A group of Texas educators have proposed to the Texas State Board of Education that slavery should referred to “involuntary relocation” in second grade social studies sessions.
I supposed it’s nice that conservatives are back to mastering the “it isn’t what it is” trick, this one the variation known as “it wasn’t what it was.” Lately it’s the Left’s cover words that have been most in evidence, like “choice” for abortion, and “gun safety,” when what they mean is “gun ownership restrictions.” Then there is “equity, diversity and inclusion” for “racial preferences” and “restorative justice” which really means “letting criminals get away with slaps on the wrist for serious crimes so they can prey on their communities again but at least there won’t be ‘over-incarceration.'”
All of these (and so many more) used by the Left and Right—never forget “enhanced interrogation” “rendition,” and “detainees” (you know: prisoners without trials forever)— are base deceit designed to deceive—-in other words, lies.
Lying to kids, however, is especially despicable. Slavery was not “involuntary relocation” any more than it was “free room and board” or “Community singing.” Those “educators”( a working group of nine, including a professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley) have revealed their absolute lack of fitness for their jobs, for mis-education is the opposite of education. They should apply to be White House press secretaries. Or New York Times op-ed writers. Fire them. Parents? Are you paying attention?
“The board — with unanimous consent — directed the work group to revisit that specific language,” Keven Ellis, chair of the Texas State Board of Education said in a statement. Board member Aicha Davis, a Democrat, said that the proposed wording is not a “fair representation” of the slave trade.
Ya think?
Does this look like “relocation” to you?
__________________
Pointer: Curmie
Ethics Alarms 
I saw this as well. The Right is apparently learning the wrong lessons from the Left. Typical, and typically unethical. In this case, even evil.
I’m reminded of the line “All Democrats had to do was not be crazy… and they couldn’t even do that.”
Seems some conservatives want to join them in the asylum.
This is exactly the kind of nonsense that gives liberals ammunition to try to paint conservatives as racist. There is absolutely no point in denying history. Accepting the faults of our fathers does ***not*** mean everything they said or wrote was wrong, but, it is good to be honest about their faults.
Slavery was real, and it was a great injustice. It was widely practiced around the world, with even Africans enslaving other Africans, but it still existed here and was atrocious. As a matter of accuracy, to try to whitewash slavery the way the left tries to whitewash other debates means these school board members are unqualified to be where they are.
My issue, which happens often with the left, is that they try to paint the Untied States as uniquely terrible on the issue of slavery. Slavery is awful, no matter where it is practiced.
The legitimate point is that slavery was particularly hypocritical in a nation that was founding on principles of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Slavery predated the founding. And in the cultural equivalent of a New York minute and at the cost of millions of lives, it was irradicated.
And realistically, there was no other way it could have happened…
That’s true, The contradiction is pretty blinding.
Is this the offending language:
Part of the proposed draft standards for the curriculum, the Tribune reported, directed students to “compare journeys to America, including voluntary Irish immigration and involuntary relocation of African people during colonial times.”
Evidently “relocation” is a social science term for all sorts of situations involving ethnic cleansing and other historical events. If you’re looking at “relocations,” why not contrast the Irish being starved out of Ireland by the Brits with Africans being rounded up by opposing tribes and sold into slavery? Wouldn’t that be an illuminating inquiry that would provide some helpful perspective? But I also have to ask, “Second grade?”
I think this is a tempest in a teapot. Nit-picking by racial grievance mongers.
And if there are any conservative social scientists anywhere, never mind in the education industrial complex’s curriculum wing, I’ll eat my hat.
I know one!
Cue Lee Corso: “Not so fast, my friend.” Jordan Peterson doesn’t count!
But slave trade is not “relocation,” involuntary or not. The term focuses on a minor factor to ignore the significant one: commerce in human beings. White slave trade is also not “involuntary relocation.” Deportation is close, but I would argue that the term is even misleading for that.
And no, the Irish weren’t deported, they left out of necessity, but so did the Pilgrims. Are pigs rounded up and shipped too slaughterhouses being “involuntarily relocated”? This kind of language deception has to be exposed and slapped down wherever it pops up.
I bet the guys rounding up slaves and selling them to the Brits viewed it as relocation. It freed up whatever land and resources the slaves were taking up in the neighborhood. And weren’t the Brits essentially trying to de-populate Ireland so it could be run more profitably as a colony? And the Dutch were thrilled to get the annoying Huguenots the hell out of Lyden. Good riddance. This is way inside baseball social science stuff. More appropriate for college sociology classes. It’s just not white washing anything. If it’s anything, it’s academic naval gazing by, you know, academics. And I don’t see any suggestion the term is to be substituted for slavery. This is gotcha stuff.
And wouldn’t the inquiry’s first result be along the lines of what you’re saying? Something like, “Whoa, slavery was different!”
Many of the Irish who left faced a hard choice and decided the new world would be better for them than the penury and starvation they faced. It is also true that many a British landlord preferred that they leave rather than be an economic drain. It is also true that protectionist tariffs (corn laws) exacerbated the problem. It is also true anti-Catholic bias played a role.
It was a huge multi-faceted mess.
Given that slavery never was in Texas 2nd grade curriculum – if I recall, middle school kids get a full dose of understanding slavery in no uncertain terms – this actually appears to be a incompletely analyzed solution to the introduction to 2nd graders about how Americans came to be American – with a heaping dose of left-leaning educator’s guidance: “think of people’s feelings”.
