https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
Black Agenda Radio Commentaries
19 May 2010
As Arizona moves past the “tipping point” of non-white population, its government scrambles to safeguard historical white lies from exposure by public school ethnic studies programs. The governor “intends to wipe the white historical slate clean of actual genocides, enslavements, land piracies, and all manner of crimes against darker peoples.” The truth shall not be spoken in Arizona.”
“The truth shall not be spoken in Arizona, if it is detrimental to the reputation and sensibilities of white people.”
The State of Arizona has very ambitious goals. It will not be satisfied simply to impose a kind of apartheid system in which Latino-looking persons have no rights that a policeman is bound to respect. Oh no, Arizona’s legislature and governor have a grander plan, a much larger vision to rewrite history so as to place white people back where they think they belong: at the unchallenged center of all things worth knowing and learning. In order to do that, it is necessary to erase and outlaw the past and present of those who are not white. Governor Jan Brewer thinks she can whitewash history and put barbed wired around the present and the future with the stroke of a pen. In signing what is effectively a ban on teaching any version of history other than the approved, white version, in elementary and secondary public schools, the governor seeks to impose an ethnic cleansing of the mind – a kind of official genocide of past generations. She intends to wipe the white historical slate clean of actual genocides, enslavements, land piracies, and all manner of crimes against darker peoples. The truth shall not be spoken in Arizona, if it is detrimental to the reputation and sensibilities of white people. Apparently, the true facts of history cause white Arizona great pain, like sunlight shining on Dracula. Gov. Brewer wants to shut out the light, by shutting down ethnic studies in the classroom, making the schools safe for white lies.
Whites make up less than 60 percent of Arizona, which is apparently past the tipping point at which many of them become terrified at the prospect of losing their monopoly on power, including the power to hijack history to the service of one group: whites. One of the ways whites dominate other ethnic groups, is by denying that whites are an ethnicity, at all, but the normative form of human being. When Arizona’s legislature prohibits teaching classes that are, in the language of the new law, “designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group,” they mean classes designed for non-whites. Of course, schools in the United States have always tailored classes to one ethnic group: whites. History has always been a white narrative, and therefore by definition, a lie and a slander against the other ethnicities. Arizona wants its white lies back.
“Governor Jan Brewer thinks she can whitewash history and put barbed wired around the present and the future with the stroke of a pen.”
It is now forbidden to teach that which causes “resentment toward a race or class of people.” Since it is impossible to teach the truth of genocide, slavery, aggressive war and conquest, racial discrimination and all the other central facts of America’s past and present, without arousing some degree of resentment among the victims, only falsified versions of history will pass legal muster in Arizona.
The state reveals itself as the unreconstructed heartland of Latter Day McCarthyism, where subversives lurk under every classroom desk. The new law puts schools off-limits to materials that advocate “overthrow of the United States government.” What they really mean is: overthrow of white dominance over the rest of us. That includes preserving the sanctity of White American Manifest Destiny. What is actually manifest is that the destiny of Arizona, and America, is to lose its white majority. In the process, the United States will also shed all those books full of white lies – which is what Gov. Brewer is afraid of.
For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com
Black Agenda Radio commentaries are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike U.S. License
from the archives:
Economic Power: Avoid Arizona and Boycott BP by Joel S. Hirschhorn
Greg Palast: Behind the Immigration Law
Noam Chomsky: No Mas Muertes! – No More Deaths!
Arizona Targets Ethnic Studies
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seeing everything thru a ”race lense” is dangeriuos , weather it be white or black .
i strongly exhort you mr. ford to change the name of your group from black agenda report to human agenda report. but you wont , for as sheldon steele said ”you would not have any white guilt to play on ”.
how would you like a white history month , or a white agenda report ? see how divisive these words can be . your complaints about Arizona when and only when you change your name from the black agenda report to the a report that does not involve race. race talk , and the race card has been used too often by everybody . we are all just human beings , and the pigment of our skin does not matter.
Rocket, this reminds me of a little kid asking his mom on Mother’s Day, “Why isn’t there a Children’s Day?”, to which she replies, “Every day is Childrens’ Day.” Every day in the US, it is the White Agenda Report on all the news media, in our schools and in our society.
This is why we need the Black Agenda Report: https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2010/01/07/white-power-usa/
Was the word “Feminism” or “suffragette” also divisive?
Now they wanna teach kids it was the ‘Triangle Trade’ as it was another form of ‘free trade’? OH NO YOU DIDN’T! (And won’t!!). That’s in some way’s worse than the DWS (Driving While Spanish) law—more like a form of holocaust denial.
We already have enough irrational racial tensions trickling down from racialized power-abusing cops and citizen hysteria.
Even in NYC, minorities are frisked 6-times more than whites. Cops will abuse with impunity. the Blue Wall of Silence and institutionalized racist courts protect their own’.
It leads to the Jena 6, Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, Rodney King, Abner Luima, et. al, and a whole lot of innocent ‘suspects’ getting booked and jailed for not having their papers.
No AZ, you won’t get away with eating up justice and liberty with your idiotic backward racialistic obsessions.
Thanks to Lo for publishing this man who I’d never have heard of otherwise.
Thanks, Natureboy.
Here’s a related story on the textbooks in Texas, incredibly scary news:
http://tfninsider.org/2010/05/21/christian-land-governed-by-christian-principles/
Of course, if the US was indeed a Christian nation we wouldn’t have any more wars, no soldiers trained to kill, all the people would be housed and fed regardless of their documentation, etc. etc.
Interestingly Jesus & Buddha both seemed primarily concerned with human compassion and suffering of common people, yet so few christians see it that way.
Of course they used their ideology to promote racialism and such epic crimes as ‘Manifest Destiny’, resulting in ethnic cleansing on a continental scale. Quakers notwithstanding, christ’s compassionate doctrine hasn’t worked out too well for America (at the link, one commentator pointed out that it’s an “Indian state with christian squatters!)
We need to strictly keep religions out of politics and policy, & ‘religiously’ manifest our compassion (however we find) it via purely secular, legal means.
Good that you read some/all of the comments, there are some good ones there, I also liked the one you quoted. This is scary, we need to continue to have a separation of church and state. If only so-called Christians actually followed Jesus.
Ahhh! These people are scary! They really want to teach in the schools American Exceptionalism! Propaganda is already in our schools we don’t need to have more of it.
http://vodpod.com/watch/3681754-texas-school-board-wants-eugenics-taught-in-school?u=dandelionsalad&c=dandelionsalad
Yikes! Is it being published that way? (OK if Blum writes the next chapter).
Texas needs to secede so all the anti-progressives have a private whites-only Alamo to hole up in…
Haha, I was thinking the same thing, wondering when Texas will say goodbye to the Union.
Yes, Blum needs to write some chapters in the history textbooks, too.
This is what happens when the white Christians take over the education:
It destroys civilizations, cultures, etc.
Here’s another one:
https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2010/05/22/endciv-premise-2-of-derrick-jensen%e2%80%99s-endgame/