Friends,
The night of Friday, May 21 was a historic debate in the Texas Senate on House Bill 3979 that outlaws the teaching of controversial topics—which most interpret to mean anything that offends white people. Never mind that the K-12 standard or official curriculum systematically dismisses the histories, cultures, and identities of Texans of color via the politics of under-representation or mis-representation in school curricula, textbooks, and pedagogy, including in the very social studies curriculum that is ironically under attack.
Basically, this is a straw man, a rhetorical tool, that exemplifies the reaction by the right to the racial justice movement that burst in the wake of the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor killings in May, 2020. It also borrow directly from Trump’s September 2020 executive order that banned trainings previously conducted throughout the federal government to address workplace racism, sexism, and bias—an order that President Biden readily rescinded upon assuming office.
Do listen to the entire Texas Senate floor debate at this link, as this will indeed go down in history as emblematic of today's culture wars.
The HB 3979 debate begins at 1:33:21 on the meter. My sense of all of this is that it will become law but that we as a community can take this up at the Texas State Board of Education as the implementation rolls out. So more to come.
-Angela Valenzuela
#HB3979
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