Category: Racism
Rep. LAUGHED AT For Not Knowing The Law
Florida History Curriculum To Note “Benefits” Of Slavery
Remember these racist bigots are a minority. They have been so since they lost the war to keep black people as property. Think about what the reporting says the majority turned out against this, yet the Board of education did it anyway. Der DeathSantis handpicked board. Think of what he would do if president. They are driven white supremacists who want real history erased and a fake nice version of slavery taught instead. Ask why? What is the gain, to not feel guilty? That is stupid, no current white person should feel guilty of racism unless they are promoting / practicing racism. And that is the point. These white people want to keep practicing racism, and a lot of them want to make it worse by returning to a time before the civil rights act that gave people of color a voice and a right to some equality in the country that the constitution says they are equal citizens. Seriously scary how deeply racism is in the red states and especially Florida and Texas.
As a side note when we first got to Florida we had a black friend visit us. I mention the skin color only because when we all went out to eat, the waitress at the restaurant refused to take his order, instead asking both Ron and then myself what the other (pointing to our friend) wanted to eat. This was in 1994. We complained but our friend who was experienced in the south did not want us to make a scene, so we agreed when management only offered to change the waitress. It was the first time I had experienced / seen that, and it really stuck in my mind. Totally horrible any person had to go through that dehumanizing experience that our friend did. I can not image how it makes one feel to be treated that way in front of friends. Hugs
The Tallahassee Democrat reports:
The Florida Board of Education approved a new curriculum for African American history on Wednesday, but not without pushback.
After more than an hour of public comment, with a majority of speakers opposed, the board voted unanimously to approve the social studies standards for African American history for kindergarten through 12th grades. Opponents say the curriculum leaves out Florida’s role in slavery and the oppression of African Americans, victim blames Black communities and uses outdated language.
In a letter to board member Ben Gibson, a group of 11 organizations, including the NAACP and the Florida Education Association, criticized the state for omitting or rewriting “key historical facts about the Black experience.”
The Washington Post reports:
More than a dozen speakers at Wednesday’s board meeting opposed the changes, including state Sen. Geraldine Thompson (D), who helped pass a law in 2020 that requires schools to teach lessons about the Ocoee Massacre. The incident in 1920 began when several Black residents attempted to vote, and ended with as many as 60 people dead, making it the deadliest instance of Election Day violence in U.S. history.
Thompson said the new curriculum “suggests that the massacre was sparked by violence from African Americans. That’s blaming the victims. ” State Rep. Anna Eskamani (D) said she was concerned about inaccuracies in the new standards, including instructing that enslaved people “developed skills” that could be helpful. “That is inaccurate and a scary standard for us to establish,” she said.
A short round up as I start a new post to catch the Friday to Sunday bunch.
the Republican infrastructure plan !!
House Bill 245 expands the definition of adult cabaret performers from strippers and topless dancers to include “entertainers who exhibit a gender identity that is different from the performer’s or entertainer’s gender assigned at birth.”
Biden got a Target Letter, too!
Ta-Nehisi Coates Crashes School Board Meeting Over Removing His Book From Class
Thanks to Ali for leaving this link on MPS. Hugs
The writer’s critically acclaimed memoir has become a flashpoint in a small South Carolina town.
Brooke Leigh Howard
Updated Jul. 19, 2023 2:14PM EDT / Published Jul. 18, 2023 1:04PM EDT
A South Carolina school board meeting, in which community members railed against an African American culture writer’s award-winning memoir about racial injustice, featured a special guest appearance: Ta-Nehisi Coates, the famed author in question.
On Monday evening, the Lexington-Richland District 5 School Board met to discuss the outrage concerning Coates’ 2015 nonfiction bestseller, Between the World and Me, which has repeatedly caused political literary mayhem among reactionary right-wing communities and been placed on book ban lists.
In February, after getting approval from higher-ups, an AP Language teacher at Chapin High School conducted a lesson involving Between the World and Me. The book, written as an essay to Coates’ son to prepare him for the life he will live as a Black man, details personal accounts of Coates’ life and his first-hand experiences with racism. However, the lesson was shut down and the book was removed from the course after students filed a complaint claiming the book made them feel “guilty for being white,” local news outlet CBS 19 Columbia reported.
According to footage obtained by CBS 19, a slew of people wearing blue rallied in support for the book and for academic freedom during the board hearing. And Coates sat in the back of the room next to the teacher who assigned the book as a sign of solidarity.
