Sixteen Black children accompanied by four mothers carry anti-segregation signs in Hillsboro, Ohio, in 1956. Photo: Bettmann Collection/Getty Images
Schools and universities are marking Black History Month starting today, but this is the first time it will be celebrated under new restrictions on diversity education imposed by some states.
Why it matters: The constraints — under the guise of banning the teaching of critical race theory — limit what some state-supported institutions can discuss about the nation’s racial past. Educators embracing Black history have received death threats.
Details: Since last year, 14 states have imposed such restrictions through legislation, executive actions, or commission votes, an Education Week analysis found.
In addition, 35 states have introduced bills or taken other steps to restrict teaching critical race theory — a concept that focuses on the legacy of systemic racism — or limit how teachers can discuss racism and sexism.
Elementary school teachers, administrators and college professors have faced fines, physical threats, and fear of firing because of this organized push from the right to remove classroom discussions of systemic racism.
Those limits would allow teachers to mention that Brooklyn Dodgers infielder Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color line but not allow them to discuss why Black players were banned before him, Sharif El-Mekki, founder and CEO of the Center for Black Educator Development, said.
Teachers may also introduce Malcolm X but not read his speeches, mention soul singer Marvin Gaye but not discuss his “What’s Going On” lyrics, or point out Rosewood, Florida, or Tulsa, Oklahoma, on maps but not talk about the racial atrocities that occurred there.
In many cases, the toughest crackdowns could prevent students from learning about history that happened in their own backyards.
State legislators in Alabama, where John Lewis was beaten by police during a 1965 voting rights march, are expected soon to take up a bill that would prevent colleges from teaching critical race theory.
Lawmakers in Mississippi and Florida are considering bills that would ban history lessons that make students feel uncomfortable about their race.
What they’re saying: “These laws supposedly protecting white students from guilt say more about the authors of the law than the students,” Manisha Sinha, aUniversity of Connecticut historian and author of “The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition,” told Axios.
“There’s no reason why a white student can’t identify with the abolitionist or the civil rights leader rather than a slaveholder.”
Tracey Lynn Nance, a 4th-grade teacher in Decatur, Georgia, told Axi0s she estimates that half of the teachers she knows will continue Black History Month lessons as planned while the other half is distraught.
“I think that many are self-censoring right now. (Many) are feeling angry about thinking that someone is out to get them or they’re going to twist their comments.”
Nance, who has faced a backlash online for defending diversity and equity in education, says she plans to continue her lessons on Coretta Scott King and Black poets during Black History Month.
The other side: James Henderson, an Alabama conservative activist, dismissed complaints that anti-critical race theory laws that he supports would prevent students from learning Black history or Martin Luther King, Jr.
“The teaching of morality is a good thing in public education. And unfortunately, we’ve largely gotten away from it,” Henderson said, referring to King’s teachings about being a good moral citizen.
Zoom out: New teaching on race has been criticized by the right and even some on the left. David Bromwich, an English professor at Yale, wrote in The Nation: “The new methods are marked by a certain severity, a pressure to cleanse or catechize.”
Yes, but: Even before Black History Month began, the attacks oncritical race theory, driven disproportionately by white, suburban and rural parents, had led to book bans and school districts re-examining diversity lessons.
Moms for Liberty in Tennessee, for example, filed a complaint last year asking the state to review certain children’s books about King and civil rights advocate Ruby Bridges. The state rejected it.
“Dear Martin,” a young adult novel about a Black high-schooler writing letters to King, was removed last month from a North Carolina high school following complaints from parents about the book’s expletives.
In 1976, on the 50th anniversary of the first Negro History Week, the Association for the Study of African American History officially made the shift to Black History Month.
President Gerald Ford issued a declaration that year celebrating the month — and every president since has followed.
The bottom line: El-Mekki said he’s encouraging teachers to use primary sources in lessons like the racist speeches and essays of former Confederate president Jefferson Davis or Thomas Jefferson. “Teachers can they say…’I didn’t say this. They said this.’ That’s history.”
A school board outside Denver voted to fire the district’s superintendent Friday night in a controversial move that came amid accusations that the newly elected conservative majority had violated state open-meeting laws.
The Douglas County, Colo., school board voted 4 to 3 in a special meeting Friday night to fire Corey Wise without cause, dismissing the superintendent with two years left in his contract.
