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"Republican legislation to limit teaching a historically accurate picture of U.S. history in public institutions has advanced in some half a dozen states." Min

"Republican legislation to limit teaching a historically accurate picture of U.S. history in public institutions has advanced in some half a dozen states." Mind-boggling propaganda.

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CGamesPlay 5y ago
It's a bit strange to throw this sentence in at the end--it's vague to the point of being useless and seems to throw the 50 Republican senators who didn't oppose in a generic "bad guys" light.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  They're hoping you click on the link in that paragraph, which is full-on Marxist propaganda. Also, it's not 6 states banning CRT, it's 20 states now. (CRT is calling white children oppressors, and black children victims. Neither is accurate or helpful. CRT is derived from Marxist Critical Theory. Since the US doesn't have a class struggle, racism has been inserted to make it a racism struggle.)
  - crummy 5y ago
    Are there some example texts being given to kids on CRT I could look at?
  - ecshafer 5y ago
    Marxism has nothing to do with Critical Race Theory, which is an explicitly non-marxist idea. Marx theory is that all of history is a history of class warfare, so any racism is a result of class warfare. Marx was unconcerned with race.
    - seneca 5y ago
      > Marxism has nothing to do with Critical Race Theory This is just incorrect. Critical Theory is a product of the Frankfurt School. They were explicitly applying Marxist thought to twentieth century politics, and wanted to understand why Marxism wasn't successful in the west. This is a basic matter of record, not some wing-nut attempt to slander. Critical Theory is reworked Marxism to try to apply it to the modern West.
    - klyrs 5y ago
      There is a nugget of truth to the propaganda, which is one reason it persists. Critical Race Theory (which seeks to understand the relationship between racism and law) is a branch of Critical Legal Studies (which seeks to understand the relationship between more generalized oppression and law), which is a branch of Critical Theory (which seeks to understand how societies reinforce power structures). Critical Theory arose from the Frankfurt School, and drew significantly from the thinking of Marx and Freud. So, yes, CRT is fractionally inspired by Marx, a notorious racist and anti-Semite. But the Red Scare is alive and kicking in American discourse, so this tenuous link makes for effective gish gallop.
    - fighterpilot 5y ago
      It's true that Marx is about class and CRT is about race, but don't you think there's an abstract similarity there, which is the group-based oppressed/oppressor claim? I don't think it's totally disingenuous to think of CRT as a modern re-incarnation of this type of thinking due to this abstract nearness. Perhaps a more accurate way to frame this is that both CRT and Marxism are separate instances of a collectivist way of thinking that tries to categorize people into groups based on their perceived power, where what informs that categorization is low dimensional (e.g merely class or merely race+gender). In that sense they're similar ideologies.
- dabbledash 5y ago
  I haven’t read the article yet, so i’m going to bet now that there is no direct link in the article to the text of any bill they’re characterizing this way. If i’m wrong, i’ll donate $10 to NPR. ETA: unsurprisingly, my money was safe. But at least they linked to the Juneteenth bill. That’s rare enough. I think it should be considered a bare minimum in modern reporting to link to the original sources.
bigbillheck 5y ago
You're referring to the general state of US history education including this new legislation, I assume.
seneca 5y ago
NPR has really squandered their credibility in the last 5 years or so.
amznthrwaway 5y ago
If you look at a lot of southern history textbooks, they’re absolutely fucking insane. Like, they start talking about the civil war by portraying somebody who owned 100 slaves as poor (obviously false; slaves are expensive), and talking about how they’re victimized by losing those slaves… and how the slave master will lose their job. The textbooks today are fucking obscene propaganda. But this is a safe space for racist shits like you, because that's how Paul Graham wants it. Paul pays Dan Gackle specifically to ensure that racist assholes like you have a Safe Space where you won't be challenged.
SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
I really encourage everyone who disagrees with this comment to reflect on it. The reporter just threw out, as though it was obvious, a partisan stance on an issue of great controversy completely unrelated to the topic of the article. A key component of media literacy is recognizing biases in your sources, so you have to be consciously aware of these kinds of things, or you'll be systematically misled. For example, one question you should be asking is, why does the article contain a quote only from one side of the aisle? I think a lot of people are likely to conclude that only one side thought it was important, and that's not so - there was strong bipartisan support for this bill.
- jturpin 5y ago