“What matters most to me is that my students have the ability to hear six or seven opinions on one topic and come up with their own thesis, supported with evidence, and come up with an independent conclusion,” said Superintendent Dr. Akil Ross. “Sometimes there’s going to be topics you agree with, and there’s going to be topics you disagree with. Academic freedom says even if you disagree, there’ll be another opinion presented to our children. Our democracy needs that.”
PEN America, a literary human-rights organization, called the book’s removal “an outrageous act of government censorship and a textbook example of how educational gag orders corrupt free inquiry in the classroom.”
“We cannot become critical thinkers without being uncomfortable in some way,” one student declared while directly addressing the Lexington-Richland board. “If students can’t learn these things in a safe space, like school, how are they—we—meant to make good decisions and think critically?”
The board did not conduct a vote after public discussion.
In a statement to The Daily Beast, Lexington-Richmond District 5 wrote that it is “important to understand” that Between the World and Me “is not banned in our school district.”
“Superintendent Ross is committed to providing additional training on how to use books like Between the World and Me,” said communications director Amanda Taylor, referring to International Baccalaureate courses and policies on teaching about controversial and sensitive issues. “This training will cover how to determine if the material is appropriate for the course and the maturity of the students. District administration will also provide training to ensure materials are based on state standards and protect the academic freedom of the students.”
Coates did not respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment on Tuesday.
Brooke Leigh Howard
Book Bans Are Fascist
‘There were no benefits to being a slave’: Florida St. Sen. slams Florida’s new slavery curriculum
‘Poisoning the well’: Florida middle schoolers to be dragged into DeSantis’ war on history
Jen Psaki reveals what ‘Moms for Liberty’ is all about
Exclusive: Texas troopers told to push children into Rio Grande, deny water to migrants, records say
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/border-trooper-migrants-wire-18205076.php
July 17, 2023Updated: July 18, 2023 12:16 p.m.
WASHINGTON — Officers working for Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security initiative have been ordered to push small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande, and have been told not to give water to asylum seekers even in extreme heat, according to an email from a Department of Public Safety trooper who described the actions as “inhumane.”
The July 3 account, reviewed by Hearst Newspapers, discloses several previously unreported incidents the trooper witnessed in Eagle Pass, where the state of Texas has strung miles of razor wire and deployed a wall of buoys in the Rio Grande.
According to the email, a pregnant woman having a miscarriage was found late last month caught in the wire, doubled over in pain. A four-year-old girl passed out from heat exhaustion after she tried to go through it and was pushed back by Texas National Guard soldiers. A teenager broke his leg trying to navigate the water around the wire and had to be carried by his father.
The email, which the trooper sent to a superior, suggests that Texas has set “traps” of razor wire-wrapped barrels in parts of the river with high water and low visibility. And it says the wire has increased the risk of drownings by forcing migrants into deeper stretches of the river.
The trooper called for a series of rigorous policy changes to improve safety for migrants, including removing the barrels and revoking the directive on withholding water.
“Due to the extreme heat, the order to not give people water needs to be immediately reversed as well,” the trooper wrote, later adding: “I believe we have stepped over a line into the inhumane.”
Department of Public Safety spokesman Travis Considine did not comment on all the contents of the trooper’s email, but said there is no policy against giving water to migrants.
Considine also provided an email from DPS Director Steven McCraw on Saturday calling for an audit to determine if more can be done to minimize the risk to migrants. McCraw wrote troopers should warn migrants not to cross the wire, redirect them to ports of entry and to closely watch for anyone who needs medical attention.
In another email, McCraw acknowledged that there has been an increase in injuries from the wire, including seven incidents reported by Border Patrol where migrants needed “elevated medical attention” from July 4 to July 13. Those were in addition to the incidents detailed by the trooper.
“The purpose of the wire is to deter smuggling between the ports of entry and not to injure migrants,” McCraw wrote. “The smugglers care not if the migrants are injured, but we do, and we must take all necessary measures to mitigate the risk to them including injuries from trying to cross over the concertina wire, drownings and dehydration.”
The incidents detailed in the email come as Abbott has stepped up efforts in recent weeks to physically bar migrants from entering the country through his Operation Lone Star initiative, escalating tensions between state and federal officials and drawing increased scrutiny from humanitarian groups who say the state is endangering asylum seekers. The most aggressive initiatives have been targeted at Eagle Pass.
