Critical race theory (1 Viewer)

[DaveXA]

Frankly, I'm completely ignorant when it comes to the Critical Race Theory curriculum. What is it, where does it come from, and is it legitimate? Has anyone here read it and maybe give a quick summary?

If this has been covered in another thread, then I missed it.

 

[zztop]

This could go in a variety of topics, but this is from 2 years ago:





(below is a portion of the video above - oh and spoiler: the bill got passed)

 

[Optimus Prime]

MIAMI – February marks Black History Month, an important topic being taught at South Florida schools, but now parents at IPrep Academy are being asked to sign off on whether they want their children to participate in some of the educational events.

“I was shocked,” said concerned parent Jill Peeling, who said she thought she may have misunderstood the document. “I’m concerned. I’m concerned as a citizen.”

The permission form is asking parents if they want their kids to participate in:

“…class and school wide presentations showcasing the achievements and recognizing the rich and diverse traditions, histories, and innumerable contributions of the Black communities.”

Miami-Dade School Board Member Steve Gallon said it all has to do with getting parental consent when individuals come on campus.

“This is a policy that’s an extension of a new state board rule,” said Gallon.

It’s a policy that was just enacted last year in November, an extension of the Parental Bill Of Rights.

“We have to follow the law,” Gallon said. “We have to implement the rules that are adopted by the State Board of Education, but we cannot throw the baby out with the bath water and we have to square some obligations we have to academic freedom.”

But Gallon said he is concerned about the unintended consequences this may have on children whose parents choose not to have them attend.

“Something feels very off here, and the fact that the school needs to cover themselves against the state feels even worse,” said Peeling............

Controversy arises as Miami-Dade school seeks parental consent for Black History Month events

February marks Black History Month, an important topic being taught at South Florida schools, but now parents at IPrep Academy are being asked to sign off on whether they want their children to participate in some of the educational events.

www.local10.com

 

[coldseat]

MIAMI – February marks Black History Month, an important topic being taught at South Florida schools, but now parents at IPrep Academy are being asked to sign off on whether they want their children to participate in some of the educational events.

“I was shocked,” said concerned parent Jill Peeling, who said she thought she may have misunderstood the document. “I’m concerned. I’m concerned as a citizen.”

The permission form is asking parents if they want their kids to participate in:

“…class and school wide presentations showcasing the achievements and recognizing the rich and diverse traditions, histories, and innumerable contributions of the Black communities.”

Miami-Dade School Board Member Steve Gallon said it all has to do with getting parental consent when individuals come on campus.

“This is a policy that’s an extension of a new state board rule,” said Gallon.

It’s a policy that was just enacted last year in November, an extension of the Parental Bill Of Rights.

“We have to follow the law,” Gallon said. “We have to implement the rules that are adopted by the State Board of Education, but we cannot throw the baby out with the bath water and we have to square some obligations we have to academic freedom.”

But Gallon said he is concerned about the unintended consequences this may have on children whose parents choose not to have them attend.

“Something feels very off here, and the fact that the school needs to cover themselves against the state feels even worse,” said Peeling............

Controversy arises as Miami-Dade school seeks parental consent for Black History Month events

February marks Black History Month, an important topic being taught at South Florida schools, but now parents at IPrep Academy are being asked to sign off on whether they want their children to participate in some of the educational events.

www.local10.com

If I lived in Florida and got that form, I'd cross out "Black" and replace it with "White", then cross out "Month" and replace it with "Year" and then opt out of it. Then write in below it that this from is belligerent, offensive and stupid. Just to see what they do.

 

[Optimus Prime]

guess this can go here
===============

Madam C.J. Walker was born to former slaves, orphaned, abused, widowed, raised a child alone — and still found a way to secure her place in the Guinness World Records as the first American woman to become a self-made millionaire. Her millionaire status would later be disputed, but in her lifetime, her success was still largely unparalleled.

Walker, a hair care mogul, is one to talk about. But her great-great-granddaughter A’Lelia Bundles, who has written five books on her ancestor, doesn’t want everyone getting in on the discourse.

