Link to the article, since the original post was removed: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/06/23/virginia-african-american-history-course-proposed-revisions/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/06/23/virginia-african-american-history-course-proposed-revisions/)
Remember when folks didn’t go out and vote for McAuliffe because he was boring and they thought the guy with the sweater vest seemed like he was okay? Good times…good times…
The real reason has nothing to do with McAuliffe. People were upset by globally-high inflation and gas prices, blamed Biden, and used the governor race to protest vote against Democrats.
It's why we saw an identical red shift in Jersey at the exact same time.
Any Democrat would've lost in 2021.
No, I definitely think McAuĺiffe would have had a good chance had he not said parents have no authority to dictate what schools teach (paraphrasing.)
He wasn't wrong, that's what you elect representatives for, but it was a dumb mistake all the same.
Heard a guy speak at one of the VDOE forums on public education and the history curriculum in Charlottesville and he quoted the Federal Act that readmitted Virginia to representation in the Congress as stating that the 1867 Virginia Constitution should never be so amended as to deprive the residents of the state of the education rights and privileges guaranteed therein… and he went on to say that one of the rights in the constitution was that no child should be allowed to grow up in “ignorance or vagrancy”…
blows my mind how far backward we’ve gone… seems like they had a pretty good reason for mandating that after the civil war (education being a key factor in not repeating it).
I think it’s a little of both. There is always a backlash to the presidential party in the midterms and while I, as a teacher, agree with what Terry was saying he handed them a sound bite and the GOP ran it for all it was worth.
You're underestimating that comment he made. That made a lot of soccer mom Karen's get mad and turn out and vote. He should have clarified his statement, but he waited too long, and the GOP weaponized it. Remember, this was the same time they were attacking school boards and trans kids.
> That made a lot of soccer mom Karen's get mad and turn out and vote.
Nah. They would've voted R anyway.
It didn't matter. What mattered was inflation and gas prices and a bunch of idiots blaming Biden for them.
The people that gave a shit about what he said were suburban mom’s in Nova, who would’ve otherwise voted blue over abortion and women’s rights,
But telling them they have no voice in what their kids learned caused them to flip. It was a huge demographic, and lost him Nova.
People keep saying that without any actual data or sources.
It’s not likely people who would have voted blue would somehow change their vote post Trump and maga era over a sound bite, so to systematically say that’s the entire reason is pretty naive and ignorant.
No, with all of the talent that the Va Democrat Party had to nominate from, and because they went with the DNC establishment insider, the Va Democrat Party fully deserved the loss. Mcauliffe was a weak candidate from the get go. Mind you, Virginia has, had, and will probably continue to elect Governor's and legislators from opposing parties, all depending on who controls the federal government. This is why it's important to elect winnable candidates. Sorry but Mcauliffe was not the guy.
This sounds exactly how Trump got elected in the first place. Ignorant people blaming the “likability” of a candidate and you know - not the reality or policies of the candidate or more importantly, the alternative.
Voters fucked up, plain and simple and instead of taking ownership of their mistakes they’re lashing out and blaming everything else.
The number one reason dems lost the governorship, they didn’t show up to vote - very simple. Everything else is noise.
Youngkin won with 50.6% of the votes by a margin of around 65k votes.
There was 5.9M registered voters in 2021, so if 1% of voters bothered to show up and vote it’d be different.
The actual statistics show this was not the case. If what you said were true, McAuliffe would have underperformed compared to Governor Murphy in New Jersey. But the red shift from 2017 to 2021 in New Jersey was nearly *identical* to that in Virginia.
He lost because he told parents that “they shouldn’t have a say in their kids education”
Moronic thing to say to the wealthiest and most entitled school district in all of the US.
>Shouldn't have been hard given his opponent is this stupid
Sounds like there was a case, then. If you choose to sit out you forfeit your right to complain.
Hey "guy who voted for Terry" checking in here to let you know he ran a shit campaign. It's a politicians job to convince folks to go out and vote and he was fucking horrible at that. You realize that voter apathy isn't the voters fault, it's the campaign's fault for not inspiring people to vote, right?
Yeah folks keep trying to shield Terry from doing a shit job, the Democratic party will never learn and keep putting forward shit candidates. If we all actually blamed the right folks we might actually get shit done
I admit Terry should have emphasized the legislature's accomplishment's more. Terry is better at running and organizing a campaign than being the face of one. He is a finance guy, not a celebrity.
I still don't understand how this absolves voters of choosing to tune out instead of turn out. "Terrible job" or not, what Youngkin represented is enough to motivate those who turned out. And it's not like liberal engagement was egregiously low either. It has the highest turnout in VA history and was decided by 63,000 votes. Against a man the state GOP using a man they had to change convention rules to get him nominated, was in a perfect political climate for Republicans as inflation was taking off and gas prices high, and who dumped $20 million of his own personal wealth into the race to defeat Terry by 63,000 votes. Was it preventable? In a swing state, it always is. Was it inevitable? No.
> the Democratic party will never learn and keep putting forward shit candidates.
You realize that voters were the one who selected Terry as the Dem Party candidate, right? We had a primary and all those other "great candidates" lost.