Wise, voted in by the board last April, supported policies on in-school masking and equity that were overturned in the months since by four conservatives who campaigned against critical race theory and other diversity initiatives and were elected to the board.
Suburban school wars, chapter XXX: Conservative-led school board fires superintendent in suburban Douglas County, Colorado, after allegations of private ultimatum, teacher protest.https://t.co/a4L2dnQW9a
Notice in their rush to purge those they disagree with these board members are accused of violating the laws. But Republicans believe rules and laws are something they have a right to ignore.
Manchin is trying to reverse psychologize the climate crisis by saying removal of fossil fuels will make the environment dirtier. https://t.co/wN8tVrBEQS
In other words his income is tied to fossil fuels and he want the US to keep using them. The idea that by using more fossil fuels such as oil and coal we can make the plant cleaner is asinine. Manchin is hoping what he said will be picked up and run on the right wing misleading media as sound bites. He wants to make sure the clean energy parts of the Build Back Better bill are dead even though much of the country wants to and is ready to do more to fix the climate crisis.
Take away obstruction and Republicans will have to work.
Ahhh! “Legitimate Discourse” defined by GOP National Committee. Pic (including PA man who just pled guilty to Capitol riot charges) Thanks to Phila. Daily News pic.twitter.com/th1XKP21TY
According to the Republican Party, sending lawmakers running for their lives and chanting about hanging the Vice President is simply “legitimate political discourse.”
Democrats must take this threat seriously — before there's no democracy left to protect. pic.twitter.com/zxpWATTXcq
But we are supposed to pretend this is only about merit and qualifications, just like we are supposed to pretend what Shapiro said was only a bad tweet and that this keeps being directed at black women, like @nhannahjones also, just by coincidence. https://t.co/LZE15is5zO
“Yes, of course [peaceful Muslims] exist, and those people are not good Muslims, but they’re good people. So, I’m talking about the doctrine of Islam itself, that’s what it prescribes, that’s what it’s calling for Muslims to do.”
Originally, most folks were predicting that a Russian invasion would be focused on eastern Ukraine — both due to troop concentrations and ease of assault. Eastern Ukraine is mostly flat, and will be hard to defend. 1/5
Now, many analysts are of the opinion that Kyiv is the target after all. The increased concentrations of Russian troops, with more on the way, certainly make it look like Putin has decided he wants *all* of Ukraine. 4/5
“Race” is a construct. There are only humans. That hasn’t stopped one set of humans for using demographic labels (race, religion, sex, economic class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc.) as a means to suppress and kill that hated group. It’s human nature, unfortunately. We hate. We kill. Dig deep enough and you’ll find greed is the reason. It’s the most humanistic trait there is.
The old hero fantasy. Unlike in the movies there is a real mess to clean up. People who buy guns to shoot intruders are eight times more likely to shoot their own children. The burglary rate has dropped by half over the last ten years. The homicide rate, however, has climbed in those ten years. But it’s not because people are shooting burglars. Mostly it’s family or random, often unarmed strangers on the street.
Using the FBI data, the violent crime rate fell 49% between 1993 and 2019, with large decreases in the rates of robbery (-68%), murder/non-negligent manslaughter (-47%) and aggravated assault (-43%). Meanwhile, the property crime rate fell 55%, with big declines in the rates of burglary (-69%), motor vehicle theft (-64%) and larceny/theft (-49%).
Using the BJS statistics, the declines in the violent and property crime rates are even steeper than those reported by the FBI. Per BJS, the overall violent crime rate fell 74% between 1993 and 2019, while the property crime rate fell 71%.
So historically crime rates are down. Crime has risen as people are more desperate and stressed. However it is no where near the terrifying levels that the misleading right wing media wants to portray. Ask your self why it is so important for the misleading right wing media to push the narrative of a national crime wave? It is political. They want to find anything they can to make people feel the country is going wrong with Biden in charge. Don’t believe their hyped myth.
The right wing screamers that appointing a black woman is racist seem to have the assumption that race is the only qualification Biden is looking for and that there is no qualified black woman. That is racist. The idea of a white man not automatically getting the position while a black person must fight for it is shocking to the right.
Congress hasn’t done a good job since the GOP went off the range with the Tea Party, Trumpism, MAGA, and the other whack jobs they brought in.
Steve Kelley continues to LIE about the border crisis, even though he has been caught in his LIES many times.
The border crisis was caused 100% by DONALD TRUMP.
