PHONY LIBERAL AND CONSERVATIVE MEDIA

"ANTI-RACISM"

by John Spritzler

July 21, 2023

The URL of this article for sharing it is https://www.pdrboston.org/phony-liberal-media-anti-racism

[Also please read "THE NEW LIBERAL-SPEARHEADED STRATEGY IN HEALTH CARE TO DIVIDE THE HAVE-NOTS ALONG RACE LINES, ALL IN THE NAME OF 'ANTI-RACISM'"]

Gather 'round my friends, and you shall hear the amazing story of how the liberal and conservative media turn a blind eye to the way ALL the U.S. states promote (nowadays in the name of "anti-racism," of course) racial divisiveness in their teaching about the history of slavery, while the liberal media accuses ONLY conservative states like Florida of doing this.

For my first example, I will look at this liberal People Magazine article headlined:

"Florida Middle Schoolers Will Now Be Taught That Slavery Had ‘Personal Benefit’ for Enslaved People:

New academic standards slammed as "a big step backward" will require teachers to instruct that enslaved people "developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit."

The way ALL the U.S. states--liberal and conservative alike--promote racial divisiveness in their teaching about slavery is this:

First, they teach the FACT of slavery, but never it's anti-working-class PURPOSE; they teach that it harmed blacks, but they don't teach that it ALSO harmed white working class people and that its very purpose was to keep white working class people oppressed as well as non-whites. At the same time the ruling class today tells everybody that systemic racial discrimination against non-whites BENEFITS (and in the past, benefited) white working class people, that it is a "white privilege" (the word 'privilege' means by definition a benefit.)

Second, either implicitly (with silence on the question of the purpose) or explicitly, they send the message to students that the purpose of slavery was to benefit ordinary white people. This naturally angers the white parents who think (understandably!) it is wrong to tell white children that they are essentially racist oppressors just because they are white. When white parents object to their children being taught this self-hatred, they are accused of being racists who don't want the truth about slavery to be taught.

Presto! Divide-and-rule

To foment this racial divide-and-rule, no U.S. states teach our school children what MLK, Jr. and Frederick Douglass and W. E. B. Du Bois said about systemic racial discrimination against blacks. Here's what they said:

MLK, Jr. in his 1965 Selma Alabama speech said:

"Our whole campaign in Alabama has been centered around the right to vote. In focusing the attention of the nation and the world today on the flagrant denial of the right to vote, we are exposing the very origin, the root cause, of racial segregation in the Southland. Racial segregation as a way of life did not come about as a natural result of hatred between the races immediately after the Civil War. There were no laws segregating the races then. And as the noted historian, C. Vann Woodward, in his book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, clearly points out, the segregation of the races was really a political stratagem employed by the emerging Bourbon interests in the South to keep the southern masses divided and southern labor the cheapest in the land. You see, it was a simple thing to keep the poor white masses working for near-starvation wages in the years that followed the Civil War. Why, if the poor white plantation or mill worker became dissatisfied with his low wages, the plantation or mill owner would merely threaten to fire him and hire former Negro slaves and pay him even less. Thus, the southern wage level was kept almost unbearably low.

"Toward the end of the Reconstruction era, something very significant happened. That is what was known as the Populist Movement. The leaders of this movement began awakening the poor white masses and the former Negro slaves to the fact that they were being fleeced by the emerging Bourbon interests. Not only that, but they began uniting the Negro and white masses into a voting bloc that threatened to drive the Bourbon interests from the command posts of political power in the South.

"To meet this threat, the southern aristocracy began immediately to engineer this development of a segregated society. I want you to follow me through here because this is very important to see the roots of racism and the denial of the right to vote. Through their control of mass media, they revised the doctrine of white supremacy. They saturated the thinking of the poor white masses with it, thus clouding their minds to the real issue involved in the Populist Movement. They then directed the placement on the books of the South of laws that made it a crime for Negroes and whites to come together as equals at any level. And that did it. That crippled and eventually destroyed the Populist Movement of the nineteenth century."

Here's what Frederick Douglass said in his My Bondage and My Freedom:

"The slaveholders, with a craftiness peculiar to themselves, by encouraging the enmity of the poor, laboring white man against the blacks, succeeds in making the said white man almost as much a slave as the black slave himself. The difference between the white slave, and the black slave, is this: the latter belongs to one slaveholder, and the former belongs to all the slaveholders, collectively. The white slave has taken from him, by indirection, what the black slave has taken from him directly, and without ceremony. Both are plundered, and by the same plunderers. The slave is robbed, by his master, of all his earnings, above what is required for his bare physical necessities; and the white man is robbed by the slave system, of the just results of his labor, because he is flung into open competition with a class of laborers who work without wages."