Nonetheless, a few Republicans and showrunners have taken it upon themselves to play fast and loose with Walker’s legacy anyway.

Among these is Dinesh D’Souza and his 2014 political commentary film “America: Imagine the World Without Her,” in which he introduces a character billed as Madam C.J. Walker. The character is seen giving a motivational speech to a group of women, using herself as an example that success can be had no matter the hardships.

“I got my start by giving myself a start,” the woman says. “Ladies, there is no flower-strewn path to success. And if there is, I haven’t found it. If I’ve accomplished anything in my life, it’s because I was willing to work hard.”

Walker did give an inspirational speech at the 13th Annual Convention of the Negro Business League in 1912 in which she alluded to having overcome adversity. But she didn’t co-sign any delusions in her speech about bootstrapping one’s self to success in America.

Walker, having been excluded from the convention’s speaker line-up, instead demanded recognition for her business from conference curators and attendees. While there, she announced that her goal for her wealth was to give back, including her aspiration to build a Tuskegee Institute (America’s first historically Black college) in Africa.

D’Souza’s work left that bit out.

Instead, the Walker character in his film seems to suggest that America is the sweet land of meritocracy — slavery and its consequences be damned. Speaking as narrator, D’Souza then goes on to assert that Walker has been left out of history books because her trajectory doesn’t align with what he refers to as the “shame narrative.”...........

MSN

 

[zztop]

 

[MT15]

Imagine the fragility, the snow flakeyness if you will, to need that permission slip. It’s almost comical, if it weren’t so toxic.

 

[barbar]

Imagine the fragility, the snow flakeyness if you will, to need that permission slip. It’s almost comical, if it weren’t so toxic.

And the people you are referring to think it's everyone else who are snowflakes.

 

[Optimus Prime]

this could have gone in a few threads
=========================

SOUTHWEST FLORIDA — Kali Fontanilla repeated the lesson title to herself one last time — “‘A Com-plete History of Slavery in America’” — sipped her peppermint tea and hit record.

“Hello, Exodus students,” she said, addressing the group of 90 fifth- through 12th-graders who would eventually watch the video as part of their lessons from the Exodus Institute, an online Christian K-12 school Kali and her husband founded in 2021 with the motto “Exit Public Education.” The video, which Kali was recording in her guest bedroom turned office, was the latest in a special enrichment program dubbed the Young Patriots Academy, which aims to “debunk the ‘woke’ lies taught in most public schools,” per the Exodus website.

Kali, who is half Black and half White, had a particular target that Friday: what she calls the left’s unquestioning advocacy of reparations, the theory that the government should pay restitution to descendants of enslaved Americans.

She told her virtual students they were about to learn of the Quakers, and how White members of that religion helped fight slavery. She said that, throughout American history, there were good people and bad people. But focusing only on the bad, like she believes many public school teachers do, would be wrong.

“Whenever you learn history,” she said, “it’s important to learn the full context of it.”

Kali’s online job marked a sharp departure from the years she and her husband, Joshua Fontanilla, spent teaching middle- and high school English in California’s deep-blue Salinas district. The couple quit their jobs a year after the coronavirus pandemic began, disillusioned by school shutdowns and displeased by some colleagues’ embrace of the Black Lives Matter movement, which both thought was wrongheaded and hateful for what they saw as its anti-police stance.

Kali, 41, and Joshua, who is 42 and of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent, had also grown convinced their school was teaching harmful ideas about race and history, including what they believe is the false theory America is systemically racist. Across the nation, mostly conservative mothers and fathers were raising similar alarms — anxiety that soon fueled an explosion of legislation restricting how educators can teach about race, sex and gender.

By April 2024, such laws had spread to affect half the nation’s students. The claim that public schools teach left-wing “indoctrination, not education” had become commonplace on the right, repeated by parents, politicians and pundits.

But not, usually, by teachers. And that’s why the Fontanillas felt compelled to act: They came direct from the classroom. They had seen firsthand what was happening. Now, they wanted to expose the propaganda they felt had infiltrated public schools — and offer families an alternative.

