Not just Christian Fundamentalism, attempt to rewrite schoolbooks by Texas BOE filled with racism

[ck4829]

The plan in Texas to rewrite history textbooks to fit a right-wing agenda could pass this week. The Guardian profiles the evangelical Christian lawyer behind the push, Cynthia Dunbar, who has plenty of interesting ways of looking at history.

Dunbar was elected to the state board of education for her evangelical Christian credentials, but no real surprise there because we already know that Texas has a large number of crazies in positions of power. A proponent of home and Christian private schooling, Dunbar says that sending kids to public schools is like "throwing them in to the enemy's flames." But because of the sheer number of the state's textbook purchases, the changes suggested by Dunbar could eventually reach most of the states in America.

The Guardian quotes Dunbar as saying:

"There seems to be a denial that this was a nation founded under God. We had to go back and make some corrections."

What kind of corrections? Some pretty big ones!

# Remember that thing called the slave trade? Well, it turns out what you learned was all wrong, because it wasn't some evil buying and selling of human beings, it was simply "Atlantic triangular trade."
# The Civil Rights Movement created "unrealistic expectations of equal outcomes" for minorities in America. And Martin Luther King, Jr? Pretty much a Black Panther.
* George Wallace has been slandered by the history books, he was the white MLK. We had it bad, my fellow white people, we had to sit in the front of the bus, we had to get better service at restaurants, etc.

http://gawker.com/5540483/meet-the-crusader-behind-texas-textbook-whitewash
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/16/texas-schools-rewrites-us-history

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Elementary school history texts refer to Native Americans as "savages".

[derby378]

7. But not half as savage as the victors of Wounded Knee

Honestly, I think I'd better lie down...

[RKP5637]

2. I often wonder anymore if the US will remain one country in my lifetime. It seems

the divisions in this country are enormous. The split seems to be between truth and outright lies IMO. This country today is so far from the country in my youth.

[get the red out]

8. I wonder too!

I just hope if the split does happen in my lifetime I have enough warning to make it the hour and a half to Cincinnati before Kentucky slips officially into the Dixie Theocracy. Things are NOT looking good for freedom and truth in any state even remotely considered "south". Tomorrow Rand Paul will most likely get the Republican Nomination for Bunning's senate seat, I can't imagine the religious nuts here permitting either Democrat running in the primary to beat him and join forces with the "evil Obama baby-killer socialist fascist anti-Christ BLACK GUY". Paul had a rally in the state capital a month or so ago surrounded by militia with guns.

http://barefootandprogressive.blogspot.com/2010/04/closer-look-at-rand-pauls-militia.html

[RKP5637]

9. Sometimes I feel like we are living in Germany, pre WWII. Not a good feeling. n/t

[get the red out]

10. +1

[ZombieHorde]

3. Disturbing. nt

[dflprincess]

4. "Atlantic triangular trade."

There's a song about that in the musical "1776", "Molasses to Rum to Slaves". Maybe we could slip that pass the wingnuts and convince the kiddies need to be taught the song. With any luck they'll ignore the words just like they seem to dowith "Born in the U.S.A."

Molasses to rum to slaves, oh what a beautiful waltz
You dance with us, we dance with you
Molasses and rum and slaves

Who sails the ships out of Boston
Ladened with bibles and rum?
Who drinks a toast to the Ivory Coast?
Hail Africa, the slavers have come
New England with bibles and rum

And its off with the rum and the bibles
Take on the slaves, clink, clink
Hail and farewell to the smell
Of the African coast

Molasses to rum to slaves
'Tisn't morals, 'tis money that saves
Shall we dance to the sound of the profitable pound
In molasses and rum and slaves

Who sails the ships out of Guinea
Ladened with bibles and slaves?
'Tis Boston can coast to the West Indies coast
Jamaica, we brung what ye craves
Antigua, Barbados, we brung bibles and slaves!

Molasses to rum to slaves
Who sail the ships back to Boston
Ladened with gold, see it gleam
Whose fortunes are made in the triangle trade
Hail slavery, the New England dream!
Mr. Adams, I give you a toast:
Hail Boston! Hail Charleston!
Who stinketh the most?

[derby378]

5. Disbar Dunbar!

:grr:

[TriMera]

6. Rec. Well, at least

they didn't have to go back and delete all of the references to women as active participants in history.That's because, as with most history books, there probably weren't any. History in schools is a joke and it always has been.:grr: