I remember how it was -- JR
What American Schools Should Teach about Race, Racism and Slavery
BY DENNIS PRAGER
Regarding race and much else, America’s students are not taught history. In fact, they are not taught; they are indoctrinated. With anti-Americanism.
The purpose of all teaching about race in American schools is to engender contempt for America. They are, therefore, “taught” the lies of The New York Times’ “1619 Project” — that the United States was founded to preserve and protect slavery — and of such works as Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility.
So, then, what should American schools teach about race?
They should, of course, teach students about slavery and racism.
But, if truth and moral clarity are to matter, students must also learn that slavery was universal. They would therefore learn about Muslim-Arab slavery, slavery among Africans, slavery among Native Americans and Native South Americans, and slavery in Asia and India.
They would learn that it was the West, beginning with England and America, that abolished slavery. And they would learn that the abolitionists were overwhelmingly religious Christians, animated by the Bible and Judeo-Christian values.
They would learn that, unlike the slaves under Arab-Muslim rule, most black slaves in America were allowed to have children and form families. They would read Herbert Gutman’s “The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925,” about which The New York Times wrote when it was published in 1976: “Gutman has performed an immense service in burying the idea that slavery destroyed the black family.” For the record, Gutman was a professor of the left and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
They would learn that the tens of millions of African slaves under Islamic-Arab rule were not allowed to form families (most males were castrated). They would learn that while about 340,000 African slaves were transported to America, 12 million were transported to Brazil. They would learn that far more blacks — about 3 million from Africa and the Caribbean — have come to America willingly than came as slaves. They would read a 2005 article from The New York Times called “More Africans Enter U.S. Than in Days of Slavery,” in which they would also learn how much less racist America is than any other country: “Agba Mangalabou, who arrived from Togo in 2002, recalls his surprise when he moved here from Europe. ‘In Germany, everyone knew I was African,’ he said. ‘Here, nobody knows if I’m African or American.'”
They would learn about white slavery, too, from one of the greatest economists of the last half-century, Thomas Sowell, who wrote: “More whites were brought as slaves to North Africa than blacks brought as slaves to the United States or to the 13 colonies from which it was formed. White slaves were still being bought and sold in the Ottoman Empire, decades after blacks were freed in the United States.”
None of that would be taught to diminish the evil of the transatlantic black slave trade, let alone to justify it. America’s schoolchildren should, of course, be taught about the horrors of the slave auctions, of the separation of many families, of the rapes, the beatings and the lynchings. But nothing in history is understandable without perspective.
As regards the Arab-Muslim slave trade, students should read Ghanaian professor and minister John Azumah’s book “The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa,” in which he said:
“While two out of every three slaves shipped across the Atlantic were men, the proportions were reversed in the Islamic slave trade. Two women for every man were enslaved by the Muslims.
“While the mortality rate of the slaves being transported across the Atlantic was as high as 10%, the percentage of the slaves dying in transit in the trans-Saharan and East African slave market was a staggering 80 to 90%.
“While almost all the slaves shipped across the Atlantic were for agricultural work, most of the slaves destined for the Muslim Middle East were for sexual exploitation as concubines in harems and for military service.
“While many children were born to the slaves in the Americas, the millions of their descendants are citizens in Brazil and the United States today, very few descendants of the slaves who ended up in the Middle East survived.
“While most slaves who went to the Americas could marry and have families, most of the male slaves destined for the Middle East were castrated, and most of the children born to the women were killed at birth.”
They would read some of the left’s favorite “America-is-racist” books, such as the national bestseller “White Fragility.” But, unlike any school in America that assigns that book, they would also assign a black professor’s review of it. In The Atlantic, John McWhorter, a Columbia University professor of linguistics, wrote that “White Fragility” “is actually a racist tract. … the book diminishes Black people in the name of dignifying us. … White guilt and politesse have apparently distracted many readers from the book’s numerous obvious flaws. For one, DiAngelo’s book is replete with claims that are either plain wrong or bizarrely disconnected from reality.”
They would read and listen to a variety of black thinkers and authors, not just those who detest America.
That these brilliant thinkers are unfamiliar to most Americans is proof of the bias and superficiality that pervades American academic and intellectual life.
If they read these books and are taught the truths about race outlined in this article, it is perfectly acceptable for them to read black and white leftists on race. In fact, it would be advisable.
Harvard's Racial Doublespeak Affirmed
The title is admittedly a little misleading: “Racial doublespeak” is but one humble epithet among many arising from the discrimination case just decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Dropped from the title for brevity’s sake were “double-standards,” “race-based quotas,” “court-sanctioned institutional bias against Asians,” “leftist elitism,” “overt racism,” “throwing the 1965 Civil Rights Act under the bus,” and a host of other equally apt descriptors. But “racial doublespeak” is a good start.
Background: The Harvard Case
Students for Fair Admissions (SFA) sued Harvard in 2014, culminating most recently in the First Circuit’s decision in favor of the Ivy League school. We’ve discussed at length the ongoing struggle of SFA against Harvard’s biased admissions standards. The gist of it is that Harvard effectively says, There are just too many smart Asians applying to Harvard — we can’t let them all in — and we don’t have enough smart blacks entering, so we need to tweak the admissions knobs in the name of “diversity”!
Good luck getting any Harvard official to admit this position, of course, but a simple inspection of the facts demonstrates this to be the practical effect. In any case, we fully expect this matter to reach the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), especially given the flawed logic upon which the First Circuit’s decision rests.
Logic Gaps
The underpinnings of all federal courts’ admissions-diversity jurisprudential logic is flawed. The First Circuit affirmed the district court’s ruling partially on the basis that Harvard’s use of race “is consistent with the requirements of Supreme Court precedent.” Translation: We will continue to make these types of insane rulings, because SCOTUS itself endorses them. The Supreme Court, for its part, has done nothing to clarify its convoluted positions in a handful of cases on the matter over the past few decades, stating nothing more than some use of race in admissions is permissible. A little racism is okay, apparently.
So how much is “some”? Nobody knows. The nation’s highest court has yet to deign to put sharp edges — actually, any edges — on how much “race” in the admissions process is enough and how much is too much, let alone how such criteria could or should be implemented. Thus, lower courts are left to their own whims and mischief on the matter, all under the umbrella of aegis and legitimacy conferred, however nebulously, from SCOTUS. The result: A federal district court under the First Circuit ruled in 2019 that penalizing Asian Americans is “justified by the compelling interest in diversity and all the benefits that flow from a diverse college population.”
The First Circuit, having endorsed that decision, has now established a new standard. The Wall Street Journal accurately pegs it: “Harvard never explains precisely how it uses race in admissions, but the court says that’s fine because the school uses other subjective admissions criteria as well. The ambiguity means schools can use race in arbitrary fashion as long as they’re not too blatant.” In honor of the Journal’s keen insight, we’ll call this new benchmark for college admissions discrimination the Not-Too-Blatant Standard™.
Thus, in both word and effect, the First Circuit has given carte blanche for schools to freely discriminate based on race, as long as they “aren’t too blatant” about it. This sounds more like reasoning from the Jim Crow era than from a modern federal court, but there it is. Until the Supremes hear SFA’s inevitable appeal, the First Circuit’s standard is effectively the law of the land. But the absence of a sane juridical standard to decide admissions discrimination matters isn’t the only logic problem.
Logic Flaws
Another even more fundamental reasoning defect lurking underneath the Not-Too-Blatant Standard™ is this: Why a skin-color-based double standard in the first place? Wasn’t the basic idea behind the Civil Rights Act of 1965 to attempt to fulfill the vision of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — that people should be judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin? So what happened? Is it okay to discriminate for the sake of ending discrimination? Does that make any sense? And for how long?
The Civil Rights Act is now over a half-century old. What discrimination still exists? That is, what real, concrete examples of discrimination exist that are not addressed by our current laws, either at the state or federal level? As to those who would point to “systemic institutional bias” backed up by cherry-picked statistics rather than concrete evidence, we would simply ask: What is more systemic, institutionalized, and biased than a race-quota-based admissions system at one of the nation’s most prestigious universities? That is, what discrimination actually exists that isn’t sponsored by the government?
