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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34433 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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The Simpsons seems to be accusing anti-CRT parents of practicing a motte and bailey, where the motte is being anti-CRT and the bailey is being anti-teaching about slavery and Jim Crow. It actually looks like The Simpsons is practicing one themselves, where their motte is wanting to teach about history, and their bailey is wanting to teach CRT. Nobody watches The Simpsons anymore, but the existence of this is still boggling my mind. I'm not offended, just confused. In 20 years, will anyone understand what this was about? Will they think that there were literally people trying to whitewash history in this way?

Personally, I would rather not have slavery and Jim Crow taught in schools without mentioning the global racism of the time, or that Americans were actually way ahead of other peoples of the world in terms of inclusivity, or that African Barbary pirates enslaved many White Americans, or that European powers forced African kingdoms to stop enslaving Africans. I would also want to include passages about how European philosophy is what paved the way for our notions of equality, and that “what do we do with the former slaves” is not an easy question when one group is significantly less developed. Finally, I would like an approximate calculation of how much black Americans benefitted from being taught by white Americans and being allowed to live in their free, prosperous, and protected nation — versus how they fared in Haiti or just Africa proper.

I mean, we’re not trying to whitewash the facts, right?

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