Lately, we appear to have crossed a new Rubicon. I do remember how things were in the ’60s and in the ’70s and lately, here in the 2020’s, it seems to be the worst it may have ever been since those times. Now, yet again, we have states implementing racial bigotry into our election systems. It seems that the ugly head of open blatant racism and bigotry has lifted and is now present in the middle of our schools and in the middle of our lives in an entirely new and dangerous way.
Exhibit A: Black children at a Minnesota School are being regularly assaulted and terrorized.
According to the report, one Duluth Edison Charter Schools teacher allegedly cut off a student's dreadlock and threw it in the trash. The suit, originally filed in April 2019, alleges a "culture of racism at the school's Raleigh and North Star Academy campuses and school officials' refusal to address it," according to NBC News.
"There's been a lot of frustrated families in the Duluth Edison community," said Rebekah Bailey, an attorney representing the parents. "The families in this case, all they really ever wanted is for their children to be treated fairly at school. They fought long and hard to remedy their individual situations as best they could through the system. This case was only filed when they exhausted those opportunities."
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"The lawsuit said that white students bit, punched, kicked, pinched and spit on Black students and repeatedly called them the N-word. The white classmates also taunted them, calling them 'negro' or 'monkey' and telling them they 'look like what's inside a toilet,'" NBC News reports. "In 2017, a white student at North Star Academy threatened to stab a Black kindergartner in the eye with a screwdriver because she looked 'different,' the lawsuit said. White students allegedly pinched and kicked the girl, who is biracial, on several occasions. And, during one bus ride to school, an older white student punched the girl so hard, she had a bruise on her rib, the suit states."
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According to the lawsuit, one Black student "was spit on so profusely by a white student that she had to change her clothes."
Things like this don’t happen in a vacuum. They don’t happen in isolation. This is part of a larger anti-black anti-immigrant movement fueled by resentment and white panic. And it’s getting worse.
Exhibit B: An example where a Georgia School threatened students who wanted to stage a protest against the Confederate Flag:
Local news station CBS 46 reports that many students at the school were upset last week when a group of white students came to school brandishing the Confederate flag while hurling racial slurs.
However, the school quickly jumped in to clamp down on a potential protest against the flag and suspended the students who organized it.
A recording obtained by CBS 46 reveals a high school administrator announced that the protest would not be allowed over the intercom system last week.
"The administration is aware of tomorrow's planned protest," the administrator said. "Police will be present here at school and if students insist on encouraging this kind of activity they will be disciplined for encouraging unrest."
Please note they didn’t call the police when white students protested with the Traitor Flag — but then did threaten to do so when black students planned to protest against it. This would be a Confederate Flag similar to the one that was displayed on the truck of the man chased down and shot Ahmaud Arbery to death for the crime of “jogging” in his neighborhood.
You also have Exhibit C: A black student in Missouri was punished for reporting that another student used the N-word against her.
Officials at a school district in Missouri were the targets of a protest after a student claimed she was suspended by the Raytown South Middle School school for reporting a racial slur.
"It is the same school district where students reported a teacher used a racial slur in class the day before," Fox 4 Kansas City reports. "In the latest incident to surface, an eighth grade girl said a boy who's not a person of color referred to another student as an N-word in a chat."
The girl's father says she reported it to a teacher, who told her to report it to the administration.
"But the girl's parents say after feeling she was brushed off, she shared the racist comments on social media that night. She underlined the slur and added question marks and 'smh"=', meaning shaking my head. Monday when students returned to school there was reportedly a fight between the boys in the post," the station reported.
The parents say the district blamed her daughter for "stirring things up" by commenting on the racial slur, writes Fox 4 Kansas City.
This is what we’re dealing with.
Let me also take a moment to bluntly address this entire kerfuffle with Jon Gruden as Exhibit D.
This guy sent dozens, possibly hundreds, of bigoted racist, sexist, anti-gay emails for seven years while working for ESPN to someone at the Exec Office of the Washington (Insert Team). It's not surprising that someone at the Washington Team would be a racist shithead, but it didn't just go to him - it went out to an entire network of people. And then -- AND THEN -- as he quits his NFL job he claims "he's not a racist" and he "didn't mean to hurt anybody?"
