication and commitment to facing its problems honestly, in order to slowly but surely resolve them. Find out what your state legislature and state education system are doing and speak out against any attempts to introduce censorship defined as patriotism.

Why did Americans fight in wars?

There are many correct answers to this question, from the noble to the mundane to the misguided. But we feel confident claiming that making it hard for Americans to vote was never a stated purpose for going to war in the United States.

Texas state representative Jack Enfinger does not agree. We’ll get to him in a moment. For now, the background. We were listening to a story on the radio about Texas Senate Bill 1, which is titled thusly:

An act relating to election integrity and security, including by
preventing fraud in the conduct of elections in this state;
increasing criminal penalties; creating criminal offenses;
providing civil penalties.

It is one of the many state bills that have been or are about to be passed to stop non-white people from voting in the name of correcting election fraud. It’s not a leap to make this statement, as the decisions of the Supreme Court has been openly stating since 2013 and its Shelby County decision that times have changed, non-white Americans no longer suffer from institutional discrimination, and there is no need to keep the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

We posted about this at the time – see The Supreme Court strikes down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Section 4 of the VRA sets out the criteria for determining when a state/local jurisdiction is violating fair elections and voting. As we said back then,

the Court was reviewing two things: whether racial minorities still face voting intimidation and restriction nearly 50 years after the 1965 Act; and whether it was unfair to keep singling out Southern states for closer inspection than other states. The answer to both these questions was “no”. The current system, says the majority opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts, is “based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relationship to the present day. Congress—if it is to divide the states—must identify those jurisdictions to be singled out on a basis that makes sense in light of current condition. It cannot simply rely on the past.”
That is, we can’t say that since Southern states prevented black citizens from voting during Reconstruction, in the 1870s, those states should still be identified as requiring federal oversight. The problem with this logic is that one does not have to go back to the 1870s to find voter repression in the Southern states singled out (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and Virginia). These states were preventing black people from voting in the 1920s, 1950s, 1970s, and today. The history of intimidation, arson, and murder used to prevent black Americans from voting in those states is unbroken from 1865 to 2013.
The proof of this claim is in the hundreds of proposed changes to state voting laws in the Southern states currently pending at the U.S. Department of Justice. It’s in the statements made yesterday by Republican leaders in those states that they will take “immediate action” to not only introduce new laws restricting voting rights, but to revive and pass old laws that were rejected by the Justice Department as infringing on the right to vote.
“After the high court announced its momentous ruling Tuesday, officials in Texas and Mississippi pledged to immediately implement laws requiring voters to show photo identification before getting a ballot,” reports the Houston Chronicle. “North Carolina Republicans promised they would quickly try to adopt a similar law. Florida now appears free to set its early voting hours however Gov. Rick Scott and the GOP Legislature please. And Georgia’s most populous county likely will use county commission districts that Republican state legislators drew over the objections of local Democrats. …Laughlin McDonald, who heads the American Civil Liberties Union’s voting rights office, said he agrees that pending submissions to the Justice Department are now moot. It’s less clear what happens to scores of laws that the feds have already denied since the 2006 reauthorization.”
The Southern Republicans in question say that the ruling is a validation of their states’ move away from racial discrimination, an acknowledgement that times have changed. In one way they are right: over the past 20 years, Southern politicians widened the scope of their ambition to attempt to prevent not just black Americans from voting, but the poor, elderly, and Latino as well—all groups they perceive as voting for Democratic party. They have moved away from purely racial discrimination to a much broader discrimination.
Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, said, “Voting discrimination still exists; no one doubts that. The question is whether the Act’s extraordinary measures, including its disparate treatment of the States, continue to satisfy constitutional requirements. As we put it a short time ago, ‘the Act imposes current burdens and must be justified by current needs.’”

There are many things to question here:

If, as the Court claims, voter discrimination still exists, but southern states are no longer the single source of that voter discrimination, then why didn’t the Court expand the VRA to include northern states, rather than kill the VRA?

If the states that wanted the VRA overturned have representatives publicly stating that they would immediately introduce laws that restricted voting, how can the Court state that overturning the VRA will not make voter discrimination worse?

If the VRA is outdated because it’s not current, then what just happened with the Court’s decision in Brnovich v Democratic National Committee?

