Miscellaneous items today, including a few from a couple weeks ago.
- Oklahoma, insisting the Bible be taught as an historical document, seems intent on mis-educating its children and ill-preparing them for life in the 21st century;
- How conservative attacks against DEI is the modern-day Jim Crow;
- More about why Americans think crime is going up, when actually it’s not;
- Christians in Australia let a child die by preferring prayer over insulin;
- And how little things change that we don’t always notice: climate change push-alerts; the death of the necktie; how few people answer their phones (and the consequences for polling).
Race to the bottom. How un- and mis-informed can we make our children? And ill-suited for life in the 21st century?
AlterNet, 27 Jun 2024: Oklahoma now requires all public schools to teach from the Bible as a ‘historical’ document
The State of Oklahoma appears to be poised to outdo Louisiana in its effort to inject Christianity into public schools, after a new announcement by the state’s superintendent of public instruction.
On Thursday, ABC affiliate KOCO 5 News reported that Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters is now requiring all K-12 public school classrooms keep a copy of the Bible on hand, and to give it the same regard as a history textbook. The new policy is to be implemented “effective immediately.”
Conservatives would suppress many elements of American history, yet would promote an ancient document that in no way can be considered reliable history. They want to tell stories that bind the tribe together, not to tell the truth or prepare students for life in the modern world.
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As noted three days ago, issues in American politics remain remarkably consistent over the years and decades. There’s always the same deep motivation of conservatives: resentment by whites of everyone else. (Why is this, ultimately? Historical contingency.)
Washington Post, Theodore R. Johnson, 27 Jun 2024: Opinion | Meet Dr. DEI, the new personification of old right-wing grievances, subtitled “Complaints about diversity programs reflect the same old racial divisions inflamed for political gain.”
A decade ago, in civic sermons across the South, the Rev. William J. Barber II described all the ways that states made voting harder once federal protections were weakened. He pointed out that the most restrictive laws were designed with Black people in mind — a federal judge found they were targeted with “almost surgical precision.” With every detail, Barber added to the portrait he was painting, tacitly asking: Who does this remind you of? “Jim Crow did not retire,” he answered. “He went to law school. … Meet James Crow, Esquire.”
It’s a powerful allegory. Jim Crow was a minstrel character from the 19th century, when stereotypes of enslaved Black people fueled a booming entertainment industry for White audiences. In the 20th century, he entered politics, denying constitutional rights to Black Americans through the courts and legislatures, police violence and vigilantes. Today, having graduated and passed the bar, he sues to roll back civil rights gains and passes partisan legislation in gerrymandered states. The goal has always been the same: Exploit racism for political and social advantage. Barber’s argument was that racial prejudice had not been vanquished, but had evolved.
And so on.
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Questions like the one in this next piece tend to resolve, given modern understanding of these matters, into issues of human nature, and why such fears, no matter how without basis in reality, work to promote human survival at the expense of recognition of the actual world. (Better be safe than sorry.) And in the 21st century, this tendency is exacerbated by the media. Mass and social.
Vox, 27 Jun 2024: Why do Americans always think crime is going up?, subtitled “Crime is actually falling. Here are three theories on why that doesn’t seem to reassure voters.”
The three theories:
- Fearmongering “law-and-order” campaigns are a constant in American politics. (Especially by conservatives, especially by Trump. But it goes back to Nixon and Bush, too.)
- Media coverage of crime often distorts reality. (A perennial theme. On local TV: “If it bleeds, it leads.”) One reason to watch less sensationalist (TV) news, without at least understanding the motivations behind what they highlight.)
- When crime is sensationalized, Americans can’t look away. (The media gives outsized weight to crime, especially when there’s any kind of video they can show on TV.)
Concluding:
But whatever candidates will say about combating crime, one thing is clear: Crime isn’t actually getting worse – even if the majority of Americans think it is.
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Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta, 9 Jul 2024: 14 Christians go on trial in Australia after “faith-healing” death of 8-year-old girl, subtitled “Elizabeth Struhs’ own parents denied her life-saving insulin, believing God would cure her. Then she died.”
So many things one could say about this. I’ll defer.
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Little things change everyday, and they accumulate over the years, until the reality we experience today is utterly unlike that of 50 years ago. Sometimes we don’t notice, at the time.
The Atlantic, Zoë Schlanger, 8 Jul 2024: The Climate Is Falling Apart. Prepare for the Push Alerts., subtitled “In our era of extreme weather, this is how we’ll watch the world change.”
And
The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik, 6 Jul 2024: The Knotty Death of the Necktie, subtitled “The pandemic may have brought an end to a flourishing history.”
And
Slate, Teresa Carr, 9 Jul 2024: We’re in a New Era of Survey Science, subtitled “It’s very difficult to get anyone to answer a phone call—and that’s skewing data on everything from chocolate milk to antisemitism.”
I for one never answer my phone (my iPhone; don’t have a land line) unless I recognize the number. When I don’t, I let the call go to voicemail.
