Author: suem

The right-wing campaign to suppress what children are taught about racism and limit efforts to promote diversity in our public schools was, of course, a topic of discussion last weekend at the Conservative Political Action Committee’s (CPAC) gathering in Dallas, an event where truth was an optional agenda item.

Seeking to fan the flames of fear and ignorance among some parents, Carroll ISD board member Hannah Smith addressed a CPAC session about the Texas campaign to whitewash history, which already has produced one law restricting teachers and also is on Gov. Greg Abbott’s special session agenda.

Smith, whose opposition to a diversity effort in Carroll ISD propelled her successful campaign for the school board, told her audience to “imagine the trauma that we’re inflicting on our school-age kids when we teach them that just because you’re born white means that you are inherently a racist.”

That is not what Texas teachers are teaching their students. Texas teachers are teaching their students that racism was a part of Texas and American history and is an issue that continues to plague our society today. The victims of racism were and are the trauma victims, not the white children who may be learning about racism and what it really means for the first time in school.

Children need to know about all of our history, the dark side as well as the positive. That is what public education is supposed to be about. By knowing the truth about racism, maybe the next generation will do a better job addressing it than previous generations have.

Carroll ISD is in Southlake, a suburban city in Tarrant County. Sixty-three percent of the district’s students are white, well above the 27 percent of white students in public schools statewide. Only 9.8 percent of Carroll’s students are Hispanic and 2 percent Black, although Hispanic and Black students combined comprise a majority of statewide public school enrollment.

But the demographics are changing in Carroll, and some students have complained of being bullied because of their race, religion or sexual orientation. With the help of students, parents and other members of the community, the district had begun putting together a plan to address the growing diversity.

According to The Dallas Morning News, it called for the district to hire a director of equity and inclusion, require cultural competency training and establish a grievance system through which students could report discrimination. The plan, which opponents called a “left-wing agenda,” was the overwhelming issue in last spring’s school board elections and was put on indefinite hold after Smith and a second new member were elected.

Smith and her supporters scored a political victory for ignorance and denial, and Carroll ISD students were the losers.

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2021/07/12/texas-trustees-at-cpac-encourage-parents-to-take-back-your-school-boards/

Clay Robison

Critical race theory is not the reason the legislative majority enacted HB3979, the new anti-education law, despite what Gov. Greg Abbott and the law’s other supporters claim. The law’s real purpose is broader and more sinister.

Critical race theory is an intellectual belief, which has been around for a long time, holding that the law and legal institutions in this country are inherently racist in the sense that they function to maintain social, economic and political inequalities between white people and people of color, particularly Black Americans. People who subscribe to this theory say it explains why racial inequalities still exist long after civil rights laws and court rulings outlawed discrimination.

Critical race theory is not a political agenda, and it is not taught in Texas public schools.

HB3979, however, is the product of a national, right-wing political agenda, and its real purpose is to intimidate teachers into whitewashing the racism that has plagued our nation’s history and downplaying the results of racism today. These results include, but are not limited to, inequities in funding our public schools and the abuse by police of many Americans, often with fatal consequences, for the alleged “crime” of being Black. These realities make many people, including our governor, uncomfortable, but they must be addressed, not ignored.

This effort to whitewash history became a priority of then-President Donald Trump after The New York Times published its “1619 Project,” which shined a strong light on the role that slavery played in the founding of our country and slavery’s lasting impact on the systemic racism that was to lead, a few months later, to the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, under the knee of a white police officer.

Floyd’s death precipitated angry protests throughout the country by the Black Lives Matter movement and Americans of all colors. The vast majority of demonstrators were peaceful. But a few opportunists resorted to violence, and Trump, seeking reelection, focused on them as he pushed back, portraying himself as the “law and order” candidate and ignoring the tragedy of racism.

Trump attacked The New York Times slavery project and started talking up the creation of a “1776 Commission” to counter what he falsely claimed were efforts to divide Americans on race and teach children to “hate their own country.” And he – one of the most divisive presidents in American history — started using critical race theory, which I doubt he even understands, as a partisan lightning rod.

In a final campaign gesture to the ignorance and prejudices among his core supporters, Trump issued an executive order on the day before Election Day, creating the “1776 Commission” to promote “patriotic education” and counter historical accounts that he said had “vilified” the nation’s founders, many of whom were slave-owners.

President Biden promptly abolished the commission after taking office, but the idea lives on in many Republican-leaning states, where allegiance to – or fear of — Trump remains strong. In Texas, it has taken the form of HB3979 and HB2497, another new law that Abbott recently signed to create the “Texas 1836 Project.” This second law creates a nine-member committee charged with increasing awareness of the state’s history, including its independence from Mexico in 1836, and promote what the governor and Trump call “patriotic education.”

The panel will be responsible for helping state agencies ensure that the 1836 message is provided to visitors to state parks, museums, battlefields and other landmarks. The law’s language tracks language in Trump’s now-defunct order for the “1776 Commission” to ensure that a “patriotic education” would be offered to the public.

It is not clear that the 1836 message of independence that Abbott wants conveyed will include the fact that the preservation of slavery was one of the reasons the Texas colonists revolted against Mexico, which prohibited the practice.

So far, it doesn’t look as if HB2497 will directly affect Texas’ public schools, but HB3979 will.

By whitewashing history, limiting classroom discussions about current events and discouraging student participation in political activities, HB3979 will impede the development of the critical learning skills so important for a young person’s future success. And it threatens to leave the next generation of Texans poorly informed about the reasons for the racial inequities that still plague their state and country and poorly prepared to address them.

Gov. Abbott says he wants the Legislature to continue to address critical race theory in a special session he intends to call later this year. That probably means he has ideas for making the new law even worse. The only remaining thing the Legislature should do with this law is repeal it.

