Tom Hanks penned a guest essay for The New York Times on Friday in which he called for the truth about the 1921 Tulsa race massacre to be taught in schools.
Calling himself a “lay historian” who studied history in high school and community college in Oakland, California, Hanks notes that his education, in which he learned about the Emancipation Proclamation, the Ku Klux Klan and Rosa Parks’ heroism, did not include the Tulsa massacre.
“I never read a page of any school history book about how, in 1921, a mob of white people burned down a place called Black Wall Street, killed as many as 300 of its Black citizens and displaced thousands of Black Americans who lived in Tulsa,” Hanks writes.
The actor notes that this experience is common, due to history being “mostly written by white people about white people like me, while the history of Black people — including the horrors of Tulsa — was too often left out.”
Hanks emphasizes that the truth about Tulsa, and the violence against Black Americans by white Americans, has typically been “systematically ignored, perhaps because it was regarded as too honest, too painful a lesson” for young white students.
Hanks goes on to write, “It seems white educators and school administrators (if they even knew of the Tulsa massacre, for some surely did not) omitted the volatile subject for the sake of the status quo, placing white feelings over Black experience — literally Black lives in this case.” He asks readers to consider how different one’s perspective might be if the Tulsa massacre were taught to students as early as the fifth grade. “Today, I find the omission tragic, an opportunity missed, a teachable moment squandered.”
He adds that, in addition to predominantly white schools omitting the Tulsa race massacre in their education programs, the entertainment industry also did not take on the subject in films or television shows until recently, in projects such as Watchmen and Lovecraft Country. He notes that historically based fiction entertainment “must portray the burden of racism in our nation for the sake of the art form’s claims to verisimilitude and authenticity.”
Considering whether schools today should teach students about Tulsa, Hanks simply says yes. Though he goes further and calls for “the battle to whitewash curriculums” to end. Hanks acknowledges that America’s history is “messy,” but knowing the truth makes people “wiser and stronger.”
Toward the end of Hanks’ essay, he writes that 1921 is “the truth, a portal to our shared, paradoxical history.”
Stalking the stage while brandishing a tomahawk at the rally, McKay declared that “World War IV” is underway and warned doctors and nurses that if they “have the courage to kill our people, you better have the courage to stand in a direct crosshairs of Patriot Streetfighter because this is now going to happen.”
Following his remarks at the event, McKay sat down for an interview with David Scarlett of the program “His Glory” where McKay explicitly threatened violence.
“I’m going to name names—show pictures where I can—these are the nurses, doctors involved in murdering these people, and I’m going to start pushing these people into the public eye,” McKay said. “Let’s see how they like that battlefield.”
“We can’t allow the enemy or anybody to use our virtues against us,” he continued. “I don’t allow anybody to use the semantics of language or use my virtues against me. This is war. It’s gonna get bloody, and I’m going to get ugly too; no less ugly than any 1776 preacher that dropped his Bible on the lectern, grabbed his muzzle loader or musket, and went out and put balls and bullets inside people and watched blood flow on a battlefield. That’s what they had to do. That’s the name of Christ.”
“It’s an evil enemy,” McKay declared. “Any of the minions, including the doctors and nurses who were part of it—knowingly or unknowingly, that’s not for me to sort out—but they need to know what’s coming next. And that’s the only other battle that I can see in my future now coming up after what happened to Cirsten W.”
Wouldn’t it be a great world if people acted this way instead of acting only for themselves? Scottie
Remember when it was cool to help others, social welfare programs & orgs, & humanity? Everyone needs help in their lives. Now with unprecedented inequality, only the privileged get help.
He should know, his daughter helped raised the price of EpiPens
No one should be as rich as Elon Musk when millions of Americans still don’t have health care.
Tax the wealth created by capitalism. Fund the vulnerable exploited by capitalism.
Trying to bring back child labor for 2022 huh.
And then they pick a celebrity with zero political experience to be president?