  It doesn't help that CRT proponents do not provide a complete, rigid definition of CRT, and might provide a very nice sounding initial explanation like it "explores the history of systemic racism in the US and how it still has tangible effects today." If that's one's understanding of CRT, then it feels very reasonable to be against the people trying to suppress teaching it. Who wouldn't want to dive into the history of racist policies and how it still creates problems today? But in order to explore these problems, CRT relies on assumptions, groups our modern-day conceptions of races as homogeneous groups of people with their own class struggles, and in general is not a historically honest or objective way of looking at the world.
  - ninthcat 5y ago
    Here’s a definition used in Florida’s ban[1] on CRT: > the theory that racism is not merely the product of prejudice, but that racism is embedded in American society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white persons. CRT by this definition is an objective historical fact. The effect of white supremacy on the legal system can be seen from the end of reconstruction, to Jim Crow laws, to government officials allying with the Klan, to the modern-day carceral state. All of these topics were covered in my public school education. If you want to argue that some works of CRT are flawed, that’s one thing, but substituting the objective historical facts of critical race theory with nationalist propaganda, as these CRT bans explicitly aim to do, is irresponsible and a disservice to the public education system. As NPR correctly points out, it “limit[s] teaching a historically accurate picture of U.S. history”. [1]: http://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/19958/urlt/7-4.pdf http://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/19958/urlt/7-4.pdf
walkedaway 5y ago
Not mind-boggling at all when you consider the source: NPR.
spywaregorilla 5y ago
Can you explain why you believe this isn't a factual claim?
- yerwhat01010 5y ago
  Here's one of the bills that NPR is presumably referring to: Texas HB 3979, which was just signed into law by the governor yesterday: https://legiscan.com/TX/text/HB3979/2021 https://legiscan.com/TX/text/HB3979/2021 That's its full text. You can read it, it's short. Some highlights are that the bill mandates (that's mandates - not prevents) that Texan schoolchildren are educated about: * "the history of Native Americans;" * "the history of white supremacy, including but not limited to the institution of slavery, the eugenics movement, and the Ku Klux Klan, and the ways in which it is morally wrong;" * "the history and importance of the civil right movement" * "the history and importance of the women's suffrage movement" * The Indian Removal Act * the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850; * Brown v. Board of Education; * The Underground Railroad The bill also mandates that Texan schoolchildren learn about such historical figures as MLK, Frederick Douglass, Sally Hemings and Cesar Chavez, to name but a few. So tell me: who wants to prevent a "historically accurate picture of the United States" from being taught in schools - those who support a bill that requires children to be taught about the history of slavery, Indian genocide, the civil rights movement and white supremacy, or those who oppose such a bill? And I've only talked about what what the bill requires. What does it prevent? What does HB3979 ban from Texan classroom? Again, I encourage you to read the whole thing yourself, but I know that most people don't click through to the source, so I'll quote again. Some of the things that HB3979 bans from being taught to Texan schoolchildren include that: * "an individual, by virtue of the individual's race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex;" * "an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of the individual's race;" * "an individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual's race or sex;" Similar wording appears in most of the anti-CRT bills working their way through state legislatures. You need to understand this: critical race theorists want to teach the above. They oppose these bills (and lie about their contents) because they want to discriminate on the basis of race, make people feel discomfort, guilt and anguish based on their race, hold entire races collectively responsible for the actions of individual members of that race, and engage in racial stereotyping and scapegoating. The sooner you realise this, the sooner you'll be able to make sense of our current moment.
mikedilger 5y ago
[I was going to post this independently, but as I've found your comment down the page I'll post this in reply to your comment.] NPR is usually a more balanced news source, but that last paragraph takes a definite one-sided stance in the phrase "a historically accurate picture" in reference to critical race theory. Critical race theory is not about historic accuracy (non-normative fact), it's a very normative activist perspective. That being said, I'm strongly against any form of the law restricting what ideas can be taught, even wildly wrong and dangerous ones.
- jollybean 5y ago
  NPR really isn't very balanced. It's good, but not balanced. There are very few places that are, and everyone is covering 'different things' it's like there is no accepted version of reality anymore.

