From Pine View Farm

“That Conversation about Race” category archive

Still Rising Again after All These Years 0

They just can’t seem to stop themselves from showing us what they are.

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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:

“The Civil War was not about slavery,” his (DeSantis’s) Darlington students quoted him as saying, “it was about two competing economic systems,” an industrial North squaring off against an agrarian South. Slavery was a “business,” and the free labor North and the slave South were, in essence, fighting over differing definitions of what constituted “property.” In short, young Ron DeSantis was offering up an economic explanation for the coming of the Civil War. The racial content of the South’s slave system was not the key; it was the slave’s legal definition as chattel property that was the critical variable.

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.

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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:

He’s probably the first governor ever to set out for the White House while his home state is the subject of multiple travel advisories not associated with a hurricane. . . .

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.

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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:

I thought of all this book-banning and history-censoring while attending a recent session on the rise of antisemitism at the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Florida. One panelist said the best way to combat hatred, intolerance and ignorance is to ensure children hear unvarnished truths. He described it as “The criticality of giving truth to our kids.”

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.”

Title:  President Ron DeSantis.  Image:  Voice comes from the White House asking,

Click for the original image.

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Twits on Twitter 0

That seductive siren, “social” media, vamps the unwary and the stupid into forgetting that the internet is a public place.

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“Parents’ Rights,” Republican Style 0

Frame One:  Principal says to teacher,

Click to view the original image.

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Recommended Viewing 0

Hidden Figures.

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.

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All That Was Old Is New Again 0

The “Green Book” returns:

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on Saturday issued a travel advisory for the state of Florida.

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.

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A Notion of Immigrants 0

Republican Elephants look at scarecrow.  One says,

Via Job’s Anger.

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The Radical Reactionary Court 0

Thom follows the money.

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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?”

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Still Rising Again after All Those Years 0

They just can’t seem to stop themselves from idolizing icons of iniquity.

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Durham’s Bull 0

Despite the hype about John Durham’s report, Farron, who has actually read it, explains why there’s no there there.

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The Past as Prologue 0

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Gene Collier reminds that, as Mark Twain said, “History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

By the way, if you haven’t read the book that Collier refers to in his article, this might be a very good time to do so. It is excellent.

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A Tune for the Times 0

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If One Standard Is Good, Two Standards Are Better 0

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What’s in a Name? 0

As Chris Williams points out at Above the Law, quite a lot, apparently. A nugget:

It has been well documented that people discriminate against prospective employees if their name doesn’t sound white enough. Just their names.

Follow the link for context.

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A Tune for the Times, Republican Family Values Dept. 0

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A Notion of Immigrants 0

Republican Elephant thinks,

Click for the original image.

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A Question of Identity Politics 0

Frame Two:  Man wearing tee-shirt saying

Click for the original image.

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