Whoa! Don’t Wanna Teach No Controversial Issues
Time to think about burning witches again in small-minded America.
Classrooms, as all right-thinking Republicanite Boards of Education know (or should know) they exist to turn out responsible, un-critical time sensitive and efficient workers, who are not likely to ever have heard a discouraging word. In those unquestioning halls-of-learning, the skies are not cloudy all day.
Okay class, the topic is Critical Race Theory
Theories are worth teaching since we have (for the most part) given up burning witches in favor of passing laws to keep truths out of the hands of our children. Truths, like knives and minds, need sharpening from time to time. Yet any responsible parent knows that sharp instruments must be kept away from children.
I’m not sure how gravity, the world being spherical or Einstein’s theory of relativity slipped past local school boards, but critical race theory is clearly a bridge too far. At this writing, five states have passed laws keeping it safely away from young minds and another seventeen have legislation underway but not yet signed. Apparently 44% of America is scared shitless of teaching what everyone has known (if they cared to look) since the birth of the nation.
America, born and bred racist
Don’t get me wrong, I love my country and think she has the stuff to regain her reputation as the home of the free and the brave. But we won’t accomplish that by ignoring how we came to be who we are today.
First of all, despite all the John Wayne movies, we committed a genocide upon our native inhabitants. It wasn’t enough to miss-name them as Indians, we put smallpox in the blankets we handed out, introduced liquor into their culture and broke every single one of the 370 lawful treaties we signed with them. We forcibly moved them to the worst lands and when oil or other valuable resources were found there, moved them again. I have written about this before, then again and yet once more. This was celebrated as America’s manifest destiny. Few of us know what that actually means, nor did I until I looked it up. It’s defined as “a policy of imperialism rationalized as inevitable (as if granted by God).” That's never the way I understood my country.
Our Constitution actually specified ‘white men’ as being allowed to vote if (and only if) they were literate and owned land. Women didn’t get the vote until 1910. Slave ownership was rewarded by allowing masters to count each slave as three-fifths-a-man and then vote personally on his behalf. The Civil War freed the slaves, but that was not its intent. It was intended to prevent the breakup of the Union.
Lynching of blacks was prevalent until the 1930s and 3,446 African Americans were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968. Picture post-cards were popular, illustrating the bodies hanging from trees. By the end of Reconstruction in 1877, with fraud, intimidation and violence at the polls, White Democrats regained nearly total control of the state legislatures across the South. They passed laws to make voter registration more complicated, reducing Black voters on the rolls.
If that sounds familiar, check the news reports today in Republican-held state legislatures.
But of course all this is only theory, even though proven by evidence
And any reasonable and proper white parent would shield his children from such disturbing evidence. And it is disturbing. Yet we know the earth to be a sphere that circles the sun and are no worse for knowing it. We know that gravity keeps us attached to the earth and do not question why those on the underside fail to fall off or feel the blood rush to their head. This knowledge—taught today in our schools—makes us no more intellectually or socially impoverished.
But intent seems to be the Republicanist sticking-point
It certainly was not their intent after the Civil War to lynch or withhold blacks from the polls, any more than it is today in their race to legislate. Bless their hearts, they are trying to keep elections safe and free of fraud for all voters.
You may not call me a racist, because it is not my intent to be a racist. You may not teach my child about a genocide against native Americans, the evils of slavery or the continued racism against people of color, because it was not their intent to commit genocide, enslave black Africans or disenfranchise people of color.
“I’m sorry, your honor, but you may not find me guilty of a fatal hit-and-run incident. Not denying it was my car and I was at the wheel at the time, it was not my intent to run down that woman, kill her and flee the scene.”
I guess the lesson is that not all unintended consequences are unintended.
Now there is a theory fit to teach and test in all Republicanist classrooms
Get hold of the Boards of Education ASAP and work in a truly bipartisan effort to bring Unintended Consequence Theory into the American classroom. It’s already part of our Pentagon and Diplomatic Service, but I’m not sure we really understood its power ourselves. Perhaps the rest of the world misunderstood what we were up to.
We need to get our American Brand all over it--and quickly.
When one plan turns into a disaster, it’s never too late to change theories. It nearly always beats taking responsibility
Image Credit: axios.com