In 2021, eager to fulfill their mission, the couple moved to Florida to found their own Christian school in a state which, under Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), had become a haven for people with views like theirs. In the years since, they have grown their school to nearly 200 students, partly through Kali’s appearances on conservative media like Fox News — but mostly through her social media.

Kali’s Instagram videos, filled with right-wing rhetoric and delivered almost daily to her 333,000 followers, proved a powerful recruiting tool. But they also spurred thousands of critical messages from online observers who contended she was indoctrinating students into a skewed, conservative worldview. “RACIST, ONE SIDED, WHITEWASHED OPINION,” one wrote on a recent post, just above someone else who declared: “No one [is] impressed by the trash you are trying to sell.”

Now, half an hour into her lesson on slavery, Kali told students how some Quakers risked prison time to assist people fleeing enslavement.

“There are certain people that are saying, ‘Oh, White people owe Black people for slavery,’” Kali said. “But what about the White people who were descendants of the Quakers, who actually had a lot of negative consequences that happened to them for helping free the slaves?”

She urged her students to keep pondering the question as they turned to their next assignment.............

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/04/15/kali-joshua-fontanilla-exodus-institute/

 

[SamAndreas]

this could have gone in a few threads
=========================

SOUTHWEST FLORIDA — Kali Fontanilla repeated the lesson title to herself one last time — “‘A Com-plete History of Slavery in America’” — sipped her peppermint tea and hit record.

“Hello, Exodus students,” she said, addressing the group of 90 fifth- through 12th-graders who would eventually watch the video as part of their lessons from the Exodus Institute, an online Christian K-12 school Kali and her husband founded in 2021 with the motto “Exit Public Education.” The video, which Kali was recording in her guest bedroom turned office, was the latest in a special enrichment program dubbed the Young Patriots Academy, which aims to “debunk the ‘woke’ lies taught in most public schools,” per the Exodus website.

Kali, who is half Black and half White, had a particular target that Friday: what she calls the left’s unquestioning advocacy of reparations, the theory that the government should pay restitution to descendants of enslaved Americans.

She told her virtual students they were about to learn of the Quakers, and how White members of that religion helped fight slavery. She said that, throughout American history, there were good people and bad people. But focusing only on the bad, like she believes many public school teachers do, would be wrong.

“Whenever you learn history,” she said, “it’s important to learn the full context of it.”

Kali’s online job marked a sharp departure from the years she and her husband, Joshua Fontanilla, spent teaching middle- and high school English in California’s deep-blue Salinas district. The couple quit their jobs a year after the coronavirus pandemic began, disillusioned by school shutdowns and displeased by some colleagues’ embrace of the Black Lives Matter movement, which both thought was wrongheaded and hateful for what they saw as its anti-police stance.

Kali, 41, and Joshua, who is 42 and of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent, had also grown convinced their school was teaching harmful ideas about race and history, including what they believe is the false theory America is systemically racist. Across the nation, mostly conservative mothers and fathers were raising similar alarms — anxiety that soon fueled an explosion of legislation restricting how educators can teach about race, sex and gender.

By April 2024, such laws had spread to affect half the nation’s students. The claim that public schools teach left-wing “indoctrination, not education” had become commonplace on the right, repeated by parents, politicians and pundits.

But not, usually, by teachers. And that’s why the Fontanillas felt compelled to act: They came direct from the classroom. They had seen firsthand what was happening. Now, they wanted to expose the propaganda they felt had infiltrated public schools — and offer families an alternative.

In 2021, eager to fulfill their mission, the couple moved to Florida to found their own Christian school in a state which, under Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), had become a haven for people with views like theirs. In the years since, they have grown their school to nearly 200 students, partly through Kali’s appearances on conservative media like Fox News — but mostly through her social media.

Kali’s Instagram videos, filled with right-wing rhetoric and delivered almost daily to her 333,000 followers, proved a powerful recruiting tool. But they also spurred thousands of critical messages from online observers who contended she was indoctrinating students into a skewed, conservative worldview. “RACIST, ONE SIDED, WHITEWASHED OPINION,” one wrote on a recent post, just above someone else who declared: “No one [is] impressed by the trash you are trying to sell.”

