“That Conversation about Race” category archive
Thought Police 0
The Fredericksburg, Va., Free Lance-Star reports on efforts to censor books in the Spotsylvania County public schools. You can follow the link for the story, but this sentence leapt out at me (emphasis added):
The county continues to field book challenges, most of them initiated by one parent.
Welcome to the unfree marketplace of ideas.
This New Gilded Age 0
LZ Granderson wonders whether Republicans have ever read any of the works of Charles Dickens.
Here’s how his article starts:
High school freshman girls should not double as cocktail waitresses at night.
That’s not a sentence I thought needed to be said, but here we are in 2023, and conservative lawmakers in more than 10 states are making efforts to roll back child labor laws. Cocktail waitress is just one of the disturbing occupations floated as appropriate work for children.
Iowa enacted a law last month allowing more kids to work more dangerous jobs. In Arkansas, a 14-year-old would no longer need to show an employer proof of parental approval.
Now the arguments against this movement are painfully obvious, but the so-called case for child labor requires unpacking.
Follow the link for the unpacking.
Afterthought:
As Republicans reintroduce child labor while barring immigrants who are willing to work, I am again reminded of Professor Shade’s mantra, “History is irony.”
Misdirection Play, This New Gilded Age Dept. 0
Robert Reich details the decoys. A snippet:
Follow the link for the debunking of de bunk.
Courting Disaster 0
Federal Judge Judge James Ho has a notion of immigrants.
Built-in Bias 0
Writing at Psychology Today Blogs, Karim Bettache takes a penetrating look at how structural racism permeates society. (Structural racism is that thing that racists and their dupes, symps, and fellow travelers say does not exist because they don’t want to admit that it does.) Furthermore, he suggests that it’s a world-wide phenomenon that can be traced back to the age of empire, when European nations used racism–that is, white superiority–to help justify rationalize subjugating foreign lands and peoples.
Bettache cites research that demonstrates that children start absorbing racist messages from the culture almost before they learn how to talk, let alone learn how to read or think critically. Here are a couple of snippets from his article:
(snip)
For black girls, discrimination based on hair texture is a common experience that reinforces their position as outsiders in some environments. Some schools have even prohibited natural hairstyles, considering them “unruly” or contrary to policies requiring a “professional” appearance (Macon, 2014). The message is that to succeed and be accepted, black women must conform to white norms rather than embrace their cultural heritage and identity. Such policies inflict psychological harm and perpetuate racist beliefs that natural black hair is somehow unkept (sic) or unclean.
Given the efforts of the New Secesh to rise again, I think his piece is well worth the few minutes it will take to read it.
Sound Familiar? 0
Thom offers a definition of fascism from the U. S. Department of War during World War II. A snippet;
Fascism is government of the few, for the few.
Fly the Fiendly Skies 0
They are fiendlier than ever before.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
They just can’t seem to stop themselves from showing us what they are.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
At the Tampa Bay Times, historian Charles B. Dew takes Florida Governor DeSantis to task for perpetuating America’s first big lie. He cites an example from early in DeSantis’s career, when DeSantis taught history (or, at least, his version of history). A nugget:
How does this interpretation hold up?
Not very well, the overwhelming majority of American historians working in this field today would say, and I am among them.
(“Not very well” is–er–a bit of an understatement.)
Follow the link to see what the Secesh themselves said to explain why they took up arms.
A First for Florida Man 0
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Gene Collier thinks the Florida Governor Ron DeSantis may have earned a place in the Guinness Book:
At least three different entities — the NAACP, the League of United American Citizens, the biggest Hispanic and Latin American organization in the country, and Equality Florida, which advocates for the civil rights of the LGBTQ+ community — have issued travel advisories warning that policies put into practice by DeSantis have rendered the Sunshine State a credible threat to the health, safety, and freedom of their constituencies.
Follow the link for his reasoning.
The Whitewashing 0
The Orlando Sentinel’s Scott Maxwell takes look at Florida’s whitewashing (here’s a particularly outrageous and stupid example) of America’s history; he finds the implications thereof disturbing because, well, they are. (And, natch, it’s not going on just in Florida.)
A snippet:
The leader of a Holocaust Center made a similar point recently stressing: “The Holocaust, it didn’t start with guns and death camps. It started with words.”
Twits on Twitter 0
That seductive siren, “social” media, vamps the unwary and the stupid into forgetting that the internet is a public place.
Recommended Viewing 0
It’s been on our DVR for some time and we finally got around to watching it. It is quite well done.
And its depiction of the segregated Virginia that I grew up in–well, there are those amongst us who are working most energetically to bring those times back, while at the same time pretending that they never existed in the first place.
All That Was Old Is New Again 0
The “Green Book” returns:
According to the NAACP national headquarters, the advisory is a “direct response to Governor Ron DeSantis’ aggressive attempts to erase Black history and to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in Florida schools.”
Details at the link.
The Radical Reactionary Court 0
Thom follows the money.
Still Rising Again after All These Years . . . 0
. . . and still spreading America’s first Big Lie.
Aside:
The next time someone tells you that the Civil War was about “state’s rights,” ask, “The state’s right to do just what, exactly?”