When Trump took office, illegal border crossings were at a FORTY-YEAR LOW because Dubya Bush (one of the few things he got right) and Obama had in place systems to stabilize minority indigenous communities who were the targets of racist gang violence. In one single day (June 17, 2019), TRUMP CANCELED EVERYTHING, not gradually or phased out, but all at once, and a border crisis from Central America resulted. It takes years to build bridges, a single day to blow them up. TRUMP BLEW IT UP. And yes, VP Harris is on it. The crisis is in Central America, not at our border (which Harris, as a native Californian from a border state, has been to many times). She has already met (in person and via Zoom) with the presidents of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Stabilization aid is being restored and the numbers of illegal border crossings are already plummeting. Again, blame the Democrats WHO ARE ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING to return to stability, for the problem TRUMP CAUSED.
Under Obama / Biden, our nation had brought the border to its most stable level — lowest number of illegal border crossings — in MORE THAN FORTY YEARS — by removing the incentives for coming here: addressing the violence, neighborhood insecurity and economic collapse and other issues that drive people out of their ancestral homelands.
Those leaving are predominantly INDIGENOUS MAYAN. They do not want to leave the ancestral homelands their people have occupied for tens of thousands of years, long predating the arrival of brutal European thugs.
According to the Republican Party, sending lawmakers running for their lives and chanting about hanging the Vice President is simply “legitimate political discourse.”
Democrats must take this threat seriously — before there's no democracy left to protect. pic.twitter.com/zxpWATTXcq
And yet rather than spend money fixing the electric system to ensure that the power stayed on, Abbot instead shifted state money to pandering gimmicks like finish building the wall on the border. In fact the big money donors from the fuel and energy industry gave large donations to stop any requirements that Abbot had talked about implementing to keep the power on. Now again in winter with freezing temperatures the power is again going off. They made no effort to fix the very issues that happened before and were told would happen again. Seems they care far more over their personal finance than the health and welfare of the people that elected them
Maybe we should retire the phrase "saying the quiet part out loud," on the grounds that there is no longer any quiet part.
Conservatives are about submission. Their kids will rebel one day.
Kids have no problem wearing masks. It’s the parents who can’t think of others.
What is horrifying is the change in the Republican party that went from saying “Better dead than Russian red” to praising Putin and supporting Russia. Russia under Putin is still as authoritarian as it was under communism. Russia under Putin is still as much an enemy to the US and democracy as it ever was.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Misleading right wing media cartoons / memes
This cartoon author is one of the right wing misinformation cartoonist normally but in this case I agree with her. The Chinese government has shown they will crack down on anyone who says what they don’t like even if done by the athletes. The big scandal in the comment section of the page is over Nancy Pelosi saying the athletes should be care and watch what they say to keep themselves safe, and she blasted the Olympic committee for picking China to host them. The right wing commenters can not seem to understand why she said these things and are attacking her at the same time they are attacking China. So it doesn’t matter what she said, the fact is them must scream in anger about anything she says.
Oh boy the right wing media is on fire over trying to make Whoopi the worst racist ever. Why? Because she is a left leaning black woman. They are drooling to attack her, it is a dream come true for them.
Today’s “The Daily” treats inflation as entirely a natural consequence of stimulus checks, etc – rather than a choice by corps with record profits. @mikiebarb@RBReich: “Slowing the economy will hurt the most vulnerable… reduce corporate market power.”https://t.co/Gq4HtzeEOi
Conservatives want to cancel non-white humanity. Conservatives want to cancel elections. Conservatives want to cancel the separation of church and state.
GOP: gaslight, obstruct, project
NEWS: The Jan. 6 select committee has subpoenaed for the phone records of Arizona GOP chair KELLI WARD and her husband Michael.
Both signed false Electoral College certificates and sued Pence as part of pressure campaign.
The above is about politicians in Kentucky trying to shield / block reports of bad actions done by cops and other political groups from the public and to make it easier for utilities to raise rates on customers with less input. Just jack prices for profit.
This is disgusting persecution of a woman who served her time. There is no justification for any of this. https://t.co/eGc9GBIcGU
You will typically get far less jail time, if any, by participating in an armed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol than you will by registering to vote after you were informed you were allowed.
No grey area here. Simply a black and white issue.
If this six year old could stand the discomfort of walking through crowds of shouting angry people screaming obscenities and throwing things at her, knowing that if they were allowed they would hurt her, then white six year olds can learn of her, what she did, and why.
