Ida Bae Wells Profile picture
Jul 31, 2023 26 tweets 9 min read Read on X
There's been much gaslighting & moderate justifying of the new Florida social studies standards, people stating the "clarifications" were designed to show Black resilience, or were just "facts." So, I thought I'd compare the African-American history standards to the Holocaust's.
As you can imagine, they were quite illuminating. So, let's be clear: facts in cases such as this are rarely neutral. It's which facts are highlighted, how much emphasis they get, how are they framed, what is left out, what is diminished and what is uplifted.
I compared the Holocaust for a particular reason. We are a country with a great deal of anti-Semitism. But when it comes to the Holocaust, Americans believe we are the good guys in the story (watch Ken Burns' America & the Holocaust: NO). Slavery, however, is the sin we own.
So, shall we? Let's start here. This is the section on AFRICAN AMERICAN history. And yet, educators in Florida now must discuss the Barbary Pirates and slavery, slavery in Asia, the Slavs and what Indigenous people were doing before African or Europeans arrived. Huh.
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In the Holocaust section, there's no such comparison and cataloguing of other genocides committed by and against other groups. The Holocaust stands on its own, as it should. In fact, the only reference to past times and other peoples is to describe the root of anti-Semitism.Huh. Image
In fact, the Holocaust is described exactly as it was: systematic state-sponsored persecution and murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. But the only time the word systematic occurs in reference to Black history is to describe African slave traders. Huh.
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So, even though the slave trade, slavery, racial apartheid were systemic, systematic, institutionalized, the word is only used to describe African slave traders, which is actually inaccurate. The word racism occurs just twice, once in the Holocaust section, one in AA. Compare.
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U.S. racism is not treated a systematic, and only apparently abridging on "individual freedoms" even though the racism was codified to deprive rights, life, liberties, due process, access to public goods, access to ballot, from an entire race.
The description of racism in the Holocaust section sounds like America, but no such paragraph exists in the African American history section, even as Nazi's looked to America's race laws for inspiration. Image
There's this section much discussed section on enslaved people (who worked on slave labor camps in the U.S.) gaining beneficial skills. Shockingly, no similar paragraph about Jewish people gaining skills in concentration camps.
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The African American section spends section after section after section on the abolitionist movement that was always a tiny minority of white Americans, and yet no similar concentration on all the good Germans exists in the Holocaust. Image
The section on the Holocaust names the perpetrators: Nazis and their collaborators. But Black Americans & the good white people are apparently fighting against some nameless, faceless, race-less group of people in the quest to abolish slavery.Who were these obstacles to liberty?? Image
I mean, we were founded on liberty & justice & white people were on this quest to end slavery, with the Continental Congress that was totally powerless to do so, and some chief justice's notes in a court case, but we really have no idea why these good white people didn't win. Image
With all of these white people trying to so hard to end slavery, including Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, the Continental Congress, who was this alien force that stopped them from until the Civil War? You won't find that in the standards. No perpetrator is ever named.
The Holocaust section does not broach Jewish collaborators, but the African American history sections regurgitates right-wing talking points wholesale by blaming a Black man for the beginning of racial slavery in America. I believe they got this section from a meme.
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In fact, as far as I can tell, the only named enslaver in this section is, in fact, a Black man. Huh.
Here we need to focus on the white people who supported Black American's rights and were targeted. But targeted by WHOM? Who were these good white people fighting against? And, well, might we point out they were a minority because clearly these good white people didn't win? Image
In addressing the rampant racial terrorism that Black Americans experiences in the forms of systemic lynchings and massacres, this section clarifies that teachers must also address acts of violence by (individual) African Americans. No such qualification in the Holocaust section. Image
In fact, in the Holocaust section, students are expected to think about the experiences of survivors and describe the psychological and physical struggles of survivors. They are not asked to contemplate Black suffering at all. Image
Florida students are tasked with learning about the efforts to hold Nazi perpetrators accountable, including government officials, but there is no such expectation around slavery and the LIVING victims and perpetrators of the 100-year period of US apartheid. Image
The Holocaust sections calls out bystanders and collaborators, the everyday citizens who aided the Nazi regime and perpetrated gross violence. It tasks students with learning about the complicity of corporations. No such thing for U.S. slavery and apartheid.
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The Holocaust sections emphasized for students why it is so important that they and future generations learn about the Holocaust. There is no "Never Again" moment in the African Americans section. No culpability. Image
The point of this thread, if it is not clear, is to say that the factual choices presented in the African American section, even if true, are indeed political choices. They are not reflective of an accurate accounting of history. They are not objective. They do not get us truth.
I ask every well-meaning, hand-wringing person who says, well, it is true that enslaved people could use the skills they could have learned if they were free to benefit themselves if they ever got freedom, to stop being gaslit and foolish. These are political choices.
This is curriculum that is trying to hide the crime in a state led by folks who cannot bear the truth and who want to hide the truth for political gain by diminishing what Black Americans have experienced and what white Americans have done or allowed to be done.
All one has to do is compared the treatment of these two atrocities to know you're being played. Stop being complicit in it. Here are the standards. You can read for yourselves. fldoe.org/core/fileparse…