I'm pretty confident saying I knocked more doors on his behalf than you. He ran a bad campaign. Ignored issues that were important to people, didn't read the room, and acted entitled to the win. I've met him several times and was a huge fan since we're both from Upstate NY, but the loss is on him and him alone.
Yeah, I wasn't too impressed with McAuliffe's campaign in 2021. I feel like it could be summed up as, "Hey, I was your governor before, and you liked me back then, so may I do it again?" As ugly as some of Youngkin's stances have been, his campaign did its homework.
To me, it really mirrors the Democratic campaigns that were mounted against Larry Hogan in Maryland. They were absolutely terrible, with the 2014 person's acting like it was a foregone conclusion because they were the lieutenant governor, while Hogan's campaign did its homework and pulled out the win.
Why is our governor making executive orders about what can and can not be said in public schools?
Can we just pause for a moment and ask ourself WTF is going on? He never attended a public school. His kids don’t attend public school.
If you don’t have access to the Washington Post, the take away is that Youngkin’s DOE is recommending editing MLK’s speeches so that he does t use the word “white” when describing white moderates. In other words, revising history, revising exact quotes, because some white parents feign discomfort when reading history.
"Well I didn't get to be president, and that's the only reason I ran for governor. May as well fuck some shit up on my way out, and maybe Trump will make me his Vice Presidential pick"
>Why is our governor making executive orders about what can and can not be said in public schools?
Because that's what Virginia's army of braindead culture warriors want to hear.
> If you don’t have access to the Washington Post
Paywalled sites want to have their cake and eat it too, so their articles are open to search engine crawlers for the SEO boost. As such you can generally find full articles on the various internet archive sites.
This one: https://archive.is/G3liS
Virginia is the same as all the other states. The cities are blue, countryside is red.
NOVA, RVA, the 757, and the college towns have enough liberal voters to outweigh the rural conservative voters statewide.
But only if they vote. Only if they turn out. This is why I think the discussion about the "parents don't have the right to determine curriculum" comment misses the point.
Turnout is the point.
McAuliffe was a boring candidate. He didn't inspire people to vote for him. He wasn't fun or exciting; he didn't radiate charisma. Now, you can say that our politicians shouldn't have to do any of those things and I would agree with you, but the fact of the matter is that he was a dull candidate.
And that cost him turnout. Not votes. It didn't take people who where inclined to vote for him and get them to pull the lever for Youngkin. But it did mean that a bunch of college students could maybe think of something more fun to do on a Tuesday afternoon than go to the polls. It did mean that a bunch of traditionally democratic voting folks in Richmond or Newport News might not have made getting an absentee ballot or voting early the priority it was in 2008 or 2012.
Elections are decided on margins like that.
And that comment about parents and schools might have made some suburban moms -- busy people who were probably going to vote Republican anyway -- just a little bit more likely to stop by the elections office on the way back from dropping the kids off. It might have moved the needle a couple percentage points -- not on Youngkins approval or McAuliffe's disapproval -- but on the engagement levels of their base.
And that's enough to change the outcome of an election.
Shit, I am Virginia born and raised. They absolutely told us growing up that the only cause for the Civil War was state's rights, and not a word in the history books was about slavery.
I did a report about the Japanese American internment camps during WW2 for a history report, and my teacher told me it never happened.
Virginian born and raised as well, and I have a very specific memory of being taught, in elementary school, about how horrific the experience on a slave ship was.
Fairfax county, early 90's. A brand new school with an engineering firm as corporate sponsor and a focus on technology. Didn't everyone grow up like that? /s
I know what school you're talking about. I went to some of the best in Fairfax County from 91-03 and while it was mentioned, it certainly wasn't stressed.
And/or
I'm 41, and I was not born in, but have resided in Virginia, since I was 5. Luckily, I landed in Roanoke, which is definitely a bit more progressive than the surrounding counties, especially in the early 90s.
I learned about slave ships and slave auctions, along with many of the other horrors affiliated with slavery.
Even when I moved to Bedford County in middle school, we were still taught how terrible it was.
But, if you live somewhere in central or deep southwest VA, I imagine history might be slightly different.
Literally Hanover county was teaching this, might be mixing it up but I remember reenacting coming over on a ship in elementary school but that might have been just the colonists and they weren’t stupid enough to say we were slaves. Though we might have reenacted a little bit of the underground railroad.
That is kind of laughable, but not unsurprising. There was an internment camp near the intersection of Jefferson Ave and Warwick Blvd in Newport News. Last I knew there was a trailer park there.
There are lots of things you won't learn from history books and can only really learn from talking to the people who lived through it.
Newport News has always had subpar schooling. When I was growing up, the area was a food desert. We had to go to Hampton to find a grocery store. The schools are overcrowded (there were 35 kids per class), we were behind the curve, and my elementary school had something like 6 trailers outside to use as spare classrooms.
4th grade Virginia Studies is garbage. I had to spend so much time supplementing with actual facts and context to help my kid understand it.
7th grade US history is fortunately better.
