Text fills in history of Oregon's racist acts »
Posted by: jovial 3 months, 3 weeks agoPortland Public Schools is poised to adopt a new curriculum today, making the district the first in the state to use a textbook exploring Oregon's racial history.
Read Full Story at oregonlive.com
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jovial3 months, 3 weeks ago
Hurray for Oregon! To recognize this as part of their history needs to be commended. Hopefully people will become more educated on the history of minorities in America enabling them to understand people of color.
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Spadecaller3 months, 3 weeks ago
Yes, Bravo!
Acknowledging flaws in our personal and collective histories is tremendously encouraging and will have great impact on the lives of these children and their communities.
I know from individual experience, when I have addressed my own mistakes from the past and clearly looked at them, the benefits have been priceless. The prospect of meaningful change cannot come when people's lives are rooted in ignorance and denial.
Great story and extremely important message for everyone!
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jmopinion3 months, 3 weeks ago
Lets tell the whole story.The fact that Black Africans and Arabs were responsible for enslaving the ancestors of African-Americans and there were 3,000 black slave-owners in the ante-bellum United States etc..
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audimar3 months, 3 weeks ago
I agree with you 100%. I also think that slavery was a horrible but necessary evil to further the buildup of commerce in the world. I also do not think that slavery was in essence a racist practice as some would have us believe. However for some observers I am sure it encouraged racist practices in them. I wish as a black man in this country that history was taught in a more complete and truthful manner. This I believe would go a long way in bridging the divide that still exsist and get us closer us seeing ourselves as the children of an all loving Heavenly Father that we truly are. we all have a right to be here and should be each others keepers. One love...
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jovial3 months, 3 weeks ago
Yes, the Arabs did enslave black Africans. There should be IMO, a call for reparations from those Arab countries that are awash now with oil money. Yet that again is a different subject. The curriculum should be changed in all the states as they did in Oregon to be inclusive of all history. Arabs enslaving blacks, white enslaving black, Presidents who were slave owners or any other omitted details that our countries youth have been protected from. Just because the Arabs sold and enslaved a race of people, how does it justify the U.S. and the Europeans doing it too. Isn't this a blatant attempt to deflect blame?
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hyperbola3 months, 3 weeks ago
We have a lot of revison to do of what we teach students.
Lies My Teacher Taught Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1132/is_...
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hyperbola3 months, 3 weeks ago
What the Classroom Didn't Teach Me About the American Empire
Do No Evil รข;; The country that was once proclaimed an "empire lite" has proven increasingly light-headed. The country once hailed as a power greater than that of imperial Rome or imperial Britain, a dominating force beyond anything ever seen on the planet, now can't seem to make a move in its own interest that isn't a disaster.
http://donoevil.propeller.com/story/2008/04/02/...
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jordan113 months, 3 weeks ago
Good for Oregon! There's no surer way to repeat history, than pretend it never happened.
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Locky123 months, 3 weeks ago
I find it very ironic that the organization is called United Oregon.
How about concentrating on what makes us all the same!
Why are 8th graders being given reasons to be cynical about our great country? Let them read that in college.
Nobody is "multicultural". We're not reassured by somebody's difference, we come to know each other by what makes us the same.
Shame on Oregon. Looks like we lost that state.
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Dionys3 months, 3 weeks ago
Shame on you for wanting to sweep history under the rug so that it can occur once again.
Shame on you for trying to keep 8th graders in some shangri-la version of the United States.
Shame on you for not acknowledging and praising the beautiful differences as well as the similarities of our great nation.
Shame on you.
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Locky123 months, 3 weeks ago
Shame on YOU for not realizing that the secret to America's greatness is it's melting pot.
Shame on YOU for not realizing that impressionable 8th grade minds should be focused on all the things our country did and is doing RIGHT so they can have the point of reference to match the drive to LOVE this country (wow, imagine that they'd LOVE this country?!?)
Let them learn in college what we did wrong. There'll be mature enough to deal and debate with our problems then.
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jmopinion3 months, 3 weeks ago
Just another excuse for minorities to hate and perpetrate crimes against white people.
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jmopinion3 months, 3 weeks ago
This is the truth-From an article:
Each year, some 1.2 million violent crimes involving blacks and whites occur nationwide. In fully 90 percent of those cases, according to U.S. Justice Department figures, the perpetrators are black and the victims are white. Violent white felons choose black victims for fewer than 3 percent of their attacks, whereas violent black felons choose white victims about 56 percent of the time. Statistically, the "average" African American is an astonishing 56 times more likely to attack a white than vice versa. In one recent year, approximately 100 black women were raped by white men; the corresponding number of white women raped by black men was over 20,000, according to Dinesh D'Souza in The End of Racism.
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Mdiar3 months, 3 weeks ago
I don't know if its because of where I am or what classes I took, but my history courses weren't glossed over to badly. Most of them, from my sophomore year of high school on, were college level though.
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ETproductions3 months, 3 weeks ago
I went to school in VA. Was in HS when school desegregation first hit. Norfolk closed their schools rather than obey the court order and integrate, and we in the burbs took their white only students into our schools.
I had a Polish immigrant teaching government in HS. He was convinced the South actually should have won the Civil war and he was damned sure still up to fight on lest the uppity blacks ruin America.