We won’t go into all of the details of this decision here – you can find an objective, very detailed explanation here at BallotPedia. What we will focus on is the decision’s selection of 1982 as the standard for judging state voting laws: here’s a clear reference from the decision itself:

(B) The degree to which a voting rule departs from what was standard practice when §2 was amended in 1982 is a relevant consideration. The burdens associated with the rules in effect at that time are useful in gauging whether the burdens imposed by a challenged rule are sufficient to prevent voting from being equally “open” or furnishing an equal “opportunity” to vote in the sense meant by §2.

If the problem in 2013 was that an Act from 1965, and thus 48 years old, was too outdated to be relevant (a dubious claim), then how is 1982 okay in 2021? That was 38 years ago, and will only get older.

This discrepancy is just a token for the overall violation of voting rights that the Brnovich decision represents.

Now to circle back to our question about why Americans fought in wars. When we were listening to the radio, we heard many Texas residents saying their piece for and against the legislation. Then we heard state rep Jack Enfinger, of San Antonio, say this:

“This thing about voter suppression is a major false claim—a joke.”
Jack Enfinger, a San Antonio Republican, testified that Texas offers multiple ways to vote, including two weeks of early voting.
“How much more does Texas have to bend over backwards for… the voters? Voting is not supposed to be easy. That’s what our men died for.”

The disdain and incomprehension in Enfinger’s voice when he said “the voters” was remarkable. He makes it very clear that “voters” are a subspecies of American that somehow cannot be equated with “citizens.”

But it’s his claim that American men [sic] fought to prevent Americans from being able to vote easily is so alarming and cray that it takes your breath away. What can it mean? Because the bill in Texas makes it harder for non-white people to vote, the only possible answer seems to be that he’s saying white American men fought and died in foreign wars to make sure that only white American men could ever vote here at home. Americans fought and died in WWII to keep America white.

This is, by now, mainstream, often-heard white fascist content in America (we never thought we’d be saying this in our lifetimes). It hardly causes a stir anymore–since 2020, we’ve become used to fascism in the mainstream. This comment will win Enfinger more Republican support, and otherwise disappear.

But the Supreme Court is on his side, and that’s a problem that’s larger than Texas, and won’t go away. The Shelby decision and the Brnovich decision and the decisions that are coming soon don’t use Enfinger’s direct language, but they are of a piece, and they shore him up and support him.

We seem to end every post the same way lately – do what you can on your local level, vote, protest, get involved in local politics. The minority of people who are passionately devoted to destroying democracy in America are active every day in these ways. SIgn a petition, go to a speech by your representative or a candidate. America has a long tradition of making this relatively easy to do… for now.

Oklahoma and Kansas ban diversity education

…if it seems like the HP only rears its head when another state legislature or university initiates a crackdown on democracy, in the form of banning instructors from teaching American students that racism was, and is still, a real thing that we are all a part of, some of us benefiting from it even without trying to, others of us suffering from it, then… you’re right!

That is what we’re devoted to this year, ever since we began a series on examining the Biden Administration’s January 20, 2021 Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government, which you can find here on the official White House site.

We’ve always been about civics here, and the ever-lengthening roll call of states in the list below is an abject object lesson in how sometimes democracy is chipped away at bit by bit, and sometimes it falls in an avalanche. If you’ve ever seen a glacier bridge calving in-person or on YouTube–an unfortunately common sight as climate change rages on mostly unchecked–you’ll see that small bits fall off, then much larger pieces, then enormous shards, and then the whole structure falls.

We’ve been seeing small bits and larger pieces falling in our democracy for years, as dedicated efforts to shore up and protect white power began in this country in the 1970s, when the impact of legislation from the most recent Civil Rights Era (1950s and 60s) began to be felt. It only took a few small instances of non-white Americans benefiting from equal rights to send those white Americans who are racist into a rage, and the effort to undo all of that Civil Rights legislation began under Nixon, and his touting of the “silent majority” of Americans who were not on board with revolution, rioting, drugs, and all the other fearsome things he associated with Americans living up to our founding principle of liberty and justice for all. There was a break in the action under Ford and Carter, and then neo-conservative forces regrouped under Reagan, and the fight to keep the “real” America–white people–safe from welfare queens and drug dealers and everything else non-white began in earnest.

Now enormous shards are falling. The attempted racist coup on January 6 hit the water hard. But multiple shards are falling in individual states, where it should be so much easier for people to fight back, because it’s their local legislatures hacking away at democracy. This very learned helplessness is itself one of the tools that right-wing conservatives use constantly, telling Americans that their government is corrupt and dangerous at every level, and they should just a) elect a strong-man to go in and “drain the swamp” for them, then b) stay far away from their governmental institutions and let the strong men go to work unchecked and unquestioned.

