What is changing a history curriculum around the edges to make it marginally less anti-American than the average AP history course? According to author and MSNBC personality Ruth Ben-Ghiat, that shows that there is “a war, actually, on blacks.”
That came during an interview with MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart. During it, Ben-Ghiat told Capehart that Trump, DeSantis, and much of the rest of the GOP are waging a war to start “criminalizing Black people” so that white children can “feel like, you know, victims” instead of feeling “guilty.”
That came after Ben-Ghiat agreed with Nevada Democrat and Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Rep. Steven Horsford when Hosford told Capehart that there is a “ban on blackness,” an assertion with which Capehart agreed, saying that “information, books, and libraries” are being attacked.
Capehart then asked Ben-Ghiat how the supposed “book bans” play into the “authoritarian playbook you talk so often about.” Responding, Ben-Ghiat told Capehart that the GOP candidates and voters are “authoritarian.”
Continuing, Ben-Ghiat said that “there’s a war on blackness at the ballot box, disenfranchising Blacks. There’s a war actually on Blacks at their places of employment, through the suppression of diversity and inclusion initiatives. And there’s the war on blackness and education.”
That wasn’t all. Ben-Ghiat then attacked DeSantis and Florida’s educational program specifically, saying that the current GOP views on history are meant to start “erasing” black people and that DeSantis’ program is “rewriting history in ways that satisfy, you know, White people.”
Then, with more prodding from Capehart about how horrible DeSantis is, Ben-Ghiat went on to attack DeSantis for trying to criminalize both black people and other non-whites. Further, Ben-Ghiat bizarrely argued that it is Republicans, who want to remove critical race theory from school curricula, of being the ones promoting the racial tension enveloping America, rather than the critical race theory-pushing leftists.
Ben-Ghiat, speaking on that, said, “If we relate this to, to the questions of race and education, you know, it’s it’s making, creating an educational and emotional environment so whites feel that they’re under attack all the time. And criminalizing black people and non-whites in general, and non-Christian Whites, is part of this game to keep people in a state of tension.”
Ben-Ghiat then alleged that Florida’s history program is full of “propaganda,” as if a CRT-focused curriculum is anything other than pure propaganda. Ben-Ghiat said, “And, you know, the Prager curriculum that Ron DeSantis is adopting, which is not accredited, by the way, it’s a it’s a propaganda outfit. And all of these GOP, you know, education measures, they want, they say, they all have the same language, that they want to remove emotional distress like sources, things that make people feel, white people feel guilty. And and so they can feel like, you know, victims.”
Watch Ben-Ghiat discuss the GOP’s supposed attempts to start “criminalizing” black people here:
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