Jesse Hagopian is an activist teacher in the Seattle Public Schools, a leader in Black Lives Matter at School and editor of the book More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High-Stakes Testing. This article appeared in the Seattle Times:
State Republican Rep. Jim Walsh recently introduced HB 1807 and Republican Rep. Brad Klippert introduced HB 1886 for this legislative session — two bills designed to mandate educators lie to Washington’s students about structural racism and sexism.
This copycat legislation is lifted from a growing number of bills around the country that seek to ban an honest account of history in K-12 education, including many of the long struggles against oppression. These bills especially target the teaching of critical race theory (CRT), the 1619 Project, the Zinn Education Project and Black Lives Matter at School.
It’s fitting that Rep. Klippert’s bill is numbered “1886,” as that was the year a mob of white people in Seattle rounded up more than 200 Chinese people, forced them into wagons, and hauled them to Seattle docks where they were placed on a ships and deported. Though 15 people were tried in court in relation to the riot — including Chief of Police William Murphywho helped the mob round up Chinese people illegally — not a single one was ever convicted of a crime.
It’s similarly appropriate that Rep. Walsh’s bill is numbered “1807” because this bill seeks to return us to the early 19th century — a time when the nation was accelerating the attack on Black people’s rights in the North and colonizing the land of Native Americans. In 1807, New Jersey took away the right to vote for Black people. On April 1, 1807, Ohio outlawedBlack people from testifying in cases with white people. For the next 40 years, white people could act with impunity in filing baseless lawsuits and commit crimes — even violent attacks — against Black people who could not testify to defend themselves or give any evidence against them…
HB 1886 states that educators would be banned from teaching that, “The United States is fundamentally or structurally racist or sexist.” But consider these facts: The average white family has 10 times the amount of wealth of the average Black family.
∙ A Black woman is three times more likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth-related causes than a white woman.
∙ Black students are more than three times more likely to be suspended from school than white students.
· The median household income for Native Americans was 60% of median white household income. And that was before the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent estimates reveal inequities have worsened, especially for Native American women.
· At least 44 transgender and gender nonconforming people were violently killed in 2020, with Black transgender women accounting for two-thirds of total recorded deaths since 2013.
· Anti-Asian hate crimes surged over 169% last year.
For teachers who believe in accurate history, there is no real choice here — we will always teach students about the reality of structural racism and other intersecting oppressions. Revealing these facts in the classroom is not about shaming white students — in fact, it is those who deny structural racism who end up leading white children to suspect that they are personally responsible for the racial disparities they see, rather than understanding the way systems can work to perpetuate inequities sometimes regardless of the intentions of the individuals who work in these systems.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
To Avoid The Abyss
We have come to the edge of a moral abyss.
The abyss is telling us — “Stop. Do not go this way. Turn and go another way.”
A simple message. Easy to obey. But there may be other forces in play.
Is there too much whirring in our ears and heads to hear what the abyss is saying? Are we going too fast, have too much momentum in a single direction to stop in time? Are there people pushing us toward the abyss? — they call themselves leaders, but they walk behind. Are there people pulling us toward the abyss? — they call themselves leaders, the already lost.
It will take each individual stopping and asking, “Who are the real enemies of freedom? Who are the real enemies of truth?” It will take each individual stopping and saying, “No, I will not go this way. I will not teach the lie anymore.”
That is what it will take …
magnificent!!!!!
I’m about to start “To Kill A Mockingbird,” itself under scrutiny and a possible ban for “teaching CRT.” Again, if CRT is Courage/Compassion; Reason/Responsibility; Temperance/Tolerance, sure, it’s a ‘go’ with all cylinders firing. The lead-up to it will be a two-week mini-unit on banned books and censorship, calling out both CRT “crisis” mongers as well as out-of-control cancel culture. I thought we lived in a country where our First Amendment protections guaranteed us the right to a free exchange of ideas. I’d like to keep that tradition alive in the last vestige of Democracy: public education.
Outstanding!!!
Ninth Grade curriculum in Tennessee
You go, Yossarian. I would be doing the same thing if I were still teaching. All teachers need to defy this Orwellian, Fascist madness until the masses wake up & demand that this return to the Middle Ages stops! We’ll look back on this era just like we look back at the nightmare of the McCarthy Era.
Most democratic countries 2021; https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/democracy-countries. Notice who the leaders are.
The United States has DROPPED … no surprise.
One has to make a concerted effort to teach lies. The efforts to conceal the fact that they are lies creates entire public policy and cultural agendas that have nothing to do with education or citizenship. Hence the importance of contrived “education” issues to further American fascism.
Preach it!!!! LOL.
“there is no . . . choice here”
The answer is this. Teach the facts about what has occurred in this country and then teach students how to think critically about what is presented. I had 5th grade students who were quite good at forming their own conclusions about things such as the Trail of Tears, slavery, etc. And they were usually a conclusion that contained some insight and compassion. Where is the tolerance? Hey white people (I’m white) you can’t take back what wasn’t yours to begin with. History is history and you can either face it or hide it. Frightened people hide it.
