Georgia and Other Altered States of Reality
The fight against Critical Race Theory is another attempt at literal whitewashing
At the behest of Governor Brian Kemp, the Georgia Board of Education passed a resolution intended to prevent the teaching of Critical Race Theory in state schools. Specifically, the resolution declared that Georgia and the US as a whole are not racist.
The 11-2 vote was split almost entirely on racial lines, with only Black Republican Lisa Kennemore voting with the majority. Her reasoning was that the teaching of slavery in schools has been lacking. She said that White people were not the only people enslaving people:
“Black people were actually slaves to Black people, and it goes all the way back even to ancient times.”
She went on to express her concern that minority students be taught that “they will always be victims.”
Ms. Kennemore’s philosophy is keeping with the low bar set by most contemporary Black conservatives. It’s a philosophy built on the absurd notion that if we just ignore the past and the present, the future will miraculously turn out alright.
Ms. Kennemore, the Board of Education, Governor Kemp, and those who think like them are appalled at the notion that education is based on reality. To these people, the if the truth is inconvenient, alternate facts should be substituted in its place.
Georgia is just the latest to pass or attempt to pass laws that are designed to ignore two hundred and forty five years of codified prejudice.
No, Georgia nor the United States of America are not racist, even though
Black people were legally designated as 3/5 of a person
We had eighty seven years of legal chattel slavery, during which one and only one race enslaved one and only one race
We had decades of Jim Crow laws that promoted “separate but equal,” but were actually separate and unequal
Blacks have been systematically lynched in almost every state of the Union
We live in an era where Blacks and other People of Color are indiscriminately killed by White law enforcement
Black people are afforded less credit than their White counterparts
Black Lives Matter protesters are treated like foreign invaders, but marauding White Supremacists can storm the US Capitol, and the Republican Party treats it like a social gathering
Whether you call it Critical Race Theory, history, or the plain, God-honest truth, it doesn’t matter.
Black people and people of any color who have a rational mind and a conscience know the difference between what has happened/is happening and fairy tales.
It’s just unfortunate that Governor Kemp, Lisa Kennemore, and their ilk are without reason or conscience.