Lawmakers attempting to rewrite Ohio’s racial history
Having solved all Ohio’s problems, the General Assembly is now trying to rewrite America’s – and Ohio’s – racial history.
No, Critical Race Theory isn’t on the table: (1) It evidently isn’t taught in Ohio’s K-12 schools. And (2) few, if any, Ohio General Assembly members can define it.
Instead, House Bills 322 and 327 are products of “fire-in-a-crowded-theater” radio yowlers and Ohio’s suspicion of factbased politics (and factbased schooling).
Among other features, House Bill 322, sponsored by Rep. Don Jones, a Republican from Harrison County’s Freeport, forbids public schools to teach that “slavery and racism are anything other than deviations from, betrayals of, or failures to live up to the authentic founding principles of the United States, which include liberty and equality,” the Legislative Service Commission reports.
Those “authentic founding principles” may not exactly resonate with African
American Ohioans: About 41 of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence had owned slaves. About 25 of the 55 delegates who wrote the U.S. Constitution were slaveowners. And the Constitution counted slaves as three-fifths of a person; that guaranteed America’s slave states extra clout in the U.S. House of Representatives. Moreover,
“of [the] first twelve presidents, the only two never to own slaves were John Adams and his son, John Quincy Adams,” Statista reports. And – oh yes – the Ohio Constitution of 1802 forbade Black Ohioans to vote.
HB 327 forbids the teaching of “divisive” concepts, in public schools. It exempts non-public schools “except,” the LSC reports, “that a nonpublic school that participates in a [state] scholarship [voucher] program is prohibited from using state [funds] to promote divisive concepts.” It’ll be interesting to see how many lawsuits that fine line will stoke.
It’s been reassuring to know that, despite everything, the Ohio Senate has exacting standards – as in, “get with the program,” for gubernatorial appointees.
State Board of Education President Laura Kohler, an appointee of Republican Gov. Mike Dewine, recently resigned because she was unlikely to win Senate confirmation.
Reason: Kohler, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, supported a State Board of Education resolution that, among other features, acknowledged that “profound disparities between Black, Indigenous and People of Color … students and their white peers exist in all parts of the Ohio education system.” That evidently didn’t sit well with the Senate, run 25-8 by Dewine’s fellow Republicans. Result: The governor, already in hot water with his party’s right wing, asked Kohler to resign rather than be unseated by the Senate GOP.
The 19-member State Board of Education is partly appointed by the governor, partly elected. Kohler required Senate OK, which wasn’t going to happen because of right-wing Republicans’ gripes about what and how schools teach. That’s a conservative perennial: Sex vs. abstinence; Darwin vs. Genesis; school prayer vs. private prayer – and now race. With ‘22’s election looming, the GOP must stoke its base. And the Senate obliged.