Clay Robison

I hope it was only a coincidence that Gov. Greg Abbott chose June 7, the day after the 77th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, to sign a law creating the “1836 project” to promote what he calls “patriotic education.”

More than 2,500 real American patriots, including many Texans, died on the beaches at Normandy on D-Day to help liberate Europe and eventually end World War II. Abbott’s new 1836 project has nothing to do with patriotism or education. It is merely another dose of Texas chauvinism that will do nothing to improve the lives of the governor’s constituents.

The new law, HB2497, creates a nine-person committee that will be charged with increasing awareness of the state’s history, including its independence from Mexico (hence the 1836 modifier), and advising the governor on how the “core principles” of Texas’ founding “enrich the lives of its residents.”

The panel also will be responsible for helping state agencies ensure that the 1836 message is provided to visitors to state parks, museums, battlefields and other landmarks. So far, this new endeavor isn’t expected to directly affect public schools, which already are required to teach Texas history at specific grade levels. The school curriculum includes the revolution as well as the exploration, exploitation and settlement period before 1836.

But the Texas Education Agency will be required to provide funding and support for the new program, including for pamphlets to be distributed to new Texans getting drivers licenses, pamphlets that soon will be tossed into the nearest trash cans.

It has been estimated the new law will cost nearly $2.3 million over the next two years, tax money to brag about Texas. Tax money that would be better spent on real educational costs in public schools or finding health care for some of the millions of low-income Texans who don’t have Medicaid and can’t afford to see a doctor.

Compounding the political crime is the fact that the same governor who signed this law will soon sign another law, HB3979, which is designed to whitewash the teaching of history in the public schools. It will discourage instruction and discussion about our history of racism and slavery, which was one of the reasons the Texas colonists brought the 1836 revolution against Mexico, which prohibited the practice.

There is nothing patriotic about denying, deemphasizing or ignoring historic truths, even if the governor and many other Texans find them uncomfortable today.

And, of course, there is nothing patriotic about trying to enact laws to impede the ability of millions of Texans, including people of color, to cast ballots for the political candidates of their choice. This is a raw attempt to cling to political power.

Yet, this is what the governor, the lieutenant governor and the speaker of the House – the three officials who will appoint the members of the new 1836 committee – spent much of the recent legislative session trying to do. Having failed the first time, Gov. Abbott will add the voter suppression bill to the agenda of a special legislative session later this year, even though a free and open voting system is at the very heart of true patriotism. It is what countless American patriots have died for over the years.

There are people who practice real patriotism. The D-Day invaders come to mind. And there are people who practice lip-service patriotism, like the governor is doing now.

Clay Robison

Public health and safety, education and the protection of democracy are three of the basic responsibilities of our system of state and local government. But the governor, the lieutenant governor and their allies in the Legislature are tossing those responsibilities out the window.

Barring an unforeseen change in direction in the next few days, this legislative session will end up as the most insensitive, reckless and undemocratic session in many years.

Public health and safety? After lawmakers have gone home, Texas will remain the state with the highest number (more than 5 million) and highest percentage (almost one-fifth) of residents without health insurance because the governor and legislative leaders are sticking to their misguided and short-sighted refusal to expand Medicaid coverage for the poorest Texans, including thousands of school children.

Gov. Greg Abbott’s actions forcing schools to open prematurely in the middle of a deadly pandemic, ignoring the pleas of school employees for vaccine priority until President Biden ordered it and banning mask mandates were insensitive. His endorsement of a proposed law to allow almost any nincompoop to carry around a loaded gun without benefit of basic firearms safety training is tragic. Barring a miracle, that proposal will pass.

Public education? The state finally started releasing $11.2 billion in federal pandemic relief funds to school districts, but only after educators were unified in demanding it. Another almost-$7 billion is available, but the federal government hasn’t released it yet, partly because the Legislature has refused to add another $1.2 billion to the higher education budget, which the federal government requires and our universities need. Instead, the state is seeking a waiver to avoid that expenditure. And there is no assurance that state leaders, if Texas gets the additional $7 billion, won’t try to divert it from public education, despite what Congress intended.

Meanwhile, legislation to make it easier for corporate charter chains, many based outside Texas, to siphon millions of additional tax dollars from under-funded public schools has been advancing in the statehouse.

Democracy? Legislation, approved in separate bills by the House and the Senate, to discourage teachers from teaching about racial injustices, past and present, and discourage the discussion of current events and political activity by students is both a denial of history and an effort to curb democratic participation. It is a disservice to all school children and a slap in the face for the children of color, who make up a majority of students in Texas public schools.

It also is a blatant attempt to discredit the people of color who are making their voices heard and seeking redress for a number of legitimate, festering grievances that should have been addressed years ago. These include unequal economic opportunities, stemming from a history of systemic racism, and the unnecessary and tragic use of deadly force by police against unarmed Black people.

Politicians used to praise local control and the virtues of the governments closest to the people. But the politicians now in charge at the state Capitol are continuing their campaign to curb the independence of elected officials – and the voters who elected them – in cities and counties that have enacted programs and policies that the powers in Austin oppose. This is another assault on democracy.

But the worst assault is legislation, pushed by Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and the legislative majority, to make it more difficult for many Texans to vote. They are claiming a need to strengthen election “integrity,” when, in truth, there have been very few documented cases of voter fraud in Texas. And Texas already has some of the most restrictive voting laws in the country.

The bill, instead, is intended to appease those voters who believe or want to believe Donald Trump’s dangerous lie that the recent presidential election was “stolen.” It also is intended to make it more difficult for people who oppose the dangerous and shortsighted policies discussed above to vote.

That’s not election integrity. That’s an attack on democracy.

Clay Robison