Music Appreciation, Friday, 1st Period

[furnaceface]

"So," Hannibal began. "There is a holiday coming up."

//Garbage holiday,// Jono muttered. //Overrated Hallmark holiday. Too commercial for its own bloody good, is what that holiday is.//

( Yes, Jono. Whatever you said. )

Lies Your Other History Teachers Told You, Friday, Feburary 9, 2018

[heroic_jawline]

"As it's Black History Month right now, it's only fitting that we talk about some of the biggest lies that still perpetuate in America," Steve said, "namely that everyone has an equal opportunity to make something of themselves."

"The American Civil War was over, the armies of the North were victorious and everyone lived happily ever after," Tony replied. "Or at least those enslaved were now free. But what did that mean? Hundreds of thousands of people in a state of limbo where no one had a plan for what to do next."

"Most of them couldn't read," Steve said. "None of them had ever been paid before, and the folks still in the South weren't exactly...thrilled...at this new world order."

Understatement if the day!

Tony nodded along with that. "And then the president of the United States is assassinated by a rebel sympathizer. One of the few people with the power or clout to do something about this... gone. Leaving a Vice President with strong southern ties to take office."

"Andrew Johnson is widely viewed as the worst possible person to have taken over at that moment in history," Steve said. "He was a rigid, dictatorial racist who refused to compromise or to accept a political reality at odds with his own ideas. Instead of forging a compromise between Radical Republicans and moderates, his actions united the opposition against him. His bullheaded opposition to the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the Fourteenth Amendment eliminated all hope of using presidential authority to help fix the massive problems left from the Civil War. Johnson's strong commitment to obstructing political and civil rights for blacks is responsible for the failure of Reconstruction to solve the race problem in the South, something that continues to haunt us."

"These laws, called Jim Crow, were designed for the sole purpose of re-enslaving the newly freed black people in all but name," Tony said. "They involved the removal of black people from the political process with poll taxes, or grandfather clauses, or literacy tests. Removal from from the chance to gain an equal education by segregating schools. Removal from the economic process by taking back any lands that had been given over to newly freed men and women and turning to the process of sharecropping to keep them in debt to wealthy white landowners. So, we have political, educational, and economic oppression."

"And then, when people struggled, the ruling class collectively threw up their hands and said, 'must be something innate,'" Steve said, looking disgusted. "Jim Crow extended into hotel bookings, restaurants, public transportation, restrooms. 'Separate but equal' was anything but."

"In a very broad sense, these laws were ended put an end to in 1964 and 1965 with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, " Tony continued. "But realistically, the institutionalized system of oppression is still being fought against to the day with voter suppression and the racial inequality of the incarceration rates here in America."

Steve nodded. "Requiring identification cards to vote, then closing all of the DMVs within a reasonable distance, requiring paperwork that older people of color tend not to have, and, like in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, gerrymander the bejeezus out of districts so that people aren't being equitably represented in Congress, the state house, or city hall. It's essential that we squarely face our own, unique, American-made problems. And Jim Crow is a huge one with lasting impact even now."

"So, today leys discuss what, if anything, we think can be done to fix this. Is it too entrenched in the system to be rooted out? Or can we still fix it without breaking the board?" Tony asked.