A courageous Texas mom speaks out against a history textbook that lied about the reality of slavery
One wondered if Texas was going to be the catalyst for the complete revisionist history of slavery. Roni Dean-Burren (FB aka Rusty Styles), started the counter attack that counted, a taxpaying parent who would not allow her state to lie to her child.
Ms. Dean-Burren, posted a video on Facebook detailing the lies in the textbook which implied that the slave trade was but the immigration of blacks to America as agricultural workers. She explains in the video above.
It started when she posted an image that her son sent her from his history book, World Geography published by McGraw Hill. It claimed that black people came to America as workers. She pointed out the list of academics, PhDs, and the Texas advisory board that signed off on the book. In other words, academics signed off on a lie. She then went on to read the section that was rather problematic, “Patterns of Immigration.” That section implied the slave trade was tantamount to bringing immigrant workers to the South as opposed to the gruesome cruelty it really was, the enslavement, family seperating & destructing, beating, lynching, and mutilating of other humans.
Ms. Dean-Burren’s video has received over 1.245 million views at the time this blog post was posted. Most importantly her video was the catalyst for the following response from the publisher.
McGraw-Hill Education
October 2 at 5:49pmThis week, we became aware of a concern regarding a caption reference to slavery on a map in one of our world geography programs. This program addresses slavery in the world in several lessons and meets the learning objectives of the course. However, we conducted a close review of the content and agree that our language in that caption did not adequately convey that Africans were both forced into migration and to labor against their will as slaves.
We believe we can do better. To communicate these facts more clearly, we will update this caption to describe the arrival of African slaves in the U.S. as a forced migration and emphasize that their work was done as slave labor. These changes will be reflected in the digital version of the program immediately and will be included in the program’s next print run.
McGraw-Hill Education is committed to developing the highest quality educational materials and upholding the academic integrity of our products. We value the insight the public brings to discussions of our content.
This story is deeper however. Those that follow politics knew the revisionist history was coming. It was known that the genesis would be Texas given its buying power and control of a large portion of the textbook market.
Back in July 2015 the Washington Post gave notice that the new revisionist textbooks would be unleashed on Texas students.
Five million public school students in Texas will begin using new social studies textbooks this fall based on state academic standards that barely address racial segregation. The state’s guidelines for teaching American history also do not mention the Ku Klux Klan or Jim Crow laws.
And when it comes to the Civil War, children are supposed to learn that the conflict was caused by “sectionalism, states’ rights and slavery” — written deliberately in that order to telegraph slavery’s secondary role in driving the conflict, according to some members of the state board of education.
Back in 2010 the Texas Tribune reported about former U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige admonishing State Board of Education. The following passage is probative.
In response to barrage of criticism, locally and nationally, board social conservatives have repeated said they merely want to “balance” the curriculum, which they say had been left-leaning. To Paige, that’s the wrong answer to the wrong question: “There’s been a lot of discussion of fairness. History it is what is it, whether it’s fair or unfair.”
Very little attention is generally paid to meetings by education boards and other local and statewide governmental entities. Yet they have a very large impact on us all. Those textbooks should not have made it into print. The textbook teaches a revisionist history, a lie.
Kudos must be given to Roni Dean-Burren for exposing this fraud on all Texas students. When Americans decide to show the power of conviction, resolve, and fortitude for taking control of their city, their county, their state, and ultimately their country, change can and will happen. Americans must expose the many frauds by secret government and greedy corporations. They must pre-act and react to force change.
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