Posted on 11/16/2018 6:48:57 AM PST by 2nd Amendment
I had an unfortunate event happen to me this morning. For a semi-retirement job I decided to substitute teach. After hearing 2 black students tell me they hated history, I began to extol the rich contributions of blacks to American history. Moments later I was escorted to the office by the principal and escorted to the door. He implied I was a racist and we do not single out black students in our school. The parents of the students are coming in to support the students. and I will be blacklisted from subbing in county schools.I learned firsthand the sensitivity of race in American Schools and how Politically Correct educators must be in government schools.
You’re not a Racist, but you overcompensated for your White Guilt.
And that includes being able to blame whitey and or play the race card...usually in order to get something undeserved or without merit.
Sue until you’ve got millions for your new vacation home.
Thanks FreeRepublic for the graduate course in substitute teacher sensitivies for the new millenium!
We’re just pulling your chain.
In this day and age it’s best to keep your thoughts to yourself when dealing with anyone who isn’t a Conservative and a Patriot.
No offense taken. I’m in my 60’s probably only have a few decades left on this ole earth. Good luck to all you snowflakes and “sensitive” people who have created these great trends in American history. I’m so glad that Americans like Gen. Patton, McArthur, Halsey,etc. didn’t offend anyone during their stay in America!
I’m in my mid 60’s. I could never have imagined our Society would be anything like it is today.
You did what you thought was the right thing to do, period.
Whatever happened afterward has more to do with them than it does you.
Remember the words of John McClane, “welcome to the party Pal”.
I love your moniker Kickass! We can only do the best we can. Trump in 2020, our Don Quixote.
I wasn’t, then Obama came along.
You can talk to me...
I can. And I will.
I’m so sorry our schools and our culture has devolved to such a sorry state of fear and doubt.
I’m sorry for the offensive tone I took when I said “Do not talk to blacks. At all.”
It really has little to do with blacks, or those students in question. The real problem as I see it here is White Guilt. It seems to be the white school administration - steeped in liberalism - has created a 21st century version of Jim Crow. But now the overt racism is now passive and carefully crafted based on a fear of being white.
Unreal.
That's because, when spoken about the "protected" classes, TRUTH is the new HATE SPEECH.
The courage black citizens showed in the time of slavery and into the Jim Crow South - while keeping their dignity and families together should also be noted. Marriage rates for black citizens back then was higher than the white rate... etc.
MLK with his example of how to stand up to a society of corrupt 'elites' is also a blessing given to our country - and the world. And yeah, I know he borrowed from Mahatma Gandhi AND our founding fathers - but he put it together in a unique style that worked - and changed the world.
I'd answer that with questions. "Have we in America made mistakes in the past? Have we in America done good things in the past? If we don't know about the past, how can we avoid the mistakes and repeat the successes?"
Then the statement "That is why we study history". A smart open minded kid will get it. The others will ignore it, but then they're ignoring anything of consequence anyway.
Cool dude now let me tell you about the 92nd and 93rd in ww1 and the Tuscegee airman of wwl and the Buffalo soldiers of the old west ...I’m sorry I promised no pandering it was all done by Bedford Forrest
Racist.
Yes, Windflier, but you are a Child of God first, a Human Being second, a Conservative third, and a Person-of-Color fourth.
The people we cannot talk to put those in reverse order. :(
What are they?I began to extol the rich contributions of blacks to American history. - 2nd Amendment
The answer, IMHO, is that blacks are in fact Americans - and, as such, they have a great deal in common with other Americans which they - which everyone - takes for granted.Start with being native English speakers (after the American idiom). That is deeply ingrained; they can’t go “home” to Africa because they were never there in the first place, they don’t speak the lingo in the second place, “Africa” is highly multicultural (thus, an American black’s ancestry might very likely trace to various tribes widely separated in Africa, for example).
