Mediaboss Marketing

The Advanced Placement (AP) Program, run by the non-profit organizationThe College Board, has issued itsfinal 20242025school year guidelines. The AP African American Studies course has been hotly debated since Florida Governor. and fading candidate for the Republican nominee for President injected himself and decided the previous version would not be taught in Florida because it didnt align with his desires.

In the final version, the AP course makes the teaching of the Black Lives Matter movement optional. At the same time, mandatory learning includes NFL players taking a knee on the sidelines during the National Anthem.Which of these two has had the most impact on American history?The issue of reparations has also been made optional.Both Black Lives Matter and reparations were initially considered Essential Knowledge by the College Board but became optional after pressure from DeSantis and other politicians.

The State of Florida had previously issued its Social Studies Guidelines, including Black History. To its credit, theFlorida guidelinesare surprisingly comprehensive, covering a wide range of topics and individuals yet promoting a theme that makes white people look better and highlighting the activities of white abolitionists, who are the storys heroes.My biggest objection was the repeated reference to natural reproduction, which explains away the fantastic increase in the number of domestic-bred enslaved people instead of properly attributing it to forced breeding and rape.

The public debate between DeSantis and The College Board seemed to presume that the AP Program was proposing a complete and accurate version of Black History while DeSantis wished to gut the program. The new AP version is as disingenuous as was Florida when discussing whatsome historiansrefer to as natural increase and what Florida calls natural reproduction. Heres the only mention of this in the AP guidelines.

Even after the 1808 ban against importing enslaved Africans, the number of enslaved Africans in the United States increased steadily throughout the nineteenth century as children of enslaved people were born into enslavement themselves, such that 4 million Africans remained enslaved in the United States about 50 percent of all enslaved people in the Americas by the time of the Emancipation Proclamation.

The AP program mentions the word rape twice, whereas Florida doesnt mention rape at all. The AP says that some slave women were raped during the Mid-Atlantic Passage and that there were no laws against rape of enslaved women in the country.

Aboard slave ships, Africans were humiliated, beaten, tortured, and raped, and they suffered from widespread disease and malnourishment. About 15 percent of captive Africans perished during the Middle Passage.

Laws against rape did not apply to enslaved African American women.

What both Florida and The College Board are unwilling to say out loud is that not only was a significant foundation of America built on the backs of enslaved people.Americas labor force was increased by forced breeding and rape.Thomas Jefferson ended the International Slave Trade in 1807 as a protectionist measure to increase the value of domestic-bred slaves. Jefferson wrote George Washington explaining that a Black woman having a child every two years was of greater value than any field hand and would increase profits by 4%.

Ill be reviewing the entire 294-page AP Guidelines to see what else they say (and omit) about Black history. Assuming they got it right might have given them too much credit.

This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

***

All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.

A $50 annual membership gives you an all access pass. You can be a part of every call, group, class and community. A $25 annual membership gives you access to one class, one Social Interest group and our online communities. A $12 annual membership gives you access to our Friday calls with the publisher, our online community.

Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.

Photo credit: iStock.com

Continue reading here:
AP Black History Program Makes Discussing Black Lives Matter Optional and Won't Mention Rape - The Good Men Project

Artists and volunteers work on a mural that reads Black Lives Matter on Hamilton Avenue in front of Palo Alto City Hall on June 30, 2020. Each artist was assigned one letter in the mural to paint in their own style. Photo by Magali Gauthier.

Seeking to avoid a summer trial, Palo Alto is asking the courts for a quick ruling on a lawsuit from a group of police officers who claim they were offended by a Black Lives Matter mural that 16 artists painted in front of City Hall in June 2020.

The citys attorney, Suzanne Solomon from the firm Liebert Cassidy Whitmore, filed a motion on Feb. 28 requesting that the Santa Clara County Superior Court issue a summary judgment in May, a ruling that would obviate the need for a two-week trial that is currently scheduled for June 10.

She has asked the court to schedule a hearing on the request on May 28. If the court opts to move ahead with the trial, Solomon has asked that the trial be postponed until June 28 to comply with a 30-day requirement for summary judgments.

The City Council is scheduled to discuss the latest developments in the case in a March 11 closed session.

The six officers Eric Figueroa, Michael Foley, Robert Parham, Julie Tannock, Christopher Moore and David Ferreira filed their lawsuit in July 2021, about a year after the city commissioned artists to paint the mural along Hamilton Avenue, between Ramona and Bryant Streets.

Each of the 16 artists (or, in some cases, artist teams) was commissioned to paint a single letter of BLACK LIVES MATTER. The city removed the mural in the first week of November 2020 with the goal of eventually creating a more permanent art installation.

The mural was part of the citys effort to address nationwide calls for social justice in after George Floyd was murdered by a Minnesota police officer on May 25, 2020. While the mural was only up for about four months, the litigation stemming from the artwork has been winding its way through the legal system for three years. The plaintiffs have maintained that the mural represented a form of harassment. They specifically objected to two images, which are contained in the letters E and R of MATTER.

The E featured Assata Shakur, a civil rights activist and member of the Black Liberation Army who became a fugitive after she was convicted in 1977 of killing a New Jersey state trooper. The R included an image of a black panther, an emblem of the Black Panther Party. In their lawsuit, the police officers claimed the image alludes to the New Black Panther, an antisemitic organization that has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and that has been disavowed by the original Black Panthers.

In March 2022, the Santa Clara County Superior Court rejected an argument from the officers that the citys failure to immediately remove the images constituted workplace discrimination. Judge Socrates Manoukian also found no evidence that the city had engaged in discriminatory conduct or that its failure to remove the mural had anything to do with the officers race, ethnicity or some other protected classification.

But in July of that year, Manoukian rejected the citys position that the officers claim does not state facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action and allowed the case to move forward.

It is not difficult for this court to conclude that by allowing the mural to be posted in its current location, a reasonable jury could conclude that the behavior by the City was outrageous because it abused its relationship with its valuable employees, should have suspected that the plaintiffs were susceptible to injuries through mental distress; or that the city acted intentionally or unreasonably with the recognition that the act would be likely to result in illness through mental distress, Manoukian wrote in the July 5, 2022, ruling.

The citys latest filing seeks to expedite the resolution of the case by requesting a summary judgment on the officers only remaining cause of action: the allegation that the citys decision to keep the mural constitutes harassment that violates the Fair Employment and Housing Act.

In making the argument, Solomon disputed the notion that the mural is objectively offensive.

No reasonable person would have considered public speech on a sidewalk during the summer of 2020, when the entire Country was focused on its history of racial injustice, to be hostility directed toward them personally because they are not African-American, Solomon wrote in her brief. In any event, they were reassured by the City Manager that the City valued their dedication and hard work, and that the City was not endorsing Ms. Shakurs past acts.

She noted that the mural posed no actual physical threat and did not urge anyone to take any action in relation to Plaintiffs due to their races. In fact, the only words in the letter E were, WE MUST LOVE EACH OTHER AND SUPPORT EACH OTHER.

Solomon argued in her new motion that the city is entitled to legislative immunity for all claims relating to the mural because the artwork was made in response to a City Council enactment. She also argued that the city could not have altered the mural without violating the artists First Amendment rights.

She dismissed as false the assertion by the officers that the panther in the R references the New Black Panther Party and argued that it in fact alludes to the original Black Panther Party, which is not a hate group. One of the artists who had painted the letter had similarly told this publication shortly after the lawsuit was filed that he was inspired by the Black Panther Party.

Solomon also took issue with the idea that the Shakur painting somehow discriminates against the officers because of their races. The officers identify as Caucasian, Filipino, Asian and Hispanic, according to the filing.

Plaintiffs attempt to recast their offense as being race-based because the police officer Ms. Shakur was convicted of killing was Caucasian, the Solomon motion states. Plaintiffs believe that the murder was race-based, but their unsupported belief does not transform the message of the letter E, which is racially neutral and urges love and support, presumably for everyone.

