CT Republicans would whitewash racism history in schools

Guno צְבִי

We fight, We win, Am Yisrael Chai
Legislation championed this week by state Sen. Rob Sampson, R-Wolcott, and supported by every one of his Republican colleagues attempted to curtail the teaching of “divisive concepts” in our K-12 schools. The concept they find most divisive is the notion that America has been, throughout its history, “fundamentally racist.” They recognize that slavery existed but refuse to acknowledge the idea of “systemic racism.”

How is this any different from post-Civil War, pro-Southern organizations like the United Daughters of the Confederacy effectively policing American history textbooks so that content critical of the South and slavery was excluded?

Or how different is this from the Lost Cause narrative, the carefully managed tale that the South told itself, that the Confederacy wasn’t about defending slavery? Rather, it was devoted to states’ rights in the face of an aggressive federal government. Slavery was just a minor side story, of far lesser importance than the spirit of political liberty protected by stalwart Southern patriots.

What this narrative left out, of course, was the that state right most worth defending to the South was the “peculiar institution,” the race-based labor system of African slavery that had grown with the rise of the Cotton Kingdom. Slavery was also an iron-clad means of social control, of racial hierarchy, in which Blacks were on the bottom.

The answer is that this legislation isn’t different. All are a whitewashing of American history, a denial of the Black experience.


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Americans, many Republicans among them, bristle at those who would deny the Holocaust, the story of how Jewish people were systematically segregated, tortured and executed. Few can deny that the Holocaust has shaped the world’s Jewish society. How, then, can anyone deny the impact of slavery and, yes, systematic racism on today’s African Americans?

Acknowledging that slavery has been a cornerstone of the American experience isn’t an affront to the nation’s history. It means that we must amend the story of the nation’s founding to be more inclusive and, most important, to learn right from wrong in today’s society. That is what the study of history is meant to do. The story of America is divisive history, and it will continue to be so, especially when new Lost Cause bills are put forth on the floor of our General Assembly that speak loudly about one party’s denial of racism.
 
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