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More from @nhannahjones

Nov 9
The economic anxiety argument is the exact same rationalization for Trump winning that we saw in 2016. The exact same. I wrote about this then. It took too many too long to listen. Now here we are again when we absolutely should know better. It is part of the process of justifying the country to itself and the majority of white American voters who chose a man who said he would be a dictator on day 1, who has threatened to round millions in camps, who has targeted transgender people, who ran a racist and misogynistic campaign, who has threatened to jail his political opponents and shutter news orgs and has promoted violence against media and adversaries. This comes from a deep need to absolve and normalize and this, too is dangerous. America has the strongest economy in the world and that doesn’t mean people aren’t struggling, they are, but polling is already showing it’s perception of economy not actual economy that led people to vote for Trump.
And yet, Black Americans, who are disproportionately working class, hold collectively close to zero wealth, who have the highest unemployment rates even in a good economy did NOT vote for the man that his own former generals called a fascist. What that tells you is that vote was about perceived loss of status. What elected Trump was demographic anxiety — his campaign ran explicitly on it, explicitly! — and so many people whose job it is to dispassionately deal with facts still do not want to deal with that.
Let’s say however, economic issues were the reason. It still doesn’t change the fact that the majority of white voters were willing to vote for someone who has threatened to terminate the Constitution, whose own generals called a fascist, because they think groceries are too high or they wish they could by a home. This is exactly how autocrats come to power. We in the press must rise to the occasion and see what’s happening with clarity so we can best do our jobs. Our delusions have not served us well. The stakes are too high for us to indulge them.
Read 4 tweets
Nov 6
We must not delude ourselves in this moment. Multiracial democracy in the United States is less than 60 years old. It has always been contested, often violently so. It has always been fragile. Since this nation's inception large swaths of white Americans -- including white women -- have claimed a belief in democracy while actually enforcing a white ethnocracy. In the face of shifting demographics where white Americans will lose their numeric majority, we see a growing embrace of autocracy to keep the "legitimate" rulers of this country in power. History teaches us that we are in a perilous moment.
The first time America attempted multiracial democracy was during Reconstruction at the end of the Civil War. A white majority in order to unify after a contested election succumbed to those who wanted to violently reinstate a white ethnocracy in what became known as the period of Redemption. Black Americans were stripped of their newly obtained citizenship rights for nearly a century in the name of national unity.
It was naive to believe that if Kamala Harris avoided discussing her race and gender, that if she evaded so-called identity politics, that she would nullify the liability of being a Black woman seeking the presidency in a country where racism and misogyny are embedded in the culture. This is a country that responded to a multiracial electorate sending the first Black president to the White House with a *minority* of the white vote by electing an openly white racist man over the person who could have become the nation's first woman president.
Read 6 tweets
Oct 8
Democracy Summit 2024 on Covering Oligarchy is underway. Watch on livestream here.
Political scientist Jeffrey Winters opens Democracy Summit 2024 with a primer on oligarchy. He tells journalists that megadonor is an inaccurate term and not neutral because donors give without expecting something in return. Image
Professor Winters says that oligarchy impacts democracy by limiting democracy, controlling the agenda and narrowing our political choices. Image
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Read 27 tweets
Jun 7
I really wish rich, out-of-touch folks who nothing about education would just stop. 1) Read the fine print. THIS IS A GOVT VOUCHER PROGRAM. Voucher programs have not been shown to improve results for poor Black children because most cannot get into high-quality private schools. 2) Read the fine print. All of the money is coming from taxpayers, ie. the government. Roc Nation is not funding this, it is just launching an educational campaign that maybe it is being paid to do. I'm researching. But certainly, it's involvement is to convince poor Black parents to leave the public schools. 3) What do you think that $300 million could do for improving those low-performing public schools? 4) It is a lie that these programs do not take from public-school funding. Fewer kids in the classroom means fewer dollars to the school. 5) This is a windfall to the city's private schools at the expense of the public ones that most kids attend.
Stop playing with us. Not only do students who go to private schools on vouchers not perform better, 1 out of 5 leaves the private school and actually see improved academic results by returning to the public school. brookings.edu/articles/resea…

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This is no different than the right-wing efforts in Arizona, Florida and elsewhere just because they put a Black face on it.
Read 8 tweets
Jun 5
What we are witnessing, once again, is the alignment of white power against racial justice and redress. We now have a legal landscape that takes the very laws created to eliminate the anti-Black caste system and uses them destroy racial justice efforts. The Supreme Court has determined actual school segregation is fine, but efforts to remedy it are unconstitutional.
The courts have determined the almost complete exclusion of Black women from venture capital is legal — Black women get just .34 percent of these funds — but efforts to address that disparity violate the 14th Amendment, written to ensure BLACK people equal protection.
Black people are about 5 percent of US doctors, but HBCU medical schools have been targeted and threatened with lawsuits if they specifically seek to help Black people become doctors.
Read 9 tweets
May 24
Can you show me the data that shows that private school teachers are better qualified? See, here’s the thing, you all think your voucher will pay for the Daltons of the world. It won’t. And Dalton won’t take your kids anyway. Your kids will be at some low/budget private school that doesn’t have to adhere to any academic standards and the rich parents who were already sending their kids to the Daltons of the world will just get a big fat rebate they don’t need on the taxpayers dime. Y’all are delusional.
Further, many of these voucher movements are not bubbling up from parents. When polled, public schools parents consistently rate their own schools high.
The nationalization of liberation market-place rhetoric has convinced you all that private means better. Private just means not publicly funded. Private schools can discriminate. They don’t have to adhere to standards. They might be excellent. They might be terrible. We see everyday that private businesses fail or get rich while producing inferior products. Stop being brainwashed.
Read 5 tweets

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