Perhaps this seems like editorializing rather than history. People often make the mistake of conflating objectivity with neutrality. When we study the atrocities of human history, the failures, the wars, the greed and destructiveness that characterizes all eras, we have to do all we can to gather all the data available to us, so we know what really happened, and we’ve gotten enough information from all sides to understand how the actors in those events defined what they were doing and their reasons for taking action. We then draw conclusions from the evidence about whether those actions helped improve human life, or whether they contributed to making it more miserable, narrow, and hopeless. We are, after all, studying human beings, not electrons or tectonic plates. We’re studying human actions born of human intention. No one takes action without hoping that the action will have a lasting impact on their own life, lives immediately near to them, and, sometimes, on their society or even the world as a whole.

History describes, then assesses those intentions and impacts. The objectivity part is in the work of reading critically and gathering all available data, not just from a few actors, and not just the parts that confirm your theory, or the parts you agree with, or want to hear. The assessment is necessarily subjective, because “impacts” are felt and borne by human beings, objectively (people can’t vote) and subjectively (people feel inferior). Historical actors want to achieve both objective and subjective impact in order to make the change wrought by their actions more impactful, and long-lasting.

So when people attempting to pass, and succeeding in passing, legislation that forbids Americans to learn that racism against black citizens was and still is carried out by white citizens make very clear, plain, unashamed statements about their desire to protect white people from ever feeling implicated in racism at all costs, including the cost of censorship, silencing of black people, and continued racism, we gather that data. It’s in all of these sources:

On March 18 we wrote about the Iowa state legislature working to incorporate the anti-justice language and intent of the Trump Executive Order 13950 of September 22, 2020 (Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping), which we spilled so much ink on late last year. The University of Iowa is being pressured by the state legislature to end diversity education for students and staff.

Then on March 23 we posted about the Idaho state legislature attempting to do the same. Then, just over a month later came the terrible update: they did. On April 29 the Idaho House approved legislation aimed at preventing public and charter schools and universities from teaching critical race theory, which examines the ways in which race and racism influence American politics, culture and the law.

On May 14, we posted about New Hampshire, whose House Bill HB544–“An Act relative to the propagation of divisive concepts”–is yet another move to make teaching Americans about racism illegal.

And then we analyze those statements and draw our conclusions from facts. And the conclusions are, necessarily, objective descriptions of attempts to subjugate black Americans, which can only provoke a subjective response, whether that’s positive, because you want black Americans to be subjugated, or negative, because you don’t.

We don’t. So we will add to our list this week, and feel the alarm of adding not one but two states to that shameful roll call:

Oklahoma: Governor Keven Stitt signed legislation to ban critical race theory from being taught in schools. “The bill prohibits public schools and universities from teaching that “one race or sex is inherently superior to another,” and that “an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive.” Proponents say it also bans the teaching of critical race theory, which examines systemic racism and how race influences American politics, legal systems and society. The Oklahoma GOP called on Stitt, a Republican, to sign the bill to “ensure that children are not indoctrinated by dangerous leftist ideologies.” The University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University have announced their student diversity trainings can no longer remain mandatory under the new law, and the first course has been “paused” – a euphemism for “shut down forever.”

Kansas: On June 2d department chairs at Pittsburg State received an urgent email: “Good evening. I have received an email this evening from Dr. Pomatto inquiring for the Provosts office if Critical Race Theory is being taught in any PSU classes. The specific information would be 1. yes or no and 2. if yes which course(s). The response needs a short timeline as I need to have this information to the Dean’s office by the end of the day. Please reach out to the faculty within your programs and have them, or you, get back to me ASAP by the end of the day tomorrow.” Why this information was needed so urgently is unclear, but given our growing list, it seems that someone at Pittsburg State is anticipating inquiries from the Kansas state legislature.

In each of these cases, there is pushback, but it’s very weak. The Oklahoma City Board of Education has protested the new law, but that will not do much to overturn it. And some faculty at Pittsburg State are angrily commenting on Twitter, which is equally impotent. Unless Americans can shake off the political paralysis they are rewarded for, existing laws will not be overturned, and more will come.

