Warren voted for Carson? I must have missed that one. Well, at least Graham got
it pretty much right in her article. Her comments about the odious DeVos show
how her “red herring promotion of choice” will further divide the nation…what
parent with half a brain would live in a state that denied the Holocaust, saw
slavery as a great opportunity with free housing and zero unemployment, denies
climate change and all other science, bans books they don’t like, and brands
the arts as superfluous? Those states will end up with the people who support
such nonsense, and the rest of us will live elsewhere…just like now only worse.
On Mar 11, 2017, at 9:50 AM, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Yes, and your esteemed senator, the liberal icon, Elizabeth Warren, voted for
him. So while I applaud her efforts at financial reform, that vote, plus her
refusal to re-think her support of Israel is an example of why the Democratic
party is hopeless. They’re the lesser of two evils, but just barely, and
they’re still evil.
Miriam
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Bob Hachey
Sent: Saturday, March 11, 2017 3:01 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] The Trumpist Attitude Toward African-Americans
Rewriting the history of slavery Renée Graham Renée Graham . By Renée Graham
. Ludicrous statements recently made by Ben Carson and Betsy DeVos, both
members of President Trump's Cabinet, are nothing less than a flagrant
attempt by this administration to recast this nation's shameful history of
slavery, bigotry, and oppression. In his first staff address as Housing and
Urban Development secretary, Carson should have stopped talking after calling
America "a land of dreams and opportunity. Nevertheless, he persisted. "There
were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even
longer, even harder for less," Carson said. "But they too had a dream that
one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great-grandsons,
great-granddaughters, might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.
You'll need an earthmover to unpack everything offensive about Carson's
comment. Those forced into slavery were not immigrants. Africans arrived
shackled together in the dank bellies of teeming ships, not in search of
better lives. During their transatlantic nightmare, countless people died
from disease, starvation, and murder. Those who survived found ceaseless
brutality, worked under constant threat of an overseer's lash or worse, and
were paid nothing. If they could still dream at all, it was for the
opportunity to kill their oppressors, flee the plantations, and reunite their
families. There was no prosperity or happiness - only crushing misery they
would never want inflicted on loved ones. Carson presented a rosy
interpretation of a vile institution whose stench still chokes us. If the
former neurosurgeon can't find a reliable history book, perhaps he can get
his skilled hands on a dictionary to look up the vastly different definitions
for "slave" and "immigrant. This comes less than a week after Education
Secretary DeVos claimed Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)
are "pioneers" of school choice. "They are living proof that when more
options are provided to students, they are afforded greater access and
greater quality," she said in a statement. DeVos, who eventually backtracked,
overlooks the fact that HBCUs are "living proof" of the Jim Crow era, and the
only choice black people had was to create their own places of higher
learning, since they were barred from segregated colleges and universities.
These aren't misstatements but part of a sinister pattern. In an
administration at war with facts, these historical rewrites seek to minimize
the pain and suffering of African-Americans. It is literally a page from
Texas textbooks that, in 2015, referred to slaves only as "millions of
workers from Africa [brought] to the southern United States to work on
agricultural plantations. We've seen this before. In January, a White House
statement commemorating International Holocaust Remembrance Day made no
mention of Jewish victims, opting for what was called a more "inclusive" tone
- a move praised on a neo-Nazi website. As inept as the Trump administration
is, never underestimate its desire to craft a frightening new world order
that will amend the past to cement its archaic vision of the future.
Hardships like slavery and segregation are repackaged as cheery bootstrap
parables. A Holocaust remembrance must now take "into account all of those
who suffered," as White House spokeswoman Hope Hicks said. Senator Tim Kaine
of Virginia compared it to something else: Holocaust denial. Martin Luther
King Jr. said, "We are not makers of history. We are made by history. So what
becomes of us when our history is systematically unmade? The first step in
erasing history is to slowly erode our understanding of it. This isn't just
carelessness; it's an act of contempt. That's why pushback to correct this
revisionism must be as vigilant as efforts to thwart ongoing assaults on
civil rights by this caustic presidency. Otherwise we may soon hear another
member of this administration rhapsodizing about that wonderful era when
African and African-American workers enjoyed nearly 250 years of prosperity
and happiness, complete with free housing and zero unemployment. Renée Graham
can be reached at renee.graham@xxxxxxxxx. Follow her on Twitter @reneeygraham
