I've heard this quite a lot recently and agree that there is a fair amount of the organization of US Law Enforcement that does come from slave patrols but the idea of "Police" long pre-exists chattel slavery as practiced in the US. Every civilization has had some sort of law enforcement. This is one of those areas where I think the arguments of systemic racism as much as illuminating history can distort it too.
Ok i can agree with you on that .My whole point about this issue is why not teach the truth about American history for decades they have been teach what was assumed was the truth now that it's really out their now is the time to correct the mistakes of the past so that it will not be repeated.
Police have existed, but I thought not as an organized large force. It was usually a sheriff that could gather a posse. Organized large forces came about to catch fugitive slaves, or so I thought. And then interstate automotive theft, insurance companies, and prohibition brought about the rise of the FBI and the federal government getting involved in policing.
In ancient Rome the Cohortes Urbanae served as police and were apart from the regular military. In ancient Egypt there were also law enforcement officers that protected markets and tombs and are depicted in tomb art making arrests. Modern US police does trace back to slave patrols but it also has been heavily influenced by the British Constabulary and the start of modern Police departments were in the UK which the US has copied.
No, this is made up propaganda. Policing has been in existence in some form for thousands of years, generally as some sort of guard or watch. As long as there have been laws, there has been some form of law enforcement, generally either as part of the military or as a civic responsibility (like firefighting before professional fire departments were created). The first modern professional police department was in London at Scotland Yard. The first modern professional police department in the United States was in Boston, followed by New York. Policing did not originate from slave patrols. Some of the members of slave patrols undoubtedly became police officers, but that would be expected. They were enforcing the law as slave patrols, they kept enforcing the new laws after slavery was abolished. The fact that brown suspects are also not treated the same blows up the argument. There is no connection between Latin suspects and slavery in the 1800s US.
Is it CRT to teach about red lining? Rosa Parks? Unabashedly calling Jackie Robinson the n word from MLB stadiums? The Tuskegee experiment?
The number one priority of government is protecting it's people from outsiders and then from each other.
Yes the truth should be taught but that should also mean recognizing that the 'truth' isn't just the opposite of what had been prevailing opinion. The danger I see sometime is that in the rush to "correct" historical teaching a distorted view also get's taught.
No i have to disagree with you on the distorted view point if history is taught the was it should have been taught with a open mind maybe a lot of the current issue wouldn't been present now.
Not doubting the historical importance of Columbus' voyages. He changed the world. But they start teaching about Columbus before kids have the maturity to understand the implications. So when I was in elementary school (ages ago), they instead just used that time in social sciences to build a mythology of historic heroes -- Columbus for sailing the ocean blue, Puritans for seeking freedom, Paul Revere for riding a horse, John Hancock for his defiantly large signature, George Washington for cutting down a cherry tree and not have the sense to lie about it, Davy Crockett for wearing a dumb hat while getting killed at the Alamo, Martin Luther King for the I Have a Dream speech, Rosa Parks for sitting in the front of a bus. Maybe it's good just to introduce kids to the names, but we never got the necessary contextualization in my elementary school to really understand why these things were significant and how they changed the world. The focus instead was on holding up great men for admiration. I agree that today's focus on what a terrible person Columbus was is probably an over-correction. We don't need villains in history any more than we need heroes. Especially in elementary school, all it would do is turn him into a Benedict Arnold figure. Whether hero or villain, teaching history this way is just myth building and not helping kids to understand why things happened the way they did. Maybe elementary school is too young to be teaching this stuff at all.
Consider the current debate we're having. While every knows that slavery happened and was a major factor in US history I agree that the extent of how much it was a major factor wasn't taught and for many of us we grew up with a rather simplistic view of the role that slavery played in US history. The problem though is addressing that by teaching that the primary force in US history is slavery and then reducing US history down only how it related to slavery and those descended from slaves. That is important but US history it is a distortion of history to view everything in US history through the lens of slavery.
Isn't that covered ad nauseum through hundreds of different ways? I learned those things in Texas public schools decades before anyone had even imagined such a thing as CRT.
I went to school in both Tennessee and Texas, and I can tell you that slavery was taught...a lot...all the time...every year... Slavery bad North won and were the good guys Abraham Lincoln awesome Jefferson Davis bad guy 3/5s compromise Reconstruction It was taught as a major factor certainly. It just doesn't need to be taught as the ONLY factor. That's disingenuous.
That's the problem. Vocal Trump Republicans are glomming onto anything taught as an injustice to blacks and calling it CRT
I went through the FBISD system. The first time I learned about Redlining was in college. And I even took AP US history in 12 grade. Can you be more specific. Did they really reach you Redlining and it's effects to modern wealth distribution between races in your k-12 district you attended?
As long as the teacher doesn't point at my 5 year old daughter and blame HER for it, I'm cool with it. She should know history so we don't repeat it, but she has nothing to feel guilty about.
Okay so why come up with absurd hypotheticals? Like if you can only find a couple of these type of incidents out of thousands of public schools, why make it into a systemic issue as portrayed by right wing media?
But nobody is doing that in the broad curriculum. What has actually happened is that perspectives that argue slavery is ONE of the dominant forces in US history (which is not a distortion at all) are being included along with the more traditional perspectives (which often credit broadly movements like the Enlightenment and the Reformation). This is another example of running with the narrative set by the same people who would claim that (1) slaves were better off because they were brought to America instead of remaining in Africa, or (2) there are no lingering effects of racism since the MLK gave his "I Had A Dream" speech because everyone in the 1960s loved MLK.
There is not one curriculum in the US that advocates for this. Not one. There have always been rogue teachers but even then, I can assure you there are far, far more examples of teachers perpetuating myths like "The War of Northern Aggression" or "the US is a Christian nation" than there are teachers blaming their white students for slavery.
