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![]() May 2006 Liberal Racism = Education for War
New York Regents Exam
Pushes Apologies for Imperialism MAY 17 – A scandal erupted this week over vile apologies for imperialism in the New York State Regents exam on global history and geography given last January. On Monday, the New York Daily News (15 May) published an exclusive reporting on black students and educators in Bushwick who are up in arms over exam questions asking students to read outright apologies for colonial rule and then “state two ways British imperialism would benefit Africans.”
There have been innumerable
outraged protests over the institutionalized
discrimination of high-stakes standardized testing, and racism in the
New York
schools. Here we have a blatant example of the way in which the
educational
system pushes imperialist ideology. This is not an isolated incident
but part
of an international trend. It reflects the current political climate in
the
United States and elsewhere, in which justifications for empire have
become
fashionable. This
is education for imperialist war, and
it must be fought tooth and nail. It goes hand in hand with the arrests
last
year of two Muslim high school girls who were dragged from their homes,
transported hundreds of miles to be held in immigration jails without
charges,
because some police-state officials considered the young women
“would-be
suicide bombers.” We call on the United Federation of Teachers and
all
teachers, parents and others to denounce the racist Regents exams. The readings on the
Regents,
from Frederick Lugard, an official of the British East Africa Company
who
helped colonize Uganda, talked of the colonizers’ “desire of civilized
administration,” and claimed that “Europe is in Africa for the mutual
benefit
of her own industrial classes, and of the native races in their
progress to a
higher plane.” It praised the colonial masters for “endeavouring…to
teach the
native races to conduct their own affairs with justice and humanity.”
What
racist filth!
This is nothing but the
age-old justification for the colonial conquest and rape of Africa and
Asia,
Europe’s supposed “civilizing mission,” the “White Man’s Burden,” as
colonial
apologist Rudyard Kipling put it. Brian Favors, who teaches at Bushwick
Community
School, compared the test question to “asking a Jewish child to state
two ways
the Holocaust benefited Jews.” One student was so upset with the
question that
she complained to an exam proctor; she then ran out of time and never
finished
the exam’s final essay (on the same theme). Initially
caught off-guard, the authorities have pulled together to defend the
colonialist exam. A Daily News (17 May) editorial declares, “No
offense,
history exam is fine.” How so? They argue that “Based on this
document
[the Lugard pieces] and according to this document, students
were asked
to cite several ways in which imperialism benefited Africa” (emphasis
in
original). And the exam included a selection criticizing imperialism
from
African independence leader Kwame Nkrumah. “Nowhere is there a
promulgation of
racism,” they claim. Dead
wrong. We read the exam, and the teachers scoring and rating guide.
First of
all, it’s not just a matter of a single question. There are three
lengthy
selections praising imperialism. No, this is not the White Citizens
Council,
the Nazi Party or Colonel Blimp taking over the educational system – it
is liberal
racism. The test wants students to weigh both sides of the question,
you see.
The essay is to discuss imperialism from the point of view of the
imperialist
power, and from the view of the colonized people. But from the
standpoint of
working people and the oppressed, there are no “two sides” to
imperialism. What’s
next? Are the Regents going to have readings next year from Confederate
rulers
and abolitionists and then debate the “pros and cons” of slavery? Will
they
have students read excerpts from Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the Protocols
of the Elders of Zion and then tell students to write essays on
anti-Semitism the Holocaust from the point of view of Jewish victims
and the
tsarist or Nazi perpetrators, based on their documents? You can
imagine
the uproar if anyone proposed this. But if it has to do with Africa,
and the
holocaust of slavery which slaughtered millions of black people, the
administrators who run the capitalist education system figure they can
get away
with “even-handed” racism.