She also noted that while the plaintiffs see Shakur primarily as a killer, others see her as a civil rights icon. Cece Carpio, the Oakland-based artist who painted the E, explained her decision to paint Shakur in an email to the city shortly after the officers demanded that the letter be removed.She wrote that she felt it was important to represent the words and wisdom of Assata, who has been a political refugee since 1979.

Assata was a target of policing and COINTELPRO, and is still a target of the policing and the US government, Carpio wrote, referring to the surveillance program of political organizations that the FBI conducted between 1956 and 1971. They see her involvement with the Black liberation movement as a threat to the status quo. Just as they see the movement to defend Black lives as a threat to racial capitalism and white supremacy.

But some in the Police Department saw things differently. Anthony Becker, former president of the Palo Alto Police Officers Association, wrote several emails to City Manager Ed Shikada in July 2020 asking that the mural be removed. The exchanges between Becker and Shikada are included in the exhibits that Solomon had submitted as part of her request for a summary judgment.

The men and women of the PAPOA deserve better, Becker wrote. This portion of the mural is intimating (sic), threatening and promotes violence. To allow such an image to be displayed takes away from the message of the mural.

Shikada responded by noting that the art in the mural was based on a selection process managed by the citys Public Art Commission, a process designed to prevent politicians and bureaucrats from making design decisions.

This is a wise rule, Shikada wrote. As a consequence, however, we open the door to diverse perspectives like the mural. Some have called it brilliant and beautiful, while others have called it idiocy and an insult. Personally, I call it art something I perceive in my own way while understanding that others may see it differently.

More here:
City seeks to avoid trial over Black Lives Matter mural - Palo Alto Online

The NLRB has issued a decision inHome Depot USA, Inc.,holding that an employer violated the National Labor Relations Act when it discharged an employee for refusing to remove the hand-drawn letters BLM the acronym for Black Lives Matter from their work apron.

Several other employees at the same Home Depot store also displayed BLM markings on their work aprons at about the same time.

The National Labor Relations Act protects the legal right of employees to engage in concerted activities for the purpose of mutual aid or protection, regardless of whether they are represented by a union.

The Board applied existing precedent and said that the employees refusal to remove the BLM marking was concerted because it was a logical outgrowth of prior concerted employee protests about racial discrimination in their workplace and an attempt to bring those group complaints to the attention of Home Depot managers.

The employees conduct was also for mutual aid or protection because the issue of racial discrimination involved employees working conditions, the Board found.

Further, the Board said that an employers interference with its employees right to display protected insignia, such as the BLM marking, was presumptively unlawful, and that the employer had the burden of establishing special circumstances making a rule about insignias necessary to maintain production or discipline.

The Board found that Home Depot failed to establish such special circumstances in this case. Therefore, the Board held that the company broke the law when it conditioned the employees continued employment on removal of the BLM marking.

It is well-established that workers have the right to join together to improve their working conditions including by protesting racial discrimination in the workplace, said Chairman Lauren McFerran. It is equally clear that an employee who acts individually to support a group protest regarding a workplace issue remains protected under the law.

See original here:
NLRB: 'Black Lives Matter' insignia allowed New England Biz Law Update - New England Biz Law Update

Share this Article

You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license.

While many Black and white parents spoke to their children about the Black Lives Matter movement within a year of the 2020 murder of George Floyd, they used different language to explain it, according to new research.

As reported in Developmental Psychology, 84% of Black parents and 76% of white parents talked about Black Lives Matter (BLM) to their 8- to 11-year-old children. While 78% of Black parents affirmed Black lives and acknowledged systemic racism, only 35% of white parents reported similar messaging.

The study was prompted by the widespread calls in 2020 for national conversations on race that included children, as highlighted in a Sesame Street Town Hall. The researchers wanted to learn what parents were saying to their children during this sociopolitical moment of upheaval.

Parents are experiencing the stresses and us versus them divisions in society, but what are they telling their kids about this? says coauthor Andrew Meltzoff, professor of psychology at the University of Washington and co-director of the UW Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences.

