Florida bans offensive history

[billvon 2,379]

So Florida just banned CRT, like several other states.  But they didn't just ban CRT, they banned anything that can make "an individual . .feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin."

Which means that:

Teaching anyone about the Holocaust is now banned if there are German students in the class.  After all, if a student is distantly related to the people who ran those concentration camps, they could feel discomfort or guilt by being reminded that their family participated in that.  

Now, there is an exception for "training or instruction" - it is allowed provided that "is given in an objective manner without endorsement of the concepts."  However, since pretty much all teachers describe the Holocaust as "bad" (and in fact endorsing its termination) that provision does not apply.

Teaching about 9/11 is now banned if there are Muslims in the class.  Muslims were targeted after 9/11 as the perpetrators, and thus they will feel discomfort by being reminded that they were blamed for the attack.  And again, most teachers consider what the 9/11 terrorists did to be "bad" which is not objective at all.

Teaching about the Vietnam War is now banned if there are Vietnamese in the class.  After all, depictions of what the Viet Cong did could reasonably be assumed to cause Vietnamese students distress.  

Teaching about the Civil War is now banned if there are Southerners in the class.  No one wants to hear about how their families were insurrectionists - and losing insurrectionists at that.

What's left that is safe to teach in history class?  What's left that will not offend the special snowflakes in Florida?  Perhaps the history of sugar cane in . . nope, that doesn't work.  The Revolutionary War?  Nope.  I know!  The history of Star Wars.  Since that's entirely fictional, no one could reasonably be affected.

[NewGuy2005 51]

The history of Sasquatch and Nascar is still safe.

[JerryBaumchen 1,046]

50 minutes ago, billvon said:

So Florida just banned CRT, like several other states.  But they didn't just ban CRT, they banned anything that can make "an individual . .feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin."

Which means that:

Teaching anyone about the Holocaust is now banned if there are German students in the class.  After all, if a student is distantly related to the people who ran those concentration camps, they could feel discomfort or guilt by being reminded that their family participated in that.  

Now, there is an exception for "training or instruction" - it is allowed provided that "is given in an objective manner without endorsement of the concepts."  However, since pretty much all teachers describe the Holocaust as "bad" (and in fact endorsing its termination) that provision does not apply.

Teaching about 9/11 is now banned if there are Muslims in the class.  Muslims were targeted after 9/11 as the perpetrators, and thus they will feel discomfort by being reminded that they were blamed for the attack.  And again, most teachers consider what the 9/11 terrorists did to be "bad" which is not objective at all.

Teaching about the Vietnam War is now banned if there are Vietnamese in the class.  After all, depictions of what the Viet Cong did could reasonably be assumed to cause Vietnamese students distress.  

Teaching about the Civil War is now banned if there are Southerners in the class.  No one wants to hear about how their families were insurrectionists - and losing insurrectionists at that.

What's left that is safe to teach in history class?  What's left that will not offend the special snowflakes in Florida?  Perhaps the history of sugar cane in . . nope, that doesn't work.  The Revolutionary War?  Nope.  I know!  The history of Star Wars.  Since that's entirely fictional, no one could reasonably be affected.

Hi Bill,

And, the Third Reich had book burnings. 

No one can stop the flow of information.  You might slow it down for a while, but you are not going to stop it.

Jerry Baumchen

 

[kallend 1,619]

Mathematics and physics make a lot of people uncomfortable.

[ryoder 1,380]

8 minutes ago, kallend said:

Mathematics and physics make a lot of people uncomfortable.

For me, thermodynamics was worse. :-(

[Phil1111 905]

36 minutes ago, kallend said:

Mathematics and physics make a lot of people uncomfortable.

Based upon US politics I thought it was race and wealth.

[wmw999 2,114]

1 hour ago, kallend said:

Mathematics and physics make a lot of people uncomfortable.

Biology can be distressing, too.

Wendy P. 

[brenthutch 383]

1 hour ago, kallend said:

Mathematics and physics make a lot of people uncomfortable.

Everyone knows math is racist.

https://marketresearchtelecast.com/canada-declares-a-math-test-for-teachers-racist-and-unconstitutional-but-some-question-the-decision/232753/

[murps2000 86]

1 hour ago, wmw999 said:

Biology can be distressing, too.

Wendy P. 

Profit & loss math is about the easiest you could ever do in the real world and successful business owners understand that. Compound interest is as complex as it gets in the world of finance, but it too is fairly easy to understand. If you take advantage of either you can make a lot of money and afford to tell everyone how smart you are.

[JoeWeber 2,294]

13 hours ago, billvon said:

So Florida just banned CRT, like several other states.  But they didn't just ban CRT, they banned anything that can make "an individual . .feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin."

Which means that:

Teaching anyone about the Holocaust is now banned if there are German students in the class.  After all, if a student is distantly related to the people who ran those concentration camps, they could feel discomfort or guilt by being reminded that their family participated in that.  

Now, there is an exception for "training or instruction" - it is allowed provided that "is given in an objective manner without endorsement of the concepts."  However, since pretty much all teachers describe the Holocaust as "bad" (and in fact endorsing its termination) that provision does not apply.

Teaching about 9/11 is now banned if there are Muslims in the class.  Muslims were targeted after 9/11 as the perpetrators, and thus they will feel discomfort by being reminded that they were blamed for the attack.  And again, most teachers consider what the 9/11 terrorists did to be "bad" which is not objective at all.

Teaching about the Vietnam War is now banned if there are Vietnamese in the class.  After all, depictions of what the Viet Cong did could reasonably be assumed to cause Vietnamese students distress.  

Teaching about the Civil War is now banned if there are Southerners in the class.  No one wants to hear about how their families were insurrectionists - and losing insurrectionists at that.

