When I was in high school here in Portland, my father told me that by state law I was prohibited from attending a public school in South Carolina.
School board backed down and teachers can now say Nazis were bad. Yippee! Quote from Youngkin is accurate.
But teaching about them makes some white people uncomfortable. Schools have banned books about Dr. King and Anne Frank's diary. Besides, she talks frankly, no pun intended, about menstruation. Horror!
CRT is a very controversial and disconcerting subject on many levels. I still don't completely understand it, nor pretend to have answers to overcome it. That said, I continue to research and want to learn more. I came across this article and was intrigued. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22464746/critical-race-theory-anti-racism-jarvis-givens Moreover, makes me want to go out and purchase this book. Think I might. .
When my brothers and I were young (11-12 years old) our grandfather gave us copies of Black Like Me and Nigger (by Dick Gregory) and insisted we read them. I’ll be the first to admit they made this little white boy extremely uncomfortable……which is EXACTLY what my grandfather set out to accomplish. It’s hard to do serious critical thinking when you’re comfortable and wrapped in a cocoon of privilege. But the discussions with my grandfather that came out of reading those books were some of the most enlightening (and actually enjoyable) events in my lifelong “education”. The entire point of Critical Race Theory is to make white people uncomfortable…….and to force them to think critically and outside themselves. Unfortunately, too many white people are too stupid to understand that……..
I've posted this before but take a few minutes from your day and listen to this episode of the podcast, Stuff You Missed in History Class about the Vanport flood here in Portland. I grew up in NE Portland and learned a lot. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/stuf...-21124503/episode/the-vanport-flood-30207620/
Anne Frank, a young girl had to hide in a small secret room with friends and family for over two years because of her religion and ethnicity. When she was betrayed by a man who gave up the hiding place to protect his own family, she was sent to a concentration camp where she just escaped the gas chamber as she had just turned 15 (kids under 15 were immediately sent to the gas chamber...so if she was caught earlier she would have died then). Many of her friends were sent to the gas chamber. She, her sister, and mother were sent to hard labor. Their mother gave them all of her food so they could survive, effectively sacrificing herself. After, they were moved to another camp, Frank and her sister wasted away. A friend of theirs who survived, said in the end Frank was so emaciated she was confined to a bed and her friend could hardly bear to look at her. She died in a way no child, no person, should have to experience. Weeks later the war ended and the camp she was in was freed. Her father survived and was given her diaries by a secretary who had found and kept them after she was taken to the camp. She wrote about wanting to publish her writings and about sharing them with the public records of her people's oppression. Her father published her work, granting his daughters wish. But, we can't learn this in school because it makes white people uncomfortable to say Nazis are bad. It's makes them uncomfortable to have to think about the millions of Jews sent to the gas chambers, or the many others the starved to death in camps. The excuse is there are depictions of menstruation in her diary. But, that's a fascade.
I saw that flood. I stood in front of it which I believe bordered somewhere around Vanport. Hey this reminds me, does anyone remember the name of Portland State College before it was Portland State College? Vanport College.
