This is another wonderful post by Billy Townsend about politics and education in Florida. He begins by questioning the staff of a Black Republican Congressman, Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) for using the term “redemption” in a tweet without being aware that this was the word used by white supremacists who wanted to end Reconstruction and restore the status quo of Black servitude. I have posted only about half the article. I urge you to open the link and read it in full.
The post begins:
OFF RECORD: I will not be entertaining such an asinine question. Questioning if the Congressman, a proud American and Black man, would support the overthrow of Reconstruction does not warrant the Congressman’s or my time.
This is a real statement from Harrison Fields, the spokesman of Republican Florida Congressman Byron Donalds, in response to several questions I emailed him. The “off record” part is meaningless. I did not ask “off record,” nor did I agree to go “off record.” This is the public voice of a Florida elected public official. He doesn’t get to unilaterally declare what’s public and what isn’t.
Fields ignored my primary question, which was this:
Was Rep. Donalds aware when he tweeted about “our country’s great story of redemption” that “Redemption” is actually the historical name white supremacists gave to the overthrow of Reconstruction and re-establishment of white supremacist governments in Florida and the South after the Civil War.
Here is the Donalds tweet in question: Byron Donalds @ByronDonaldsI applaud @GovRonDeSantis for banning Critical Race Theory in our schools. We must tell our country’s great story of redemption and teach our children patriotism. Every child should know they have a shot at the American Dream and that we ARE the greatest country in the world.
I suspected and suspect that Donalds did not know about Redemption. But he prides himself on “intellectual diversity;” so I did not want to assume anything or take away his agency. So I also asked:
If he was aware, could you clarify if he intended to praise the overthrow of Reconstruction and re-establishment of white supremacy as “our country’s great story”? Does he consider the white supremacist overthrow of Reconstruction “our country’s great story?”
Fields asserted in response that Donalds’ very blackness makes what I asked an “asinine question.” That assertion is the essence of critical race theory,as near as I can understand it.
It’s the idea that racism is systemic enough in American history and governing and legal structures that “a proud American and Black man” can be expected to perceive, experience, and act in response to events and state power in a particular way.
Under Fields’ critical race theory, “our country’s great story of redemption” becomes a particularly fraught phrase to use in addressing what the state says one can teach and learn in school about racial history — if one knows the historical meaning of Redemption.
It’s either willful carelessness or open trolling.
“Narrative” vs. “fact”
You can check out Jeff Solochek’s Tampa Bay Times article about the final critical race theory/1619 blahblahblah rule-making circus here. Key talking point from Ron DeSantis:
Florida must have an education system that is “preferring fact over narrative,” DeSantis said.
It’s important to understand that no word DeSantis uses has any meaning. Ever. He only knows that 2024 Republican presidential primary voters enjoy leaders who behave like petty assholes in order to provoke and own as many “libs” as possible. Everything he does and says that isn’t directly tied to enriching a particular subset of the powerful is aimed at that 2024 GOP primary electorate’s impulses. If critical race theory somehow “owned the libs,” DeSantis would immediately take up its cause.
You can’t debate any of this with anyone because debate is not the point. There is no content to this argument because it’s not an argument. It’s a troll.
What you can do is recognize what a gift this fake suppression trolling is to the short, medium, and long-term cause of spreading real history. The enemy of good history isn’t suppression and threats; it’s indifference and incuriosity.
And the more “fact” emerges, the more garbage cultural “narrative” falls apart. It can’t be reimposed on the culture without a level of force DeSantis and Corcoran and the rest are too feckless and incompetent to bring — even in the classroom.
Beyond the classroom, DeSantis and Corcoran and all the rest of the screaming anti-critical-mask-1619-theory performance artists are utterly powerless to affect the relentless march toward clearer, more honest historical understanding — unless they start killing people and locking them up for it.
If it’s going to come to that; let’s get to it now and force the confrontations that might prevent it.
Please read the rest of the post. It is worth your time.
That this coordinated, professionally produced and funded attack on public schools was launched immediately after public school students and families were finally coming out of the covid catastrophe tells me all I need to know about whether these folks actually care about 1. public school students or 2. public schools.
That people who didn’t and don’t attend public schools and don’t support public schools now barge in to direct what happens in public schools is just appalling.
This has nothing to do with “education”. It’s another ideologically driven attack on public schools and the only thing it will do is harm public school students at a time when they and their schools are most vulnerable.
Never any positive agenda. Never any productive work. 100% negativity and attacks on our schools. No positive contribution of any kind.
Instead of launching yet another politically motivated attack on public schools may I suggest some of these lawmakers think about actually performing some productive work sometime this year? Have they gotten anything at all accomplished for public schools this year? We’re 6 months into 2021. Can they list the work they’ve completed? A list of any work performed and completed that actually benefits any public school or public school student, anywhere.
The Kochs are funding these astroturf attacks on “critical race theory” in public schools.
