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Slave auction reenactment

If certain Tea Party members in Tennessee have their way school textbooks will no longer contain references to slavery and exclude any mention of the founding fathers of the country as slave owners.

Trymaine Lee of the Huffington Post just published a story that contains quotes from one of the Tea Party's spokesmen, attorney Hal Rounds, who calls the founding fathers "revolutionaries."

"An awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another," Rounds said. "The thing we need to focus on about the founders is that, given the social structure of their time, they were revolutionaries who brought liberty into a world where it hadn't existed, to everybody -- not all equally instantly -- and it was their progress that we need to look at."

Hal Rounds

Rounds is listed as an Air Force veteran who served in Viet Nam on his website.

The group of about two dozen that Rounds represents held a news conference earlier this month. They passed out literature that said, “Neglect and outright ill will have distorted the teaching of the history and character of the United States. We seek to compel the teaching of students in Tennessee the truth regarding the history of our nation and the nature of its government.”

That would include, the documents say, that “the Constitution created a Republic, not a Democracy.”

According to the Tennessee Commercial Appeal, the group wants state laws governing school curriculum to be amended and for textbook selection criteria to say that “No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership.”

This is the second attempt by the group to basically rewrite history. Their first attempt occurred in January 2011.

The group's bold attempts appear to be have been buoyed by the passing of similar legislation in Texas in 2010.

The Texas revisions include the exploration of the positive aspects of American slavery, lifting the stature of Jefferson S. Davis to that of Abraham Lincoln, and amendments to teach the value of the separation of church and state were voted down by the conservative cadre. Among other controversial amendments that have been approved is the study of the "unintended consequences" of affirmative action.

 

The board approved more than 100 amendments affecting social studies, economics and history classes for Texas's 4.8 million students.

 

The influence of the amended textbooks will likely reach far beyond the state of Texas. The state is one of the largest purchasers of textbooks, and many other states adopt Texas's books and standards.

 

The curriculum changes were pushed through by a majority bloc of conservative Republicans on the Texas school board, who have said the changes were made to add balance to what they believe was a left-leaning and already-skewed reflection of American history.

 

"There is some method to the madness besides vindicating white privilege and making white students feel as though they are superior and privileged and that that it is the natural order of things," Gary Bledsoe, president of the Texas State NAACP, told The Crisis magazine last year about this time. "The agenda being pushed and the ultimate impact intended is to make young people automatically identify with one political party."

 

A number of groups, including the NAACP, the Texas League of United Latin American Citizens and the Texas Association of Black Personnel in Higher Education have joined forces to beat back the measures, which they said would have a negative impact on minority children.

 

The groups sought a federal review of the state's public education and have raised claims that the Texas State Board of Education has violated federal civil rights laws. In a formal complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Education, the groups charge that the new curriculum was devised to "discriminate."

 

The measures went as far as to replace instances of the trans-Atlantic slave trade with "Atlantic triangular trade."

 

"It is going to be extremely psychologically harmful to African-American young people because they are marginalized in the curriculum," Bledsoe said. "It will require them to be taught things such as the benevolence of slavery and the problems with affirmative action rather than the good and the bad."

 

"They voted down a motion that requires students to be taught about the terrorism brought about by the Ku Klux Klan and what they did to ethnic and racial minorities, but they turn around and pass a provision that requires the teaching of the violence of the Black Panther Party."

Sources: The Huffington Post and The Tennessee Commercial Appeal

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