No divisive concepts
Georgia Senate passes bill that limits how schools can teach about race.
House Bill 1084, the “Protect Students First Act”, was approved by the Georgia senate. The measure requires local school boards and administrators to ban discrimination on the “basis of race” by limiting how race can be discussed in classrooms.
Under the bill, discussion topics that would be banned include teaching that “one race is inherently superior to another race” or that the US is “fundamentally racist”, reported CNN.
“We can teach US history, the good, the bad and the ugly, without dividing children along racial lines,” said the Georgia senate president pro tem, Butch Miller, of the bill that passed 32-21.
Can we though? Maybe it’s not actually that easy.
Here’s the bill itself.
Title 20 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to education, is amended in
23 Article 1 of Chapter 1, relating to general provisions, by adding a new Code section to read
24 as follows:
“20-1-11.
26 (a) As used in this Code section, the term:
27 (1) ‘Divisive concepts’ means any of the following concepts, including views espousing
28 such concepts:
29 (A) One race is inherently superior to another race;
30 (B) The United States of America is fundamentally racist;
31 (C) An individual, by virtue of his or her race, is inherently or consciously racist or
32 oppressive toward individuals of other races;
33 (D) An individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely
34 or partly because of his or her race;
35 (E) An individual’s moral character is inherently determined by his or her race;
36 (F) An individual, by virtue of his or her race, bears individual responsibility for
37 actions committed in the past by other individuals of the same race;
38 (G) An individual should feel anguish or any other form of psychological distress
39 because of his or her race;
And so on. You can see what they’re hinting at. Don’t dig too deep. Don’t say the whole problem was not solved when the Civil War ended or when Booker T. Washington founded Tuskegee or when MLK gave the “I have a dream” speech or when Obama was elected. Don’t teach the truth about the defeat of Reconstruction. Don’t talk about prison plantations. Don’t talk about Jim Crow laws. Don’t talk about voting rights. Don’t talk about the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act. Don’t talk about mass incarceration and what color most of the mass is. Don’t talk about redlining. Don’t talk about the GI Bill. See appendix for several thousand more examples.
(3) ‘Race scapegoating’ means assigning fault or blame to a race, or to an individual of
49 a particular race because of his or her race. Such term includes, but is not limited to, any
50 claim that an individual of a particular race, consciously and by virtue of his or her race,
51 is inherently racist or is inherently inclined to oppress individuals of other races.
52 (4) ‘Race stereotyping’ means ascribing character traits, values, moral or ethical codes,
53 status, or beliefs to an individual because of his or her race.
It’s cute, that one, because it’s crafted to sound like anti-racism but of course the point is to shut down anti-racism.
Funny how bills are given names that are the opposite of what they are actually doing. With a name like that you would think it would be some measure to prevent school shootings. No, it’s to eliminate knowledge of historical and current issues that embarrass Republicans.
If that’s what they’re hinting at, the language seems a little vague. It will be their undoing.
OK maybe I’m dumb, but I would agree that these statements are untrue and should not be taught in schools:
29 (A) One race is inherently superior to another race;
30 (B) The United States of America is fundamentally racist;
31 (C) An individual, by virtue of his or her race, is inherently or consciously racist or
32 oppressive toward individuals of other races;
33 (D) An individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely
34 or partly because of his or her race;
35 (E) An individual’s moral character is inherently determined by his or her race;
36 (F) An individual, by virtue of his or her race, bears individual responsibility for
37 actions committed in the past by other individuals of the same race;
38 (G) An individual should feel anguish or any other form of psychological distress
39 because of his or her race;
The only possible exception I might make to this is B, ‘The United States of America is fundamentally racist’–I do think the USA (and other European and European-colony countries) are ‘fundamentally racist’, in that racism is baked into laws, institutions, custom and ‘common sense’–but that doesn’t mean these things can’t be changed if we understood this and made a genuine concerted effort to change them (not that that will ever happen but it’s theoretically possible).
This doesn’t sound to me the same as saying ‘The racism permeating America’s history (and the history of Europe and its colonies) should not be taught, nor should the fact that this history has created a situation where laws, institutions, custom and ‘common sense’ continue to disadvantage, discriminate against, oppress and harm nonwhite people.’
Though it appears to be written protect any and all races, this is likely intended to be used as a “don’t teach anything that makes white people look bad.” Given its origins come from whatever Republicans thinkCritical Race Theory is, that’s likely the point. Regardless of whether or not these laws get passed in all the states, as we saw with the teaching of evolution, it only takes a few populous states moving in this direction for textbook publishers to water down, shy away from, or avoid altogether, subjects which some state school boards (i.e. their customers) don’t want to hear about. The customer is always right.
They’re only “hinting at” that list of things in the same way that J.K. Rowling and Kathleen Stock are continually “hinting at” their underlying motivation: “Trans people! I hate them! They shouldn’t be allowed to exist!”.
guest @ 3, sure, but that’s because putting it that way would look bad. It’s an elaboration of “I don’t see color.”
Coel, that’s cute, but it’s not the case that because fanatics call Rowling and Stock transphobic, therefore these other people are not veiling their intentions in legalese.
Have you read Oshinsky’s Worse Than Slavery? I keep asking you that and you keep not answering. I think your knowledge of the history of slavery and race in the US is too thin.
@Ophelia: #6:
No, I’ve not read that book, and my knowledge of the history of race relations in the US may well be much worse than yours and that of others.
But nothing in that bill prevents a straightforward and honest account of race in American history. And the bill is not obscure “legalese”, it is straightforwardly worded. It is aimed at (what is known as) CRT-style training/indoctrination in schools. It is aimed at things like the compelled-speech stuff in the Gabrielle & William Clark lawsuit (and there is ample documentation that such is widespread).
You’re suggesting that the wording of the bill and stated motivations are just a cover story for wanting to whitewash American history. But this is why the “culture wars” consist primarily of people yelling at each other: everyone just attributes bad faith to their opponents and accuses them of much worse than their actual views. (The trans activists are very much the worst at this, but they are not the only ones.)
I happen to think that (for example) the anti-CRT activist Chris Rufo is straightforwardly honest about his attitudes, aims and tactics. (That’s not the same as I saying I agree with him.) It’s the automatic presumption of bad faith that does so much to poison discussions these days. We’ve entirely lost the notion that someone who is disagreeing might be doing so in good faith (the loss of that notion is what, a decade or so ago, first turned FtB toxic).
Coel –
What do you mean “known as”? It’s not “known as” that by people who don’t already despise the whole idea of paying close attention to the history of slavery and its aftermath in the US. The word and the dismissive acronym have become buzzwords for “shut up about race because the I have a dream speech took care of all that.”
The paying close attention can be done well or badly, of course, and some of it is done badly. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing there. I might take your comments more seriously if you showed any interest in that subject at all.
I don’t think this sort of legislation is helpful. That said, it may be that this bill is not motivated by racism or a desire to deny history, but by dismay at DiAngelo-style dogma, which, like gender identity dogma, seems to have infected an awful lot of otherwise intelligent people.
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-problem-with-jon-stewart?s=r
Sure, that’s part of the picture, but it’s only part of it. This is Georgia after all.