Agreed. People often underestimate the capacity of elementary students to understand injustice and think critically. If you are going to teach history, you should teach it “warts and all.” Unfortunately, in about a third of the country that has punitive, regressive laws, some teachers may lose their jobs.
in times when teaching is already thinned out and frighteningly understaffed: teachers may lose their jobs
I love this! My fifth graders were the same way. I taught all of this for ten years in grade 5. In the end, each class essentially struggled to understand the motivations of the past, struggled to empathize with those who lived through it all and came to the realization that while they are absolutely not responsible for the past, they ARE responsible for the future.
Anyone who repeats statistics like this as if they’re meaningful cannot be taken seriously on any subject:
Do you have knowledge to the contrary? This came from a periodical that claims to know. Do you question all information this way?
I’m not questioning the numerator, I’m invoking the omitted denominator. There were 21,000 homicides in the US last year.
If Jesse Hagopian is teaching his students that the fact that “44 transgender and gender nonconforming people” were murdered last year is evidence of structural inequity, then he’s a terrible teacher.
Yes, I question all information this way. Everybody should.
FLERP, I take your point, but my reading is that 44 transgender and gender nonconformity people were murdered because of their gender. When Matthew Shepard was murdered brutally in Montana, it was shocking because he was murdered for being gay. His death was unusually brutal and shocking. I have no idea what percentage of gay men were murdered that year, just this nice kid was left to die, strung up on barbed wire. He was only one person.
Diane, that’s not what Jesse wrote. If that’s what he meant, I’d appreciate a clarification and citations to the evidence that these 44 people were murdered because of their gender identification.
Flerp,
Greg B is right. Jesse Hagopian wrote a solid article, published in the Seattle times, calling on teachers to teach the truth, and you nitpick it with a distraction. The number of transgender people killed, whether many, few, or none at all, does not affect the point of his article. Are you saying “Don’t teach truth” because not many transgender people were killed? You just changed the subject for no reason I understand.
Why? Jesse is a careful writer and I believe this is well sourced.
It would represent 0.2% of homicides for that year. That’s well below most polling on what percentage of Americans identify as non-binary and trans. It this doesn’t make the point Jesse thinks it makes, and arguably makes the opposite point.
Too many people repeat little info-bits like this uncritically.
Why? Because this is a page right of the right wing playbook.
Carefully peruse any piece of writing of those who challenge the false narratives that are so important to the far right.
Find something – anything – contained somewhere within the body of the work that you can pull out and then amplify that in order to hijack debate.
Jesse Hagopian wrote a well-sourced essay about very dangerous Republican legislation that censors what teachers can teach. You posted it to have a discussion about it.
But flerp has hijacked that to have exactly the subject that the right wing wants to have:
“Is this statistic that Jesse Hagopian included in his essay meaningful or not meaningful?”
That’s a conversation that the right wing wants us to have. Because folks are now longer discussing about how disgusting the Republican law is, but they are discussing the relative meaningfulness of the statistic. One side says it is very meaningful! The other side says it isn’t meaningful! And there is the “middle” opinion that it might be a little meaningful but maybe not as meaningful as Jesse thought it was.
And the public gets totally turned off listening to the “debate” that the progressives get manipulated into having and no one is talking anymore about this horrible law that the Republicans are trying to pass that will greatly impact our country.
I have watched this happening over and over again, especially here.
folks changing the subject from how bad a law is, to instead having a discussion about all the flaws and problems that critics of the law have.
I don’t even know if flerp thinks this law is good or bad, because having a discussion about whether the law is good or bad is not the discussion that flerp ever seems to want to have.
flerp does like to have conversations about the relative merits of single power point slides or use of statistics of those who challenge something that right wing Republicans like.
But will flerp have a conversation about whether this Republican law is a good idea or not?
The INNUENDO contained in flerp’s comment is that the Republican law is good because otherwise a teacher might tell their student that a statistic is more meaningful than flerp believes it is.
But of course, who would ever argue such a ridiculous thing? That’s why it’s so insidious. Instead of simply defending these reprehensible Republican bills, flerp simply changes the subject to a criticism of Jesse Hagopian.
Diane, I wonder what would happen if you stipulated that the specific statistic that Jesse used in the essay was not meaningful to humor flerp, and THEN asked flerp whether he supports or opposes those very problematic Republican bills that are the subject of your post.
I am betting the reply would be “I don’t know enough to have an opinion.” Or silence. But I would be happy to be proven wrong.
NYCPSP, completely agree. FLERP changed the subject to a meaningless debate about an irrelevant statistic. I don’t know whether he meant to or not. I do know we lost sight of Jesse’s point about censorship
Flerp: Back in the days of the rise of post-civil War White Supremacy, Journalists like Edward Carmack and Josephus Daniels questioned the work of Ida Wells in much the same way. They said Ida Wells was just stirring up trouble. Do you really think Mathew Shepard was the only one?
Not familiar with these journalists, Roy. If they criticized Ida Bae Wells for unwittingly presenting statistics that undermined her arguments, then I don’t see the problem with that. If they did something else, then I don’t see the relevance.
No, I don’t think Matthew Shepard was the only gay person murdered for being gay.