In fact there was a kerfluffle a few years ago, in which, typically, left wing journalists were not honest, in which the claim was made that Texas would be teaching that the civil war wasn’t about slavery. Turns out what really happened is that Texas was going to teach that there were a lot of forces involved leading to the civil war of which slavery was the key point.
I’ll wait a few days until honest journalists can do the full research on what this committee’s deliberations were and what the full context is before deciding if this is truly brain exploding or not.
Nevertheless, there’s no circumstance in which Texas students don’t graduate high school not having learned about the nation’s history and slavery.
“In fact there was a kerfluffle a few years ago, in which, typically, left wing journalists were not honest, in which the claim was made that Texas would be teaching that the civil war wasn’t about slavery. Turns out what really happened is that Texas was going to teach that there were a lot of forces involved leading to the civil war of which slavery was the key point.”
This simply isn’t true. In 2010 the Texas Board of Education declared that “sectionalism” was the primary cause of the Civil War, followed by “states rights” (to do what?). Slavery was third on the list, not “the key point,” although any honest accounting would make it clear that this was the principal cause. In 2018, Democrats on the TBOE were able to get the order reversed. I don’t remember the exact quote, but one Democratic pol said something like “the lies they’re telling now aren’t as bad as the ones they used to tell.” That pretty well sums it up.
2018 is the “few years ago” I’m referring to.
When Texas progressives wanted to list slavery as the only cause of the civil war.
The curriculum had been teaching the causes as sectionalism, states rights, and slavery – a logical order to build up on.
To finish out, I’ll quote myself from 2018 when this was a topic in the warm-up:
“Texas Republicans wanted to keep the curriculum unchanged on that topic.
They “compromised” by keeping the 3 causes of the Civil War, but emphasizing the ‘centrality’ of Slavery. In essence, nothing changed…but Leftists got to grandstand in an effort to look like they accomplished some grand change to “fix” some sort of egregious omission in Texas education…as all the headlines coming out the Democrat’s propaganda ministry were all variations on the line “Texas to start teaching that Slavery was major cause of Civil War” as though Texas hadn’t been teaching that all along.”
Was Texas teaching slavery as “the major cause of the Civil War” between 2010 and 2018? No. Why? Because the conservatives wanted euphemisms. Sectionalism and states rights were simply slavery in a less obviously offensive package. The South became “sectionalized” because they wanted to keep slavery. “States rights” meant “the right to have slaves.”
Texas’s own secession convention was butt-hurt because of “the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color—a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law.” You can dress that up however you want, but the Civil War was about slavery. Full stop.
I’m not going to re-litigate a well done argument – but a lot had to be in place for the Civil War to happen. There were many causes even while the proximate cause was slavery.
I do however want to comment that it’s a little disturbing that an educator would want to avoid teaching the fullness of history because doing so might make someone somewhere think that slavery might be less bad than it obviously is.
So terms like “involuntary relocation”, “gun safety”, “enhanced interrogation”, “detainees”, etc. aren’t “new and improved” after all? Oh dear, I guess we will have to get back to the old words. How boring.
Honestly, when I first saw mention that the phrase “involuntary relocation” was causing a bit of an uproar, I didn’t know which side had created this euphemism, which side was offended by it, and why. Modern grievance is often opaque.
I’M offended. There is no excuse for it. Slaves weren’t “relocated,” they were kidnapped and sold. There is no analogy to any other immigration group.
I understand that. I’m just saying that I couldn’t immediately tell if the term was manufactured to try to downplay slavery, or to avoid offending/triggering someone by using the word “slave”.
While it is stupid idea, it appears to have died in committee:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/01/texas-board-education-slavery-involuntary-relocation/
I do have to say, though, that Democrats and liberals have forfeited any right to complain about stupid language and concepts. “Undocumented immigrants” comes to mind. So do “cultural appropriation,” “dreamers” and “intersectionality”.
jvb
I mean, these are the same idiots who have brought linguistic confusion with neo pronouns such as “Xe/Xem/Xyr” or “Ey/Em/Eir” or “Zie/Zim/Zir” or “Ve/Ver/Vis” and, my personal favorite, “Ne/Nem/Nir” along the “Latinx” and a whole host of other woke ideas.
jvb
Anne Althouse gas and interesting take:
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2022/07/a-group-of-educators-in-texas-proposed.html
jvb
Re: TX Board of Ed Curriculum Working Group
If I don’t misunderstand the pragmatics of curriculum development in TX and the dangers it poses, let’s not forget that curricula drive texts, and the selection of a text (at any grade level) by the TX Board of Ed may well set the course for many more States than TX. As the Board decided to instruct the working group to revisit the curriculum, they sent a pretty clear signal, and the textbook battle on this never even started.
Money moves content, in K–12 textbooks, and since TX buys for the whole State, they have major influence nationwide.
MB
The history of slavery needs to be taught accurately. When the students are done learning about it, they need to know it was a horrific practice that is a blight on the history of our country. I don’t know if 2nd grade is the appropriate age to teach it at or not. I think most 2nd graders could handle it, but if it is too horrific to teach accurately in 2nd grade, then wait a year or two and teach it accurately without the stupid euphemisms.
Over-engineering words so you can teach things to kids to young to understand is not a solution. Accuracy matters. If 2nd graders will spend years having nightmares over the accurate history of the US, then teach it in 3rd or 4th grade. While you are at it, accurately teach the horrors of all the other dark parts of history instead of pretending the bits that reflect badly on your pet cause don’t exist.
I’m sick of this war to control what people think. Reality exists. History exists. Pretending otherwise to get a particular outcome is unethical.