What the actual fuck is this shit?
First off, how and on what planet is someone who uses a gay slur against the head of the league, and a racist slur against the head of the players union - somehow not a racist homophobe asshole? What is he claiming he didn't mean it? Is he claiming it was a "joke?" How is that funny? Is he claiming he meant it "ironically?" Dude, if you quack like a racist, you're a fucking racist. There is no third option, you do not pass "Go" and get out of jail free.
Secondly, he claims he "didn't want to hurt anyone." What he really means is that he didn't want anyone he was talking about to ever read or see what had to say about them. Character assassination done in the dark is still character assassination when the light turns on. This is the biggest bullshit ever right here. Didn't anyone else as ESPN ever see these emails? How many other people in the NFL saw them? And they kept this shit a secret for SEVEN YEARS? What other toxic shit is circulating on this mailing list? How many other people does it reach?
This guy figures he quit his job with the Raiders, he quietly goes away, whimpers and grovels for a few weeks or a few months and he gets a pass. He'll get to come back and it will be "Hail fellow, Well Met."
Fuck that. I'm not for cancel culture but this dude has some serious explaining to do first, and he should be shunned until he fucking explains what the hell was he thinking and why didn't he think anyone would spill the beans? Who else knew and what bullshit did they post on this email list? All of these fuckers need to be outed.
Rant over.
No less a friend of all things sleazy than Donald Trump Jr. was among the first to rush to Gruden's defense with this dose of whataboutism on Twitter:
"Let's see the emails & texts of Goodell & every NFL owner/exec. We must find out if they've ever said anything wrong, shared a controversial thought, or held an opinion that wasn't PC. No statute of limitations. We can't allow them to hide behind their white privilege."
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That's all that was necessary for martyrdom from the MAGA right, where a drumbeat of support for Gruden can already be heard. Here are some examples:
Greg Kelly of Newsmax slammed his CAPS LOCK Trump-style with this full-throated support of Gruden: "I SUPPORT THAT COACH FROM LAS VEGAS. HIS NAME IS JON GRUDEN. HE DIDN'T MEAN TO HURT ANYONE !!! LIGHTEN UP AMERICA!!!"
That was a sequel to Kelly's earlier commentary; "IT'S ALL CANCEL CULTURE BULLSH*T. JON GRUDEN JUST GOT TOTALLY SCREWED OVER. AND EVERYONE KNOWS IT."
Right-wing commentator Matt Walsh weighed in with some more whataboutism with this: "I hope Jon Gruden has learned a valuable lesson. If you want to have a job in the NFL, stick to beating your wife, raping massage therapists, and assaulting pregnant women."
And this: "He was not an NFL employee. He was talking to friends on his private email account. There has been no indication or even claim that he has acted inappropriately in his job as a coach. So in what way do the emails have any effect on anything?"
Commentator Clay Travis observed "Every rapper the NFL has performing at the Super Bowl has more offensive lyrics than Jon Gruden had in his emails. How does the NFL reconcile the difference in treatment? These are questions all sports media would be asking if they were real journalists."
The right-wing just can't find a racist and bigot that they won’t embrace and protect. They supported Donald Sterling, they supported Paula Deen, and oh look didn’t David Duke run for office as a Republican?
Also, all of them claimed they weren't racists either, just like Gruden.
But then again, most of this isn’t new. It’s been brewing and stirring even since Barack Obama ran for high office.
Now we’re seeing this in the violent outbreaks at school board meetings across the country. There have loud angry demonstrations about mask and vaccine mandates but also about this hoax that “critical race theory” is allegedly being taught in our grade schools, although it clearly is not.
The threats and violence have prompted Attorney General Merrick Garland out of his general slumber to write a memo directing the FBI to pay attention and protect the public servants who work at school boards from violence, this, in turn, has totally outraged the right-wing causing former Trump Administration pet racist Steven Miller to write the DOJ Inspector General in outraged response.
