Name: Tom Cotton Wants to Stop Kids From Learning About American Racism
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Tom Cotton Wants to Stop Kids From Learning About American Racism

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In the middle of a global pandemic and a racial reckoning—with schools the names of racist namesakes, players taking a knee to protest police brutality, and federal agents kidnapping protesters in Portland—Tom Cotton, a U.S. Senator from Arkansas, has decided to take up the of preventing&nbsp; The New York Times’ from being taught in America’s schools.As a student,&nbsp;I wasn’t taught about how enslavement explains why crime, poverty, and a lack of opportunity disproportionately impact Black people.The 1619 Project, spearheaded by Times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones, is a compilation of essays that detail how slavery served as the economic, social, and political foundation on which the United States was built, and how that foundation continues to negatively impact Black people in the present.Schools around the country—including those in , , and —have used the series to grapple with America’s history of racial injustice. But if Cotton’s bill were to become law, school districts would be unable to use any federal funding to teach or make lesson plans around the 1619 Project.This is because, for , the 1619 Project isn’t an effective teaching tool, but rather, “a racially divisive, revisionist account of history that denies the noble principles of freedom and equality on which our nation was founded.”&nbsp;As a student, I remember how enslavement was taught to me during my K-12 experience: Nothing was said regarding the resistance and rebellion of the enslaved; the connection between enslaved labor and America’s economic power wasn’t made clear to me by any teacher; and I wasn’t taught about how enslavement explains why crime, poverty, and a lack of opportunity disproportionately impact Black people.Today, for many students, an institutional silence around this legacy continues to leave young people misinformed, as a by the Southern Poverty Law Center highlighted. One reason for this is that textbooks present a whitewashed version of the difficult parts of American history; another is that most teachers— of whom are white—are uncomfortable teaching it.Under Cotton’s proposed law, federal agencies would be to schools that assign the 1619 Project based on how much it costs to plan and teach. The schools would also become ineligible for professional development grants.The biggest loss to affected schools would be funding (which supports academic achievement among low-income students). But targeting professional development is no accident on Cotton’s part, as this is an important mechanism in helping teach enslavement properly, and Black student achievement in general.Essentially, Cotton’s proposed law punishes any educator who decides to use the 1619 Project to teach history accurately.Essentially, Cotton’s proposed law punishes any educator who decides to use the 1619 Project to teach history accurately. The funding that it aims to withhold or strip from schools would also hinder efforts to support student achievement, specifically that of Black children.But non-Black children would also be made worse off for not learning the truth about slavery’s role in the nation’s history. And that, too, is part of Cotton’s endgame: By keeping Americans ignorant of a troubled past, it’s easier to maintain a social order that centers on racial disparities in everything from housing policy to policing.&nbsp;While Cotton’s bill, which was to the Senate in late July, isn’t likely to pass, it nevertheless highlights how telling the truth about our racist past remains a threat to the exclusionary ideas that drive the conservative establishment.In this sense, Cotton’s pursuit of the bill is not insignificant. Public education in the United States has&nbsp;a of&nbsp;deculturalizing and assimilating people, where it was frequently used it as a tool for&nbsp;&nbsp;genocide and upholding class and racial divisions.In the United States, folks socially categorized as “white” exercise political, economic, and social dominance—and historically, as well as today, those categorized “Black” have been the primary target in America’s war to maintain the social order.When Cotton the founders’ view of enslavement as “the necessary evil upon which the union was built,” he acknowledged that Nikole Hannah-Jones and the other authors of the 1619 Project are correct: Enslavement is the fundamental principle on which America was founded.But the difference is that Cotton believes we overcame that history, and that American’s past is a story of unrelenting progress.But the difference is that Cotton believes we overcame that history, and that American’s past is a story of unrelenting progress, of a people and a nation that always sought the improvement of mankind, the advancement of liberty and justice, and the broadening of pursuits of happiness for all.The point of Cotton’s bill is to make sure that students don’t start questioning why that “progress” has only come about for a select few.Sign-up for our free weekly e-mail newsletter.Sign up for our free email newsletter!The Progressive Inc. publishes The Progressive magazine plus Progressive.org and Public Schools Advocate.© 2022 • The Progressive Inc. • 931 E. Main Street, Suite 10 • Madison, Wisconsin 53703 • (608) 257-4626Built with

In the middle of a global pandemic and a racial reckoning—with schools the names of racist namesakes, players taking a knee to protest police brutality, and federal agents kidnapping protesters in Portland—Tom Cotton, a U.S. Senator from Arkansas, has decided to take up the of preventing&nbsp; The New York Times’ from being taught in America’s schools.As a student,&nbsp;I wasn’t taught about how enslavement explains why crime, poverty, and a lack of opportunity disproportionately impact Black people.The 1619 Project, spearheaded by Times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones, is a compilation of...

Tom Cotton Wants to Stop Kids From Learning About American Racism

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