I for one am glad that Bobby Jindal is finally getting the attention he deserves. Bobby has spent a lot of time courting out of state interests while neglecting radioactive parish gobbling sinkholes, perpetual budget crises created the same exact way every year (failing to accurately account for revenue, failing to budget based on actual dollars, including non-existent one time money, stealing from constitutionally dedicated funds, paying state workers fewer real dollars every year, and including the proceeds from the sale of state assets before they are put up for sale. (Washington take note, this is how Bobby Jindal says you should run your family or your business.) Why just today he was forced to cancel a contract with a vendor awarded a 185 million dollar Medicaid contract with CNSI, his department of Health and Hospitals Bruce Greenstein’s former employer, which is being reviewed by a federal grand jury for illegal practices, fraud, etc.
I’m sure there are plenty of people what will investigate the various crimes of malfeasance this administration has committed, but what I want to address is not really a crime so much as it shows an appalling lack of character and perhaps part of a larger reeducation program that if left unchecked has the potential to rip our nation apart, for the second time.
Jindal is a staunch support of something he calls school “choice.”
“To oppose school choice is to put the wishes of the adults who control the status quo ahead of the needs of our children,” Jindal said. “To oppose school choice is to oppose equal opportunity.”
Jindal believes any private school should be able to operate without any oversight or guidelines and teach whatever they want. At best Jindal is unconcerned with what gets taught, so long as the parents make a “choice” and he feels state and federal tax funds should be spent on this “choice” regardless of what our State Constitution or judge’s ruling on the constitution say.
Jindal has in been in the headlines for allowing and promoting the teaching of Creationism in science classrooms, even going so far as to pass and promote a law that allows teachers to dispute evolution and with creationist text books. While I believe this is harmful to the children to teach creationism in Science class, and a waste and abuse of taxpayer dollars to pay for this, I don’t believe this is the greatest travesty being allowed in the name of “choice.” I also believe a great guy and Louisiana citizen name Zack Kopplin is making headway on the creationist issue, and I am grateful for that.
However, under Jindal’s guidance, Louisiana is encouraging voucher schools to open up and teach that slavery was just a choice, and not an entirely bad one.
“A few slave holders were undeniably cruel. Examples of slaves beaten to death were not common, neither were they unknown. The majority of slave holders treated their slaves well.”—United States History for Christian Schools, 2nd ed., Bob Jones University Press
This is just one of the “facts” being taught in voucher schools supported by taxes paid by everyone. Jindal seems to believe the greater sin is to curtail choice, than it is to allow the promotion of the idea that slavery wasn’t really that big of a deal, that if not for the actions of a few slave holders that beat and mistreated their slaves, slavery was generally a good thing.
Jindal’s voucher school supporters believe that owning people, another ace of people, was actually much ado about nothing. Sure, many slaves were raped, tortured, murdered and forced to work under in the burning sun every day until they died, their children sold and traded like pieces of furniture, and adults bred like animals to produce good livestock to be enslaved or sold to others. . . but for the most part it was a good deal and if not for a few miscreants that mistreated their slaves it might well be a great idea to employ today.
Louisiana’s state Superintendent of Schools, John White, is aware of these troubling texts being used, as is BESE president, Chas Roemer, but they believe a parent’s choice to send their kids to a school (that teaches slavery has gotten a bad rap) is not just ok, but should be defended at any cost. They feel it would be an injustice to interfere in the teachings of voucher schools. . . at least those that teach that ownership of other human beings was not something to be ashamed of, but something to be proud of.
Other “choices” for redefining history abound in these types of schools. For instance they also teach that the KKK was peaceful civic organization that only targeted the “decline of morality.” They don’t mention that what they defined immorality as was the acceptance and integration, emancipation and education of African Americans.
“[The Ku Klux] Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross. Klan targets were bootleggers, wife-beaters, and immoral movies. In some communities it achieved a certain respectability as it worked with politicians.”—United States History for Christian Schools, 3rd ed., Bob Jones University Press
The KKK was (and is) an evil bigoted hate group that roamed the night killing, burning black churches, lynching blacks and anyone else that opposed them while wearing white sheets to hide their identities from their neighbors. They were evil cowards that held positions of power (and often even the Sherriff) in society but used fear and death to terrorize and control people. Sadly they still exist today, especially in Louisiana, where they are still responsible for crimes and murder. Not too long ago Louisiana almost elected David Duke, a KKK grade wizard as the governor of our state. In Bobby Jindal, Louisiana is working to reestablish the Klan and their by rewriting their legacy through our children’s text books.
This has been an ongoing process, taking place in the shadows, but with the new voucher plan Bobby Jindal is trying to mainstream these types of thoughts, that slavery was just misunderstood, that the KKK was a peace minded civic organization simply trying to help the world.
You may think this is an absurd overstatement, but consider this recent outburst at the CPAC convention, (CPAC is the marquee conservative conference of the year, with speakers ranging from former Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney to Senator Marco Rubio, and Bobby Jindal), attended by Jindal and most prominent Republican’s. This man’s actions were not only not condemned by Jindal, other participants actually cheered this man’s statements.
The exchange occurred after an audience member from North Carolina, 30-year-old Scott Terry, asked whether Republicans could endorse races remaining separate but equal. After the presenter, K. Carl Smith of Frederick Douglass Republicans, answered by referencing a letter by Frederick Douglass forgiving his former master, the audience member said “For what? For feeding him and housing him?” Several people in the audience cheered and applauded Terry’s outburst.
After the exchange, Terry muttered under his breath, “why can’t we just have segregation?” noting the Constitution’s protections for freedom of association.
But this bigotry doesn’t end there, nor does it appear at all isolated.
When asked by ThinkProgress if he’d accept a society where African-Americans were permanently subservient to whites, he said “I’d be fine with that.” He also claimed that African-Americans “should be allowed to vote in Africa,” and that “all the Tea Parties” were concerned with the same racial problems that he was.
This man is from North Carolina, which is currently pursuing similar goals with its department of Education that Louisiana is. This type of thought has no place in any society, but most especially not in America. How can we as a country criticize the human rights and abuses of other countries like China, and North Korea, when a large and vocal segment of our society still believes slavery was acceptable and that we should return to the days of segregation, the KKK, or worse?
How can we pretend to be a free society that doesn’t believe everyone is entitled to be free?
How can we allow our publicly funded schools to allow this as a choice?
How can we elect and support leaders like Bobby Jindal, Chas Roemer, and John White, who are in positions where they could so something about this, but instead defend these historic atrocities as “choice”?
Racism is on the rise in the United States and the Reform movement is driving it forward with their separate but unequal schools, their false evil choices. Politicians like Jindal and Chas Roemer hide behind this fact, while they educate our children to hate, in much the same way Yassir Arafat educated the Palestinian youth to hate all Jews so he would have a never ending supply of suicide bombers eager to perpetrate his crimes in the name of freedom.
These conservative forces of hate are now taking hold and exposing themselves at all levels of government, and they are boldly challenging the protections and fabric of society in pursuit of their bigoted agenda. The recent challenge to the Voting Rights Act that was unanimously reauthorized by Congress in 2006 is evidence of this, and rushing to the defense of those who would disenfranchise African Americans is none other than the most senior and respected (in conservative circles) Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
I hear racists all the time point to the fact we have an African American president in Barak Obama as proof that racism no longer exists. That’s like saying you’ve eliminated mold from a Katrina flooded house by simply applying new drywall on the already festering walls. The racism and hate exists and seethes and grows below the façade, just waiting until we, as a nation, stop paying attention to it. If we do, it will most certainly spread through our house and ruin it, perhaps forever.