Former Trump senior advisor Stephen Miller's legal group is demanding the U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General launch an investigation into Attorney General Merrick Garland's memo that directs the FBI to discuss threats against school board officials.
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After months of coaching and training of "grassroots" activists by right wing groups, including parents across the country, the nation has witnessed countless threats against school board officials and education professionals by parents whose anger is falsely ginned up by Fox news and other right wing media claims over critical race theory, masks, and vaccines.
Miller sees it differently, claiming his group is "demanding an investigation into AG Garland's memo unleashing federal law enforcement against parents fighting racism/CRT. Letter includes shocking info on origins of the memo."’
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Meanwhile, in addition to threats, school board officials have been subjected to verbal and even physical abuse – including death threats.
As NCRM has previously reported, school board members and educators in at least nine states this year have been targeted with threats, death threats, and often racist death threats, including in Virginia, Arizona, Connecticut, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Vermont, according to local news reports.
According to Miller, who was one of the architects of Donald Trump's child separation policy, parents engaging in these threats should not be subjected to legal investigation, but protection.
People fighting against “Critical Race theory in our schools” are not battling racism, they are fighting a deliberately manufactured right-wing hoax — and in the process implementing white-fright and retrenched racism.
As Rufo eventually came to see it, conservatives engaged in the culture war had been fighting against the same progressive racial ideology since late in the Obama years, without ever being able to describe it effectively. “We’ve needed new language for these issues,” Rufo told me, when I first wrote to him, late in May. “ ‘Political correctness’ is a dated term and, more importantly, doesn’t apply anymore. It’s not that elites are enforcing a set of manners and cultural limits, they’re seeking to reengineer the foundation of human psychology and social institutions through the new politics of race, It’s much more invasive than mere ‘correctness,’ which is a mechanism of social control, but not the heart of what’s happening. The other frames are wrong, too: ‘cancel culture’ is a vacuous term and doesn’t translate into a political program; ‘woke’ is a good epithet, but it’s too broad, too terminal, too easily brushed aside. ‘Critical race theory’ is the perfect villain,” Rufo wrote.
He thought that the phrase was a better description of what conservatives were opposing, but it also seemed like a promising political weapon. “Its connotations are all negative to most middle-class Americans, including racial minorities, who see the world as ‘creative’ rather than ‘critical,’ ‘individual’ rather than ‘racial,’ ‘practical’ rather than ‘theoretical.’ Strung together, the phrase ‘critical race theory’ connotes hostile, academic, divisive, race-obsessed, poisonous, elitist, anti-American.” Most perfect of all, Rufo continued, critical race theory is not “an externally applied pejorative.” Instead, “it’s the label the critical race theorists chose themselves.”
Last summer, Rufo published several more pieces for City Journal, and, on September 2nd, he appeared on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” Rufo had prepared a three-minute monologue, to be uploaded to a teleprompter at a Seattle studio, and he had practiced carefully enough that when a teleprompter wasn’t available he still remembered what to say. On air, set against the deep-blue background of Fox News, he told Carlson, “It’s absolutely astonishing how critical race theory”—he said those three words slowly, for emphasis—“has pervaded every aspect of the federal government.” Carlson’s face retracted into a familiar pinched squint while Rufo recounted several of his articles. Then he said what he’d come to say: “Conservatives need to wake up. This is an existential threat to the United States. And the bureaucracy, even under Trump, is being weaponized against core American values. And I’d like to make it explicit: The President and the White House—it’s within their authority to immediately issue an executive order to abolish critical-race-theory training from the federal government. And I call on the President to immediately issue this executive order—to stamp out this destructive, divisive, pseudoscientific ideology.”
Rufo constructed the concept of “Critical Race Theory" as a conservative boogeyman largely from researching the source material used in mandated anti-racism training seminars for Federal employees and contractors. It's debatable whether those seminars are truly useful or effective, but it was from this basis that he made the argument that such efforts were intended to cause white guilt and self-hatred. None of this is taught in grade school, but for what its worth some teachers and school administrators have received similar training. It was after his appearance on Carlson that Rufo received a call from Trump himself, so If you have any doubt where all of this is coming from — doubt no more.
