Justice

People Are Furious About This Teacher's History Lesson on Women and Black People

September 29th 2016

Author Rachel Grant set the internet ablaze Thursday when she shared on Twitter screenshots from a history lesson her daughter brought home from school.

Entitled "U.S. History Special Victims Unit," the 55-page packet was allegedly compiled and distributed by Grant's daughter's U.S. history teacher and shares controversial, offensive perspectives on women and Black people in America.

One portion of the material deals with welfare programs created by President Lyndon B. Johnson's "Great Society," which the packet's author asserted that "Blacks" "took full advantage of."

"Over three centuries of a strong work ethic, cohesive families, the thirst for education and Christian values as vital parts of the African-American heritage gave way to long-term dependence on the government and the erosion of the work ethic."

Since Black people were enslaved and segregated for the majority of the past three centuries, the packet seemed to be extolling the virtues of slavery and segregation.

Another portion dedicated to race relations from 1960s to the present slammed President Barack Obama for "[Stoking] the fires of grievance."

The teacher spent the largest portion of the section "Women in U.S. History" attacking current Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

The section dealt with sexual assault and harassment allegations against her husband, Bill Clinton, while he was the attorney general and governor of Arkansas.

Grant asserted that she was aware of the teacher's politics, but didn't feel it was her place to comment until she found him strongly pushing his views on pupils.

Grant declined to name the teacher or particular school, but said it was a Washington state public school, Fusion reported. She also said she is reporting the material to the principal and her local school board.

This is not the first time racist lessons in history textbooks have surfaced.

The Texas Board of Education in September held a hearing over a textbook titled "Mexican American Heritage," which critics asserted spread racial stereotypes and factual inaccuracies, NPR reported.

The textbook was published by Momentum Instruction, whose chief executive, Cynthia Dunbar, is a former Republican member of the Texas Board of Education.

Part one of the book asserted that Mexican laborers in the 1800s were lazy and driven to alcohol abuse.

Dunbar said the paragraph was taken out of context and would be rewritten, NPR reported.

The Texas Board of Education will make its final decision in the fall.

A 2015 McGraw Hill textbook distributed in Houston ignited mass outrage for its depiction of the Atlantic Slave Trade, terming slaves "workers" and including a map titled "Patterns of Immigration," The Guardian reported.

"We are deeply sorry that the caption was written this way," McGraw-Hill Education chief executive David Levin wrote in a letter to his employees in response to the backlash. "While the book was reviewed by many people inside and outside the company, and was made available for public review, no one raised concerns about the caption. Yet, clearly, something went wrong, and we must and will do better."

The textbook giant also said the language "did not adequately convey that Africans were both forced into migration and to labor against their will as slaves" and would be revised in future editions, according to The Guardian.

Texas curriculum standards have also characterized slavery as the third cause of the U.S. Civil War.

"It's no accident that this happened in Texas," Kathy Miller, the president of the anti-religious-right activist group the Texas Freedom Network, said in a statement reported by the Guardian. "We have a textbook adoption process that's so politicized and so flawed that it's become almost a punchline for comedians.

"The truth is that too many elected officials who oversee that process are less interested in accurate, fact-based textbooks than they are in promoting their own political views in our kids' classrooms," Miller added.

[h/t Raw Story]

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