I am the best. I have the best brain. Only I can do it. Only my son-in-law who can’t pass a security clearance can do this. No media allowed when I met with Putin.
Just say you enjoy the cult.
A former Speaker of the House is threatening jail time for members of Congress who are investigating the violent January 6 attack on our Capitol and our Constitution.
Increasingly strange to watch governors claim trans teenagers aren't old enough for gender-affirming care but a teenager is old enough to be forced into giving birth https://t.co/gHl8E3Hr7b
We have been arming the Ukraine lately, as have Britain and Germany. I suspect Ramirez wants the readers to think it would be okay to preemptively attack Russia. Folks, slow down and give it another millisecond of thought, does that sound like a GOOD idea? If so, please get immediate counseling. At the same time the right wing is hammering Biden on his Ukraine policy the Republicans in congress that are in the pay or under threat from Russia are demanding that Biden rule out sending any troops. So Biden did say he wouldn’t send any US military troops to fight Russia in Ukraine. What a set of foreign asset assholes. Scottie
Since life changes all the time, it must be terrible to be a conservative who practically wets their pants when anything changes. Such an absurd cartoon. Also, “woke” is an obsolescent term. How is a gay M&M any more or less stupid than a straight one? You know what is stupid? People who worry about this crap.
News headline: “M&M characters get new, more inclusive look”
No WONDER poor ol’ Payneful is having a snit. “My GOD, how is it POSSIBLE for important cultural icons such as the M&M characters to CHANGE when they were already PERFECT, just like God made them in the garden of Eden? What is this world COMING to?!! (etc)” Scottie
Tom Hanks narrates a new spot that marks year one of Joe Biden’s presidency, one that tries to reinforce a message that the country is on the right track. This scares the right because he is a prominent well liked person. So they have to attack him as much as they can. Rather than admit that Biden really has accomplished quite a bit in just one year and would have done a lot more if the right had not tried to block everything that would help the country jsut because they don’t want Biden to have a win. That is how radical the right has become, doesn’t matteer if the country really needs it they will block it to deny the Democrats a win. The Democrats don’t do that … yet. Scottie
What a misrepresentation. She was saying take care of your self over the weekend, do what you need to do that recharges yourself, and then come back at the issues / problems strong on Monday. What is controversial about that message? Unless the left fighting the right wing ongoing sabotage of the country is scary for the right? Scottie
People are hurting. small landlords are hurting, congress full of millionaires are not hurting so won’t help address the problem. Red state governors were given money to help renters but refused to do so. The idea was to drive people out and the wealthy hedge funds could buy up the properties. Scottie
For the first morning since last Sunday I feel almost normal. I have been sick for a week, Ron thinks we had a version of Covid. I don’t care what the name of the thing is all I know is it put me in my bed. I like my bed but not anywhere that much. But the roundup still got done. Ron said I was crazy and I told him it is an addiction to editorial cartoons. Scottie
After a blockbuster year, the 5 biggest Wall Street banks just paid out $142 billion in bonuses and compensation for 2021 — $18 billion more than in 2020.
Why do banks do so well when people are suffering? Let's go back to the 1980s.https://t.co/IebqruygTd
Republicans can’t defend their policies. Killing the political conversation is their mission.
Republican religion, nor their pro-life gaslight, will ever look to help the poor/vulnerable.
Helping the richest is their zero sum game.
Also, people like Putin create refugees through their military/foreign policy, [see Syria], yet conservatives love Putin.
By creating refugees, conservatives always have a boogeyman to frighten their base.
Conservative policies are about isolation and lonerism. Inclusion is a threat.
We are a society of different people, and that scares people who only value whiteness.
Empathy evolves in stages. Some people will always be stunted at the lower levels. Unfortunately, those at the lower levels can’t experience/see/feel what the people at the higher levels experience. That discrepancy between levels is what defines our current politics.
Under funding schools and education is criminal.
Teachers are long a target of conservative cuts. Teachers are 75% women.
We will never have strong communities until we invest in schools and teachers as core infrastructure. This is the foundation.