“This tyranny is the kind you see in third world dictatorships — if it doesn’t stop, we’re not gonna have a country left.”
This propaganda has led to scenes like this:
And for balance, like this:
People, we are in total upside-down land here. Although Critical Race Theory is not being taught in our schools, there have been some efforts at anti-racism added to some curriculums. Some efforts to include books about Rosa Parks, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. the Sesame Street Special on Racism, the history of Jim Crow and Slavery have been viciously attacked. They’ve been called “Anti-White.” Parents have been saying that they don’t want their white children to “Hate themselves.”
Today’s schools don’t teach about the Tuskegee experiment. They don’t teach about the Tuskegee Airmen. They don’t teach about the Tulsa Massacre and the firebombing of Black Wall Street. They don’t teach about the Internment of Japanese Americans. They don’t teach about the Trail of Tears. There are a lot of holes in our education system, and these people are completely, totally opposed to closing those holes.
Frankly, I took “History of the Americas” in college which focused mostly on South and Central America and that was a God DAMN Horror show of genocide and religious indoctrination. The Conquistadors were no freaking joke, man. In fairness, they had already implemented the Crusades and the Inquisition against their own people — so why expect better with American natives? But are we walking around with a big stigma against the Spaniards, even though they and the Dutch were instrumental in the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade? Nope. Spain is lovely this time of year. One of my best and oldest friends is Dutch.
As shown in North Carolina recently, they are completely determined to project a sanitized, white-washed, watered-down version of American history.
Teachers could be punished for teaching about systemic racism or "undermining" foundational American documents — like the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights — according to a revised code of conduct document decided on by the Johnston County Board of Education Friday.
The Johnston County Board of Commissioners said over the summer that they would not approve the school board's funding until it would "adopt policies that eliminate the possibility of divisive teaching topics." Until then, the commissioners hung the funding over the board of educations' head.
"No student or staff member shall be subjected to the notion that racism is a permanent component of American life," the revised code of conduct says. "No unequal value shall be placed on any race, gender, religion, ethnicity, social class, or any other identity group."
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In a section labeled Balance & Fairness, the code of ethics requires that teachers make sure "all people who contributed to American Society will be recognized and presented as reformists, innovators and heroes to our culture."
The code of ethics focuses on history teachings and American excellence. It doesn't allow any room for criticism of America's founding fathers, even though studies show nearly 55 million Native Americans were killed after Europeans arrived to the Americas in 1492.
All people who contributed to American society — are heroes to our culture?
Even Nathan Bedford Forest and the KKK? Even those who lynched 4000 Americans for either being black or being an ally to those who were black?
I don't want to be “divisive” but that was a thing. So was the Civil War. So was Slavery, so was Jim Crow, so was Red-Lining, so was and is the ongoing disparity in treatment by the criminal justice system, lending institutions and — obviously — discipline as it is applied racially in our schools.
These people want to teach the Declaration of Independence with its “All Men are Created Equal” — without teaching that when those words were written, they weren’t even addressing “ALL MEN” in the first place. They certainly weren’t addressing women, who didn’t get the right to vote until 1920 when the 19th Amendment was ratified. They certainly weren’t addressing Native Americans who were ultimately murdered by the millions, and they weren’t addressing African-Americans who were enslaved by the millions. They didn’t even mean all white men, only those who were wealthy property owners.
The truth is that was a slogan. That was advertising. It was a political document intended to rally people to the cause of the Revolution, it wasn’t a governing document, it wasn’t the actual rules that our society was initially built upon. As they say: Politics is poetry, but policy is prose.
In the prose, in the U.S. Constitution: slavery was enshrined and protected. And it wasn’t just the infamous 3/5ths clause — the real knife cut was the Fugitive Slave Clause which essentially required the free states to do the dirty work for the slave states.
Clause 3. No person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.
If you were an escaped slave, this clause stated that you would not be safe even if you were within a non-slave state. That state itself was required to hunt you down and return you to bondage.
