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ERIC FONER looks at the changes in the social studies curriculum approved by the Texas Board of Ed – and what the new standards tell us about conservatives’ vision of American history. Their favorite topics: the Confederacy, the military, and religion; topics they cut include slavery, labor, and feminism. WATCH Eric on “The Colbert Report” on Comedy Central Tuesday night HERE; READ the Texas curriculum changes HERE.
Also: Columnist HAROLD MEYERSON says “the road to America’s economic recovery starts in LA”: with a sales tax increase passed in November 2008 by L.A. County’s voters to construct new rail and bus lines — a major environmental and stimulus program that won’t add to the federal deficit. He wrote about it in his column for for the Washington Post op-ed page.
And historian IRA BERLIN analyzes four epic migrations of African-Americans: the slave trade; then the relocation of a million slaves to the interior of the antebellum South; then the move by six million blacks to northern cities a century later; and since the late 1960s, the arrival of black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean.
Ira teaches at the University of Maryland; his new book is The Making of African America: The Four Great Migrations.
