Thread by @DrIbram

I finished reading the 1776 Commission Report. It claims America is “the most just and glorious country in all of human history”--the nation's great founding truth. But anti-Americans are disregarding this great patriotic truth, the report argues. 1/11
nytimes.com/2021/01/18/us/…

But it does not take long to read this report as the last great lie from a Trump administration of great lies. 2/11

whitehouse.gov/wp-content/upl…

This report makes it seems as if slaveholding founding fathers were abolitionists; that Americans were the early beacon of the global abolitionist movement; that the demise of slavery in the United States was inevitable;

3/11

that those espousing identity politics today resemble proslavery theorists like John C. Calhoun; that since the civil rights movement, Black people have been given “privileges” and “preferential treatment” in nearly every sector of society, which is news to Black people. 4/11

If we have commonly been given preferential treatment, then why do Black people remain on the lower and dying end of nearly every racial disparity? Whenever they answer this question, they express racist ideas of Black inferiority while claiming they are “not racist.” 5/11

The report claims identity politics “values people by characteristics like race, sex, and sexual orientation,” when actually identity politics points out that people are devalued in American society because of characteristics like race, sex, and sexual orientation. 6/11

Why else would Black people say #Blacklivesmatter? Why else would women say #MeToo? These are expressions of valuing us in a society devaluing what keeps happening to us. 7/11

Finally, the report calls for “restoring patriotic education that teaches the truth about America. That doesn’t mean ignoring the faults in our past, but rather viewing our history clearly and wholly, with reverence and love.” 8/11

Does this mean that the descendants of enslaved people and the descendants of slaveholders should view their ancestors’ enslavement and slaveholding clearly and wholly with reverence and love? Can anything be more shameful? 9/11

I think not. But that's the point. We're supposed to revere and love the founding fathers no matter what just as Trump wants us to revere and love him no matter what. Trump supporters call their fealty, freedom. We call their fealty, tyranny. 10/11

The 1776 Commission Report is calling forth our fealty to tyranny. But we will resist, like we resisted the proslavery founding fathers and their ideological descendants who wrote this report. 11/11