Recent looting, arson and targeted violence against police wasn’t about police reform, and the assassination of police officers wasn’t about mourning or respecting George Floyd — so what’s really going on?
Less than three weeks after protecting Black Lives Matter graffiti, the Vermont Agency of Transportation has scrubbed away anti-BLM roadway messages in the same town.
“I’m very uncomfortable with printing an American flag on the ground,” Mayor Watson said. “I know it’s not a cloth flag but nonetheless with the U.S. flag code not allowing the flag to touch the ground it just really rubs me the wrong way.”
LA Times contributor Jody Rosen cited “viral posts on social media” which said the anthem is racist, then argued it is aesthetically a bad song in the article. Rosen concluded saying the message of “Lean on Me” can be a foundation for a “decent” society.
Systemic paternalism, not systemic racism, is the thread that links dissolution of the American family and the decline in effective education with the failure of poor blacks to achieve the economic progress available to every American.
This Independence Day, more than any in living memory, it is vitally important that we reflect upon that greatest of all anti-slavery documents, the Declaration of Independence. That document in turn launched the greatest abolitionist movement in human history: the United States of America.
The legacy of slavery in the United States is real, and its impact on the lives and opportunities of Black Americans persists. But the improvements we have made over the past 150 years were because of, not despite, the principles laid out in our founding documents by the likes of Jefferson and Washington.
Rioters gathered Monday in Lafayette Square before the White House where they clashed with police as they attempted to tear down a monument to former U.S. President Andrew Jackson and set up a Black House Autonomous Zone.
In the wake of George Floyd’s death by the knee of a Minneapolis police officer one month ago, activists across the nation are urging police departments to defund or even disarm. Two police departments in Vermont have responded differently to such demands.
On June 11, the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance held a webinar to discuss a bill “establish(ing) a task force to study and consider a State apology and proposal for reparations for the institution of slavery.”
In the end, politicians cannot resolve systemic problems of any type, and especially racism, by setting policy.
The latest Vermont standardized test scores are out, and the results are not good, especially for students who have been “historically marginalized.” This is nothing new. The “achievement gap” has been persistent for decades.