What's left that is safe to teach in history class?  What's left that will not offend the special snowflakes in Florida?  Perhaps the history of sugar cane in . . nope, that doesn't work.  The Revolutionary War?  Nope.  I know!  The history of Star Wars.  Since that's entirely fictional, no one could reasonably be affected.

Unlax. DZ's across the nation have been banning offensive history for decades and we're still ticking along.

[SkyDekker 1,120]

14 hours ago, brenthutch said:

Everyone knows math is racist.

https://marketresearchtelecast.com/canada-declares-a-math-test-for-teachers-racist-and-unconstitutional-but-some-question-the-decision/232753/

As usual, that is not what that article, nor the underlying court case says. I would suggest focusing on reading comprehension prior to getting to difficult subjects like 1 + 1.

[ryoder 1,380]

[GeorgiaDon 340]

People have a long history of repackaging repugnant policies to make them more palatable, and even to fool the unwary into supporting those policies.  Slavery was repackaged as "states rights".  It's a lot easier to convince people that states should be free to enact policies they decide is in the best interests of their citizens, than it is to convince them to support slavery.  So you create a couple of degrees of separation; now you're not talking about buying and selling people, you're talking about states being free from Washington bullying. 

Similarly, in the 1960s the California Realtor's Association found their practice of adding racial covenants to property deeds under attack from civil rights advocates (see this article for example).   Realtors found that they could drive up property values by adding restrictions to deeds to make white-only developments and whole neighborhoods.  It got to the point that in many communities there were literally no homes that non-whites were allowed to buy.  This was supported by the courts; in one case the California Supreme Court ruled that a black family could not be blocked from buying a property, but they could not live on the property due to the covenants.  When the Federal government moved to block racial covenants, the realtor's association responded by repackaging the issue as "freedom to do as you wished with your own property".  Now they could talk about freedom and property rights, and leave segregation out of the conversation altogether.  They pushed an amendment to the California constitution to protect the "right" to enforce racial covenants, which passed with over 60% of the vote pretty much because it was sold as a personal freedom issue not one of legally enforced segregation.  Although the California amendment was later voided as in violation of Federal law, the many all-white communities established under the system remain almost entirely white to this day.  The lesson was learned well by Regan as Governor, and persists strongly today in Republican Party tactics to fight efforts to combat Covid, poverty, voting rights, or anything else they decide to adopt as a wedge issue.

Now we see censorship and efforts to "whitewash" (a perfect word to describe the effort) history repackaged as an effort to protect children from feeling badly about how various racial groups have been treated.  Never mind that doing that robs students of any hope of being able to understand why the country has many of the problems that it has.  If you can't talk about slavery or Jim Crow or the California Realtor's Association, how do you explain the vast differences in average wealth between white and black (or hispanic) families, or incarceration rates, or any of the other structural issues that fall along racial lines?  All you are left with is that non-whites have less wealth, or are more likely to be incarcerated, because they are lazy, or stupid.

I see evidence that the same repackaging is happening for religious issues.  In the Supreme Court both Thomas and Alito have written about same sex marriage and abortion as being offensive to people with strongly held religious (IOW fundamentalist Christian) beliefs.  They seem to be setting up a new constitutional right: the right to never be offended by other people "living in sin".  "Freedom of religion", I fear, will soon be twisted to mean that no-one can do anything that might offend someone else's religious scruples.  You don't have to pass laws that say everyone has to believe in fundamentalist Christianity, if you can pass laws that say that everyone has to behave just like fundamentalist Christians. 

Edited January 21, 2022 by GeorgiaDon

[Faicon9493 114]

Where black history is concerned, if you fail to teach it with anything but accuracy, fidelity, or legislatively sanitize it or whitewash it, what you call American History becomes American Mythology.

[billvon 2,379]

18 minutes ago, Faicon9493 said:

Where black history is concerned, if you fail to teach it with anything but accuracy, fidelity, or legislatively sanitize it or whitewash it, what you call American History becomes American Mythology.

Yep.  And unfortunately that American mythology is beloved by a lot of people who feel you are "stealing their past" by removing that whitewashing.  There's an entire segment of American society who feel everything was better Back in the Day, and seek to return to those times (with all their whitewashing intact of course.)

[JerryBaumchen 1,046]

2 hours ago, billvon said:

Yep.  And unfortunately that American mythology is beloved by a lot of people who feel you are "stealing their past" by removing that whitewashing.  There's an entire segment of American society who feel everything was better Back in the Day, and seek to return to those times (with all their whitewashing intact of course.)

Hi Bill,

Re:  Back in the Day

Yet, no two of them can agree as just when Back in the Day actually was.

Jerry Baumchen

[kallend 1,619]

On 1/20/2022 at 5:51 PM, billvon said:

 

What's left that is safe to teach in history class?  .  I know!  The history of Star Wars.  Since that's entirely fictional, no one could reasonably be affected.

Nope.  All the bad guys have British accents.

[headoverheels 291]

Trae hits on this one

 

[billvon 2,379]

8 hours ago, JerryBaumchen said:

Yet, no two of them can agree as just when Back in the Day actually was.

"Well, it's easy!  Before the Libs took over.  Like in the 50's with Fonzie and cars and kids who obeyed."

"You mean, like, with separate lunch counters and all that?"

"Look, I'm the least racist person in the world.  But as far as I know no one really cared about that.  I mean, I'm white, and I never heard any complaining."

"Or like men couldn't be arrested if they raped their wives?"

"Hey, I never heard anything about that.  None of the women I knew said they were raped.  Until the whole BS 'me too' nonsense."

"Or like gays could be arrested for being . . . gay?"

"Again - never happened.  I mean, I never heard of it happening.  None of MY friends were ever arrested!  From my perspective as a white, straight male those days were great."