Unfortunately, there are Not two sides of the same. The GOP Big Lie is a Fact… and So is their attempt at voter-suppression. The Dem side is a Big Truth, and should be noted as such. At least he has confessed the “Big Lie” to be a lie. That’s progress. His lame attempt to both-sides the dishonesty is no more blameworthy than the snarls of a cornered beast. With apologies to Upton Sinclair, It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his standing within his tribe depends upon his not understanding it. Scottie
Is that not the job of the press secretary? It has been done in every administration I can remember. Often it is a deliberate attempt to get a conversation going in the media or to change the Overton window. I would point out the prior administration went through a lot of press secretaries because they were required by their boss to flat out lie to back up his many lies. Scottie
Other than a small minority of cult like followers no one likes tRump nor wants him to run in 2024. More and more Republicans are openly saying it as tRump’s influence over the base is shrinking. The 2020 presidential election was not about Biden and his polices, but a referendum on tRump. tRump was rejected. He will be rejected by an even larger margin if he runs again. Scottie
The right wing media is desperate to bring Biden down. Think on it, what have the Republicans done they can brag about? They are reduced to lying about supporting bills they voted against. So they hammer on Biden’s poll numbers. It is partly the Biden’s peoples fault, they don’t brag enough on what they have accomplished, unlike the former guy who had to make most things up. Scottie
The distinction is extremely clear to me. If you don’t get it, try being a pregnant female. BEFORE birth, there’s a woman who has bodily autonomy or she’s less than a full human. AFTER birth there are two humans.
This is BS propaganda. Abortions after gestational age of 21 weeks are extremely rare (<1%). They are fundamentally illegal unless medically necessary. The vast majority of those abortions are when the fetus is no longer viable. Overturning RvW most likely will not even ban these types of abortions more than they are now.
That fetus abandoned in the trash was most likely a baby that the mother had to conceal because she didn’t know what else to do. This is often caused by the stigma created by families about pregnancy outside of marriage by young women incapable of taking care of the child. It speaks to the fact that American society does less to encourage a mother to keep her child by supporting both the mother and child (the infamous “welfare mother” stigma). It’s so much easier for conservatives to punish the mother for getting an abortion and forcing her to carry the baby’s to terms and then abandon both mother and child. Scottie
Catch up note. I have been sick since Sunday. I thought it was from entertaining on Saturday and staying up far too late. But it is far more than that. Ron had not felt well for more than a week. His symptoms were not as severe as mine are but they were mostly the same. He had gotten over it so we did not worry. I was not feeling well for a few days after Sunday but Wednesday was bad and yesterday was really bad and today is like yesterday. Head full, slight headache, hot sweats, cold periods, fever, extreme nausea, vertigo, really tired, intermittent running nose that we thought that was allergies. Yes we both now think I have Omicron or some version of Covid and that he did also. Wednesday and yesterday spent most of the day in bed. This morning got up early thinking I could do some news stories I had missed, but this is not working. I am going to get as much done before I am forced back to bed. The thing is in Florida it is really hard to get a Covid test and before I would get any result I would be over it. So I will just quarantine at home just in case. ** Took all day with many rest periods, I am now going back to bed. I will try to get to comments tomorrow. ** Scottie
Since the pandemic began, a new billionaire has been created every 26 hours. Meanwhile, 160 million people have been pushed into poverty across the globe.
We solved the mysterious heretofore inscrutable riddle for reducing poverty which is give people money and food but now it’s time to Go Back To Normal so that means it’s time to gut, sunset and means test everything good out of existence lest the plebs not want to work sick
1) Donors give huge sums to elect corporate politicians 2) Corporate politicians block hugely popular legislation 3) Donors make a huge profit 4) Repeat
It all ties back to one thing: The flood of corporate money unleashed by Citizens United.
– the American Rescue Plan – bipartisan infrastructure deal – record low unemployment – Jan 6 Committee – 41 federal judges – most ever in a year – student loan forgiveness reform w/ more coming – nearing 70% vax rate
"Pff. We don't need to define CRT and demands to the contrary are pure bad faith."