Ed reformers must be so proud their ideological allies and donors spent the summer after a pandemic not performing any productive work on behalf of students, not assisting public schools to help students after a horrible year, but instead staging ridiculous political rallies at our school board meetings.
Good work, echo chamber members. Let us know when any of you accomplish anything productive or positive that benefits any public school student, anywhere.
Haha, this Billy Townsend is such a breath of fresh air. Love the way he nails DeSantis’ M.O. – LOL!!
Townsend is spot on: the current culture wars have a silver lining. I’ve learned more American history in the last few weeks than in the previous few years. Including the meaning of ‘Redemption’ in the context of Reconstruction that he brings up here. Lots of incidents of “Redeemers”’ terrorism and intimidation during their domination of Southern politics 1870-1910 detailed at wiki.
Critical Race Theory ate the bananas I was saving to make banana pudding.
Critical Race Theory caused COVID-19.
YUP. But THEY don’t want you to know this alternative fact
Critical Race Theory is having an affair with my daughter’s husband.
Or maybe it was Antifa.
Critical Race Theory was walking around the Farmer’s Market this morning without a shirt on.
I’m so annoyed. Critical Race Theory keeps calling trying to sell me a vacuum cleaner.
“Law and order” DeSantis fails to distinguish fact from narrative every time opens his biased mouth. Today’s conservatives have a single minded idea to stop progress and make the Republican Party a minority rule party. CRT threatens their so-called patriotic narrative. DeSantis and his cronies were so threatened by BLM and CRT that DeSantis signed a law that if protesters block traffic, drivers have the right to hit them! https://truthout.org/articles/desantis-signs-bill-giving-vehicle-drivers-civil-protections-to-hit-protesters/
DeSantis and Corcoran have banned CRT in Florida’s public schools. They intend to punish or fire perceived violators. This is another dangerous law that is so open to interpretation that some public school teachers may find themselves the victim of a witch hunt for simply teaching history.
Trump Mini-Me DeSatan is simply trying desperately to win the base Trumpy base to himself before the 2024 Presidential election. Anything to that end.
He’s making sure he keeps in the limelight. His handlers are pulling him out of Trump’s behind much more often for press conferences these days.
DeSantis says he will send Florida law enforcement to the Texas and Arizona to protect their borders against migrants. He is definitely doing some early campaigning.
In another story about Flor-uh-duh Man in today’s news:
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/17/secret-recording-florida-republican-threat-hit-squad-494976
The Republicans are like organized crime. So sad!
And, ofc, to the ever-lasting shame of the state: Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump, Ron DeSatan
The West without water, experiencing rolling blackouts and extreme fires over vast amounts of country. Today, my brother sent me a pic of water up to the parking meter heads and manhole covers floating down Kirkwood Avenue in downtown Bloomington, Indiana.
But hey, Repugnicans, keep denying global warming until absolutely nothing can be done.
I try, btw, on general principles, to limit, my use of the term “manhole.”
Oh, and don’t worry, Governor DeSatan has shown, by sending the goons in to arrest the woman who was fired for telling the truth about Covid in Florida, to ransack the woman’s house, that he is perfectly capable of these fascist regime tactics.
“You can’t debate any of this with anyone because debate is not the point. There is no content to this argument because it’s not an argument. It’s a troll.”
This is brilliant advice that I need to remember. I keep making the mistake of responding to people who don’t want to make arguments or debate, they just want to troll.
But I wish I didn’t find it so dangerous that trolls like DeSantis already wield enormous power and are using it to grasp even more.
nicely said: you cannot debate this because there is no content to argue
so I need to stop making the mistake of responding
RepubliQans verifying Einstein’s relativistic physics once again. You can only travel backwards in time never forwards.
Actually, according to Einsten’s relativity , you can travel forward in time at a greater rate than expected –even into the distant future –but not backward.
Perhaps the most famous example of this is the so called Twin Paradox.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_paradox
Traveling backward in time is forbidden because it would violate causality because, among other things, it would mean you could go back in time and kill your grandfather, which would lead to an obvious absurdity.
Chiara is correct.
CRT is the attack du jour against public schools. Another attack, no question, in on deck to follow. The base has to be fed propaganda against public schools.
Richard Corcoran said in an address where he was confronted by irate teachers, “I grew up in an Irish Catholic family with 5 kids…”
Catholic Vote reported that 30,000 people contacted the Biden WH to oppose CRT. Catholic Vote takes credit for 6,000 of them.
There are close to 50 state Catholic Conferences promoting school choice. Some rallies in the capitols are co-hosted by the Koch’s AFP and the Conferences.
Conservative Catholic organizations plot to recreate the religious authoritarian hierarchy that existed during German and Irish immigration (especially west of the Alleghenies).
“The new official contents of sex education in Mexico: laicism in the crosshairs”, Scielo website, 3-3-2021 explains the world-wide strategy for takeover of student education. The article has a much broader scope than the title indicates.