1776 Pledge Just Another GOP Whitewash
The latest attempt by the Republican Party to rewrite/ignore history
The Trump-run Republican Party is relentless in trying to prevent an honest account of our nation’s history from being taught in American schools.
Previously, the former president commissioned the “1776 Report,” a ludicrous and inane attempt to reframe slavery and racism as if the first wasn’t as bad as previously thought, and the second as a nonfactor in current American life.
The newest and literal whitewashing attempt is the “1776 Pledge To Save Our Schools.” This so-called pledge’s goal is to restore
“honest, patriotic education that cultivates in our children a profound love for our country.”
It also says that
"Young people should be taught to view one another not according to race or gender, but as individuals made in the image of God."
South Dakota governor Kristi Noem and ex-HUD Secretary Ben Carson are co-promoting this travesty via an co-written op-ed. Their specified target was Critical Race Theory. According to Noem and Carson, CRT is
…”is a deliberate means to sow division and cripple our nation from within – one brainwashed and resentful student at a time.”
The 1776 Pledge, like its namesake report, are laughable attempts to change the past, and obfuscate the present in order to manipulate the future.
The reality is that America has always said one thing and done another.
The Declaration of Independence says that “all men are created equal,” but the Constitution was written saying that slaves were 3/5 a person.
The Supreme Court said that White and Black societies were “separate but equal” under the law, but only one side were free to go where they wanted, live where they wanted, and safely exercise their right to vote.
Republicans like Noem and Carson fear CRT because it says that race is a man-made construct that benefits Whites and oppresses non-Whites.
All of American and world history supports CRT.
Right-wingers want us to ignore this inconvenient truth.
They want us to focus on the pie-in-the-sky patriotism and not the Imperial Wizards behind the curtain.
They want us to listen to GOP fairy tales, and ignore slavery, lynchings, Jim Crow, and extrajudicial police murders.
They want us to remember Abraham Lincoln, and forget Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, Tom Cotton, and Josh Hawley.
How contemptible is it that former Secretary Carson, a Black man, continues to doggedly pursue a figurative and literal whitewashing?
While there is no excuse for Noem and her ilk, Carson’s continued pursuit of currying Trump’s racist, bigoted favor is appalling.
He should know better.
Thank God most Black people in America do.