Last
year there was a similar case in France. The National Assembly passed a
law
praising French colonial rule in Africa. The law of 23 February 2005
mandated
“educational programs recognizing in particular the positive role of
the French
presence overseas, notably in North Africa.” This obscene law was voted
not
only by the conservative government but also most of the “socialist”
opposition. Only months later when youths of African and North African
origin
revolted last fall against police terror in the working-class and
immigrant
suburbs was there an outcry over the apology for colonial rule. The
French example makes clear that what was behind this sudden drive to
“reevaluate”
colonialism is the capitalist rulers’ need to justify imperialist war.
The February
2005 law was passed to defend France’s dirty war of torture and
indiscriminate
bombing in Algeria, to make it a crime to “defame” the mercenary
colonial
troops who fought for the French. Now French troops are again policing
the
Ivory Coast and propping up tinpot dictators in West and Central
Africa. And
the educational system is to provide the ideological justification. In
the case of the New York Regents exam, the key is the emphatic
instruction: “Do
not use an example of imperialism from United States
history in your answer.”
The teachers’ guide explicitly says there can be no reference to the
“acquisition of the Philippines as a result of the Spanish American
War,” in
which millions of Filipinos were killed. On the other hand, imperialism
“providing
an education as a positive effect” in India would be an acceptable
answer.
So, too, would be references to the “enrichment of life (art, music)
with
introduction to other cultures,” and the “spread of Christianity to
Africa.”
But there will be no reference in school tests to Vietnam, or Iraq and
Afghanistan today. ![]()
U.S. Marines
slaughtered over 600 men, women and children at Mount Dajo (above) on
Philippines island of Jolo, March 1906. President Theodore Roosevelt congratulated General Wood on “the brilliant feat of arms.” Hundreds of thousands of Filipinos were killed in the U.S. conquest of the islands. But the New York State Board of Regents banned any mention of “an example of imperialism from United States history,” and specifically anything concerning the U.S.’ “acquisition of the Philippines,” in student essays on the subject of imperialism in January 2006 Regents exam. The answer to this blatant
apology for empire and
imperialist war will not be found in educational reform. Certainly,
class-conscious teachers should do their best to counteract the
ideological
poisoning of their students’ minds. It is necessary to fight the racist
discrimination of high-stakes standardized testing. Marxists oppose the
escalating privatization and corporate control of “public” education.
We call
to kick the
military recruiters out of the schools where they prowl the
halls
looking for cannon fodder for their imperialist war machines. We
advocate
abolition of the New York state Board of Regents and of the NYC
Department of
Education and for teacher-student-worker-parent
control of the schools. But
as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels pointed out over a century and a half
ago, in
The German Ideology (1847): “The ideas of the ruling class
are in every
epoch the ruling ideas; i.e., the class, which is the ruling material
forces of
society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.” To defeat
the
apologies for war it is necessary to defeat the imperialist war they
justify;
to sweep racist ideology into the dustbin of history it is necessary to
bring
down the imperialist system that spawns it. At
the present time, the racist offensive is directed particularly against
immigrants. As in World War II when virulent anti-Japanese racism
accompanied
the locking up of tens of thousands of people of Japanese ancestry in
concentration camps, today anti-immigrant racism accompanies the
marauding of
fascist vigilantes like the Minutemen and preparations for locking up
immigrants in concentration camps. In addition to the existing
“facilities,”
Halliburton has the contracts to build new camps for hundreds of
thousands more. The Trotskyists of the
Internationalist Group fight
for full citizenship rights for all immigrants, and for
labor to defend
immigrants against racist attacks. We call on working people
and oppressed
minorities to break with the partner parties of U.S. capitalism,
Democrats and
Republicans alike (and their shills like the Greens and Working
Families
Party), and to join the struggle to build a revolutionary
workers party.
As Karl Marx wrote in the first volume of Capital: “The
discovery of
gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment
in
mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and
looting
of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the
commercial hunting
of black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist
production.”
It will take international socialist revolution to put
an end to
the holocaust of capitalist imperialism and along with it the
despicable
ideological justification of oppression. n To contact the League for the Fourth International or its sections, send an e-mail to: internationalistgroup@msn.com |