Fortunately, he was bucking for some sort of Dixiecrat position with the local pols, and he made a deal with me that if I would write a history of South Norfolk (later to become Chesapeake) he would give me an A for the year. I just had to "look like" I was taking tests and exams. So I never had to parrot back the racist BS he shoveled out to that class. But a lot of his students swallowed the entire party line. They all heard it at home too.
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Mdiar3 months, 3 weeks ago
What would you say to one instructor who starts the year by dismissing everything we'd been taught before and taught the country was founded on money? Then taught that World War I had absolutely no "good" guys and if anyone was at fault it was the Allies in that war and the short-sightedness of Europe particularly and the United States (League of Nations) led to World War II? That a monster like Hitler was to be expected but at the same time the United States had a point on it being a European affair, but, by and large it was fairly petty and partisan politics that the League was not accepted? Don't presume to judge an instructor before you know him. I remember almost everything I see or hear and his perspective on history was tinged with cynicism, I admit, but fairly true. I also had an instructor in Russian history and she was rather good as well. Basically tied in why the USSR acted as it did through the lens of the history of Russia.
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Mdiar3 months, 3 weeks ago
The Civil War is a different issue and I took an entirely separate course on it taught by a man who had published several books on the subject and I was lucky to get into the class as a HS sophomore. I was the youngest one in it. His perspective wasn't very biased and I could tell this because the southerners in the class and the northerners in the class disagreed with him quite often. I live in Missouri, that's why we had a healthy supply of both. It was rather interesting and he never would of told you the South should of won. He would say that the North did this and the South did that. We got to draw our own conclusions. I know about the Martial Law declared by Lincoln. I also know what the South did in that war, the attempts at biological warfare. I know a few other things to, but most of the course was a lead up to the war I'll admit. The politics behind it and I confess, I always found that most interesting. Oh, the instructor wrote the textbook we used in this course.
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Mdiar3 months, 3 weeks ago
To expand on the Russian History course I took my Senior year, well, that one was a bit tougher. It was from a different cultural perspective and I had problems with it, I admit. However the basic flavor of the class began at around the first Ivan, a bit earlier really, and went on about how Russia was always ruled under this system, sometimes well and sometimes badly. How Nicolas II was a good person but couldn't really sympathize with his people and that's why he was overthrown and how Lenin wasn't so bad, just an idealist. In my school I'll admit, idealism is second to cynicism. Missouri, once again. Anyway, it showed how Russians considered that strong executive rule to be natural. It was how they always lived and it made them no worse then us. Just different. It didn't explore Marx much or socialism/communism (it did some, did more on Russian language then that though). It was about Russia and its people more then anything, it seemed like.
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Mdiar3 months, 3 weeks ago
Essentially what those three posts get at ET, just three separate instructors from a school in the heartland who's initial affiliation in the Civil War was the Confederacy (yeah, its been around that long and is now considered one of the top 10 towns of its size in the country to live... its schools contributing in no small way to this) is that I've not encountered anything like what you describe in my teachings. Now, your statement can be interpreted two ways. One is that I swallowed my teacher's lines hook, line and sinker. The other is that I was very lucky to have instructors who's biggest bias in many respects was cynicism and a wish to get you to see everyone's perspective and not just one. Odd, those two should have clashed more, but it didn't. Its all about money in the end and you need to understand that... and you need to learn to look at it from all view-points no matter your prejudice were two big lessons I took from that school.
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Mdiar3 months, 3 weeks ago
I'll also admit this ET. My HS had rather impressive statistics. Its not the norm. I was really just stating in my post that I felt lucky to have gone to the school I attended. It was, if anything, to the right but it didn't parade the fact. Except my Psychology instructor. Wow, she was to the left and is a fervent Clinton supporter now and seemed to trumpet the fact in the class-room. Oh well, she was still a good instructor and called me brilliant even though I tended to argue right wing ideology with her just to be a Devil's Advocate. Sorry about all the text everyone. I write to quickly and think to quickly for my own good sometimes... I need to learn to put the brakes on my thoughts sometimes. I just wanted to share my own experiences in my own school as accurately as I could. I know my school isn't the "norm" but it was more to say "Thank god my school isn't the norm!" in my posts. It was a good school to attend.
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chevydog3 months, 3 weeks ago
I imagine that all states have similar stories that could be told. Such stuff isn't always uplifting to listen to. But it really has to be told, so we don't do the same stupid things over and over.
The danger is giving the impression that this is all there was. Hopefully it leaves the message that in spite of all the warts we may have and all the bumps along the road that we're growing to be a better country.
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chevydog3 months, 3 weeks ago
To each their own, I guess. There is that possibilty.
Because of the demographics of where I grew up, I never met a black person (we called them negroes then) until I was in college--and few then. So this race relations thing isn't something that's strongly in my blood.
However, having non-white children (now grown) was something of a consciousness raiser. Sometimes the goofy attitudes come from places you really don't expect; and some are really goofy.
Personally, reparation or apology is a non-starter with me. Probably for classical reasons. I had several people on my family tree that died from the Civil War; and half my family tree didn't even come to the US until about 1900.
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Spadecaller3 months, 3 weeks ago
"The truth hurts"
(Only people who care and feel.)
imopinion:
You give yourself too much credit; your just another Bozo on the Bus, even if it is chartered by the KKK.
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Submitted By:
jovial
Grew up In Brooklyn. Joined the Navy in 1976 stayed in 10 years. Aircraft Electronics tech. Worked for Major Govt. contractor then settled in California ...
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