I’ve been on the watch for the pre-filing of bills for the upcoming legislative session that would attempt to make it illegal for teachers in Louisiana’s public schools to teach about this country’s history of slavery or of the genocide of the Native Americans.
Cade Brumley saved legislators the trouble today.
The State Superintendent of Education said there was nothing in his plans for the state’s social studies standards that would “indoctrinate” students on the nation’s radial history.
I can draw one of only two possible conclusions from that: he is either in bed with the radical Repugnantcan Party or he is scared of them and afraid of losing his job.
Either way, it was a cowardly position to take. The Civil War is the darkest chapter of our history and the cause of that war, denials in some quarters notwithstanding, was the issue of slavery.
We can close our eyes to the shameful practice of enslaving other human beings and we can ignore the fact that we at one time we considered enslaved black people as only 3/5 OF A HUMAN but we cannot erase the fact that it happened.
We cannot change the fact that an estimated 5 million to 15 million Native Americans were killed in the name of westward expansion, the so-called Manifest Destiny.
President Andrew Jackson instituted the policy of Indian removal and his successor, Martin Van Buren ordered the roundup and imprisonment of Cherokees in a similar manner in which the Nazis rounded up the Jews in the Warsaw Ghettos a century later. Some 16,000 Cherokee were marched from Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina and Alabama to Oklahoma. Along the way about 3,000, nearly 20 percent of the total number, died, giving birth to the TRAIL OF TEARS.
Will there be no mention of how Japanese-Americans were rounded up and forced to live in internment camps during WWII?
That won’t be taught because, as they say, the winners write the history books. But it ain’t history, it’s propaganda.
Now since Brumley is so set against the so-called critical race theory concept, public school kids probably won’t learn about the Holocaust, either, though I’d wager the Battle of the Alamo will continue to be taught.
But never mind all that. Like Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis says, we don’t want white folks to feel uncomfortable about being white – let’s just make black folks and brown folks uncomfortable about their skin tones. Jesus! DeSantis is hellbent on becoming Donald Trump 2.0 and now our spineless education superintendent is pandering to that same milquetoast mindset.
What have we become in this country, this state? Are we so feeble-minded that we are afraid to expose our foibles? Are we so shallow that we must constantly look over our shoulder to see what Big Brother is thinking of our actions? Why are we so intimidated by the likes of Ted “Cancun” Cruz, Josh Hawley, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Gym Jordan, Ron Johnson, Donald Trump, DeSantis, et al? Why wo we continue to elect people like John Kennedy, Steve Scalise, Mike Johnson, and Clay Higgins?
It’s a damn shame when we cannot face ourselves in the mirror of history.
“I have been clear about this for some time that CRT would not be included in our standards,” Brumley sniffed. “[W]e would be cognizant that nothing in the standards could open the door for any form of indoctrination,”
What the hell is he talking about? Indoctrination? Seriously? This is history, man, and you cannot change history. It happened and ignoring it will not change that.
You want to really piss off African Americans? Pretend they don’t matter, that they were never beaten, whipped, and yes, enslaved.
I’m lily-white, so I don’t presume to understand how they must feel toward us. But I can say with certainty that had my ancestors been held in bondage and considered 3/5 of a human being, I might well harbor some resentment towards the ones whose ancestors enslaved them – especially if today, they ignored that part of history, if they continued to try to take away my right to vote, if they used fire hoses and attack dogs on me when I marched for my rights, if they tried to shut me out of educational opportunities, out of meaningful jobs, out of society itself.
You cannot ignore 12 percent of population. You cannot run them through the LSU football and basketball programs, cheer for them as heroes, and then discard them like yesterday’s news when their eligibility is up.
You have to treat people with some dignity whether you like it or not.
My grandfather drilled into me the conviction that you can take a lot of things from a man, but never take his dignity.
Cade Brumley, with Tuesday’s pronouncement, has thumbed his nose at the dignity of African Americans, Native Americans, and, if his moratorium extends to the Holocaust, Jews.
We should be reminded of that callousness every day because it resides in every member of our congressional delegation but one. It will be a dominant issue in this year’s legislative session, it already permeates the U.S. Congress and if allowed to fester, it will destroy this country from within like a cancer.
Brumley is like Kornpone and other elected and appointed officials. They read the polls and listen to the people who put them there. If they say you can keep your job and maybe even go to a better one if you take X position, that’s the one you take. There is no room for sensitivity to anything but your future personal history. The public good may be served if it happens to coincide with your personal needs.
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If only the likes of Brumley felt shame for putting their personal ambition ahead of their duty to deal with truth, what a better place this would be.
I am not so sure about your reaction. CRT isn’t taught in K-12 schools, nor is it intended to be. That is a whole different thing from teaching real history. I think he may have been trying to keep the legislature from meddling and adding undue restrictions on teaching what has always been taught. The SS standards have been under review for a while, and I don’t think he is trying to add restrictions. I could be wrong, because I haven’t read the standards, but pandering to the right wasn’t actually my first reaction. He may be trying to keep them away from the standards!
Thank you for explaining what Critical Race Theory is and where it is being taught. Perhaps Cade should have much more explicit about what exactly is history courses are proposed to be taught in our K-12 public schools. Politics seem to have made this non-issue messier and messier. It is like Mississippi outlawing CRT in their schools when it actually doesn’t exist in their schools. I am sure that history curriculum will always be lacking in the full reporting of the ugliest parts of it…sadly. But, CRT isn’t the problem at this point.
All of that will CONTINUE to be taught. If the legislature manages to pass some stupid bills that prohibit certain buzz words or commentary they don’t approve of, it will just exacerbate the teacher drain which has already reached epic proportions. Money will be wasted with lawsuits and the Supreme Court will be pushed to their limits by politicians.
Brumley is bought and paid for. He is worse than a hypocrite. He is a shill.
Lee P. Barrios, M.Ed., NBCT
178 ABITA Oaks Loop ABITA Springs, LA 70420 985-789-8304
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It will be interesting to see how Louisiana history will be taught in public schools going forward. Our Cajuns faced serious discrimination in the community and especially in schools, where English language only was allowed for many years. Will Acadian settlement in Louisiana be scrubbed from history lessons? Or will it just be limited to the romantic and tragic Evangeline story?
A subset of sad, scared, crazed adults has created a fake issue that is about to tear education apart. It was certainly predictable that some people in Louisiana would jump on that bandwagon. In a state where diversity in baked into our DNA.
Your article had some merit to it but, the people you referred to “that keep getting elected” is because that is the will of the people by vote. Many of your articles would be great if you didn’t let your hatred for the republican party wiggle its way in. Look at history, it was the republicans who wanted to end slavery, the democrats did not. What about this democratic administration keeping record numbers of immigrants in cages and secretly busing and flying them to various places in the country? That would be a good article for you to research and write on. Keep the articles coming, they are interesting.