THOUGHTS ON CRITICAL RACE THEORY (CRT)

These two paragraphs, which is being taught to 8th graders in Louisiana, are appalling.

People are so concerned about critical race theory being taught to kids, but have nothing to say about this https://t.co/KmNcoP94fU pic.twitter.com/mbJFwFbKdm

— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) June 14, 2021

If critical race theory is so evil that it can’t be allowed in schools… Why is this nonsense allowed?

I mean, I’d be okay doing without CRT if the textbooks actually taught history and not revisionist nonsense. Because if everything wasn’t slanted toward “the poor plantation owners,” and if the word “slave” wasn’t actively being changed by textbook writers to deny the AWFULNESS of slavery, there wouldn’t need to be critical race theory.

Everyone would know that slavery is wrong.

That African Americans didn’t choose to hop on boats and work in fields picking cotton for no pay. That they didn’t choose to be collared and beaten and sold away from their families and friends to toil until they died under the cruelest system imaginable. That the slave owners were the worst sort of people imaginable and nothing to worship and emulate; just monsters in human skin, whining that they had to give up slavery and actually pay workers fair wages.

“Nobody wants to work anymore”–is a codified phrase used today with the implication that workers, “the lessers of society,” are to blame for businesses “failing.” Rather than accepting that their leaning on a failed business model–a pyramid scheme where workers are paid chump change while CEOs have golden parachutes–is the problem, they want to blame people for wanting a living wage.

There’s a reason they want textbooks that lie.

Because when they do evil things to workers in the modern world, they can point at those lying textbooks and say, “What are you complaining about? We paid to bring people from Africa to work in America. They chose to come and work in exchange for food, water, and a pallet to sleep on. Their lives here were so much better than back in their original country. They were glad to leave and come to America. They were grateful enough to call their saviors their ‘masters.’ They were happy to work for no money in return for a better life. And you should be too. ‘Slavery’ is just a word, after all, like ‘indentured servant’ and ‘whipping someone so much that they die.’ It’s the natural order of things. All workers should be glad for the chance to work, even without pay or any compensation. That’s what America needs to go back to: Traditional Family Values.”

Meanwhile, the percentage of slave owners/masters/abusers is MUCH HIGHER than the 1.4% they want to lie about.

“Don’t blame me. My family was poor and couldn’t afford slaves.”

“Why do I care what happened decades before I was born? Don’t make me feel uncomfortable about it. I didn’t have anything to do with slavery!”

In 1860, 90% of America’s black population was enslaved, and blacks made up over 50% of the population of states like South Carolina and Mississippi. To suggest this ubiquity of human bondage in 1860s America was the result of only “1.4% of whites” owning slaves would be, to put it mildly, an inaccurate reading of U.S. history.

–Snopes (Did Only 1.4 Percent of White Americans Own Slaves in 1860? | Snopes.com)

The phrase “a ‘society with slaves’ is different from a ‘slave society'” resonates strongly with me. Because we weren’t a society with slaves.

We were a slave society.

Because like the earlier tweet pointed out–“They were able to reclaim their plantation but, due to emancipation (the freeing of slaves), lost all their property in slaves. The family had to face the new reality of planting and harvesting their fields with freed people who, Kate regretted, now demanded ‘high wages.‘”–the whole business model the South was dependent on fell apart without slaves. Having to pay people even a minimal amount of money for their work was TOO MUCH for a lot of slave owners/holders to handle.

Their businesses fell apart because they didn’t have human beings to exploit and abuse.

And FYI—

The definition for “indentured servant”–

a person who signs and is bound by indentures to work for another for a specified time especially in return for payment of travel expenses and maintenance

–says right in it that it IS NOT SLAVERY.

To use the two interchangeably is disingenuous at best, and outright evil at worst.

An indentured servant signed paperwork to agree to work for someone for a prearranged amount of time in return for travel expenses, food, shelter, and pocket money. They had legal recourses in the event of abuses, and could even break their contracts if they had reason.

A slave wasn’t even seen as human–“lost all their property in slaves“–but as property to be traded, sold, and bred. They certainly had no option to say “I don’t want to work for you anymore” and to leave, because the ones that fled were hunted down by people whose sole business involved retrieving “lost” slaves to their owners for money.

And I added that emphasis there–“for money“–because it’s one more proof that the United States of America started as a slave society. Because the very framework of Southern society was built on the backs of human misery, to the point that their lifestyles collapsed without slaves to hold it up.

The fact that some modern Americans are trying to take us back to those times, and are using the textbooks currently taught in schools to do so, is reprehensible. I am disgusted by the whole lot of them.

And so, if the textbooks are teaching a false narrative, then critical race theory should definitely be taught in schools. Because everybody should get an oogy-creepy awful feeling when they read something like–

Kate felt ambivalent about the end of slavery, but after the war, she did her best to adjust to a world that she felt had been turned upside down. She married, raised children, and devoted herself the memoralizing the service of Confederate soldiers like her brothers. She founded the Madison Parish chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and remained active until her death in 1907.

In this chapter, we will examine the political and cultural issues that led to sectional tensions and, ultimately, led Louisiana to secede from the Union. We will also learn about the wartime experiences of soldiers, politicians, civilians, and slaves in Union-occupied areas of Louisiana and in the parts of the state that remained in Confederate hands throughout the war. Finally, we will examine the immediate consequences of the war’s end.

–Louisiana state approved textbook: Louisiana Our History, Our Home

–in a textbook used to shape and mold children.

Seriously? She was still teaching hate and being awful right up until her death in 1907? She spent her whole life being awful and shaping people around her to be awful? And we’re not supposed to believe that racism is systemic?

The United States was built as a slave society, and some assholes want to go back to that. And to segregation. And to a time when brutally murdering someone was okay if you could excuse it with “He whistled at my girl.”

And I don’t want to go there.

That time and place seems dingy and small. It feels like it would smell like sour milk misery and everything is humid like a sweat sock in use. Just moist all over.

I prefer history books that teach history. I want events as they were, without the gloss of “The Confederacy never died!”-madness or the revisionism of modern wannabe-slave holders.

And if we can’t have honest truth taught in schools? Then there needs to be critical race theory.

Because any reader should be able to look at the Louisiana: Our History, Our Home textbook and realize that it’s full of lies and biased opinion rather than fact. That it’s slanted toward pro-slavery views rather than expressing the simple truth that slavery is wrong.

And if children are being taught these biased views from a young age, and in schools, and everywhere around them until they decide to leave it all behind and face reality… Everyone needs critical race theory at this point. It should be on TV. There should be intros and outros to TV episodes and movies explaining why the creator chose this or that, and why this or that is currently and was always wrong.

Because critical race theory is simply the ability to look at the situation as it presents itself and see where the biased opinions are, where the author’s leanings are trying to take things, and to feel empathy and to seek the truth of what’s happening. It’s the ability to look at a map of gerrymandered districts and see what is happening there, rather than just accepting that life has always been and always will be unfair.

If people don’t face the problems in a society, they never get fixed. And some people will take things backward to when things “used to work” even if that old system was a failure that never should have existed in the first place.

The United States began as a slave society where everything was built on and depended on human misery. People lived and died to change things and make things better for us all.

And now terrible people are devoting their entire lives to oppressing us and our children’s children. They are writing textbooks that contort the truth. They are trying to change history as we remember it to further their own aims of dominion over us all.

There are people actively trying to suppress democracy.

And they’re targeting your children to do it.