On The Vine: Notes on American propaganda
Your so called arguments against critical race theory are tired. They’re misguided verging on disastrous, and they reek of racism and hypocrisy. In truth they are little more than Americanized propaganda. You’re showing your hands, folks, and they’re caked in the dirt under which you’re trying to bury history and truth.
This is what has me fired up this week ... month? Probably the last 20-plus years tbh.
The issue with this “debate” about whether or not public schools and universities should be teaching critical race theory is that it quickly and often veers so far off track from any sound, rational, fact-based argument for why it shouldn’t be in schools.
Critical race theory is, in the simplest form, a method of examining how race and racism have historically been embedded in our systems and institutions as a means for exploring how that replicates and perpetuates racial inequality still.
I read arguments that this critical way of looking at our 245-year-old country (slavery on American soil predates that, by the way) will teach people to hate America — which is great, in case you didn’t know — that it does little to bring people together, that it will make white students sad about the past (their heritage).
To that, I say, what about Black students? What about our past, our history, on the backs of which rest the heritage you’re so worried about revealing as tarnished? I’ve known for 20-plus years my country has little regard for me.
You’re not arguing against critical race theory. You’re arguing against losing something that should never have been exclusively yours to begin with. You’re arguing against a loss of power and privilege. You’re arguing for a lie. America is great for many reasons, sure, but it ain’t because of its morality.
The Missouri House currently has a bill that would ban curricula rooted in and adjacent to critical race theory, which it defines as:
“Any curriculum that... Identifies people or groups of people, entities, or institutions in the United States as inherently, immutably, or systemically sexist, racist, anti-LGBT, bigoted, biased, privileged, or oppressed; and (2) Employs immutable, inherited, or typically continuing characteristics such as race, income, appearance, religion, ancestry, sexual orientation, or gender identity to: (a) Perpetuate stereotypes; and (b) Assign blame for societal problems or ills to categories of living persons based on any such stereotypes or characteristics; or (3) Classifies persons into groups for the purpose of targeting only certain groups for education, formation, indoctrination, or viewpoint transformation, other than separation of students by biological sex”
You might as well demolish history classes all together. I’d laugh if only to keep from crying.
Around the block
His family survived Tulsa Race Massacre. Kansas City area man wants the story told
Last week marked the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre, in which a white mob murdered as many as 300 Black people, ransacked and destroyed businesses and burned homes to the ground in the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma — known as Black Wall Street for the prosperity and progress the Black community there was able to create.
The Star’s Katie Moore writes:
Jack Adams, 89, who now lives in Overland Park, grew up listening to these stories. He came to understand that if his mother, Bernice Guess Adams, who was 16 at the time, had not survived, he would not exist.
As a child hearing about the massacre, Adams said he did not fully understand the racism behind it. Black people were thriving in Greenwood, and some white people resented them for it...
That spring in 1921, a Black man was accused of assaulting a white woman. A white mob used the unfounded allegations as “a catalyst to destroy that Black progress,” Williams said.
Reflecting on it this past week, Adams said, “It shows me what hate, jealousy, unbridled hate can do.”
That hate still exists, Adams said, pointing to the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.
In case you missed it...
How can you celebrate Pride Month in Kansas City? Here are some places to go
Kansas universities asked to compile list of courses that teach Critical Race Theory
New labor contract addresses issues of racial bias within Kansas City Fire Department
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson indicates Kevin Strickland pardon won’t be ‘a priority’
Federal prosecutors, Jackson County’s lead prosecutor, as well as the presiding judge, Kansas City’s mayor, members of the prosecuting team that convicted him, and 13 Missouri lawmakers believe Kevin Strickland is innocent in the 1978 triple murder for which he’s served 43 years in prison — more than half his life.
The key witness in his case recanted, and the other two convicted of the murders say Strickland wasn’t there.
He’s all but innocent, yet still behind bars.
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson this week indicated that despite all of that, and a hoard of calls for his release, he would not prioritize a pardon for Strickland.
The Star’s Luke Nozicka and Jeanne Kuang have the story:
“I don’t know that that necessarily makes it a priority to jump in front of the line,” Parson said during a Monday news conference. “We understand some cases are going to draw more attention through the media than others, but we’re just going to look at those things.”
Parson noted that Strickland — who Jackson County prosecutors this year determined is innocent — was tried “by a jury of his peers” and found guilty. But he added that he knew there was “a lot more information out there.”
Beyond the block
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Simone Biles wins record seventh national women’s all-around title
Simone Biles is unreal. To watch her requires rewinding, slowing the video down, rewinding again, and even after all that simply suspending disbelief.
Over the weekend Biles won her seventh national women’s all-around title at the U.S. Gymnastics Championship — the most of any other American woman. And she did so, leaving her most jaw dropping skills on the cutting room floor.
At the U.S. Classic in May, Biles unveiled her latest signature skill called the Yurchenko double pike. The skill is so challenging no other woman has even attempted it in competition. Biles did it at her first competition in more than a year.
Juliet Macur wrote for The New York Times in May:
To execute it, a gymnast first must launch herself into a roundoff back handspring onto the vaulting table, and then propel herself high enough to give herself time to flip twice in a pike position (body folded, legs straight) before landing on her feet...
Not even the vault’s namesake, the former Russian gymnast Natalia Yurchenko, tried it in competition. (The double pike carries Yurchenko’s name because she pioneered the roundoff-back-handspring approach to the vault, not what Biles now can do after pressing off it.)
Biles performed the vault so well on Saturday that her one flaw, somehow, was over-rotating it.
Check this out...
Newly elected trans state lawmakers reflect on record year of anti-trans bills
Fired After Calling 911 On A Black Bird-Watcher, Amy Cooper Sues For Discrimination
For the culture
“In The Heights”: Lights up on Washington Heights
The movies are BACK, papi.
The film adaptation of Lin Manuel-Miranda’s Broadway hit B.H. (before “Hamilton”) hits theaters this weekend. Sure, it’ll be on HBO Max too, but after more than a year of all but dark movie theater screens, Jon M. Chu’s fantastical iteration of the story exploring one of New York City’s most vibrant, tight-knit immigrant communities, is screaming to be experienced on the big screen.
Jocelyn Noveck writes for The Associated Press:
“In the Heights” also benefits from an exquisite sense of timing – cultural timing. The release was postponed a year; theaters are now open. “Lights up,” begins the infectious opening number, and those words are perfect: Lights up on Washington Heights, yes, but also on a reawakened New York, where many are tentatively returning to pre-pandemic rhythms after a miserable year, eager for shared experience. “In the Heights” is a work that reads the room: a film without an ounce of cynicism, that wears its big heart proudly on its sleeve and dares you not to join in. Two lovers, suddenly dancing up the side of an apartment building? A Busby Berkeley-style dance number in a city pool? Yup. And yup.
Did you see this?...
Teyana Taylor Is First Black Woman To Be Named Maxim’s Sexiest Woman Alive
With ‘In the Heights,’ Anthony Ramos Finds Stardom on His Own Terms
That’s it!
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