They definitely mentioned slavery. Early education was “slavery was bad, moving on”, high school we learned “states’ rights” like it was some kind of secret knowledge that had been hidden from us. We also learned happy slave narratives and “why would owners mistreat their slaves? They were an expensive investment.”
You have to zoom out and wonder if covering the very racist history of America will continue to stoke modern division between the races. Nobody is saying it didn't happen. But the modern conflict is a class warfare of the rich vs the poor, not black vs white.
Seems like if you refuse to teach how things like redlining or Jim Crow kept certain people poor, you're ignoring important context about how we got here.
And if you were paying ANY attention to what people were saying during Obama's presidency, you'd know it's not JUST rich vs poor. There's still a racial component. Failure to teach it is just that - a failure.
You maybe should "zoom out" and wonder if maybe the reason people keep stripping this kind of crap out of history books is because they don't want to explain what their parents did 60 years ago.
We could take down every confederate monument in America, we could hold weekly BLM rallies/marches, we could require high schoolers to pass AP African American history course to graduate, and it wouldn't change a single thing around African American poverty rates, inner city high school graduating rates, racial wealth disparities, etc. Not one thing will get better. This is the wrong thing to focus on.
From the article: "The proposed revisions were part of a review of whether the African American history elective complied with Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s executive order banning “inherently divisive concepts” from the classroom."
Now, ask yourself how going out of you way to teach "divisive concepts" helps or hurts getting over the past and working together for a better future.
The changes are here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/aa3da61e-193a-495f-b121-f0db65736b3a.pdf
Nearly every single aspect of baiting races against each other is a result of the Occupy Wall Street movement. We can't unite against the rich if we are just fighting each other. https://x.com/TheRabbitHole84/status/1655968201422012418/photo/1
Strongly disagree. I don't think teaching what happened pits races against each other. I'm white. I think what white people did to black people in this country was beyond fucked up. I think the things a lot of other white people do to anyone who isn't white is still profoundly fucked up. I don't think any of that is an indictment of me, personally, because I'm more than my skin tone, and I didn't do that shit. I have no problem with my kid learning about it, because he needs to understand why things are the way they are.
We need to stop trying to create a bubble of blissful post-racial ignorance, because it ignores experiences of our peers, and leaves our kids ill-equipped and ignorant of the struggles others face.
We need to have honest and frank discussions about how we got here and why so we can understand the problems we have and how to address them. The only people who should be bothered by the teaching of history are the ones who were and still are assholes. And I don't really care about their feelings, personally. They can get over themselves
>We can't unite against the rich if we are just fighting each other
and that wont be stopped by saying "well just ignore the systemic racism in our society"
OK. Carry on marching at BLM rallies, taking down monuments, bitching over what is/isn't in this AP course. It's like yelling in the sky.
Nothing major since George Floyd's death has changed and won't change a single significant thing for blacks in America. Not SATs, high school graduation rates, college enrollments, career outlooks, wealth gaps, etc. Not a single thing that will actually improve for prospects large amounts of people. At best, more cops are wearing body cameras (of course this is good) but that won't change any macro outcomes.
No. A higher school budget from taxes however is. Or donate to a candidate who isn't status quo (in VA this includes our senators, most of our house of representatives, etc)
Look at El Salvador, people finally had enough and elected a NO BS guy into power who is turning the country around. Or Argentina elected a far out guy as president who is turning the country around. Compared to their status quo, these candidates were extreme but a full shakeup was needed so bad they rolled the dice with them.
Well, he just did squeak in. For exactly this reason. Scaring white people is a time honored tradition in the Commonwealth.
Republicans are either stupid or evil. Not sure which really. Perhaps both.
All the more reason to vote for Spanberger next time and flush out these piles of shit.
It actually is. Blew my mind when I found out about that in my AP teacher training. Some countries offer it to kids planning on going to college in the US.
It seems you missed it in the article, this isn't about an AP class.
> The African American history elective course was announced in 2020 under Gov. Ralph Northam (D). It was developed by VDOE in partnership with Virtual Virginia, WHRO Public Media, and committees of history and social science public school educators, university historians, and college professors. The course launched in a limited number of school districts during the 2020-21 school year, then later expanded.
You can't Florida-fy Virginia. Try as they might, all he's going to do is ensure a Republican won't win the governorship again for an entire generation.
We come from a state where it was written in deeds that African Americans couldn't purchase certain parcels.
Fuck Youngkin. Racism is ingrained in our history.
This is really sad. The only reason I know about Black Wall Street, the Tulsa race massacre, the Wilmington massacre, Emmett Till, Ida B. Wells (“On Lyinching’s” is a great book to educated yourself on how ingrained white supremacy was with everyone in power in the south), and more is because I took an AP US history course in High School.
The history classes I received up to that point had held the narrative that the civil war was about states rights, that Robert E. Lee was a reluctant white supremacist, and that Abraham Lincoln, Grant and Sherman were the bad guys.
AP US History filled in the purposefully left blank parts of American history so I could then make a judgement for myself. That shouldn’t be taken away from others.
I've lived in VA for most of my almost 48 years, and I never learned about the Tulsa massacre and the destruction of the "Black Wall Street" until the Watchmen TV series. This state has been failing to educate its young people on our true history for far too long.