The researchers collected data for the study via online surveys between November 2020 and January 2021 from more than 700 socio-economically diverse parents of children aged 8-11. Study participants were evenly divided between Black and white parents. Respondents were asked whether they had spoken to their children about BLM, and, if so, were then asked what they had told their child. Open-ended question responses were then coded and categorized by the research team.

While it is notable that many parents, including white parents, were talking with their children about Black Lives Matter, it is more important to consider what parents said, says lead author Leoandra Onnie Rogers, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University and principal director of the DICE lab.

Rogers, who did her postdoctoral fellowship with Meltzoff at the University of Washington and later became a research assistant professor before being hired at Northwestern, says the responses showed not all yes responses were substantive, and importantly, the conversational approaches varied by race.

Black parents were more likely to acknowledge inequalityshown through responses like: I talk with my son about the wrongful deaths of men and women of color at the hands of policeand affirm Black lives with messages such as: I try to remind him that he is important and worthy despite what the media tells us.

White parents who gave substantive responses were more likely to communicate very general messages about equality without pointing to existing injustices, such as: All lives matter no matter your skin color.

The research team also noted a pattern of verbatim responses copied from the internet. This type of response was mostly used by white parents14% vs. 1% of Black parentswho had answered the survey with apparent credibility but could not or did not actually report their own thoughts when talking about BLM. In fact, 27% of white parents provided uncodeable responses, which included nonsensical comments or content copied and pasted word-for-word from internet sources.

Encouraging parents to talk about race, to break the silence, is necessary but insufficient, Rogers says. The upside is these data suggest that parents are listening to the societal conversation, and the concerted effort to engage parents and families in race talk did seem to influence the overall frequency of the reported conversations. However, the depth and substance of these conversations warrants further attention.

Parents wonder when its appropriate to talk with their children about race and whats the most helpful thing to say, says Meltzoff. We looked at the strategies taken by hundreds of parents across the country. Parents can teach us a lot about how to have conversations about racenot only with children but among ourselves.

Additional coauthors are from Tulane University, Wake Forest University, and Northwestern University.

Source: Lauren Kirschman for University of Washington

See the article here:
How parents talked with kids about Black Lives Matter differed by race - Futurity: Research News

Mia Schultz, president of the Rutland Area NAACP. Photo courtesy of Mia Schultz

The Vermont Conversation with David Goodmanis a VTDigger podcast that features in-depth interviews on local and national issues with politicians, activists, artists, changemakers and citizens who are making a difference. Listen below, and subscribe onApple Podcasts,Google PodcastsorSpotifyto hear more.

When Mia Schultz became president of the Rutland branch of the NAACP in December 2020, she became one of Vermonts most visible and important racial justice advocates. The NAACP was founded in 1909 and is the oldest and largest civil rights organization in the U.S. with more than 2,200 branches.

Schultz hails from Arizona and moved to Bennington in 2016. She is the first Black woman to chair the Bennington Democratic Party and serves as one of three commissioners on Vermonts Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Among the issues that Schultz and the NAACP are tackling is overpolicing.

Vermont is not exempt from this culture, she wrote in an op-ed for the Bennington Banner. Black adults enter Vermont correctional facilities at more than seven times the rate of white adults. Compared to white drivers, Black and Latinx drivers are four times more likely to be pulled over, and nearly three times more likely to be searched. By contrast, they are half as likely to be found with contraband, which means the over-stopping and over-searching is simply because of their skin color.

What is happening to really ensure that black lives matter? Schultz asked. Are you changing laws and policies that will actually affect black lives when it comes to policing? What are you doing to really affect the lives of marginalized people in our laws and systems and legal avenues to ensure that theyre protected?

Schultz told The Vermont Conversation that she is given hope by the people who are now out there starting community conversations and their own initiatives in their towns, gathering people, having those difficult conversations.

Having an interpersonal relationship with people and being able to move them into action, that means other people are moved. That is the most profound thing, she said.

Original post:
Vermont Conversation: What is happening to really ensure that Black lives matter? - VTDigger