Despite what Republicans think, Texas is our state, too. Help us stop Republicans from erasing history and pushing white supremacy in education.
Donald Trump made it ok to be racist again.
Trump was an openly racist president whose ideals emboldened those who once considered themselves “color blind” to no longer hide behind the moniker of “I don’t see color” and to bring white supremacy back to mainstream politics. As many elected Republicans in Texas spent the last five years licking Trump’s boots, no one should be surprised that in this last legislative session, the GOP committed to bringing the culture war to public schools and passing bills to promote white supremacy in education.
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During this legislative session, the GOP passed several bills that mandate schools and teachers lie to our children about history and systematic racism. These bills will hide Texas’ and America’s history of white supremacy and teach your children that America has been color blind from its inception.
The bills also open the door for teachers to teach children that the cause of the Civil War was Northern aggression and that Christopher Columbus discovered America.
It may be too late to stop in the Texas Legislature, but it isn’t too late to stop the State Board of Education from implementing a revisionist history that will hurt Texas for decades.
The 2022 SBOE elections.
The Texas State Board of Education is made up of 15 members, elected once every four years. The current makeup of the SBOE is nine Republicans and six Democrats. There are seven seats up for re-election in November 2022, four of them are Democrats, and three are Republicans.
If we can flip two of those Republican seats without losing our blue seats, Democrats will have the majority on the Board of Education for the first time in decades. If the Democrats on the SBOE have the majority, we would assume that they would already commit to anti-racist education. However, in the last legislative session, we saw that some Democrats are less reliable than others and voted with the Republicans more times than Joe Manchin on a Tuesday.
Not only do we want to flip those Republican seats, but we also want the Democrats who are running to commit to anti-racist education. If they do not, then we should support a primary challenger who will.
[mepr-hide] https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); [/mepr-hide]Why this matters.
The Lost Cause of the Confederacy was revisionist history implemented in the South and pushed by the hate group, the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). The UDC in the early 1900s managed to campaign in every Southern state, getting them to rewrite school books to say the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, but it was about Northern aggression, which is not true. The UDC also pushed narratives like Black people were happier and better off under slavery.
After the Civil Rights Era, we began to correct textbooks in the South. However, to this day, some revisionist history remains in our children’s school books. Millions of children over several generations were lied to and never told the truth about America’s history of white supremacy. This is a huge contributing factor to modern-day racism, especially from Conservative baby boomers in the South.
The Lost Cause is why so many Conservative baby boomers share the same ideology as racist in the early 1900s Jim Crow South. With the bills that the GOP passed this legislative session, they aim to instill the same racist ideology into future generations of Texans.
Texas is less than 42% white, but almost all of the GOP’s top priorities targeted hurting communities of color and other marginalized groups like women and LGBTQ. Despite the mountains of data that prove the racial inequalities in Texas are greater than in most other states.
The GOP seeks to ensure the continuance of oppression, racism, and inequality in the Lone Star State by targeting the youngest Texans to hand over the keys to.
[mepr-hide] https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); [/mepr-hide]What bills did the 87th legislature pass to continue their legacy through education?
The first, HB3979, which we wrote about in “The Lost Cause 2.0, Coming To A School Near You.” That bill alone is horrendous enough, but it isn’t the only bill the GOP pushed to rewrite history and implement racism in our schools. To better understand what HB3979 was about, watch the video below. It speaks for itself.
Patriotism is supposed to mean a love of one’s country, but during the Trump regime, the right has perverted the word to mean nationalism and intolerant sectarianism. “Love of country” has been hijacked.
Then, there is HB4509. While the bill says “relating to instruction on informed American patriotism in public schools,” it’s important to remember that the modern-day GOP think this guy was a patriot:
What does the bill actually say? The bill is to increase students’ knowledge of the deepest and noblest purposes of the United States and Texas. The deepest and noblest purposes? Considering how many Republicans in Texas still uphold Confederate values, it’s unlikely they know what noble even means.
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The 1836 Project.
The 1836 Projects mirrors the now-scrapped racist 1776 Project that the orange one attempted to implement on his way out the door, except it focuses on Texas only. This bill aims to warp the history of white supremacy and slavery in Texas. Ironically, Trump also called the 1776 Project “patriotic education.”
The bill establishes a partisan committee consisting of members picked by Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, and Dade Phelan. The committee will promote patriotic education and increase awareness of the Texas values that continue to stimulate boundless prosperity across the state.
Donald Trump brainwashed Texas Republicans. Now they’re jumping through hoops to continue the legacy of a man who kept Hitler’s speeches on the nightstand next to his bed.
Which SBOE members are up for re-election?
Democrats
Republicans
Here is what we’re pledging to do.
We’re pledging to help get anti-racists elected to the Texas State Board of Education. We will buy ads and promote SBOE members who commit to curricula with a strong equity lens and identify and dismantle the parts of the TEKS that support disparities.
Living Blue in Texas is teaming up with LevelField to make this happen, and we need your help. To help us stop Republicans from erasing history and re-implementing the Lost Cause, click below.
Texas is our state, too. We can’t let them get away with it.
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