Requiring The Teaching Of Victimology

Reader Fred Ray sends another one I missed in the WaPo. (Actually, this one may not have yet appeared in the print edition, but I don’t have to wait till the last minute to miss something.)

New York state has created an Amistad Commission (named after the commandeered slave ship) to ensure that the “‘physical and psychological terrorism’ against Africans in the slave trade is being adequately taught in schools.”

Other states have similar commissions, often with emphasis on local victims.

Illinois also created an Amistad commission this year and added lessons on the Holocaust, while New Mexico’s legislature required Indian education lessons be bolstered in kindergarten through sixth grade.

In 2001, New Jersey created an Amistad commission and the Commission on Italian and Americans of Italian Heritage Culture and Education to advise policy makers.

California created Cesar Chavez Day in 2000 and directed schools to include lessons about the farm labor activist. That same year, Rhode Island directed schools to teach about genocide and human rights violations including the slave trade, the Irish potato famine, the Armenian genocide of the early 1900s, the Holocaust and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime.

Nobody here but us victims….

Say What? (13)

  1. John S Bolton September 29, 2005 at 2:56 am | | Reply

    There’s no way officials could be so imaginative and yet essentially uniform in their promotion of racial hatred, especially of minorities against the majority, unless they hope to gain power through intercommunal conflict.

  2. Gyp September 29, 2005 at 4:59 am | | Reply

    All this is is indoctrination. As if we don’t get enough of the “white men are bad” in schools already.

    Even my history class now, which is supposed to be all about White people (AP European History) has that slant. You really do get tired of it after a while.

  3. nbody important September 29, 2005 at 10:27 am | | Reply

    White men are so bad, that when they don’t have people of color to oppress they do it to each other (European History 101).

    Since my origins trace to the British Isles here’s my tale of woe:

    Original neolithic inhabitants, the builders of Stonehenge, overwhelmed and annihilated by first wave of Celtic invasion (Q-Celts) who were overwhelmed and pushed to the fringes by the next wave of Celts (P-Celts) who were invaded and subjugated by the Romans whose decendents where overwhelmed and subjugated by the invading Saxons who were overwhelmed and subjugated by the depradations and eventual invasion by the Danes and Norwegians whose descendants were invaded, conquered and subjugated by the Normans.

  4. Stephen September 29, 2005 at 1:34 pm | | Reply

    Rhode Island teaches about the Irish potatoe famine.

    Yeah! Somewhere in this world I’m officially oppressed.

    What a relief!

    nobody important, you’d better stop making insensitive comments about me.

    Everybody, stop victimizing me right now!

  5. nobody important September 29, 2005 at 1:40 pm | | Reply

    Stephen,

    I don’t have an insensitive bone in my body!

  6. Rhymes With Right September 30, 2005 at 6:04 am | | Reply

    As i recall from my days in a multicultural education class, Illinois already has requirements in state law that require that schools cover the history of so many different ethnic groups and other special interests that devoting a special day exclusively to each would prevent the covering of the core curriculum at any point prior to Christmans break.

  7. Gyp September 30, 2005 at 6:32 am | | Reply

    Now that I think about it, it isn’t just white people who oppress everybody, even themselves. Black tribes in Africa warred like crazy; some Native American tribes were unbeliveably bloodthirsty; and what about cannibals in Asia, and human sacrifice in Polynesia?

    Humans–ALL humans–have a history of conquering and oppressing, as well as being conquered and being oppressed.

    But they don’t tell you that sort of thing in school. Pity.

  8. Cobra September 30, 2005 at 4:25 pm | | Reply

    Funny, I never really had to read a history book to witness the victimization of non-whites in America.

    Walking down the street provided plenty of that information for me.

    –Cobra

  9. TJ Jackson October 1, 2005 at 2:15 am | | Reply

    Was that in Harlem or Bedford Sty Cobra?

  10. Cobra October 1, 2005 at 12:17 pm | | Reply

    Clark, New Jersey, actually.

    http://www.city-data.com/city/Clark-New-Jersey.html

    –Cobra

  11. Stephen October 1, 2005 at 5:51 pm | | Reply

    Well, Cobra, in Sheldon, Illinois, when I was a young man, my counsin Robert died of heart disease contracted from living through an Illinois winter in an unheated shack.

    That chip on your shoulder must keep you lopsided all the time.

  12. David Nieporent October 2, 2005 at 1:54 am | | Reply

    Small world, Cobra. My wife grew up in Clark.

  13. Cobra October 3, 2005 at 12:37 am | | Reply

    David,

    It is a small world, indeed. I grew up in Colonia, not too far off of Lake Avenue.

    White Diamond on Central Ave. is still a late night haunt worth visiting, as long as the Clark Police aren’t in the vicinity.

    –Cobra

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