"Republican legislation to limit teaching a historically accurate picture of U.S. history in public institutions has advanced in some half a dozen states." Mind-boggling propaganda.

deleted 5y ago

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CGamesPlay 5y ago

It's a bit strange to throw this sentence in at the end--it's vague to the point of being useless and seems to throw the 50 Republican senators who didn't oppose in a generic "bad guys" light.

redis_mlc 5y ago
They're hoping you click on the link in that paragraph, which is full-on Marxist propaganda. Also, it's not 6 states banning CRT, it's 20 states now. (CRT is calling white children oppressors, and black children victims. Neither is accurate or helpful. CRT is derived from Marxist Critical Theory. Since the US doesn't have a class struggle, racism has been inserted to make it a racism struggle.)
- crummy 5y ago
  Are there some example texts being given to kids on CRT I could look at?
- ecshafer 5y ago
  Marxism has nothing to do with Critical Race Theory, which is an explicitly non-marxist idea. Marx theory is that all of history is a history of class warfare, so any racism is a result of class warfare. Marx was unconcerned with race.
  - seneca 5y ago
    > Marxism has nothing to do with Critical Race Theory This is just incorrect. Critical Theory is a product of the Frankfurt School. They were explicitly applying Marxist thought to twentieth century politics, and wanted to understand why Marxism wasn't successful in the west. This is a basic matter of record, not some wing-nut attempt to slander. Critical Theory is reworked Marxism to try to apply it to the modern West.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    There is a nugget of truth to the propaganda, which is one reason it persists. Critical Race Theory (which seeks to understand the relationship between racism and law) is a branch of Critical Legal Studies (which seeks to understand the relationship between more generalized oppression and law), which is a branch of Critical Theory (which seeks to understand how societies reinforce power structures). Critical Theory arose from the Frankfurt School, and drew significantly from the thinking of Marx and Freud. So, yes, CRT is fractionally inspired by Marx, a notorious racist and anti-Semite. But the Red Scare is alive and kicking in American discourse, so this tenuous link makes for effective gish gallop.
  - fighterpilot 5y ago
    It's true that Marx is about class and CRT is about race, but don't you think there's an abstract similarity there, which is the group-based oppressed/oppressor claim? I don't think it's totally disingenuous to think of CRT as a modern re-incarnation of this type of thinking due to this abstract nearness. Perhaps a more accurate way to frame this is that both CRT and Marxism are separate instances of a collectivist way of thinking that tries to categorize people into groups based on their perceived power, where what informs that categorization is low dimensional (e.g merely class or merely race+gender). In that sense they're similar ideologies.
dabbledash 5y ago
I haven’t read the article yet, so i’m going to bet now that there is no direct link in the article to the text of any bill they’re characterizing this way. If i’m wrong, i’ll donate $10 to NPR. ETA: unsurprisingly, my money was safe. But at least they linked to the Juneteenth bill. That’s rare enough. I think it should be considered a bare minimum in modern reporting to link to the original sources.

bigbillheck 5y ago

You're referring to the general state of US history education including this new legislation, I assume.

seneca 5y ago

NPR has really squandered their credibility in the last 5 years or so.

amznthrwaway 5y ago

If you look at a lot of southern history textbooks, they’re absolutely fucking insane. Like, they start talking about the civil war by portraying somebody who owned 100 slaves as poor (obviously false; slaves are expensive), and talking about how they’re victimized by losing those slaves… and how the slave master will lose their job. The textbooks today are fucking obscene propaganda. But this is a safe space for racist shits like you, because that's how Paul Graham wants it. Paul pays Dan Gackle specifically to ensure that racist assholes like you have a Safe Space where you won't be challenged.