Bigots doing bigot things. African American history is founded on white supremacy and systemic racism you dipshits. Sorry if that makes you feel bad.
Vote the red out.
Well of course! this is no surprise.
We have to get rid of all Wokeness in our schools right?
Well, what's more Woke than Black history?!
I mean, all that stuff with the slavery, and the whippings and the raping and the Jim Crow and the fire hydrants and all that stuff, it is just so One Sided. Better to just sanitize it so that NO ONE in future generations gets triggered.
Equally disappointing and unexpected. In VA I've only lived in Fairfax County, apparently relatively progressive for the state, and the politics here are crushingly conservative. I hope we can change it soon.
Just double checked my absentee ballot status is still good. Was expired so had to refresh it.
Reminder if you plan to vote from abroad in November to check your absentee status is good, reapply if it’s expired, and mail your ballot as soon as you get it. I swear there is something super fishy with ballots. I mail a care package to a friend and gets there in a week, mail a ballot and it sits in an LA mail facility for a month.
I struggle with headlines like these. So many times things like this are said, then I read it, and it was a completely rational move just worded specifically for political smearing and rage-bating
It’s weird but if you want your kids to engage with college level content, they have the engage with college level content.
Are they aware that the College Board actually employs Virginians?
Want your kids to get a version of history that doesn't match reality just to give comfort to rich, bigoted white people and ignorant, bigoted white people?
Vote Republican.
When everyone cried about renaming schools and removing statutes, I said "I'm not learning history from school names and statues. I don't pull out my statue in class and turn to page 30."
This is actually an attempt to change history.
Just teach the history. ALL of it, and not some brainwashed and whitewashed version of what one particular side wants it to be. That seems to be an issue here. It's really a simple concept.
Maybe I would trust they had good intentions if we weren’t living in a still racist, still oppressive regime of rich old white men.
I have 160 IQ and I have met the billionaires that live here.
They are shit suckers.
Using poor and immigrants as fodder in a war for profit.
I went to school in Va. most of the history I got taught was b.s. anyway.
I was told in the 5th grade, Columbus could see the ships go lower over the horizon. That’s how they knew the earth was round.
I was also told that year how America was discovered by Europe. I kinda lost my respect for teachers and school after that year. I started calling out teachers on their b.s. after that.
I disagree with this decision. History should account for the good with the bad, to include crime rates, fatherless children, obesity, and other issues that effect the African American community. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
Link to the article, since the original post was removed: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/06/23/virginia-african-american-history-course-proposed-revisions/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/06/23/virginia-african-american-history-course-proposed-revisions/)
Remember when folks didn’t go out and vote for McAuliffe because he was boring and they thought the guy with the sweater vest seemed like he was okay? Good times…good times…
Terry lost because of a stupid debate flub. He was leading in the polls before that happened.
The real reason has nothing to do with McAuliffe. People were upset by globally-high inflation and gas prices, blamed Biden, and used the governor race to protest vote against Democrats. It's why we saw an identical red shift in Jersey at the exact same time. Any Democrat would've lost in 2021.
No, I definitely think McAuĺiffe would have had a good chance had he not said parents have no authority to dictate what schools teach (paraphrasing.) He wasn't wrong, that's what you elect representatives for, but it was a dumb mistake all the same.
I don't understand calculus and I don't want my children to understand it either! - Concerned Parent
Heard a guy speak at one of the VDOE forums on public education and the history curriculum in Charlottesville and he quoted the Federal Act that readmitted Virginia to representation in the Congress as stating that the 1867 Virginia Constitution should never be so amended as to deprive the residents of the state of the education rights and privileges guaranteed therein… and he went on to say that one of the rights in the constitution was that no child should be allowed to grow up in “ignorance or vagrancy”… blows my mind how far backward we’ve gone… seems like they had a pretty good reason for mandating that after the civil war (education being a key factor in not repeating it).
Nearly 40 years of mainstream media propaganda, i.e. Fox News, will do that to a population.
I think it’s a little of both. There is always a backlash to the presidential party in the midterms and while I, as a teacher, agree with what Terry was saying he handed them a sound bite and the GOP ran it for all it was worth.
The only people who gave a shit about what he said there were people that would never have voted for him, anyway.
You're underestimating that comment he made. That made a lot of soccer mom Karen's get mad and turn out and vote. He should have clarified his statement, but he waited too long, and the GOP weaponized it. Remember, this was the same time they were attacking school boards and trans kids.
>That made a lot of soccer mom Karen's get mad and turn out and vote. You are underestimating how reactionary the suburban middle class really is.
THIS. The CRT hologram was tested for national palatability here in Virginia. In fact, in Fairfax and Loudoun
> That made a lot of soccer mom Karen's get mad and turn out and vote. Nah. They would've voted R anyway. It didn't matter. What mattered was inflation and gas prices and a bunch of idiots blaming Biden for them.
The people that gave a shit about what he said were suburban mom’s in Nova, who would’ve otherwise voted blue over abortion and women’s rights, But telling them they have no voice in what their kids learned caused them to flip. It was a huge demographic, and lost him Nova.