Perhaps you will say these new laws must represent the wishes of the majority, and so must be honored as truly American, and consonant with what America is all about and meant to be all about. In reply, we steer you firmly to the original of our “tyranny of the majority” posts: Court decisions are not democracy? It focuses on the judiciary, not the legislature, so after you read that, go to one of our many “tyranny of the majority” series posts that covers state legislation banning gay marriage being overturned by state judiciaries–try Gay marriage in Alaska v. Tyranny of the majority.

We’ll be back with more; that seems clear.

Jen Psaki on the proposals to penalize teaching the history of racism

You know the drill: another week, another installment in our unhappy, once short, now long series on examining the Biden Administration’s January 20, 2021 Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government, which you can find here on the official White House site.

On March 18 we wrote about the Iowa state legislature working to incorporate the anti-justice language and intent of the Trump Executive Order 13950 of September 22, 2020 (Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping), which we spilled so much ink on late last year. The University of Iowa is being pressured by the state legislature to end diversity education for students and staff.

Then on March 23 we posted about the Idaho state legislature attempting to do the same. Then, just over a month later came the terrible update: they did. On April 29 the Idaho House approved legislation aimed at preventing public and charter schools and universities from teaching critical race theory, which examines the ways in which race and racism influence American politics, culture and the law.

On May 14, we posted about New Hampshire, whose House Bill HB544–“An Act relative to the propagation of divisive concepts”–is yet another move to make teaching Americans about racism illegal.

The surprise? We don’t have a new state to report on this week. And we’re not going to bend your ear forever about this attack on democracy.

Instead, a very short video of Jen Psaki, press secretary for the Biden Administration, dealing with it more concisely and definitively than we ever could. If the link doesn’t work, go to YouTube and type in “Psaki on Proposal to Penalize Teaching History of Racism.”

Enjoy hearing from someone else this week who is as devoted to Truth v. Myth as we are!

New Hampshire bill would ban diversity training

These grim updates have become part of the routine here at the HP–yet another state is pushing a bill through its legislature to stop the monstrous threat to democracy that is… democracy.

If you’re wondering why we will once again give you links to all the previous posts on this topic in this post, it’s to show the growing number of dominos falling over a very short time.

So here we go: this thread began with our short series examining the Biden Administration’s January 20, 2021 Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government, which you can find here on the official White House site.

And now? New Hampshire, whose House Bill HB544–“An Act relative to the propagation of divisive concepts”–is yet another move to make teaching Americans about racism illegal. As the Chronicle of Higher Education describes it, HB544

…would ban teaching or training students to “adopt or believe” a list of “divisive concepts,” including that the state or the nation is fundamentally racist or sexist. One of the bill’s sponsors, Rep. Keith Ammon, a Republican, told fellow lawmakers in February that it is meant to take on “critical race theory.” He likened diversity and inclusion trainers to “snake-oil salesmen.” They propose a cure to disease, he said, but the cure is “making it worse.”
Ammon’s reasoning is emblematic. Republican lawmakers across the country have declared war on an academic concept, and — according to scholars of the theory — reduced a dynamic school of thought to a poorly drawn caricature. They’ve introduced similar bills in at least a dozen states meant to curb what they see as the pernicious influence of critical race theory in public institutions.
Republican lawmakers have long been frustrated with higher ed’s liberal tilt and its supposed quashing of conservative viewpoints.
Now, they’re taking a new tack: Instead of resolutions and bills to protect the speech of visitors on the campus quad, the recent wave of legislation often steps into the classroom to restrict what can be taught. It’s part of a larger battle playing out in state houses, schools, and the media between dueling versions of American history. Over the past few months, lawmakers like Ammon have wielded references to the decades-old theory as they argue with their colleagues about whether racism persists and if it exists at all outside of the hearts and minds of individuals.

We’ve said so much about this in the posts linked above. Teaching people that racism exists, now, today, not just safely in the past where it’s no one’s fault today (sort of–white people still benefit from that past racism), is not, in itself, racism. It’s not a lie. Only a party that has removed its own members from seats of power for refusing to support the lie that the 2020 election was fraudulent–that Biden’s win was a lie–would dare to say that teaching Americans about racism should be made illegal because it’s just not (or is no longer) true.

This isn’t about belief. This is now about law. Teachers in the states that pass these laws will be criminally liable if they teach about racism in an accurate way. They could potentially face jail time. It would be illegal to teach our history.