The state has also now deployed a wall of floating buoys in the Rio Grande, which triggered complaints over the weekend from Mexico.
Federal Border Patrol officials have issued internal warnings that the razor wire is preventing their agents from reaching at-risk migrants and increasing the risk of drownings in the Rio Grande, Hearst Newspapers reported last week.
The DPS trooper expressed similar concerns, writing that the placement of the wire along the river “forces people to cross in other areas that are deeper and not as safe for people carrying kids and bags.”
The trooper’s email sheds new light on a series of previously reported drownings in the river during a one-week stretch earlier this month, including a mother and at least one of her two children, who federal Border Patrol agents spotted struggling to cross the Rio Grande on July 1.
According to the email, a DPS boat found the mother and one of the children, who went under the water for a minute. They were pulled from the river and given medical care before being transferred to EMS, but were later declared deceased at the hospital. The second child was never found, the email said.
The governor has said he is taking necessary steps to secure the border and accused federal officials of refusing to do so.
“Texas is deploying every tool and strategy to deter and repel illegal crossings between ports of entry as President Biden’s dangerous open border policies entice migrants from over 150 countries to risk their lives entering the country illegally,” said Andrew Mahaleris, Abbott’s press secretary. “President Biden has unleashed a chaos on the border that’s unsustainable, and we have a constitutional duty to respond to this unprecedented crisis.”
The DPS trooper’s email details four incidents in just one day in which migrants were caught in the wire or injured trying to get around it.
On June 30, troopers found a group of people along the wire, including a 4-year-old girl who tried to cross the wire and was pressed back by Texas Guard soldiers “due to the orders given to them,” the email says. The DPS trooper wrote that the temperature was “well over 100 degrees” and the girl passed out from exhaustion.
“We provided treatment to the unresponsive patient and transferred care to EMS,” the trooper wrote. A spokesperson for the Texas National Guard did not respond to a request for comment.
In another instance, troopers found a 19-year-old woman “in obvious pain” stuck in the wire. She was cut free and given a medical assessment, which determined she was pregnant and having a miscarriage. She was then transferred to EMS.
The trooper also treated a man with a “significant laceration” in his left leg, who said he had cut it while trying to free his child who was “stuck on a trap in the water,” describing a barrel with razor wire “all over it.” And the trooper treated a 15-year-old boy who broke his right leg walking in the river because the razor wire was “laid out in a manner that it forced him into the river where it is unsafe to travel.”
In another instance, on June 25, troopers came across a group of 120 people camped out along a fence set up along the river. The group included several small children and babies who were nursing, the trooper wrote. The entire group was exhausted, hungry and tired, the trooper wrote. The shift officer in command ordered the troopers to “push the people back into the water to go to Mexico,” the email says.
The trooper wrote that the troopers decided it was not the right thing to do “with the very real potential of exhausted people drowning.” They called command again and expressed their concerns and were given the order to “tell them to go to Mexico and get into our vehicle and leave,” the trooper wrote. After they left, other troopers worked with Border Patrol to provide care to the migrants, the email said.
The trooper did not respond to a request for comment Monday. His email was shared by a confidential source with knowledge of border operations. It was unclear whether the trooper received a response from the sergeant he’d messaged.
Considine acknowledged that DPS was aware of the email and provided the additional agency emails in response. Those emails detail seven other incidents reported by federal border agents in which migrants were injured on the wires, including a child who was taken to the hospital on Thursday with cuts on his left arm, a mother and child who were taken to the hospital on Wednesday with “minor lacerations” on their “lower extremities,” and another migrant taken to San Antonio on July 4 to receive treatment for “several lacerations” that required staples.
Victor Escalon, a DPS director who oversees South Texas, wrote in an email Friday to other agency officials that troopers “may need to open the wire to aid individuals in medical distress, maintain the peace, and/or to make an arrest for criminal trespass, criminal mischief, acts of violence, or other State crimes.
“Our DPS medical unit is assigned to this operation to address medical concerns for everyone involved,” Escalon wrote. “As we enforce State law, we may need to aid those in medical distress and provide water as necessary.”
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Benjamin Wermund is the Washington correspondent for the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News. He covers the Texas delegation and the many ways the state and its leaders shape national politics and policy. He’s a Texas native and a diehard Spurs fan.VIEW COMMENTS
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