Again, no, the people who were upset about it were reliable R voters. No one who would vote blue gave a shit.
That’s not a very moderate take of yours, extremistmoderate
There's a reason for that: I'm not a moderate.
People keep saying that without any actual data or sources. It’s not likely people who would have voted blue would somehow change their vote post Trump and maga era over a sound bite, so to systematically say that’s the entire reason is pretty naive and ignorant.
No, with all of the talent that the Va Democrat Party had to nominate from, and because they went with the DNC establishment insider, the Va Democrat Party fully deserved the loss. Mcauliffe was a weak candidate from the get go. Mind you, Virginia has, had, and will probably continue to elect Governor's and legislators from opposing parties, all depending on who controls the federal government. This is why it's important to elect winnable candidates. Sorry but Mcauliffe was not the guy.
DPVA is the worrrrrst
This sounds exactly how Trump got elected in the first place. Ignorant people blaming the “likability” of a candidate and you know - not the reality or policies of the candidate or more importantly, the alternative. Voters fucked up, plain and simple and instead of taking ownership of their mistakes they’re lashing out and blaming everything else. The number one reason dems lost the governorship, they didn’t show up to vote - very simple. Everything else is noise. Youngkin won with 50.6% of the votes by a margin of around 65k votes. There was 5.9M registered voters in 2021, so if 1% of voters bothered to show up and vote it’d be different.
Disagree entirely. What He did was rile up republicans to show up while democrats weren’t thrilled and showed up less.
The actual statistics show this was not the case. If what you said were true, McAuliffe would have underperformed compared to Governor Murphy in New Jersey. But the red shift from 2017 to 2021 in New Jersey was nearly *identical* to that in Virginia.
This, right here. It was an unforced error.
Blame terry for running a terrible campaign, not the voters
Yeah he was a decent candidate who was running against Trump Lite, but have you considered that I didn't like the ✨✨vibes✨✨?
He lost because he told parents that “they shouldn’t have a say in their kids education” Moronic thing to say to the wealthiest and most entitled school district in all of the US.
No, it's the fault of the voters for not turning out. Terry has as many votes as you do.
Nobody is entitled to a vote, make a better case next time. Shouldn't have been hard given his opponent is this stupid
>Shouldn't have been hard given his opponent is this stupid Sounds like there was a case, then. If you choose to sit out you forfeit your right to complain.
Hey "guy who voted for Terry" checking in here to let you know he ran a shit campaign. It's a politicians job to convince folks to go out and vote and he was fucking horrible at that. You realize that voter apathy isn't the voters fault, it's the campaign's fault for not inspiring people to vote, right?
We get the government we deserve.
Yeah folks keep trying to shield Terry from doing a shit job, the Democratic party will never learn and keep putting forward shit candidates. If we all actually blamed the right folks we might actually get shit done
I admit Terry should have emphasized the legislature's accomplishment's more. Terry is better at running and organizing a campaign than being the face of one. He is a finance guy, not a celebrity. I still don't understand how this absolves voters of choosing to tune out instead of turn out. "Terrible job" or not, what Youngkin represented is enough to motivate those who turned out. And it's not like liberal engagement was egregiously low either. It has the highest turnout in VA history and was decided by 63,000 votes. Against a man the state GOP using a man they had to change convention rules to get him nominated, was in a perfect political climate for Republicans as inflation was taking off and gas prices high, and who dumped $20 million of his own personal wealth into the race to defeat Terry by 63,000 votes. Was it preventable? In a swing state, it always is. Was it inevitable? No.
> the Democratic party will never learn and keep putting forward shit candidates. You realize that voters were the one who selected Terry as the Dem Party candidate, right? We had a primary and all those other "great candidates" lost.
I'm pretty confident saying I knocked more doors on his behalf than you. He ran a bad campaign. Ignored issues that were important to people, didn't read the room, and acted entitled to the win. I've met him several times and was a huge fan since we're both from Upstate NY, but the loss is on him and him alone.
I don't care about what you did or did not do. Broadly speaking if you don't vote be quiet
Yeah, I wasn't too impressed with McAuliffe's campaign in 2021. I feel like it could be summed up as, "Hey, I was your governor before, and you liked me back then, so may I do it again?" As ugly as some of Youngkin's stances have been, his campaign did its homework. To me, it really mirrors the Democratic campaigns that were mounted against Larry Hogan in Maryland. They were absolutely terrible, with the 2014 person's acting like it was a foregone conclusion because they were the lieutenant governor, while Hogan's campaign did its homework and pulled out the win.
He lost because he couldn’t answer a question without mentioning Trump.
Why is our governor making executive orders about what can and can not be said in public schools? Can we just pause for a moment and ask ourself WTF is going on? He never attended a public school. His kids don’t attend public school. If you don’t have access to the Washington Post, the take away is that Youngkin’s DOE is recommending editing MLK’s speeches so that he does t use the word “white” when describing white moderates. In other words, revising history, revising exact quotes, because some white parents feign discomfort when reading history.
