Letter: "Ashamed I need to explain Critical Race Theory"
NH Union Leader, April 23, 2021
To the Editor:
It is with great indignation that I write to you about HB 544, titled “An Act Relative to the Propagation of Divisive Concepts.” I am ashamed that I need to explain the significance Critical Race Theory and how it relates to education in America’s school system. As you well know, the United States has a racist past that many Americans refuse to acknowledge (e.g., slavery, Japanese internment camps during World War II, genocide of indigenous peoples, etc.). It continues to be racist with such an arbitrary and unnecessary bill in the New Hampshire legislature.
It is not only the choices people make that define us, but how we act on those choices of how to treat others as human beings, and not three-fifths of a person.
By definition, Critical Race Theory seeks to understand and critically examine the law as it intersects with issues of race; it also challenges neoliberal ways of approaching racial justice. By no means does Critical Race Theory in any way shape or determine that any single person is inherently racist based on his or her own race.
I find it ironic that a predominantly White state and legislature seeks to undermine the efforts and progress made by fellow humans, especially Black and brown people, in advocating for racial justice. I have just one question for anyone who decides to read this letter: Do you think any legislators included anyone belonging to a racial/ethnic minority while drafting this bill? Please do not support this bill.
Emily Duszlak, Moultonborough, New Hampshire
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May 26, 2021
Most of the Founding Fathers owned slaves, yet they fought the British Empire in the name of classical Liberty. To take your statement about the Emancipation Proclamation not ending slavery in the U.S., I would like to state that the Founding Fathers did not end the spirit of British hegemony over their American Colonies because the Founding Fathers kept hegemonic power over their slaves. My point is that if one truly understands history instead of propaganda, he or she will see the absurdities and double standards throughout the centuries. Human behavior and human nature are the only truths in understanding history. We the People are ALL FLAWED! But that is what makes us human - and history what it really is instead of Mount Rushmore and the Washington Monument.
- Jonathan Melle
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June 23, 2021
Our country was founded by so-called religious white settlers from Europe committing genocide to the tune of around 50 million native American Indigenous Peoples and stealing their land and cultures for over three centuries. The Founding Fathers mostly owned Slaves, but fought the British Empire in the Revolutionary War in the name of classical Liberty. The word Capitalism is nowhere to be found in ALL of the written documents by the mostly slave holding Founding Fathers. When the U.S. Constitution was written and ratified by the states, nearly all of the industry was agricultural. In the 19th Century, the U.S.A. went through the Industrial Revolution where millions of U.S. Citizens and immigrants were exploited to create the 20th Century capitalist society we live in today. During the U.S. Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln wanted to free the Slaves and then send all of the black people back to Africa by force. Lincoln was assassinated before he could forcefully deport the former slaves and free black people back to Africa. U.S. History forgets that Abe Lincoln was really a racist who wanted a white supremacist America. After the Civil War, the U.S.A. entered the Gilded Age where Oligarchs controlled nearly all of the money in the U.S. economy. Blacks and other minorities endured second class citizenship under racist Jim Crow law and segregation. The U.S. Government and the states oversaw racist eugenics laws that were designed to decrease and eliminate black and disabled people from society. The U.S. Government in the 1920s passed racist immigration laws that targeted Jewish People and Italian People from immigrating to America. In the 1920s, Adolf Hitler published books where he praised the U.S. Government for passing laws that discriminated against Jews, Blacks, other minorities, and the disabled. It wasn't until President Harry Truman that the U.S. Armed Forces were desegregated. Post World War 2, the "white flight" out of cities into the suburbs saw redlining and some communities did not allow black people to buy homes in their suburbs. It wasn't until the mid-1960s when the U.S. Government passed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts to end Jim Crow and treat black people as equals under federal law. After black people had equal rights in the mid-1960s, the federal government stopped investing in the working class and underclass. Instead, big business and big government implemented class warfare or structural conflict and violence against all of the American People who weren't wealthy - thereby killing the American Dream of Social Mobility to rise up from poverty and into the middle class. In the 1970s through today (2021), the gap between rich and poor is now the largest in 100 years. The only two groups who grow in the U.S. economy or financial system are the dynastic billionaire families who run Wall Street and the U.S.A.'s huge underclass. There have been many recent academic books that explain that the U.S.A. is more classist today than it was 100 years ago. The U.S.A. used to criticize foreign countries such as the United Kingdom and India for its rigid class system, but now in 2021, the U.S.A. is more classist than both the U.K. and India. In 2021, the U.S.A. is in a K-shaped economic recovery for Wall Street, but an economic recession for Main Street. Big Business and Big Government - the corporate elite and the ruling elite - are doing better than ever, while the American People are experiencing a distressed economy that causes them only economic pain and financial loss. In the Swamp, K Street corporate lobbyist firms spend millions and billions of dollars buying off Members of U.S. Congress to give their well heeled big business clients trillions of public dollars and tax breaks. President Biden and his Biden "Crime" Family are all very wealthy thanks to suspect Hunter Biden's alleged money laundering business schemes with adversarial foreign countries such as China, Russia and Ukraine. Let us all not forget that U.S. Government is in the business of war and arm sales. The U.S.A.'s number one non-farm export are military weapons to foreign governments. Since the end of World War 2, the U.S. Government, military, and the like, has killed millions upon millions of foreign Peoples in endless wars to make Wall Street trillions upon trillions of dollars in money. The U.S. Government still controls 85 to 90 percent of Iraq's second largest oil fields (next to Saudi Arabia) in the world by military force. The U.S.A. is the second largest polluter of global warming greenhouse gases in the world; China is the largest. When one puts China and the U.S.A. together, the two countries alone account for nearly 50 percent of the world's global warming pollution. In 2008, both the Democrat and Republican Parties in the Swamp gave Wall Street trillions of dollars in bailouts after Wall Street nearly destroyed the U.S. economy; while foreign banks who do business on Wall Street received hundreds of billions in federal bailout dollars. Big business was rewarded by the Swamp for bringing the U.S. economy to its knees in 2008! To be clear, the Swamp continually mortgages our country's future to redistribute wealth to the top one percent or Wall Street year after year - "the system is rigged", as U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren likes to say. In closing, the U.S. Government is all about the Almighty Dollar instead of their propaganda about democracy and rule by law that they push on the American People and the world. I wish I could write that the Founding Fathers didn't own Slaves, Abe Lincoln wasn't a racist, the 20th Century was fair to all Americans, and millions upon millions of foreign Peoples weren't killed by our for profit war machine, and the 21st Century wasn't K-shaped in the form of record economic inequality, but I would be lying.
- Jonathan Melle
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