The commission was formed as an apparent contradiction to The New York Times’ 1619 project, a Pulitzer Prize-winning project aimed at teaching American students about slavery, which Trump, who spoke last fall, called “toxic propaganda.” has. The announcement comes just two days after the commission released a provocative report on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and a few hours before Biden will take over from Trump, whose time in office has been marked by racist remarks and actions.
In his report released on Monday, the commission claims that “the civil rights movement turned almost immediately to programs that were contrary to the lofty ideals of the founders,” and specifically criticized the policy of affirmative action, arguing that identity politics was “the opposite of King’s hope that his children would “live ‘in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Referring to the ideological divisions of today such as those experienced during the Civil War, members of the commission also focused on feminists and the widespread use of ethnic and racial identities in American life, arguing that they were built by ‘activists’. is.
“A radical women’s liberation movement once again portrayed America as a patriarchal system, claiming that every woman is a victim of oppression by men. The Black Power and black nationalist movements once again portrayed America as a white supremacist regime. Meanwhile, other activists. artificial groupings put together to further divide Americans by race, creating new categories such as ‘Asian Americans’ and ‘Spanish’ to teach Americans to think for themselves in terms of group identities and to raise different groups in politically cohesive bodies, ‘reads the report.
Trump announced he would set up the commission last fall, following a string of Black Lives Matter demonstrations across the country. He blamed the school curriculum for violence that resulted from some of the protests, saying that ‘the left riot and chaos is the direct result of decades of left indoctrination in our schools’.
Larry Arnn, the president of Hillsdale College, who drew criticism for his comments in 2013, when he said government officials visited the college to see if enough “dark people” were enrolled, was elected to chair the commission. Carol Swain, who once wrote that Islam “poses an absolute danger to us and our children”, was elected vice president.
Other Republicans have downplayed The 1619 Project and expressed similar sentiments about accepting ethnic and racial identities.
Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican in Arkansas, introduced legislation last year that would prevent schools from teaching the curriculum. And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, one day into his tenure as a taxpayer-funded Twitter account, denounced multiculturalism, saying it was “not who America is.”
“Awakening, multiculturalism, all the isms – this is not who America is. It distorts our glorious foundation and what this country is about. Our enemies ignite this division because they know they are making us weaker,” he said on Tuesday. writing. .
Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of The 1619 Project, said Pompeo’s tweet proved the project’s thesis.
“When you say that multiculturalism ‘is not who America is’ and ‘distort our glorious foundation’, you are subconsciously confirming the argument of the 1619 project: that although we were … a multiracial nation of our foundation, we did founders set up a government. of white rule. Cool, ‘she wrote
Twitter, also said that the Trump administration was trying to censor the 1619 project.
In September, Trump said the U.S. Department of Education would investigate whether California schools use The 1619 project in the public school curriculum, and he banned federal agencies from conducting racial sensitivity training in connection with “white privilege” and ” critical raste theory ‘.
CNN’s Maegan Vazquez, Jennifer Hansler, Kylie Atwood, Nicole Gaouette and Kevin Liptak contributed to this report.
.Source
Related