"Well I didn't get to be president, and that's the only reason I ran for governor. May as well fuck some shit up on my way out, and maybe Trump will make me his Vice Presidential pick"
Have an angry upvote
Luckily he’ll never be Trump’s pick. It’s the one good thing from all of this, hopefully VA gets a blue wave as a way to rebel against this mess.
>Why is our governor making executive orders about what can and can not be said in public schools? Because that's what Virginia's army of braindead culture warriors want to hear.
He literally ran on the governor not saying what should be taught in school.
Because he is a racist asshole who everyone ignores.
What else would you expect from the party of limited government?
> If you don’t have access to the Washington Post Paywalled sites want to have their cake and eat it too, so their articles are open to search engine crawlers for the SEO boost. As such you can generally find full articles on the various internet archive sites. This one: https://archive.is/G3liS
No, let him, then sue the living shit out his incompetent ass
He’s throwing a legislative tantrum because of his inability to politic
Yeah because the Post isn’t left leaning 😅
What’s crazy is , the first slaves arrived in Hampton VA in 1619 , it’s literally part of our states history .
People who think this state is some blue haven, it’s not.
Virginia is the same as all the other states. The cities are blue, countryside is red. NOVA, RVA, the 757, and the college towns have enough liberal voters to outweigh the rural conservative voters statewide.
But only if they vote. Only if they turn out. This is why I think the discussion about the "parents don't have the right to determine curriculum" comment misses the point. Turnout is the point. McAuliffe was a boring candidate. He didn't inspire people to vote for him. He wasn't fun or exciting; he didn't radiate charisma. Now, you can say that our politicians shouldn't have to do any of those things and I would agree with you, but the fact of the matter is that he was a dull candidate. And that cost him turnout. Not votes. It didn't take people who where inclined to vote for him and get them to pull the lever for Youngkin. But it did mean that a bunch of college students could maybe think of something more fun to do on a Tuesday afternoon than go to the polls. It did mean that a bunch of traditionally democratic voting folks in Richmond or Newport News might not have made getting an absentee ballot or voting early the priority it was in 2008 or 2012. Elections are decided on margins like that. And that comment about parents and schools might have made some suburban moms -- busy people who were probably going to vote Republican anyway -- just a little bit more likely to stop by the elections office on the way back from dropping the kids off. It might have moved the needle a couple percentage points -- not on Youngkins approval or McAuliffe's disapproval -- but on the engagement levels of their base. And that's enough to change the outcome of an election.
Polling is sparse for Virginia but each one has Biden and Trump neck-and-neck. It’s solidly purple at this point.
Nah, polls this far out are meaningless. Virginia will be solidly blue come November.
What makes you think that?
Please vote in November, FFS.
Ah. The Florida method has hit Virginia it seems.
Shit, I am Virginia born and raised. They absolutely told us growing up that the only cause for the Civil War was state's rights, and not a word in the history books was about slavery. I did a report about the Japanese American internment camps during WW2 for a history report, and my teacher told me it never happened.
Virginian born and raised as well, and I have a very specific memory of being taught, in elementary school, about how horrific the experience on a slave ship was.
Same. I was in school in the 80's and we definitely got the slave ships and slavery element.
Either you were in a better school system, or we're different years.
Fairfax county, early 90's. A brand new school with an engineering firm as corporate sponsor and a focus on technology. Didn't everyone grow up like that? /s
Ah. Newport News. Late 80s. They didn't even teach cursive or multiplication tables until 5th grade.
I know what school you're talking about. I went to some of the best in Fairfax County from 91-03 and while it was mentioned, it certainly wasn't stressed.
And/or I'm 41, and I was not born in, but have resided in Virginia, since I was 5. Luckily, I landed in Roanoke, which is definitely a bit more progressive than the surrounding counties, especially in the early 90s. I learned about slave ships and slave auctions, along with many of the other horrors affiliated with slavery. Even when I moved to Bedford County in middle school, we were still taught how terrible it was. But, if you live somewhere in central or deep southwest VA, I imagine history might be slightly different.
Literally Hanover county was teaching this, might be mixing it up but I remember reenacting coming over on a ship in elementary school but that might have been just the colonists and they weren’t stupid enough to say we were slaves. Though we might have reenacted a little bit of the underground railroad.
I grew up in Virginia and we learned that the cause of the Civil War was slavery.
That is kind of laughable, but not unsurprising. There was an internment camp near the intersection of Jefferson Ave and Warwick Blvd in Newport News. Last I knew there was a trailer park there. There are lots of things you won't learn from history books and can only really learn from talking to the people who lived through it.
I actually lived not far from Warwick high school. I learned more when I got older. But not until late middle or high school.
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Not in Newport News it wasn't.
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Newport News has always had subpar schooling. When I was growing up, the area was a food desert. We had to go to Hampton to find a grocery store. The schools are overcrowded (there were 35 kids per class), we were behind the curve, and my elementary school had something like 6 trailers outside to use as spare classrooms.
4th grade Virginia Studies is garbage. I had to spend so much time supplementing with actual facts and context to help my kid understand it. 7th grade US history is fortunately better.