"It's okay to murder children if you think they're bad" is incredibly immoral and evil. ffs. https://t.co/qqKFHsvBSd
What crimes! Oh the made up ones in Rudy’s mind? The right wing fever dream of Hunter being the worst being on earth? Oh Hunter used drugs. Have they seen the videos of Donnie Jr? He is clearly tanked up off his ass on something. The right did not care about Donnie Jr illegally hunting animals in other countries, they did not mind Ivanka getting an unheard of number of trademarks from China in a short time frame when China wanted things from tRump, they don’t mention that Jared couldn’t get a security clearance because he was such a risk but tRump gave him one anyway. Hunter Biden is an adult, he is not in the WH, he is on the WH payroll, he is not an unofficial advisor to the president. But the right needs desperately to find something to hit Joe Biden with, so they reach for the personal struggles of his son. Great people.
The right wing is preoccupied with crime as it again causes fear. Be afraid, be very afraid is the mantra of the misleading right wing media. Fact is urban crime is down, rural crime is up, and all crime is still far below historical levels. What is the rights solution to crime. Not to see what causes crime and fix it, nope. The right wants more militarized police officers to aggressively occupy the lower incomes and non-white people. They want more people in for profit prisons to do slave labor for the corporations. They want to cut any government assistance programs that would help curb crime such as after school programs and to cut any diversionary programs that help rehabilitate people as that might cost the wealthy a few bucks in taxes. And they blame democrats even though that is not the truth because they want the white people to be afraid and misinformed so they vote Republican.
The consequences seem to be causing Putin to have some second and third thoughts on invading. I wouldn’t mock Biden too hard on that front. He is pulling the world along with idea of sanctions if Putin invades. As for the minor incursions that was because there are already small groups of Russian military in the Donetsk. Biden did not want the misleading right wing media opinion hosts such as Hannity to use that to push the US into actions that would be premature. There are some Republicans wanting Biden to sanction and move aggressively against Putin now such as Lindsey Graham because that would force Putin to act and we would have the war Graham’s donors want.
The consequences seem to be causing Putin to have some second and third thoughts on invading. I wouldn’t mock Biden too hard on that front. He is pulling the world along with idea of sanctions if Putin invades.
Josiah Kenyon after his arrest, left, and during the Capitol riot.
An accused Capitol rioter got into a tense exchange with a federal judge during a status conference in his case on Thursday afternoon.
The incident began when Josiah Kenyon asked U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols for permission to speak during the hearing, according to a report from Politico’s Kyle Cheney.
After Nichols warned that Kenyon might want to consult with his attorney first, Kenyon shot back: “I have a high enough IQ range to not screw up there, boss.”
Kenyon then proceeded to ask Nichols to “acknowledge that he had a right to defend himself if prison guards in DC tried to assault him,” Cheney reported.
“I’m not making any finding one way or another about that,” Nichols responded.
“Okey-doke,” Kenyon said.
Finally, at the end of the hearing, Nichols asked Kenyon if he had any other issues to raise.
“My wife and children homeless on the street. Have a wonderful day,” Kenyon told the judge.
Kenyon is accused of assaulting police with several objects — including a table leg with a protruding nail — during the Jan. 6 insurrection. According to the Department of Justice, Kenyon wore a Jack Skellington costume, based on a character from the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas, to the Capitol.
He was arrested in December after authorities found him hiding out in a travel trailer with a cache of weapons. Kenyon and his wife, Elizabeth, reportedly were charged with child endangerment after being found in the unheated trailer in the Nevada foothills.
A Missouri man who sought to ban several LGBTQ books from schools for depicting sexual content is now facing a felony charge of second-degree child molestation.
Ryan Utterback, a 29-year-old parent from a suburb of Kansas City, also faces a misdemeanor charge of fourth-degree domestic assault and, in a separate case, a misdemeanor of furnishing or attempting to furnish pornographic material to a minor.
Utterback had spoken at a school board meeting in November, as first reported by local news station KMBC-TV, an ABC affiliate, to advocate for the removal of books in North Kansas City Schools libraries that depicted sexual acts.
Ryan Utterback holds up prints of two pages from “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic” at a school board meeting in October.NKC School District Board of Education
During another school board meeting in October, Utterback held up enlarged prints of two pages from the award-winning graphic memoir “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic,” while a member of a parent association fighting for the ban spoke, arguing that handing the material to a child amounts to “solicitation of a minor.”