Oklahoma legislature: "Anyone who teaches Critical Race Theory will lose their job and must pay $10k per incident. No, we will not be defining the term at this time."https://t.co/MkYm48fBHCpic.twitter.com/z8iXL5hzBz
“We seem to be headed back to the society Michael Schwerner, James Cheney, and Andrew Goodman fought against with their lives.” Mickey, by @RBReichhttps://t.co/MyfVFom1tF
The old white guy cartoonist pretended in the article that went with this cartoon that Biden should do this to protect black people and to increase the wages of black people. Right. Immigration has fallen for the last decade and it has not increased the wages of black people. The real issue is that the brown people coming here do have more children right now than the white people already here. So again the idea of a white majority or white ethnostate is what drives these racist on immigration at the southern border. Scottie
Wright and one other right wing media cartoonist keep trying to push Hillary into the limelight, to force the idea of Hillary running again to rile up their base. They know that for 30 years the right wing media villainize Hillary and the right wing base is in a constant rage about her while the independents are sure she must have done something wrong even though she has never been found guilty of any Republican charge. Hillary has not even suggested she is running nor that she thinks Joe should be replace. Scottie
I think this must be a regional thing. Yes we have a few things that are short like cat food. But mostly it is just one brand name missing with plenty of that item by by a different supplier. Our problem is the costs of stuff. The price of meat is out of this world along with milk which is $5.48 a gallon here. There are other things Ron comes home just all upset over the price of, but we are not yet scrounging for food as Tony Perkins claims due to Biden.
Bullshit! What about the money for the defense department? Tax cuts for the wealthy never get cost checked. But anything helping the people or taking care of the decaying nation needs is called tax and spend liberalism. The people are not buying the misleading talking point anymore. Scottie
While Biden was not articulate in how he put it, he was right. We know Putin has special operations people in Ukraine. He has troops out of uniform helping the separatist. Biden did not want to get in to a war over those handfuls of Russian troops. However he has made it clear that if Putin tries to take any more of Ukrainian territory they will pay a huge price in retaliation. Scottie
Two-thirds of companies in the U.S. are seeing higher profit margins than they did before the pandemic—and they're using talk about inflation as an excuse to slam consumers with extra high prices. We need to enforce antitrust laws & promote market competition to bring down costs. pic.twitter.com/nWQ0l8ec6C
1000%. Republican rhetoric is useless. They will say/do anything to give themselves power.
Spare us the “bipartisan” hand-wringing.
When Manchin and Sinema call for bipartisanship, what they’re really saying is “I like having the power to coral corporate donors. I won’t reform the filibuster even though it will protect democracy because doing so would deprive me off power.”
Republicans are the party of theft. They all know voter suppression and gerrymandering are about stealing elections. They know the audits were about stealing elections. They know slowing the Post Office was about stealing elections.
The complicity and gaslighting, vis a vis, ‘stop the steal’, represent manifest diseased GOP morals/ethics.
“I think the tragedy is that we have a Congress with a Senate that has a minority of misguided senators who will use the filibuster to keep the majority of people from even voting.“ – MLK
This is stupid, BUT it’s also dangerous. Look at the other provisions. Teachers can’t discuss any “current event that is widely debated and currently Controversial…” Boards my NOT “support, believe, endorse, embrace, confess, act upon or otherwise assent to a divisive concept;” https://t.co/Pc0kJm5lXOpic.twitter.com/uxu0ytLSsR
— Tina: Quad Vaxxed & still 😷 (Opinion) (@porpentina2017) January 14, 2022
Notice it includes the wrong Douglass and the correct one is spelled with only on S. Scottie
I don’t know how we collectively decided that 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale, Fahrenheit 451, and Lord of the Flies would make a good combo-reality hellscape, but here we are. https://t.co/kFq2VsaMc1
Parallel effects exist in education. Black children are viewed as "older." This means that when white kids exhibit age-appropriate behavior, they're just kids. Black children are punished for doing the same. K-12 induces racism-related chronic stress https://t.co/sJDcUFgXZR
‘Knowing you are the problem, then blaming others’ is the conservative mission statement.