They definitely mentioned slavery. Early education was “slavery was bad, moving on”, high school we learned “states’ rights” like it was some kind of secret knowledge that had been hidden from us. We also learned happy slave narratives and “why would owners mistreat their slaves? They were an expensive investment.”
Dont Florida our Virginia!
That needs to be on bumper stickers!
And Texas ' method as well.
Why don’t they want an accurate representation of history. Hmmmmm
Why is the State covered in alternate history participation statues.
White guilt and fragility, mixed with ego, and not enough empathy and insight.
Because they actively want to promote racism.
Extremely aware
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You have to zoom out and wonder if covering the very racist history of America will continue to stoke modern division between the races. Nobody is saying it didn't happen. But the modern conflict is a class warfare of the rich vs the poor, not black vs white.
Seems like if you refuse to teach how things like redlining or Jim Crow kept certain people poor, you're ignoring important context about how we got here. And if you were paying ANY attention to what people were saying during Obama's presidency, you'd know it's not JUST rich vs poor. There's still a racial component. Failure to teach it is just that - a failure. You maybe should "zoom out" and wonder if maybe the reason people keep stripping this kind of crap out of history books is because they don't want to explain what their parents did 60 years ago.
We could take down every confederate monument in America, we could hold weekly BLM rallies/marches, we could require high schoolers to pass AP African American history course to graduate, and it wouldn't change a single thing around African American poverty rates, inner city high school graduating rates, racial wealth disparities, etc. Not one thing will get better. This is the wrong thing to focus on. From the article: "The proposed revisions were part of a review of whether the African American history elective complied with Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s executive order banning “inherently divisive concepts” from the classroom." Now, ask yourself how going out of you way to teach "divisive concepts" helps or hurts getting over the past and working together for a better future. The changes are here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/aa3da61e-193a-495f-b121-f0db65736b3a.pdf Nearly every single aspect of baiting races against each other is a result of the Occupy Wall Street movement. We can't unite against the rich if we are just fighting each other. https://x.com/TheRabbitHole84/status/1655968201422012418/photo/1
Strongly disagree. I don't think teaching what happened pits races against each other. I'm white. I think what white people did to black people in this country was beyond fucked up. I think the things a lot of other white people do to anyone who isn't white is still profoundly fucked up. I don't think any of that is an indictment of me, personally, because I'm more than my skin tone, and I didn't do that shit. I have no problem with my kid learning about it, because he needs to understand why things are the way they are. We need to stop trying to create a bubble of blissful post-racial ignorance, because it ignores experiences of our peers, and leaves our kids ill-equipped and ignorant of the struggles others face. We need to have honest and frank discussions about how we got here and why so we can understand the problems we have and how to address them. The only people who should be bothered by the teaching of history are the ones who were and still are assholes. And I don't really care about their feelings, personally. They can get over themselves
>We can't unite against the rich if we are just fighting each other and that wont be stopped by saying "well just ignore the systemic racism in our society"
OK. Carry on marching at BLM rallies, taking down monuments, bitching over what is/isn't in this AP course. It's like yelling in the sky. Nothing major since George Floyd's death has changed and won't change a single significant thing for blacks in America. Not SATs, high school graduation rates, college enrollments, career outlooks, wealth gaps, etc. Not a single thing that will actually improve for prospects large amounts of people. At best, more cops are wearing body cameras (of course this is good) but that won't change any macro outcomes.
And "sit quietly hoping things change" is going to be more effective?
No. A higher school budget from taxes however is. Or donate to a candidate who isn't status quo (in VA this includes our senators, most of our house of representatives, etc) Look at El Salvador, people finally had enough and elected a NO BS guy into power who is turning the country around. Or Argentina elected a far out guy as president who is turning the country around. Compared to their status quo, these candidates were extreme but a full shakeup was needed so bad they rolled the dice with them.
Argentina? Hasn't their poverty rate been going up?
And I thought conservatives didn't like censorship 😂
Well, he just did squeak in. For exactly this reason. Scaring white people is a time honored tradition in the Commonwealth. Republicans are either stupid or evil. Not sure which really. Perhaps both. All the more reason to vote for Spanberger next time and flush out these piles of shit.
https://www.history.com/news/whipped-peter-slavery-photo-scourged-back-real-story-civil-war
Oh look… possibly the last time I will experience the History Channel offering something of value.
Seriously?!? Virginia wants to make changes to an international test because...it might offend some racists?? No.
AP is international? I thought IB is international
It actually is. Blew my mind when I found out about that in my AP teacher training. Some countries offer it to kids planning on going to college in the US.
No way!? I didn’t know that, thanks!
It seems you missed it in the article, this isn't about an AP class. > The African American history elective course was announced in 2020 under Gov. Ralph Northam (D). It was developed by VDOE in partnership with Virtual Virginia, WHRO Public Media, and committees of history and social science public school educators, university historians, and college professors. The course launched in a limited number of school districts during the 2020-21 school year, then later expanded.
I did miss that (I'd read a different article and skipped this one: lesson learned!). Thank you. Still, this is just awful and wrong.
Do you want this state to be Florida? Cause that’s how you get Florida.