Now, half an hour into her lesson on slavery, Kali told students how some Quakers risked prison time to assist people fleeing enslavement.

“There are certain people that are saying, ‘Oh, White people owe Black people for slavery,’” Kali said. “But what about the White people who were descendants of the Quakers, who actually had a lot of negative consequences that happened to them for helping free the slaves?”

She urged her students to keep pondering the question as they turned to their next assignment.............

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/04/15/kali-joshua-fontanilla-exodus-institute/

I see the problem, this is Kali, she's blue. She's also well armed.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, is perhaps best known for the “Little Rock Nine,” the first Black students to walk through the school’s grand front doors. The year was 1957, three years after the Supreme Court declared racial segregation of public schools unconstitutional, and the gears of change were grinding to a halt.

After the Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, the school board in Little Rock eventually volunteered to desegregate, a process that faced fierce backlash from white residents. Prior to what should have been the nine Black teenagers’ first day in class, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus ordered the state’s National Guard to block their entrance. A couple days later, a judge ordered the state to let the teens attend class, but the National Guard was joined by an angry mob of white residents who blocked the way.

The Little Rock Nine would eventually prevail, although not without plenty of bullying by their white peers. President Dwight Eisenhower federalized the National Guard and sent U.S. Army troops to the scene, allowing the students to finally attend class. The nine students became civil rights icons, and images of the white mob and guardsmen blocking the entrance to Little Rock Central High are some of the most recognizable of the era.

Today, two-thirds of students at the top performing high school are Black. However, if Central High teachers and students were to draw parallels between Little Rock Nine and the current effort by Arkansas Republicans to censor discussions of race and Black history in schools, they would likely run afoul of a controversial state law that civil rights attorneys argue is a blatant violation of free speech rights, according to a landmark lawsuit recently filed against Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and state education officials.

Filed on behalf of the NAACP and teachers, students and parents at Central High School, the lawsuit challenges a controversial section of the LEARNS Act, a new law championed by Sanders to promote school privatization and ban what she has called “left-wing indoctrination” and “critical race theory” in public schools. Similar anti-education initiatives popped up in red states across the country after intentionally manufactured disinformation about critical race theory (CRT) and schoolhouse diversity initiatives went viral on the right...........

MSN

 

[Optimus Prime]

In 1996, "The Wonderful World of Disney" premiered the made-for-TV movie "Ruby Bridges," a true-life story about the 6-year-old girl who helped desegregate a Louisiana elementary school in 1960. Critics lauded the film for its exploration of racism, and it went on to become a prominent part of school curriculums on American segregation.

Now the film has come under attack, with a Florida school considering a ban after a parent complained. The backlash against "Ruby Bridges" doesn't surprise its creators, who exclusively spoke to TheWrap about the difficult process of getting the movie made in the first place and their thoughts on the attempt to suppress it today. Their story highlights how much is at stake as politicians seek to reshape the teaching of history, and how authors and filmmakers are getting caught in the middle.

"I was surprised yet not surprised," Leah Keith, a former creative executive at Disney who put the film together, told TheWrap. "One of the more salient thoughts was the movie [was made] 25 years ago, the events [of the movie] took place 60 years ago, and we're still having this conversation."

There's some irony in the players involved in the "Ruby Bridges" saga: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has campaigned against "woke" corporations, singling out Disney, a large employer in the state, for pushing what he claims is a progressive agenda in its creative works and workplace policies. But the film's director, Euzhan Palcy, didn't find Disney particularly welcoming in the 1990s, and initially resisted its overtures to make the film.

Palcy sees a through line from the difficult environment in which she made the movie to the hostile reception it's receiving decades later.

"The greatness of a nation is in its ability to own its history," she told TheWrap.

The fight against "Ruby Bridges"​

The book on which "Ruby Bridges" was based has been targeted by conservative groups like Moms for Liberty for years. The movie version came under fire last week after the parent of a student at North Shore Elementary School in St. Petersburg, Florida, complained about its use of racial slurs. Historically accurate scenes of white people threatening Bridges might have students believing white people hate Black people, she claimed.