This is just another version of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which we describe here:

We learn about the FSA when we learn about the Compromise of 1850, of which it was a part. To pacify proslavery forces who were angry that California was allowed to enter the Union as a free state, the Compromise allowed slaveholding and trading to continue in Washington, DC, and upheld the “rights” of slaveholders to their “property”—enslaved people—throughout the Union.
This meant that if you lived in, say, Wisconsin, and had voted to pass personal liberty laws in your state outlawing slavery, those laws were overturned. Slavery would be upheld in “free” states, because slaveholders were allowed to enter free states and reclaim escaped people, and even pick up black citizens who had never been enslaved—the word of the slaveholder was accepted over the word of the black citizen and even the white citizens of the state. Whites were forced by the law to help slave-catchers, they were fined and jailed for failing to do so, or for helping an escapee, and whites were forced to live with the rescinding of the personal liberty laws they had voted for on a state level. Thus, slavery was basically enforced in every state of the Union, and outrage over this was expressed by many Northerners who had previously been publicly neutral about slavery.
If the Fugitive Slave Act was all about enslaved blacks, asked Northerners, why was it fining, jailing, and threatening free whites? Why did it seem to focus just as much on attacking the liberties of northern white citizens as it did on preventing black Americans from gaining their liberty? It was just another example of the slave power perverting democracy and threatening free government.

Americans who want to teach our actual history are now coerced and threatened with jail time into teaching a fake history that is about validating white Americans, locating all racism in those whites who enslaved black Americans and created institutional racism after slavery was ended (i.e., white Americans in the past) and thus relegating racism to the past. In this way, they are forced to support racism.

The problem with this that we haven’t yet addressed in our many posts is that American history is already usually taught so badly, leaving out so much of the reality of slavery and racism in our nation, that laws like this are almost unnecessary. Here’s an article that lays this out quite well, from the New Hampshire Business Review. But these laws ensure that our history teaching and textbooks will get worse and worse, thus allowing racism today and in the future to flourish in a medium of complete denial of the fact that racism has been a primary cause of a great deal of legislation, settlement and housing patterns, industrial growth, wealth creation, and other “race-neutral” economic and socio-political actions that are taught in American history courses.

Teaching all of these without mentioning racism will create a history of America that is so cartoonish it will effectively kill American history. Which is, we believe, the goal.

We do believe as well that not all Americans will accept this, and that the possibility of fighting it is real. But to have a bloody war created for us over race, once again, once again… it’s infuriating and the harm it causes from the level of the individual soul to the fate of the planet is breathtaking.

If you live in a state considering such legislation, take action. If your state has not yet introduced such legislation, investigate to make sure no one is planning to. If you’re a teacher, support your colleagues who stand against this legislation. As the NHBR article says, to be better than this we have to be brave.

Idaho bans diversity training, or, Trump is not gone

Here we are once again, forced to return to our short series examining the Biden Administration’s January 20, 2021 Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government, which you can find here on the official White House site.

Then on March 23 we posted about the Idaho state legislature attempting to do the same. Now, less than 2 months later, comes the terrible update: they did.

The Idaho House on Thursday approved legislation aimed at preventing public and charter schools and universities from teaching critical race theory, which examines the ways in which race and racism influence American politics, culture and the law.
…The measure, which passed with a 57-12 vote and no Democratic support, would prevent educators from making students “affirm, adopt or adhere to” belief systems claiming individuals of any race, sex, ethnicity, religion or national origin are responsible for past actions done by members of the same group. It also would prohibit teachers from forcing students onto belief systems that claim a group of people as defined by sex, race, ethnicity or religion are inferior or superior to another.
Republican Idaho lawmakers are concerned federal authorities could force belief systems on Idaho students through school curricula — calling the ideas often found in critical race theory “contrary to the unity of the nation and the well-being” of the state.
Backers said the bill is an anti-discrimination measure intended to spell out expectations for Idaho schools and universities following an executive order by President Joe Biden issued in January titled Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities.

–We’ve written a lot already, in the posts linked above, about this abuse of language that calls a law designed to prevent people from talking about and acknowledging racism an “anti-discrimination” law. By locating racism or other prejudice safely and firmly in the past (people today are not “responsible for past actions done by members of [their] group”), the law makes discrimination against non-white Americans seem dead, a relic of the past, and something people today would only bring up in order to hurt innocent Americans, make the U.S. “seem” racist, and destroy the nation.