Go on from there to say that if blacks hadn’t systematically been brought to America in the numbers they were, it is obviously quite impossible that any modern American black now alive today - here I refer to the particular DNA of individuals - would now exist because their ancestors could never have met if they had been left in Africa. And - only less obviously but quite certainly - neither I nor anyone else with southern ancestry would exist because even the smallest change in society 200 years ago would have inevitably meant that an ancestor would have met and married someone who was not one of my ancestors. Or an ancestral woman would have gotten pregnant a month earlier or later - and had a boy instead of a girl (or vice versa), and then all bets would be off all over the place as to the repercussions of who married who after that.
The point is that, even if only in subtle ways, the effects of everyone in American society hundreds of years ago exists in everyone alive today. I have long considered that the way to teach history would be to have students find out at least a smattering of their own geneology - and thereby arouse interest in recent history, just for starters. Then chain back from there, to a little older history - and by then you could hope that your students would have taken the point of the less immediately personal, but enduring and ineluctable, significance of ancient history.
As I said, American blacks are Americans, ineluctably; even the alienated ones have to know that they don’t know any other languages besides English (and certainly don’t consider themselves to be English) and that they interact with other Americans either exclusively or very predominantly.
And Thomas Sowell’s point about the history of slavery Black Rednecks and White Liberals is salient: slavery existed everywhere, and in all times in history. What is exceptional is not slavery in the American South, but its (relative) absence in modern times. And what is exceptional about Christianity is that, in modern times (read, after about 1700) Christianity and no other religion (not excluding atheism) delegitimated the institution of slavery (for unrelated others - obviously no one has ever liked being a slave). Of course it wasn't that American Southerners weren’t Christian but that, within Christendom, they were uniquely situated to be the last to get - that is, to accept - the word.
And, I submit, the way to look at their reluctance to reject slavery (they preferred to use the word “servants” rather than slaves) is to ask yourself how you would react if I told you that it wasn’t Christian to use electricity. Because they did have slaves but they didn’t have electric appliances all over the place. In that context it has been suggested that an American secretary today would have to think long and hard about living the lifestyle of Queen Victoria (1819-1901). Victoria had servants galore, but nothing that we have that works on electricity, nothing made of plastic, no motorized - let alone airborne - transportation (other than railroad), and no health care that would now be considered worthy of the word (that last, BTW, impacted her in that her husband died young - she was long a widow, and not a particularly merry one).
A few months ago I was in New Orleans, and (it wasn’t my choice, she who must be obeyed arranged it) I visited a sugar plantation there. There was of course substantial emphasis on the POV of slaves, and few of us there were on the tour who weren’t black. And the guide mentioned that the owner of the plantation was for a time the governor of Louisiana. It was only hours later that I thought what I should have asked the guide: “Was he a Republican?” Knowing that the correct answer would be that there were no slaveowners who were Republican - anywhere, ever (closest thing to it was U.S. Grant - who switched from Democrat to Republican well after his wife’s slave absconded).
That (actually obvious) fact I learned from Dinesh D’Souza, who also noted that of all the racist Southern Democrats, about 0.5% switched to the Republican Party at the (Nixon era) time of the so-called “great switch.” Among Southern Democrat governors and senators of the time, one - Strom Thurmond - switched. And among all two thousand plus Southern Democrat officials at all levels, about a dozen switched to the Republican Party. The rest of them lived and died in good standing with the Democrat Party. One political legacy of slavery was that, for generations after the Civil War, blacks were Republicans. That they became Democrats generations later is the legacy of the New Deal (notwithstanding that, at the behest of the Southern Democrats, FDR limited the effect of the New Deal in ways tailored to disadvantage blacks - but blacks were in pretty desperate straits during the Depression).
It has been remarked that people don’t rebel when they are repressed, but when they stop being oppressed. The trouble we have with “Black Lives Matter” might best be understood in that perspective. American history is certainly relevant to all Americans who think about it at all.
Your first mistake was playing by their rules (i.e., attempting to exaggerate the contributions of blacks.)
What a hateful life's work that had to be.
Our schools have changed over the years---a rural area, not-so slowly being Californicated---but it is nothing like what you have endured. Most of the kids are okay, responsive, and go on to live decent lives.
We have the usual p.c. events and marches, whatever, but by and large even the teachers seem content, if not dedicated.
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