I also don’t know how many transgender and non-binary people were murdered in 2020 because of their gender identification. Jesse Hagopian doesn’t know, either.
What I do know is that if you question factoids like this, the usual types will spring into action and accuse you of being a bigot. Every time, like clockwork.
FLERP, I don’t call you a bigot. I never implied it. What I did say is that the stat that bothered you is not a major part of Jesse’s article. The central point he made is that the CRT laws threaten teachers’ ability to teach the truth. He could have deleted the assertion that you took issue with, and his central argument remains unchanged. I am outraged by the very thought that legislatures pass laws telling teachers what they are not allowed to teach and what they must teach. Smacks of the McCarthy era to me.
Roy,
Noticing the false framing here. This stuff is so insidious and until we recognize it, our democracy is in huge danger.
Jesse Hagopian’s use of that statistic does NOT “undermine” the very convincing arguments Jesse Hagopian made in the essay! At most, even if you agreed with flerp and don’t give any weight to that statistic, it is a moot point.
Just like the arguments made by Ida B. Wells were not “undermined” just because people with an agenda said that they were.
But flerp’s approach is very lawyerly, if the motive is to defend these indefensible Republican laws. Then it does make sense to nitpick any tiny part of the prosecution’s case that you can find that is possibly debatable, and imply that the jury should focus all their attention on whether this tiny part of the prosecution’s case can be proven without a shadow of a doubt. The intent is to get the jury to believe that a dispute about the weight given to this minor thing (something impossible to “prove”) should absolutely cast doubt on the entirety of the very strong evidence Jesse presents that so convincingly supports Jesse’s thesis that these Republican laws are very bad.
It is very lawyerly to distract the jury from all the evidence of their client’s criminality by telling the jury to focus on the single piece of evidence that has even the slightest chance of being “debatable” and claim that it UNDERMINES the entire prosecution case.
When you can’t dispute the evidence that incriminates your client, you try to convince the jury that some minor evidence that is not even central to the case is all important and focus all your time on convincing the jury that this evidence is central to the case and without it, the defendant is innocent.
Using terms like “UNDERMINES” is not an accident. It is intentional. It is a lie.
Roy, even if you took out that entire “disputed” statistic, Jesse Hagopian has made a very convincing argument criticizing those Republican laws designed to control what educators can teach.
We can debate until the cows come home about whether or not Jesse Hagopian should have included that statistic or not — because there is no indisputably “correct” answer.
And that is exactly what those who don’t want any criticism of these Republican laws want us to do. Debate whether or not the weight placed on that statistic was precisely correct.
They play us like this all the time. And we don’t even realize we are helping them.
Matthew Shepard probably wasn’t murdered for being gay.
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/26/the-truth-behind-americas-most-famous-gay-hate-murder-matthew-shepard
Seriously, folks. You’re debating him on the merits of this? All this statement reveals, as so many before, is his bigotry against transgender persons. Only this time it’s less veiled than his other prejudices and non sequiturs used to distract. We’ve seen it many, many times before. And if this statistical discussion is the point of Jesse’s piece, I must have missed something. Seriously? That’s the point of this essay? Plus Jesse documents his claim. This is not about statistics. This is about one person’s deep-seeded bigotry. Don’t get sucked into this meaningless rabbit hole.
GregB wrote: “Don’t get sucked into this meaningless rabbit hole.”
YES! I just wrote a very similar long reply that seems to be lost — maybe it will post eventually or I will try again.
This entire thread is bullshit. Jesse writes a meaningful piece expressing fundamental ideas that need to be shared and you all are debating some homophobe’s non sequitur. Absolute bullshit.
GregB,
I don’t think homophobia has anything to do with this. It could have been a few words on a single power point slide that is part of a DEI presentation. It’s all about nitpicking some irrelevant point to change the subject.
Instead of defending these reprehensible laws that Republicans are trying to pass, it changes the subject so no one is talking about the reprehensible laws anymore.
Greg, I agree.
I highly recommend Tim Harford’s postcard sized guide to statistics: https://timharford.com/2018/03/your-handy-postcard-sized-guide-to-statistics/
Flerp is simply asking one of Tim Harford’s important questions: is that a big number?
You should also work to understand the claim, the second bit of Tim Harford’s advice. The phrase “violently killed” does not mean homicide as many here might have thought. The CDC category “violently killed” includes homicides, but the majority of people “violently killed” were suicides. Knowing that paints a somewhat different picture.
Here is a fact sheet about the National Violent Death Reporting System: https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nvdrs/NVDRS-Overview_factsheet.pdf
Really, Flerp? THS is the issue you are concerned about? Someone might be misled into thinking that there is somewhat more violence against transgender people than there is?
I suspect that you haven’t known many, if any, transgender people.
If schools are privatized, lies can easily be taught.
On which side of privatization is Rahm Emanuel?
A news article reported that he received $700,000 as a consultant for Wicklow Capital.
A campaign spending site shows $640,333 from Dan Tierney of Wicklow Capital to Arena 527, a political site. I don’t know the validity of the info. reported or, the validity of the campaign spending site.
I think half of America needs a do-over. My half needs a drink.