To say that addressing our problems is “contrary to the unity of the nation and the well-being of the state” is openly weird. The “well-being of the state”? This sounds more like language from the Soviet Union, Animal Farm, or some Unabomber-type manifesto than language from a U.S. legislature.

The nation’s well-being springs from… actually being well. The U.S. is strong when we live up to the principle of liberty and justice for all. The U.S. is weak, and in danger, when we don’t. Dictating that the health of the nation is something floating in the ether that exists separately from our daily lives on the ground, what we do and say, how we treat everyone in our nation, the laws we pass and the people we elect, is contrary to the well-being of our state.

This quote from one Idaho lawmaker is frighteningly transparent about the real goals of this bill and its supporters:

Republican Rep. Lance Clow, chairman of the House Education Committee, supported the measure. …“I’m sure,” he continued, “minorities were feeling compelled to take certain beliefs and certain directions that now, on the flip side of that, you know, this white Anglo Saxon Christian feels like, well, maybe the tables have turned, and maybe we should have recognized there were problems in the past, and maybe we didn’t.”

…hearing this white man say he’s “sure” about what “minorities” have gone through, their being forced to “take” “certain” beliefs and “directions” is already bad. When he goes on to say that the “flip side” of this is “white Anglo Saxon Christians” “turning the tables” on other people–we presume “minorities”–it gets a lot worse.

Stay with us here, because the “logic” of the last part of his sentence is tortured: if we recognize that racism and other prejudice against non-“Anglo Saxon Christians” happened in the past, and we realize that was wrong, then we don’t want to make the mistake of allowing the prejudice that is taking place against “Anglo Saxon Christians” right now in the present go on any longer, lest we fail to learn from our past experience.

Anglo Saxon?? It’s astonishing and infuriating to see constant reminders that white supremacy has taken deep root in every part of our nation. What will these white supremacists do when, relatively soon, demographic trends will result in an America where white people are the “minorities”? We need only to look as far as the racial oligarchy in South Africa under apartheid for an answer.

As recently as 30 years ago, people who tried to bring up “reverse racism”–the allegedly widespread racism against white people that was robbing them of opportunity–would be laughed out of the room. Times have changed, and that 30-year timing is relevant, as it was the Reagan administration in the 1980s that began the drastic backlash against civil rights that resulted in, among other things, the growth of the religious political right and anti-democratic hate masquerading as protecting “real” Americans and the “real” America–with “real”, of course, meaning “white”. It used to be that people had to say “real” as a code for “white” because they would get in trouble if they paraded their racism. Again, times have changed, to the point where this legislator can openly refer to “Anglo Saxons”.

The 2020 Census data is being parsed right now, and it is, as predicted, being used to re-apportion and shift political representation in Congress. It’s no secret that these anti-American, racist bills are being written and passed by Republican-majority legislatures. There’s a long road ahead of every American who believes in democracy to fight and overturn these laws, before standing up for democracy is “controversial”:

Democratic Rep. Steve Berch said the legislation would have the opposite effect. “What this bill winds up doing in practical terms is intimidation,” he said. “This bill, not necessarily intended, but for sure there are people who will use this bill to intimidate teachers, school administrators, school clerks to make sure they don’t do anything that might in any way be considered controversial.”

Trump is not gone – silence = death

We’re back once again, unable to move on from our short series examining the Biden Administration’s January 20, 2021 Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government, which you can find here on the official White House site.

On March 18–just 5 days ago–we wrote about the Iowa state legislature working to incorporate the anti-justice language and intent of the Trump Executive Order 13950 of September 22, 2020 (Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping), which we spilled so much ink on late last year. The University of Iowa is being pressured by the state legislature to end diversity education for students and staff.

Now, we find the same effort being taken up by the Idaho state legislature. Coincidentally, the Chronicle of Higher Education article from which this quote is taken was published on March 18:

Boise State University officials say their suspension of diversity classes this week was motivated only by reports of an unspecified incident, but the action comes amid a pointed attack by Republican state lawmakers on the university’s efforts to educate students about racism.
The university on Tuesday abruptly suspended 52 sections of a diversity and ethics course, citing concerns that “a student or students” were made to feel “humiliated and degraded” in class “for their beliefs and values.” No official report has been filed, and officials said they have only heard about the incidents second- and third-hand, but the university is investigating.