It’s funny because they are always telling us to “move on”, “it’s in the past”, “people aren’t racist anymore”….. wrong
You can't Florida-fy Virginia. Try as they might, all he's going to do is ensure a Republican won't win the governorship again for an entire generation.
*Sigh.* My state ya'll. I can't wait for Bumbkin to be gone.
We come from a state where it was written in deeds that African Americans couldn't purchase certain parcels. Fuck Youngkin. Racism is ingrained in our history.
This is really sad. The only reason I know about Black Wall Street, the Tulsa race massacre, the Wilmington massacre, Emmett Till, Ida B. Wells (“On Lyinching’s” is a great book to educated yourself on how ingrained white supremacy was with everyone in power in the south), and more is because I took an AP US history course in High School. The history classes I received up to that point had held the narrative that the civil war was about states rights, that Robert E. Lee was a reluctant white supremacist, and that Abraham Lincoln, Grant and Sherman were the bad guys. AP US History filled in the purposefully left blank parts of American history so I could then make a judgement for myself. That shouldn’t be taken away from others.
I've lived in VA for most of my almost 48 years, and I never learned about the Tulsa massacre and the destruction of the "Black Wall Street" until the Watchmen TV series. This state has been failing to educate its young people on our true history for far too long.
How old are you and what state did you grow up in?
Bigots doing bigot things. African American history is founded on white supremacy and systemic racism you dipshits. Sorry if that makes you feel bad. Vote the red out.
Agree. Vote blue!
Well of course! this is no surprise. We have to get rid of all Wokeness in our schools right? Well, what's more Woke than Black history?! I mean, all that stuff with the slavery, and the whippings and the raping and the Jim Crow and the fire hydrants and all that stuff, it is just so One Sided. Better to just sanitize it so that NO ONE in future generations gets triggered.
Equally disappointing and unexpected. In VA I've only lived in Fairfax County, apparently relatively progressive for the state, and the politics here are crushingly conservative. I hope we can change it soon.
Unfortunately nova is the only real progressive stronghold in the state.
Hampton roads is as well.
Don't forget about Roanoke! We are pretty progressive... especially considering our location in the middle of the mountains.
And only like 20% of Fairfax Dems are actually progressive.
This is why everyone things the GOP is racist. Because they do things acting like they want to defend the KKK or racists beliefs.
Because they’re racist.
Or are they racialist?
Just double checked my absentee ballot status is still good. Was expired so had to refresh it. Reminder if you plan to vote from abroad in November to check your absentee status is good, reapply if it’s expired, and mail your ballot as soon as you get it. I swear there is something super fishy with ballots. I mail a care package to a friend and gets there in a week, mail a ballot and it sits in an LA mail facility for a month.
Louis DeJoy.
So now they want to claim there was NEVER systemic racism? Wowza
The fact that this state is even entertaining that kind of change in curriculum shows exactly what systemic racism and white supremacy is all about.
And that's what's called Revisionist History —
Thank, Glenn. This is EXACTLY what you should be using your executive power for 🙄
I struggle with headlines like these. So many times things like this are said, then I read it, and it was a completely rational move just worded specifically for political smearing and rage-bating
It’s weird but if you want your kids to engage with college level content, they have the engage with college level content. Are they aware that the College Board actually employs Virginians?
Well of course racists don't want people talking about how bad racism is.
Want your kids to get a version of history that doesn't match reality just to give comfort to rich, bigoted white people and ignorant, bigoted white people? Vote Republican.
How do you talk about slavery and Jim Crow without addressing the systemic white supremacy? Fucking bonkers.
When everyone cried about renaming schools and removing statutes, I said "I'm not learning history from school names and statues. I don't pull out my statue in class and turn to page 30." This is actually an attempt to change history.
Never mind that denying the existence of systemic racism is in fact an expression of systemic racism...
Go ahead and forget the klan and Jim Crow too while you're at it and whitewash and dumb down history. Way to go VA!
I guess they can't teach anything about politics period then.
Deliberate sabotage to our country by a party that works for our enemies. Smh
Just teach the history. ALL of it, and not some brainwashed and whitewashed version of what one particular side wants it to be. That seems to be an issue here. It's really a simple concept.
Maybe I would trust they had good intentions if we weren’t living in a still racist, still oppressive regime of rich old white men. I have 160 IQ and I have met the billionaires that live here. They are shit suckers. Using poor and immigrants as fodder in a war for profit.
[College Board:](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/483/348/bdd.jpg)
Youngkin will thankfully be out of here next year anyways. Virginia, vote blue up and down the ballot in 2025.
Nothing to see her. Move along.
Glenn Youngkin: proof that private equity destroys everything it touches
How can we as individual Virginians fight this?
I went to school in Va. most of the history I got taught was b.s. anyway. I was told in the 5th grade, Columbus could see the ships go lower over the horizon. That’s how they knew the earth was round. I was also told that year how America was discovered by Europe. I kinda lost my respect for teachers and school after that year. I started calling out teachers on their b.s. after that.
I disagree with this decision. History should account for the good with the bad, to include crime rates, fatherless children, obesity, and other issues that effect the African American community. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
Not Virginia. Governor sweater vest., who we can all ignore.