Here is what W. E. B. DuBois said in Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880:

“Most persons do not realize how far [the view that common oppression would create interracial solidarity] failed to work in the South, and it failed to work because the theory of race was supplemented by a carefully planned and slowly evolved method, which drove such a wedge between the white and black workers that there probably are not today in the world two groups of workers with practically identical interests who hate and fear each other so deeply and persistently and who are kept so far apart that neither sees anything of common interest.

“It must be remembered that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage. They were given public deference and titles of courtesy because they were white. They were admitted freely with all classes of white people to public functions, public parks, and the best schools. The police were drawn from their ranks, and the courts, dependent on their votes, treated them with such leniency as to encourage lawlessness. Their vote selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon their personal treatment and the deference shown them. White schoolhouses were the best in the community, and conspicuously placed, and they cost anywhere from twice to ten times as much per capita as the colored schools. The newspapers specialized on news that flattered the poor whites and almost utterly ignored the Negro except in crime and ridicule.” (Black Reconstruction [1935], 700-701)

But the liberal media, bless their hearts, ignore all the above. Instead they criticize the Florida curriculum on slavery as follows, in the People Magazine article:

"According to the new education guidelines, middle school teachers must now teach students about "the various duties and trades performed by slaves (e.g., agricultural work, painting, carpentry, tailoring, domestic service, blacksmithing, transportation)." A benchmark clarification listed in the standards includes the note that teachers should also instruct that enslaved people developed skills, "in some instances... for their personal benefit.""

...

"Another guideline directs teachers to instruct high schoolers about “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans” when teaching about the rebuilding of Black communities during Reconstruction. The standards list the 1920 Ocoee Massacre, in which more than 30 African Americans were killed by a White mob while attempting to vote, among the examples of "acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.""

Now, think about the absurdity of this People Magazine criticism of the Florida curriculum.

What if, instead of teaching that "enslaved people developed skills, 'in some instances... for their personal benefit'," Florida taught the opposite: that "enslaved people NEVER developed skills for their personal benefit"?

This would amount to teaching the racist lie that blacks were essentially animals who couldn't develop useful skills.

Or what if Florida, instead of teaching that there were “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans” instead taught that there were ONLY acts of violence perpetrated against, but never by, African Americans"?

This would amount to teaching the racist lie that the enslaved blacks were like sheep, who never fought back violently against their oppressors.

The liberal media is forced to resort to these absurd criticisms of the Florida curriculum because they DARE NOT make the most important criticism (that applies equally to the liberal states.)

WHAT ABOUT CONSERVATIVE FOX NEWS?

Let's take a close look at FOX NEWS's take on this. FOX published an article headlined:

Critics unleash on Kamala Harris' 'evil,' 'astonishing lie' about Florida's school curriculum on slavery:

Harris claimed Florida will now teach students 'that enslaved people benefited from slavery'

Like the liberal media, FOX completely ignores the fact that Florida, like every other U.S. state, censors the key fact about slavery, which is that its purpose (as MLK, Jr., and Frederick Douglass and W. E. B. DuBois expressed) was to destroy working class solidarity to enable the upper class to dominate and oppress ALL working class people, white as well as black and other non-whites.

FOX ignores that by censoring this key fact the result is that when schools--including the Florida schools FOX defends--teach about the existence of slavery in the past they also implicitly (by never expressing the truth about the anti-working class PURPOSE of slavery and today's systemic racial discrimination and by thus allowing the contrary mass-media promulgated view--"white privilege", i.e., white benefit from the discrimination--go unchallenged) teach that slavery and today's systemic racial discrimination benefited (now benefit) white working class people and therefore white children are evil racist oppressors just because they are white. Even when FOX attacks CRT-style teaching about slavery for telling white children they are oppressors because they are white, it never explains why that accusation is false, i.e., that white working class people did not in the past and do not today benefit from but are instead HARMED by systemic racial discrimination against non-whites.

What FOX, in its infinite wisdom, DID choose to focus on instead is the fact that Kamala Harris lied in stating that the Florida curriculum said slavery benefited the slaves (Yes, she did say this lie. Read the liberal The Guardian article promoting her lie here.).

FOX wants its audience to remain unaware that the real problem is that the U.S. ruling class (both its liberal and conservative wings) is using the teaching about slavery to foment mutual resentment between white and non-white working class people to destroy their solidarity. FOX wants its audience to think that the real problem is simply that the Democrats lie to make people think that the Republicans say slavery was good for the slaves.

As always, FOX covers up the actual class conflict by trying to make it seem as if the real conflict is simply between the Republican versus Democratic parties, and therefore one should vote for the GOP (and ignore that despite its rhetoric, the GOP--including Trump!--serves only the wealthy, not the working class.)

We now return you back to your regularly-scheduled mass media BS.