Between the general cold, gray raininess, cramming for midterms and the contentious Student Government season, this week has been a real bitch. We’re glad it’s finally coming to an end, which means it’s time for this week’s
Darts & Laurels
Let’s start with the Oklahoma Legislature, specifically the Oklahoma House Common Education Committee, which is pushing a bill that would revoke funding for Advanced Placement U.S. history classes in the state. Doing so would ban the teaching of AP U.S. history in Oklahoma schools.
What could possibly warrant such a measure? According to the bill’s author, Republican state Rep. Dan Fisher, these AP courses only educate students on “what is bad about America.” In other words, Fisher and his cohorts can’t stomach the thought of students learning a version of American history that isn’t coated in a star-spangled layer of American exceptionalism.
While we think America is a wonderful place, we’re aware that some messed-up stuff has happened here. Teaching those things in schools simply isn’t cause to go up in arms. It’s akin to only teaching creationism in science classes — leaving out everything but V-J Day and George Washington’s cherry tree is ludicrous. So here’s a so-much-for-small-government DART to the Republicans in Oklahoma’s House who think history is something they should censor.
If there’s anything that can be said about attorney and journalist Geraldo Rivera, it’s that he means well but isn’t always on point with what he says. Example: On Tuesday, Rivera was a guest on Huffpost Live, and — perhaps for the first time in the program’s history — something noteworthy happened.
Rivera said that “Hip-hop has done more damage to black and brown people than racism in the last 10 years,” going on to say the genre is culturally destructive because it encourages people to dress in ways that are outside the mainstream. He said this keeps minorities trapped in entry-level jobs. It seems like Rivera took the most obvious — and in his mind, obnoxious — parts of a culture and used them to explain its problems.
Historically, the idea that everybody loved black people and all things were dandy until people started sagging their pants doesn’t hold up. Maybe there’s a sliver of truth in his statement, but declaring a musical genre to be more destructive than racism is an incredibly shallow observation. Here’s a dive-a-bit-deeper-into-the-issues DART to Geraldo Rivera.
In other news, a bill passed through a Florida House subcommittee that would allow concealed firearms to be carried on college campuses. It’s one of many similar bills set to pass in state legislatures around the country. We’ve already expressed our feelings about this issue — we’re opposed — but what upsets us even more is that the sexual assault crisis is being used to justify the bill. In the words of a Nevada Assemblywoman:
“If these young, hot little girls on campus have a firearm, I wonder how many men will want to assault them.” Leaving the ridiculousness and condescension of her statement aside, we’ll respond by saying the sexual assault problem doesn’t stem from a lack of guns. Here’s a don’t-use-sexual-assault-to-justify-your-warped-gun-obsessed-agenda DART to these representatives.
That wraps it up for this week, folks.
[A version of this story ran on page 6 on 2/20/2015]