The Pinellas County School District, of which North Shore is a part, maintained that it hasn't banned the film, as some media outlets reported. It was shown as part of the school's Black History Month and was not set to be presented for the remainder of the school year, a district spokesperson said. "The school is now engaging in the formal objection process to review the challenged material," the representative said, while the movie remains available in the district's movie library for schools provided that "all procedures for student viewing of movies are followed." The district didn't elaborate on what those procedures are.

"This is a concerted effort to roll civil rights back," said Toni Ann Johnson, who wrote the script for "Ruby Bridges.".......

MSN

Increasingly, the US civil rights icon Ruby Bridges– the first Black child to integrate a school in Louisiana – has seen some adults seek to prevent grade-school students from accessing the books and films that chronicle her story, saying the tale makes white children feel bad about themselves.

But that justification is “ridiculous” because “my biggest fans are kids all around the world”, Bridges told NBC’s Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker in an interview airing on Sunday morning’s episode of the show.

“All of the letters, all of the mail, I have little girls from all walks of life, different nationalities that dress up like Ruby Bridges,” the now 69-year-old activist said in an excerpt of the interview that NBC shared in advance with the Guardian.

“I found through … traveling that they resonate with the loneliness, probably the pain that I felt. There’s all sorts of reasons that they are drawn to my story. So I would have to disagree [that it makes certain children feel guilty].”

Delivered in a recurring segment known as Meet the Moment, which aims to spotlight people who influence political issues outside Washington, Bridges’ remarks to Welker come a little more than a year after one parent’s complaint prompted a school in Florida to stop showing its students a 1988 made-for-TV movie about her.

The parent in question complained that the movie– which some schools usually show to students during Black History Month in February – might teach children that “white people hate Black people”.……

Ruby Bridges: civil rights pioneer rejects claim book makes white children uncomfortable

US activist, 69, speaks to NBC amid growing effort to prevent I Am Ruby Bridges and other works being available to school students

www.theguardian.com

 

[bird]

Increasingly, the US civil rights icon Ruby Bridges– the first Black child to integrate a school in Louisiana – has seen some adults seek to prevent grade-school students from accessing the books and films that chronicle her story, saying the tale makes white children feel bad about themselves.

But that justification is “ridiculous” because “my biggest fans are kids all around the world”, Bridges told NBC’s Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker in an interview airing on Sunday morning’s episode of the show.

“All of the letters, all of the mail, I have little girls from all walks of life, different nationalities that dress up like Ruby Bridges,” the now 69-year-old activist said in an excerpt of the interview that NBC shared in advance with the Guardian.

“I found through … traveling that they resonate with the loneliness, probably the pain that I felt. There’s all sorts of reasons that they are drawn to my story. So I would have to disagree [that it makes certain children feel guilty].”

Delivered in a recurring segment known as Meet the Moment, which aims to spotlight people who influence political issues outside Washington, Bridges’ remarks to Welker come a little more than a year after one parent’s complaint prompted a school in Florida to stop showing its students a 1988 made-for-TV movie about her.

The parent in question complained that the movie– which some schools usually show to students during Black History Month in February – might teach children that “white people hate Black people”.……

Ruby Bridges: civil rights pioneer rejects claim book makes white children uncomfortable

US activist, 69, speaks to NBC amid growing effort to prevent I Am Ruby Bridges and other works being available to school students

www.theguardian.com

Feel bad about themselves? No, adults know that empathy is not that. Kids should feel bad that Ruby and others were treated that way. White adults don’t want to admit that white people acted like pieces of schlitz to people of color including children.

 

[brandon]

Feel bad about themselves? No, adults know that empathy is not that. Kids should feel bad that Ruby and others were treated that way. White adults don’t want to admit that white people acted like pieces of schlitz to people of color including children.

To be clear, most of the white people who feel guilty about Ruby Bridges' story were the ones that were actively protesting against integration.

It wasn't that long ago. They feel guilty because they ARE guilty.