The Free

To Teach Without Teaching: Tulsa Race Massacre: bigotry and racism in the U.S.

from thefreeonline on 8th July 2023 by Jill Dennison at Filosofa’s Word

Oklahoma’s Governor Kevin Stitt signed into law a bill prohibiting the teaching of race in any way, shape, or form.

Would someone please tell me how the Sam Hell it is possible to teach about the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921 without saying that it had anything to do with race or racism???

That’s like … like … telling a teacher to teach about the differences between elephants and squirrels without mentioning size!

It’s like teaching about oceans without mentioning water or the desert without mentioning sand!!!

For those who may not be familiar with the Tulsa Race Massacre, or those who may just want a bit of a refresher, please take just a minute or two to read my post from the 100^th anniversary of the events in Tulsa in 1921.

An entire thriving community populated by Black people was destroyed by white people because a Black man may have accidentally stepped on a white woman’s toes in an elevator!

300 people were killed, 10,000 left homeless, and an entire 35 square block community was completely destroyed over a small, irrelevant accident! It was nothing … NOTHING BUT PURE RACISM!!!

Yesterday it was reported that Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Public Instruction and previously State Secretary of Education, has given schools ‘permission’ to teach about the Tulsa Race Massacre, but only so long as teachers don’t actually acknowledge that the white supremacist attack was about race. WTF??? How, then, are they supposed to teach about it at all, for it was ONLY about race and nothing more! The Tulsa Race Massacre happened in 1921, but today, 102 years later, we are just as racist, just as backward as people were then!!!

In May 2021, the month of the centennial anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, Oklahoma’s Governor Kevin Stitt signed into law a bill prohibiting the teaching of race in any way, shape, or form.

“As governor, I firmly believe that not one cent of taxpayer money should be used to define and divide young Oklahomans about their race or sex. That is what this bill upholds for public education.”

So … I wonder how history teachers are supposed to teach about the Civil War? Do they say it was a fight over the price of cotton, rather than southerners holding or “owning” Black people as slaves to do the heavy lifting?