The Idaho State Senate made its decision-making process very explicit:

The course suspensions at Boise State came the same week that the Idaho State Senate passed a higher-education budget that cut $409,000 from Boise State’s appropriation — the amount the university said it spent on social-justice programs — and shifted the money to Lewis-Clark State College, the Idaho Statesman reported on Wednesday. Some Republican lawmakers had wanted to cut much more in order to send a clear signal to the university that they were against its efforts to educate students about racism and social justice.

…it’s hard to imagine an American legislator publicly saying “I am against educating students about racism and social justice” and still considering themselves a) a good American and b) supported by our founding principles.

“We don’t want funds expended for courses, programs, services, or trainings that confer support for extremist ideologies, such as those tied to social justice, racism, Marxism, socialism or communism,” Rep. Priscilla Giddings said earlier this month, according to Boise State Public Radio. In 2019, 28 House Republicans signed a letter to Marlene Tromp, who was then the new president of Boise State, urging her not to support initiatives intended to promote diversity at Boise State, Idaho Ed News reported.

It’s almost impossible to parse this ridiculous statement, which says that social justice is an ideology, and that social justice and racism are the same thing. Social justice and racism do represent opposite extremes of humanity, from good to evil, but that is their only connection. To place social justice (a good thing) in a list with racism (a bad thing), and then Marxism, socialism, and communism (as practiced so far by humans, bad things), is a bold statement of hatred. We hope that since she feels this way, Rep. Giddings does not say the Pledge of Allegiance, which ends, of course, by pledging allegiance to a nation that stands for “liberty and justice for all”.

Apparently, the Republicans in the state legislator took the opp presented by a single student saying they felt uncomfortable in the Boise State diversity and equity course to shut everything down.

One might wonder why the feelings of a student quoted in the article as having enjoyed the course did not carry equal weight. But one already knows.

Trump is “gone”, not gone. Take a look at your own state’s legislation and see what they may be doing. Check the institutions of higher ed that you care about. The time to act is now, while there’s still some room to breathe.

Wondering what “silence = death” means? Check out Neutrality isn’t Justice, silence = death

Neutrality isn’t justice, silence = death

Just when we thought we were done with our short series examining the Biden Administration’s January 20, 2021 Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government, which you can find here on the official White House site, we get pulled back in.

Attempts to deny equality of opportunity by acknowledging racism do not die when an Order is rescinded. One proof is that the Iowa state legislature is working to incorporate the anti-justice language and intent of the Trump Executive Order 13950 of September 22, 2020 (Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping), which we spilled so much ink on late last year. Here’s a report from Inside Higher Ed:

With very similar language to the Trump order, the Iowa bills prohibit race and sex “stereotyping” and “divisive concepts” in diversity training. Such ideas are that one race or sex is “inherently superior” to another, that the state of Iowa is “fundamentally” racist or sexist, and that a person, by virtue of race or sex, is “inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”
Other prohibited concepts: that a person, based on race or sex, “bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex,” and that anyone should feel “discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” for similar reasons. Meritocracy and “traits such as a hard work ethic” cannot be described as racist or sexist under the bill.
The bills apply to public colleges’ and universities’ staff or student training, led by employees or contractors. Institutions may continue training that fosters a “respectful” workplace or learning environment for all.

You can revisit our series on the Trump order, where we explain how this language bars people from acknowledging racism by saying that doing so is racist–that calling out white racism against black people is, itself, racist because it identifies white people as “fundamentally” racist. It also firmly locates all white racism “in the past”, safely removing white people today from any association with it.

One quote in particular from the story on Iowa sticks with us:

Representative Sandy Salmon, a Republican, argued that there still “needs to be a paragraph in there about requiring a public institution of higher education to attempt to remain neutral on current public policy controversies.”

Neutrality. We understand the disequilibrium our nation is going through as it attempts its boldest reckoning with racism since the 1950s and 60s. We know how painful it is to everyone to disturb the equilibrium of an entire nation, to call a halt to business as usual, including all the coping mechanisms people have relied on for centuries to deal with and survive racism and sexism. That coping state is identified as neutrality, and it can seem like neutrality, a grey area between violence and safety, but it isn’t neutral. It’s charged with fear and hate. It’s the medium in which cells of injustice grow and multiply.

So there is nothing noble or helpful about calling for neutrality on “controversies” that are tearing our nation apart, and that we are finally stopping all the machinery to address and redress. It doesn’t “calm things down”. It only perpetuates the medium for injustice by refusing to call it out and destroy it.

First they force universities to go along, then K-12 schools, then businesses, then everything else. Neutrality isn’t justice, in Iowa or anywhere else. All of us have to stick with the exhaustingly difficulty work of derailing what is corrupt in our society and nation, and then, when all injustice is indeed safely “in the past,” we can figure out how to keep it that way.

There was a slogan back in the 90s amongst gay Americans fighting the unwillingness of the U.S. government–and most of society–to do anything to stop the AIDS epidemic.

Silence=Death was a quick, efficient way to get the message across that not talking about AIDS, or “gays”, was a way to guarantee that the death rate just kept rising. Gay Americans who had adopted the coping mechanism of silence about their sexuality, concealing it in some way, to some extent, in order to survive had to be mobilized for public protest, public political action. It was not easy. But momentum grew with the death rate, and heroic gay Americans put their lives on the line to stand up and demand equal medical treatment and attention. It was dangerous, it was hard, it put all of American society into disequilibrium as “mainstream” America was forced to acknowledge gay people as human beings with equal rights (and as people–regular people who had jobs and pets and went on vacation and hated broccoli, etc.).

Neutrality in that situation was not the answer. It’s never the answer when justice is at stake. We all need to revive this slogan for today. Find a new shape to replace the pink triangle that represented homosexuality and get those t-shirts and buttons out there on every American who knows that “neutrality and silence for all” is not our national slogan.

Truth v. Myth: Biden Order on equity needs our help

It’s part the last of our short series examining the Biden Administration’s January 20, 2021 Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government, which you can find here on the official White House site. We left off in part 2 looking at the end of Section 4 and its directions for identifying methods to assess equity.

Sec. 5 Conducting an Equity Assessment in Federal Agencies tasks the head of each agency, or someone they deputize, to consult with OMB to carry out a review of their agency that identifies:

(a) Potential barriers that underserved communities and individuals may face to enrollment in and access to benefits and services in Federal programs;
(b) Potential barriers that underserved communities and individuals may face in taking advantage of agency procurement and contracting opportunities;
(c) Whether new policies, regulations, or guidance documents may be necessary to advance equity in agency actions and programs; and
(d) The operational status and level of institutional resources available to offices or divisions within the agency that are responsible for advancing civil rights or whose mandates specifically include serving underrepresented or disadvantaged communities.

–What we like about these four categories of inquiry is that they incorporate correction to the very Order they’re part of. A and B address the potential–and likely–problem that benefits may exist but the people who need them will be presented with constant obstacles when they try to access them. C accepts that the existing policies and guidance may prove to be incomplete in advancing equity, and new ones will be needed. D accepts that agencies may likely need more resources–money and people–to carry out the Order. This is not a set-it-and-forget-it situation in which passing an Order solves all problems. It’s not a magic wand, and it needs to be the beginning of a large collaborative effort. That means there will be changes and it will be expensive and there will have to be real enforcement. All of this should inspire people to do this good work, rather than turn them off, because it’s a healthy and helpful acknowledgement of the real world in which change takes place.

Section 9 – Establishing an Equitable Data Working Group – is a call to gather more data on our population, as “Many Federal datasets are not disaggregated by race, ethnicity, gender, disability, income, veteran status, or other key demographic variables. This lack of data has cascading effects and impedes efforts to measure and advance equity. A first step to promoting equity in Government action is to gather the data necessary to inform that effort.” The Working Group is established, and will go about the difficult business of gathering data from people who have every right to feel threatened by federal requests for their personal information and scared to provide it lest they be fired, deported, or harassed. This small section is very important, and calls for the most thoughtful work.

Thankfully, Section 10 – Revocation – revokes the Trump Executive Order 13950 of September 22, 2020 (Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping), which we spilled so much ink on late last year.

This is a good start, and we welcome it. But we fear for it, too, as America continues to go through ever more violent pendulum swings right to left with every presidential election. The specter of the EO on equity that the next Republican president might sign is menacing. The next four years must be spent moving the nation back to its established central base, where it is assumed the the United States is meant to provide liberty and justice to all. That founding principle was openly and explicitly rejected by the Trump administration, and too many Americans resonated with that trashing. Let’s let this Order be a step toward getting back where we belong. Do your part by asking what’s being done at your workplace to provide the data we need to broadcast the fact that “hardworking American” is not code for “white”, and to pull back at that pendulum before it swings away from us.