GQP Anti-Anti-Racism Bill To Impose Not Teaching Any History Which Makes A White Snowflake ‘Feel Discomfort’

Betsy Levin at Vanity Fair framed the issue perfectly: Florida Advances Bill That Would Ban Making White People Feel Bad About Racism, And No, That’s Not A Joke:

Quick question for the group: Despite constantly claiming liberals are easily “triggered” “snowflakes,” are Republicans actually the most ridiculously sensitive people on earth? So much so that they can’t stand the idea of factually accurate conversations about race in this country that might paint white people in an uncomfortable light? And are now going so far as to try to effectively ban said conversations, because sticking their fingers in their ears and yelling “LA LA LA LA CAN’T HEAR YOU” when the topic comes up isn’t working? If you’re unsure, let us clear it up for you: The answer is hell yes.

These anti-CRT (Critical Race Theory)  bills are now a key component of white Christian Nationalist Republican’s agenda in GQP-controlled state legislatures after this straw man issue worked for Glenn Youngkin in the Virginia governor’s race last year.

For the record, Critical Race Theory is not taught in Virginia schools, nor in Arizona schools. This is a graduate level course taught in some law schools.  I used to do a one hour seminar on “Things they didn’t teach you in your high school history class.” It consisted of horrific incidents of racial violence in American history which have been scrubbed from American history high school textbooks (the original cancel culture).

Make no mistake, this has been a white supremacist country from its founding, and there are those today who desperately want to maintain their white privilege in an increasingly racially diverse society. They are totally freaking about the idea that the American credo of “all men are created equal” may finally become a reality, and they will now be on an equal footing with everyone else in a true meritocracy. Hence, the anti-anti-racism movement.

Here in Arizona, “A House committee voted 6-4 on January 18 along party lines to make teaching about racism illegal if it is done in certain ways.” (I guess my seminar would be banned; censorship!) Panel OKs race-based school bill:

Rep. Michelle Udall, R-Mesa, said her proposal is not an effort to block students from being told about the history of racism in this country, whether it be slavery or how Native Americans were forced from their homes.

“It simply means that judging others by their race, ethnicity or sex is unacceptable,” she told members of the House Education Committee, which she chairs.

Or as Betsy Levin said, “they can’t stand the idea of factually accurate conversations about race in this country that might paint white people in an uncomfortable light.”

“It will not be tolerated in our schools in any way, shape or form, even if it is introduced to combat racism,” Udall continued. “We cannot combat racism with more racism.”

This might be the single stupidest comment I have ever read. Teaching about America’s white supremacy history is somehow anti-white racism? It is our history, and is simply stating a fact.

Udall cited some real-world examples of what she is trying to prevent, like a seventh grade English class in Chandler reading an essay entitled “Black Men in Public Places.” That dealt with a 6-foot 2-inch Black man walking at night in a military style jacket with his hands in his pockets.

“A woman out walking was frightened and sought to put distance between them,” Udall said. “The essay fully attributes her fear to his skin color rather than considering a woman walking alone at night might be afraid of anyone of that size.”

Oh please. I have witnessed “real-world examples” of white people, not just women, going so far as to cross to the other side of the street if an African-American individual was approaching on the sidewalk ahead of them, in broad daylight. That was all about race-based fear.

[T]he wording of the measure drew questions about exactly what teachers could and could not say about the legacy of racism – and what could result in the loss of their teaching certificates.

As crafted, HB 2112 would make it illegal for schools to teach that one race, ethnic group or sex is “inherently morally or intellectually superior to another race, ethic group or sex.”

But, but this is a white Christian Nationalist bill. It’s all about preserving white supremacy!

Also illegal would be teaching that someone, by virtue of the race, ethnicity or sex is “inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously” [systemic racism]. And it would ban any instruction that someone’s individual moral character is determined by that person’s race, ethnicity or sex.

Wait for it …

But the potentially more problematic language goes to whether teaching about the history of racism in this country would cross a line that forbids teaching that individuals, based on race, ethnicity or sex, should “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress because of that race, ethnicity or sex.” And there is similar language saying that students cannot be taught that, based on race, ethnicity or sex, they bear responsibility for actions committed by others from the same group.

Oooh, some white kid feels psychological distress about learning that many of the Founding Fathers were slave owners who wrote the institution of slavery into the U. S. Constitution to preserve it, and bought and sold human beings as chattel, and abused them. This is a historical fact. A teacher can’t teach this simply because some white kid is a sensitive little snowflake? “No, not George Washington!” YES, George Washington, you little snowflake. Suck it up. 10 Facts About Washington & Slavery.

Where is the concern for the psychological distress of African-American children learning that their ancestors were enslaved, or Native American children who learn how their ancestors were subject to acts of genocide, or Latinos and Asian children who learn they were segregated into ghettos and subject to exclusion from the U.S. Oh wait, they are well aware of this history and they are still subject to systemic racism today, despite laws prohibiting discrimination based on race, ehtnicity, national origin, sex, or religion. They live with racism in their daily lives. See, Anti-Asian hate crimes rose 73% last year, updated FBI data says.

And what about women? Women are subjected to sexism and misogyny, and are not only discriminated against and sexually harassed, Women in majority-male workplaces report higher rates of gender discrimination, but all too frequently the victims of violence because of their gender. Violence Against Women in the United States: Statistics. Rep. Michelle Udall sticks her fingers in her ears and yells “LA LA LA LA CAN’T HEAR YOU.”

And teachers who violate the law could have their teaching certificate suspended or revoked. And school districts would face $5,000 fines for each violation.

Are you effin’ kidding me? Now we’re canceling the Fist Amendment? And criminalizing teaching historically accurate history?