SpicyLemonZest 5y ago

I really encourage everyone who disagrees with this comment to reflect on it. The reporter just threw out, as though it was obvious, a partisan stance on an issue of great controversy completely unrelated to the topic of the article. A key component of media literacy is recognizing biases in your sources, so you have to be consciously aware of these kinds of things, or you'll be systematically misled. For example, one question you should be asking is, why does the article contain a quote only from one side of the aisle? I think a lot of people are likely to conclude that only one side thought it was important, and that's not so - there was strong bipartisan support for this bill.

jturpin 5y ago
It doesn't help that CRT proponents do not provide a complete, rigid definition of CRT, and might provide a very nice sounding initial explanation like it "explores the history of systemic racism in the US and how it still has tangible effects today." If that's one's understanding of CRT, then it feels very reasonable to be against the people trying to suppress teaching it. Who wouldn't want to dive into the history of racist policies and how it still creates problems today? But in order to explore these problems, CRT relies on assumptions, groups our modern-day conceptions of races as homogeneous groups of people with their own class struggles, and in general is not a historically honest or objective way of looking at the world.
- ninthcat 5y ago
  Here’s a definition used in Florida’s ban[1] on CRT: > the theory that racism is not merely the product of prejudice, but that racism is embedded in American society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white persons. CRT by this definition is an objective historical fact. The effect of white supremacy on the legal system can be seen from the end of reconstruction, to Jim Crow laws, to government officials allying with the Klan, to the modern-day carceral state. All of these topics were covered in my public school education. If you want to argue that some works of CRT are flawed, that’s one thing, but substituting the objective historical facts of critical race theory with nationalist propaganda, as these CRT bans explicitly aim to do, is irresponsible and a disservice to the public education system. As NPR correctly points out, it “limit[s] teaching a historically accurate picture of U.S. history”. [1]: http://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/19958/urlt/7-4.pdf http://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/19958/urlt/7-4.pdf

walkedaway 5y ago

Not mind-boggling at all when you consider the source: NPR.

spywaregorilla 5y ago

Can you explain why you believe this isn't a factual claim?

yerwhat01010 5y ago
Here's one of the bills that NPR is presumably referring to: Texas HB 3979, which was just signed into law by the governor yesterday: https://legiscan.com/TX/text/HB3979/2021 https://legiscan.com/TX/text/HB3979/2021 That's its full text. You can read it, it's short. Some highlights are that the bill mandates (that's mandates - not prevents) that Texan schoolchildren are educated about: * "the history of Native Americans;" * "the history of white supremacy, including but not limited to the institution of slavery, the eugenics movement, and the Ku Klux Klan, and the ways in which it is morally wrong;" * "the history and importance of the civil right movement" * "the history and importance of the women's suffrage movement" * The Indian Removal Act * the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850; * Brown v. Board of Education; * The Underground Railroad The bill also mandates that Texan schoolchildren learn about such historical figures as MLK, Frederick Douglass, Sally Hemings and Cesar Chavez, to name but a few. So tell me: who wants to prevent a "historically accurate picture of the United States" from being taught in schools - those who support a bill that requires children to be taught about the history of slavery, Indian genocide, the civil rights movement and white supremacy, or those who oppose such a bill? And I've only talked about what what the bill requires. What does it prevent? What does HB3979 ban from Texan classroom? Again, I encourage you to read the whole thing yourself, but I know that most people don't click through to the source, so I'll quote again. Some of the things that HB3979 bans from being taught to Texan schoolchildren include that: * "an individual, by virtue of the individual's race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex;" * "an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of the individual's race;" * "an individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual's race or sex;" Similar wording appears in most of the anti-CRT bills working their way through state legislatures. You need to understand this: critical race theorists want to teach the above. They oppose these bills (and lie about their contents) because they want to discriminate on the basis of race, make people feel discomfort, guilt and anguish based on their race, hold entire races collectively responsible for the actions of individual members of that race, and engage in racial stereotyping and scapegoating. The sooner you realise this, the sooner you'll be able to make sense of our current moment.

mikedilger 5y ago

[I was going to post this independently, but as I've found your comment down the page I'll post this in reply to your comment.] NPR is usually a more balanced news source, but that last paragraph takes a definite one-sided stance in the phrase "a historically accurate picture" in reference to critical race theory. Critical race theory is not about historic accuracy (non-normative fact), it's a very normative activist perspective. That being said, I'm strongly against any form of the law restricting what ideas can be taught, even wildly wrong and dangerous ones.

jollybean 5y ago
NPR really isn't very balanced. It's good, but not balanced. There are very few places that are, and everyone is covering 'different things' it's like there is no accepted version of reality anymore.