The Secesh category archive

The bigots and racists moving to ban the teaching of critical race theory and, indeed, the facts of America’s history of enslavement and racism claim they are trying to protect their children’s tender little fee-fees from damage.

At Psychology Today Blogs, Dr. Amanda Fialk argues that, in contrast, not teaching truthful history will have detrimental effects. A snippet:

The pushback against teaching CRT, and an inaccurate portrayal of Black history in schools, communicates to people of color that their lived experience, perspective, and daily struggle, past and present, in a white supremacist society does not matter and will never matter. When kids believe they do not matter, it impacts identity, esteem, efficacy, and the ability to succeed. The debate and pushback could even represent yet another racial trauma that brings with it an intense emotional and mental injury.

(snip)

Just as the teaching of CRT in schools is vital to the mental health of children of color, abandoning CRT in schools could negatively impact the mental health of white children. Stated simply, CRT calls for critical thinking. Critical thinking allows for the development of empathy, empathic conversations, and open and honest dialogues about race. Practicing empathy is important in building and maintaining secure social attachments, connections, and relationships.

Follow the link for the rest.

(Broken link fixed.)

Down home in Alabama . . . .

An Alabama therapist claimed she found a noose hanging in her backyard and received threatening calls about the Ku Klux Klan shortly after she reported a co-worker’s derogatory racial comments, according to a federal lawsuit she filed against her employer.

Much more rising again at the link.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Maureen Downey looks at efforts to change the names of schools honoring the Secesh and the obstacles those efforts are encountering. A snippet:

After the 2015 shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in which nine African Americans were murdered by a gunman radicalized by white supremacist websites, the Southern Poverty Law Center began to catalog all the Confederate symbols in public spaces across the country. In an update last month to its “Whose Heritage?” report, the center counted 1,747 Confederate monuments, place names and other symbols still in public spaces, including 195 schools. Georgia leads the nation in schools named for Confederates, followed by Texas with 40 and Alabama with 22.

The SPLC inventory revealed the effectiveness of a campaign by United Daughters of the Confederacy to rebrand the events of the Civil War as heroic, especially through the naming of Southern schools. “These names are living symbols of white supremacy, and there is a difference between remembering history and showing a reverence for it,” said Lecia Brooks, chief of staff for the SPLC, during a recent media briefing. “Removing namesakes that celebrate a revisionist Confederate past does not erase history; it corrects it.”

It’s about damned time.

Emma and her guest discuss the birth of a notion: the story of the “Lost Cause” amd the major role played in its creation by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

Full Disclosure:

I had ancestors who belonged to the UDC.

Charles M. Blow takes a critical look at the who-shot-john over critical race theory in elementary and secondary schools, where, remember, it is not taught (emphasis added):

While previous fights revolved around desegregation and busing, textbooks and curriculums or equitable school funding, the current battle is over what can be taught. Some conservatives want to call it a backlash against the teaching of the obscure concept of critical race theory, but it isn’t. The teaching of this theory in grade schools was almost nonexistent. It was a construct born in law schools. This is actually about something more fundamental: whether or not schools should teach a full and accurate history of race in America, knowing that it might cause white children discomfort as they are confronted with the reality of what some white people have done.

Follow the link for the complete piece.

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Michael in Norfolk points out that Richard Nixon’s loathsome “southern strategy” is alive and well in Virginia’s Republican Party.

The Roanoke Times carries a letter written to the presiding Judge in Floyd County, Virginia, regarding a Confederate monument. Remember, these monuments were erected around the beginning of the Twentieth Century to remind black persons of “their place.”

A snippet; follow the link for the rest.

In his letter to [Roanoke County Board of Supervisors] Chairman Peters, Judge Dorsey recounts looking out his window in the courthouse and seeing a young African-American walk by the statue shaking her head in anger, disgust and bewilderment. In other words, the statue is not a conceptual barrier to justice. It is real barrier to justice to African-Americans who pass by the Roanoke statue as well as those who pass by the statue in front of the Floyd Courthouse everyday.

A twit who is still rising again.

The Republican Party is the party of racism.