The malfeasance is manifest.
The fact that one of Minnesota's busiest COVID testing locations has to move out of the convention center for a week because the space was booked by an event that's estimated to bring in 40,000 visitors is straight-up Peak Pandemic.
Coming soon. But what people forget is that those cases some are going to get really sick from Covid, they are going to incur large medical bills, and a lot of them will die. Is that the future the anti-vax groups want? Just a roll of the dice if you go bankrupt or die? How many deaths will be enough when nearly 900,000 are not? Scottie
*in order to protect our strong men- we must drink pee and show our indoctrination*
History has shown that left to their desires the states will infringe on rights granted by the federal constitution. Yes the constitution is the founding document that provides the structure the US is built on. When rights that should be enjoyed by all are with held or restricted to some, the federal government must act to restore them. Plus some elections are federal elections and so should be standard across all states as with other interstate laws. Again that is provided for in the constitution. If you take out the right wing media attempts to stir up their base’s emotions you can see that this is something that has happened before and should happen again. The federal government is doing its job to address a problem across state lines and to ensure equal protection under the 14th amendment. Scottie
Have these people seen Biden’s 36 years in government service? He is a center right leaning politician who has more than once advocated cutting social security payment, assistance to the poor, being tough on crime, in favor of keeping cannabis illegal, and refusing to eliminate student debt even though some of these things helps the economy immensely. Biden is no lefty, no progressive, but he is a corporate democrat. Biden is beholden to the wealthy corporations and is willing to do mostly as they wish as they wish. The reason Biden has been pushing for policies that the right wing media call progressive is they help both the country and the wealthy / big businesses. But the right has to be against anything that Biden is for so they create a false scare tactic against even stuff they supported just a few years ago, such as voting rights reform. History and truth are pesky things the right wing media is trying to avoid. Scottie
According to 2019 FBI data, seven out of ten states with the highest per-capita rates of violent crime voted Republican in the 2020 election. In contrast, seven out of ten states with the lowest rates voted Democrat. However, the District of Columbia had the highest rate despite voting blue. Mississippi has the highest murder rate, I hear it is a deep red state. Facts matter. The cartoon is just an attempt to play on fear and keep outrage going in the right wing base. Scottie
CRT is simply a dog whistle for the right so I will ignore its use here. MLK’s words are as appropriate for today as they were back when he issued them. What is discouraging is the US has regressed on the gains in civil rights that King fought for. The US has not only stopped moving forward to eliminate pervasive racism but again has one political wing actively trying to promote it. He was right about the lack of support and work needed by moderate white people to change the discriminatory nature of the country. Scottie
Youngkin is dividing Virginia by pushing the false idea that CRT is being taught in its schools. Goodwyn prefers the old Texas schoolbooks which told that the slaves were happy being told what to do. White people afraid of facing the truth will be the downfall of this country. Not a joke. A Virginia Republican legislator introduced a bill requiring public schools to teach students about the Lincoln – Douglass debates. Frederick Douglass.
Youngkin banned the teaching of Critical Race Theory (although it is not being taught). Youngkin did not ban the teaching of Replacement Theory. Make of it what you will.
Teachers now have to fear if they say anything critical about; slavery, Jim Crow, lynching they will be fired. If Little Johnny goes home and says Mr Jones said in history class that slaves were considered subhuman and often flogged and his Great, Great,Great, Great Grandfather got rich off their labor-Mr Jones is teaching CRT and should be fired. Protecting our children from an imaginary CRT agenda, killing our children by lifting mask mandates during a lethal pandemic. Not the least bit divisive. Next we’ll have bodycams on teachers to prevent the spread of seditious knowledge. Scottie
No surprise that Lisa Benson, in her typically uneducated ignorance of economic context, wants to focus on the single factor of inflation — the TEMPORARY imbalance of supply with regard to consumer demand — caused by Trump’s devastation of our trade policy, tariff policy, infrastructure neglect and mishandling of the pandemic instead of the long-range booming consumer confidence, strong wage growth, plummeting unemployment, the most jobs created in the first year of a new president EVER in history, investment and capital markets finishing the year at record highs and a strong economic outlook due to infrastructure gains.