Now, it should be pointed out that many Northern Free states refused to implement this constitutional requirement leading to much consternation by the South and ultimately to the Fugitive Slave Acts where this responsibility was transferred to U.S. Marshals.
The Fugitive Slave Acts were a pair of federal laws that allowed for the capture and return of runaway enslaved people within the territory of the United States. Enacted by Congress in 1793, the first Fugitive Slave Act authorized local governments to seize and return escapees to their owners and imposed penalties on anyone who aided in their flight. Widespread resistance to the 1793 law led to the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which added more provisions regarding runaways and levied even harsher punishments for interfering in their capture. The Fugitive Slave Acts were among the most controversial laws of the early 19th century.
The implementation of these acts led to many free blacks being falsely identified as "slaves” and kidnapped into enslavement, such as Solomon Northup whose story was the inspiration for the book and movie 12 Years a Slave. It also played a major factor in the Dred Scott case. This is why the Underground Railroad had to reach all the way to Canada, there was nowhere in America where an escaped slave would be safe.
Ultimately the battle over implementation of this law was one of the major factors that led the Southern Slave states to Secession and the Civil War, arguing that the Northern Free states had “broken the compact" of the Constitution by refusing to return escaped slaves. This was made clear in the Articles of Secession from Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas.
Mississippi
It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion.
It tramples the original equality of the South under foot.
It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.
It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.
It has enlisted its press, its pulpit and its schools against us, until the whole popular mind of the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice.
South Carolina.
The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution.
Texas
The States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa, by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article [the fugitive slave clause] of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact, designed by its framers to perpetuate the amity between the members of the confederacy and to secure the rights of the slave-holding States in their domestic institutions-- a provision founded in justice and wisdom, and without the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish the object of its creation. Some of those States have imposed high fines and degrading penalties upon any of their citizens or officers who may carry out in good faith that provision of the compact, or the federal laws enacted in accordance therewith.
This is part of American history and it should be taught. Not only were there Slavery and Slave states but there were Free States too. The Free States resisted and fought back against the Slave States for decades before the ultimate outbreak of the Civil War. There were Slavers, but there was also Abolitionist. Many people on both sides of that argument, on both sides of the Civil War, were White. Lincoln was white. John Brown was white. There were people who implemented Jim Crow, but there were also those who fought — and sometimes died — for Civil Rights, from Brown V Board to Emmet Till, Medger Evers, the Birmingham Bombings, the Bus Boycotts with Rosa Parks, those who were beaten crossing the Edmond Pettis Bridge to the Freedom Riders.
There is no good reason for any white person or white child today to feel they are responsible for the actions of Slavers any more than the actions of Abolitionist. They shouldn’t feel they are “Evil” because Jim Crow existed. It did, but it's not YOUR fault. Those people existed in a different time, they faced different conditions and challenges. Some of them made wrong choices. If we teach our full history, there should be no need to tell white children that they aren’t “inherently evil” because of course, they aren’t. They’re responsible for what they do, not what someone else did.
We face challenges today. We face choices. Are we going to bury our heads in the sand, ignore not just the bad portions of our history but also the good? Are we going to fail to learn the lessons that our forebears fought for? Or are we going to make better choices, better decisions?
Our Constitution, as originally written, was flawed. It was a compromise between opposing views. It needed to be improved as it ultimately was with the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments which wiped away Slavery (mostly), the 3/5ths clause, the Fugitive Slave Clause and granted Citizenship and the right to vote to African-Americans. Jim Crow and segregation was wrong, it was changed. Red-lining was wrong, it is being changed. Housing, Lending and Employment discrimination is wrong. It’s being addressed, somewhat. Blatant open bigotry and racism is wrong — it’s an open issue. The current criminal justice system is being implemented in a racially biased manner — it is wrong, it needs to be changed. Turning our schools into jingoistic propaganda centers that ignore our full, rich history, both the good and bad, is wrong. That needs to stop.
If we’re going to honor the Constitution we have to be honest about it and also honor those improvements, we have to admit that we are always on a journey toward that “more perfect union.”
Unfortunately, we aren’t there yet. Not hardly. In fact right now, we’re a very long way from it.