Accusations against Utterback, according to court documents, describe separate instances in 2020 in which he allegedly touched a 12-year-old girl under her clothes and rubbed a teenager’s leg underneath her jeans. Another case alleged in 2021 that he showed pornographic video footage to a child starting from when she was around 4 years old.
Utterback is next due in court on March 10. His attorney, David Bell, declined to comment on the record.
North Kansas City Schools declined to comment.
LGBTQ-inclusive books have long topped banned-book lists: Titles with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer themes comprised half of the 20 most challenged and banned books of the decade spanning 2010-19, according to the American Library Association. While challenges against LGBTQ content have historically been “constant,” according to Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the director of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom, she told NBC News in November that the association had seen a “chilling” uptick in the previous year.
“I’ve worked at ALA for two decades now, and I’ve never seen this volume of challenges come in,” Caldwell-Stone said at the time.
“Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic” by Alison Bechdel.Mariner Books
Mary O’Hara, rapid response manager at the LGBTQ media advocacy group GLAAD, said in an email that challenged books in schools typically undergo an evaluation process by experts in literacy and education, who read them in their entirety to determine their academic and social merit. Many of these books then return to library shelves.
“Book ban advocates have long tried to inaccurately claim that LGBTQ representation in books, films, TV and ads is ‘unsuitable’ or ‘obscene,’ while other media with narratives and themes about opposite-sex relationships — even those with graphic sex or violence — are not targeted,” O’Hara said.
Those in favor of bans, including Utterback, have raised the issue of parental rights in choosing what to expose children to. The majority of the most recently targeted books feature LGBTQ- and race-inclusive storylines, O’Hara said.
“LGBTQ people and Black people are parents, too, and get a say in their children’s education,” they said, adding that schools should “ensure books are available to all children to learn about themselves and people different from themselves.”
Kansas City LGBTQ advocate Justice Horn, who was the first out Black student president at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, was present at the November school board meeting where Utterback spoke.
“The moral of this story is that book bans do not protect children,” Horn said of the allegations against Utterback. “Moreover, the people pushing book bans are not protecting children, and every lawmaker should take note.”
The “heroes” of the story, Horn said, are the North Kansas City students who spoke before the school board to fight against these bans.
“They are ensuring none of our stories are erased,” he continued. “We’ll be reading about them long after the people looking to ban books are out of the picture.”
![““Yes, of course [peaceful Muslims] exist, and those people are not good Muslims, but they’re good people. So, I’m talking about the doctrine of Islam itself, that’s what it prescribes, that’s what it’s calling for Muslims to do.”
– Yasmine...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/3277a88d473f3ba330a063be346696b9/6bdf7f88e8a2a81b-34/s1280x1920/ed60fb0c3bac923ec0d8b2c3efac3005a64b3360.jpg)
Scottie's Playtime 
Steve Kelley continues to LIE about the border crisis, even though he has been caught in his LIES many times.
The border crisis was caused 100% by DONALD TRUMP.
When Trump took office, illegal border crossings were at a FORTY-YEAR LOW because Dubya Bush (one of the few things he got right) and Obama had in place systems to stabilize minority indigenous communities who were the targets of racist gang violence. In one single day (June 17, 2019), TRUMP CANCELED EVERYTHING, not gradually or phased out, but all at once, and a border crisis from Central America resulted. It takes years to build bridges, a single day to blow them up. TRUMP BLEW IT UP. And yes, VP Harris is on it. The crisis is in Central America, not at our border (which Harris, as a native Californian from a border state, has been to many times). She has already met (in person and via Zoom) with the presidents of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Stabilization aid is being restored and the numbers of illegal border crossings are already plummeting. Again, blame the Democrats WHO ARE ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING to return to stability, for the problem TRUMP CAUSED.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-trump/as-promised-trump-slashes-aid-to-central-america-over-migrants-idUSKCN1TI2C7
Under Obama / Biden, our nation had brought the border to its most stable level — lowest number of illegal border crossings — in MORE THAN FORTY YEARS — by removing the incentives for coming here: addressing the violence, neighborhood insecurity and economic collapse and other issues that drive people out of their ancestral homelands.
Those leaving are predominantly INDIGENOUS MAYAN. They do not want to leave the ancestral homelands their people have occupied for tens of thousands of years, long predating the arrival of brutal European thugs.