The only flaw in Democratic economic policy is their failure to communicate the current strength of the economy and the fast pace of recovery that results in inflation as recovery and demand outpace supply.
But then, unlike conservatives, we don’t have our own 100% wholly-owned captive media like Faux “News,” NoiseMax or OAN, and even the supposedly “mainstream” media, while it does strive towards a standard of journalistic balance, is 100% owned — every single major media outlet, whether broadcast, cable or print — by very wealthy billionaires and corporations representing the special interests of the wealthiest elites who want to hang onto their economic power.
Price gouging and profit taking are a large cause of the current inflation. Businesses are trying to make more money as they do at the cost of the people suffering. This is win win for large or wealthy businesses. While small businesses are going under more money for the large ones. They get more money, more power, more help from the governments, the only ones getting less are the people. Scottie
Businesses created the model that is the biggest contributor to this problem so they could make more profit. In the old days where product and service meant more than profit manufacturers would have a supply of what they needed to make a product readily stored for use. The makers of a item would stock the items parts in a warehouse. the ones that make the parts would have a supply of their needs, all up and down the chain. But in worshiping the god of more profit they got rid of the warehouses and extra inventory, instead going to a system of timed deliveries. Works great if the deliveries are on time no delays. But when there is a problem then the entire system shuts down. Locally the grocery story nearest me me had empty shelves in some spots. While other stores of their same company had those products with full shelves. I checked. Turned out the problem was a hold up in the shipments directed to their store and they had no back of the store storage to hold any amount of supply in. That equaled empty shelves but more profit because when they built the store they did not need to add the cost of the storage area, nor the costs to maintain it, fill it, use it, so on. The cult leader may be tRump but the long time god is profit at all costs.
The American People are all in favor of Biden’s agenda but the rich business owners are not.
We know exactly what Dr. King would say about the filibuster today, because he said it in 1963. pic.twitter.com/iRm6Sf8ea6
I'm extremely tired of the oxygen that the lab-leak hypothesis gets. If you wanted an article that lays out the actual evidence natural origins of SARS-CoV-2, here it is. Note that there is *no evidence at all* for a lab-leak. Me for @massivescihttps://t.co/oQal3IsMIw
— Dan Samorodnitsky (@d_samorodnitsky) May 26, 2021
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Misleading right wing media cartoons / memes
“The clogged polling locations in metro Atlanta reflect an underlying pattern: the number of places to vote has shrunk statewide, with little recourse. Although the reduction in polling places has taken place across racial lines, it has primarily caused long lines in nonwhite neighborhoods where voter registration has surged and more residents cast ballots in person on Election Day.”
For Republicans that’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
Why so much skepticism and/or opposition to the most fundamental right in our democracy — the Right to Vote!
on
Scottie's Playtime 
This is BS propaganda. Abortions after gestational age of 21 weeks are extremely rare (<1%). They are fundamentally illegal unless medically necessary. The vast majority of those abortions are when the fetus is no longer viable. Overturning RvW most likely will not even ban these types of abortions more than they are now.
That fetus abandoned in the trash was most likely a baby that the mother had to conceal because she didn’t know what else to do. This is often caused by the stigma created by families about pregnancy outside of marriage by young women incapable of taking care of the child. It speaks to the fact that American society does less to encourage a mother to keep her child by supporting both the mother and child (the infamous “welfare mother” stigma). It’s so much easier for conservatives to punish the mother for getting an abortion and forcing her to carry the baby’s to terms and then abandon both mother and child. Scottie