Rep. Jennifer Pawlik, D-Chandler, who is a primary school teacher, said she worries about what will happen if a history lesson happens to make a [white] student uncomfortable.

Udall, however, said it comes down to intent.

“If you read it closely, it says that a teacher should not be teaching that an individual should feel discomfort, feel anguish or other form of psychological distress because of the individual’s race, ethnicity or sex,” she said. More to the point, Udall said, teachers should teach that students are responsible for their own actions, “not for what happened in history.”

They should feel outrage and shock at learning the heinous crimes committed in the name of white supremacy. This is how they can develop a sense of morality so as not to emulate or continue this belief in white supreamcy. Clearly too many white people today never developed this sense of morality.

House Minority Leader Reginald Bolding, D-Laveen, said it isn’t that simple.

For example, he said, there might be a discussion of the Fair Housing Act, the 1968 federal law designed to prevent discrimination in the ability of people to be able to buy and rent homes and apartments, something that can be taught as a matter of history. But Bolding said lessons go beyond those bare facts.

“A student might ask, ‘Why?’ or ‘How?’ ” he said. “And that’s when you start to have deeper discussion of why did you need a Fair Housing Act of 1968.”

Ditto, Bolding said, of what happens when children seek to know about the treatment of Native Americans.

“How do we expect our teachers to navigate questions around the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of history if they can’t mention race?” he asked. “And if they mention race, as Ms. Pawlik mentioned, someone may feel uncomfortable.”

Or as Tom Danehy explains at the Tucson Weekly, Shameful State Lawmakers Want to Fire Teachers For Teaching American History (excerpt):

This, of course, is an outgrowth of the winning Republican strategy of railing against Critical Race Theory, of which not one opponent thereof can provide an accurate definition. The “issue” helped get a hypocritical doofus elected governor of Virginia and now it’s helping right-wingers across the country rewrite history by un-writing history.

William is an actual student of history. He is acutely aware of the horrible ways Americans of all colors and creeds have mistreated each other over the centuries. But all that is about to change. No, history won’t change. It will just become inaccessible. Today’s kids won’t have to be burdened with the truth about yucky stuff like slavery or discrimination or genocide.

An aside: When I was in school we had guest speakers, survivors of the Holocaust, who told us their personal history of surving Hitler’s death camps to exterminate the Jews in Europe. This would not be permitted under this bill because some junior Proud Boy who trolls white supremacist web sites and attends MAGA rallies with his parents might be triggered when confronted with the truth.

This is all thanks to people like Michelle Udall, a state legislator from Mesa who has introduced a bill that would make it illegal to teach about things like the Civil War or Bosque Redondo.

My son-in-law is a mechanical engineer who happens to be Navajo. He grew up hearing the stories from his elders about The Long Walk of the Navajo, the vulgar attempt by the U.S. government to uproot the entire Navajo Nation and relocate them to a barren piece of land (the Bosque Redondo) in eastern New Mexico. Thousands of Navajos were forced by the military under Kit Carson to walk the hundreds of miles from the Four Corners area to their new “reservation.” Hundreds died along the way and hundreds more died under the terrible conditions at the Bosque Redondo.

After several years of living in horrible conditions, the Navajos were allowed to return to their land. The Government realized and then admitted that its plan had been terribly conceived and ruthlessly carried out. The Navajo Nation is now the largest Indian Reservation in America.

But Arizona’s children won’t learn about that bleak chapter in our history. If Michelle Udall gets her way, The Long Walk of the Navajo will be referred to—if at all—as a lovely spring stroll with a friendly Cavalry accompaniment. Those in Udall’s camp probably refer to [Hurricane Katrina as] Rainstorm Katrina and see the institution of slavery as having offered free meals and plenty of opportunities for work.

The late, great Morris Udall is probably spinning in his grave at 1,700 revolutions per minute. It was he and his brother, Stewart, who desegregated the dining halls at the University of Arizona. It wasn’t this overt, picket-sign kind of protest. The two brothers had returned to the UA after World War II and were stars on the nationally ranked Wildcat basketball team. One day, thinking that it was stupid and un-American for the dining halls to be segregated, they invited some of their Black teammates to eat lunch as a team. The dining hall staff was mostly Hispanic and they greeted the integrated lunch with a collective shrug and that was that.

Mo Udall went on to become a liberal icon in the latter half of the 20th Century. Now, somebody with that last name (she’s married into the family) is trying to push Mo’s state into some sort of intellectual Dark Ages (although she would probably blanch at the use of the term “Dark”).

I knew both Stewart and Mo Udall. This woman is no Udall. She besmirches the family name and reputation. She should be ashamed.

Just think about it: A teacher could lose his/her license for talking about slavery or the decades-long attempt by the United States government to wipe out an entire race of people so that the country could spread westward.

I’m torn. I can’t figure out whether Ms. Udall never read about the changing and/or eliminating of history in 1984 and so doesn’t understand the irony of her stance or if she did read it and is using it as a manual.

“‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’”

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” — From George Orwell’s “1984.”

Her non-defense defense of her anti-intellectual (and pretty much un-American) bill is that “we cannot combat racism with more racism.”

Instead, she wants to use racism to prevent the teaching of history that was helping to combat racism.

However, before we get complacent and believe that Udall’s Race to the Right (which overlaps the Race to the Bottom) can’t get any worse, comes word that state Rep. John Fillmore of Apache Junction [this idiot again] believes that Udall’s bill doesn’t go nearly far enough. He wants much harsher penalties against teachers and huge fines levied against district that allow actual history to be taught.

Next, they’ll probably take on math, which, as we all know, is communist.