Anyone who actually possesses the ability to think critically can see that all of this Republican anti-Critical Race Theory nonsense amounts to nothing more than a propaganda campaign to promote jingoism, protect white people’s feelings and obfuscate any and all references to slavery and racism in the telling of American history.
What conservatives want is for America to be viewed as flawless, and nothing demonstrates this as perfectly as a recent tweet by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in which the ex-Trump stump declared that it is “dangerous” to teach that the founding of our nation was “somehow flawed.”
“If we teach that the founding of the United States of America was somehow flawed. It was corrupt. It was racist. That’s really dangerous. It strikes at the very foundations of our country,” Pompeo tweeted Monday.
It’s the perfect tweet, really, because it reminds us what conservatives who have gotten their tighty red-blue-and-whiteys all in a bunch over the idea of CRT being taught to students really want—they want to pretend.
Conservatives want us to pretend it isn’t true that at least 34 of the 47 men depicted in the famous Declaration of Independence painting were slave owners. They’d like us all to play a nationally observed game of make-believe where eight of America’s first 12 presidents weren’t owners and forced laborers of human beings. Right-wingers like former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany are out here making loud and wrong claims that “all of our main Founding Fathers were against slavery” while the truth is that the Founding Fathers’ big three, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, all owned more than 100 enslaved people—Jefferson alone owned more than 600.
Seriously, what the fuck difference does it make that some of the founders “recognized the evils” of slavery if they continued to participate and profit from the institution?
Hell, let’s take a look at this tweet from one of the few people who responded to Pompeo’s tweet in defense of his call for historical delusion.
“We had a civil war to end slavery. We had a civil-rights movement to end Jim Crow. Those aren’t flaws. They’re just facts,” tweeted some random white man who’s pretending to know history when he doesn’t even know that “civil rights” isn’t hyphenated.
Imagine typing this out without realizing that the Civil War wouldn’t have been necessary if not for the flaw of slavery, and the existence of Jim Crow is what’s cited as the flaw, not the movement that ended it.
Pompeo knows that the founding of this country is flawed. Last year, he made a big, white tearsy-ass speech denouncing Nikole Hannah-Jones’ work The 1619 Project where he said, “They want you to believe America’s institutions continue to reflect the country’s acceptance of slavery at our founding.”
So which is it, Pompeo? Was the nation’s founding flawless, or was there an “acceptance of slavery at our founding?” Or are you saying the founding of this totally not racist country was flawless in spite of the acceptance of chattel slavery? Are you pro-negroes as property, or nah?
Anyway, the fine folks on Twitter had a field day going in on Pompeo’s pompous plea for pretending.
Fine, you don’t want to teach history correctly? How about math? Let’s start with fractions.
Also, if the nation’s founding was so flawless, what’s with all of those amendment thingies that needed to be added to the Constitution?
Conservatives want desperately for everyone to be shielded from the reality that their beloved “shining city on the hill” is really a dim plot of stolen land in a pit of racism, genocide and white nationalism, but history is what it is, and ours is flawed AF.