Or how about this for twisted logic: Not just any skin color counts. Being “non-white” alone isn’t enough. No, the color must be from among an anointed class of colors, and, apparently, “Asian” isn’t on that list. So let’s see if we have this straight: Harvard is okay in discriminating against Asians and whites, but not against other races deemed too scarce to meet Harvard’s “diversity” requirements — is that it? And what exactly are those diversity requirements? And why are they there in the first place? And why do the courts view “diversity” as a “compelling” governmental interest? Do we need to have [X]% of this color and [Y]% of that color in every class? And why should diversity trump academic performance or any other merit-based criteria? No one seems to be able to address any of these questions sufficient to survive a laugh test — including, of course, the First Circuit.
For its part, the First Circuit blathers on for roughly 100 pages in what amounts to using a jackhammer to tap in a wall tack in its sadly comical attempt to justify the conclusion that Harvard’s “personal ratings” used in its admissions process are not influenced by race. Never mind that the school’s data show exactly the opposite, or that, according to the Justice Department brief, these personal ratings are why Asians are disproportionately rejected from admissions, notwithstanding their impeccable academic and other merit-based credentials. Nope: Apparently that’s not too blatant — standard met!
Here’s an illuminating thought experiment: Imagine if this Harvard-shill of a court attempted to pawn its convoluted logic off on a class of black plaintiffs under the same circumstances. “Bad press” would be the least of Harvard’s troubles; rioting and the complete loss of the school’s already mottled reputation would probably be much higher up the uh-oh list at the PR Department. But for now, it’s all good, we are told by the First Circuit: It’s okay to be a racist if the goals are “diversity” (whatever that is) and ending racism (however that is defined) — and, of course, you’re not too blatant about it. Got it?
https://patriotpost.us/articles/74937-harvards-racial-doublespeak-affirmed-2020-11-17
UNICEF Study: No Consistent Link Between School Reopenings and COVID CasesIt's World Children's Day, and UNICEF is calling for "averting a lost generation" of kids. That means letting them get up and go to school. Not on their computers. In the classroom. Teachers' unions have told us that reopening schools during the coronavirus pandemic would be a danger to both students and educators. A few teachers in Wisconsin even took the dramatic route of displaying tombstone signs to demonstrate against in-person learning. In New York, citing a rise in COVID cases, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) and Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) ordered all public schools across the state to close on Thursday, and it's the same in many regions across the country.
But new data from a UNICEF study doesn't back up their claims.
"Data from 191 countries shows no consistent link between reopening schools and increased rates of coronavirus infection," Politico reports on the study. In fact, the study concluded that "there is strong evidence that, with basic safety measures in place, the net benefits of keeping schools open outweigh the costs of closing them."
UNICEF doesn't ignore the fact that children can get sick from COVID, but the UN agency argues it will only get worse if schools stay closed, for "children are more likely to get the virus outside of school settings."
These pandemic shutdowns, the report adds, means the loss of some essential services.
Dropoff in services: From surveys across 140 countries, UNICEF estimates that 70 percent of mental health services for children and adolescents have been disrupted during the pandemic, with 65 percent of countries reporting a decrease in home visits by social workers in September compared to last year.
Nearly one-third of the countries saw a drop of at least 10 percent in coverage for health services. That includes routine vaccinations, outpatient care for childhood infectious diseases and maternal health services.
Across 135 countries, there has been a 40 percent decline in the coverage of nutrition services for women and children. The number of children hurt by multidimensional poverty — characterized by poor health, education and living standards, in addition to the traditional monetary standards — is estimated to have increased by 15 percent globally by mid-2020.
So what's with all the virtual learning? Well, as The Washington Post found in a study of why school districts decided on remote learning, a lot of it has to do with politics. I know, shocker.
But a new study we conducted, examining some 10,000 school districts across the country — some 75 percent of the total — remarkably finds essentially no connection between covid-19 case rates and decisions regarding schools. Rather, politics is shaping the decisions: The two main factors that determined whether a school district opened in-person were the level of support in the district for Donald Trump in 2016 and the strength of teachers’ unions. A third factor, with a much smaller impact, was the amount of competition a school district faces from private schools, in particular Catholic schools. (Washington Post)
Conservatives are now directing New York's leaders to read the report.
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