What happens in Florida doesn’t stay in Florida:
Bill limiting DEI initiatives at Kentucky colleges amended to include free speech training
This is the same shit that has been going in Florida under fascist Governor Ron DeSantis. And the Kentucky Republican supermajority in the legislature has embraced attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. And it’s racing through the Kentucky Senate.
FRANKFORT — After an hour and a half of discussion, a bill limiting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in colleges and universities moved forward in the Kentucky legislature.
Senate Bill 6, which prohibits higher education institutions from requiring students and faculty to "describe the attitude or actions in support of or in opposition to specific ideologies or beliefs" in order to receive admission, employment, promotions or graduation passed out of the House Education Committee on Thursday afternoon.
Sen. Mike Wilson, R-Bowling Green, said at the committee meeting that the bill is to counter a trend he has seen with higher education institutions denying employment or promotion to professors and faculty who don't endorse "divisive concepts."
So “conservative” professors and instructors can openly complain that POC or women or whoever else they cannot stand do not deserve any positions at said universities and colleges.
While I know this isn’t really news to most on Daily Kos, I thought I would show you the “thinking” and “attitudes” of one of the champions of ending DEI at public universities in Kentucky. I give you the sponsor of House Bill 470: Jennifer Decker, R-Waddy. She recently attended a NAACP meeting to discuss her bill, and this is what she had to say:
“My father was a slave, just to a white man and he was white,” Decker said before the predominantly Black audience.
This was back in 1933.
She went on to discuss how DEI is just a plan to encourage more black enrollment or words to that effect. As Joseph Gerth points out in that column, DEI programs also help women and disabled students who can qualify for scholarships. But Decker was entirely focused on the issue of race. And how her white dad was a slave to another white man.
And what did that white slavery entail?
“Well, my father was born into poverty. There was a very influential man who allowed them property and then they worked on it,” she said. She added that they weren’t paid by the farmer…
Gerth stated this sounded like tenant farming. But Gerth asks, “Why didn’t her father get paid?” Turns out her father was a child working with the rest of the family on that plot of land. And this is what Gerth had to write up in response to that shocking revelation:
So, Decker’s father was forced by his parents to do chores? And that was what made him a “slave?”
I suppose any of us who washed dishes, cut grass or took out the garbage were "slaves" according to Decker's definition.
By the way, Decker is not some uneducated redneck. Deckers a lawyer, so she had to have at least been through college and law school. But Decker obviously learned NOTHING about racism, except from the people she grew up around.
I’d have included more of his insane interview with Decker, and if you can, please feel free to read it. Decker is dismissive of slavery and racism (she uses the word “irrelevant” about comparing her father’s experience to slavery), but including all of it would have violated fair use.