This Bitch: Ryan Walters

Out there in Oklahoma, the state’s far-rightwingnut superintendent of public instruction, Ryan Walters, wants the schools in his state to teach students about the Tulsa Race Massacre, as long as they don’t teach that it was about white supremacist murdering Black people for EWB … existing while Black.

If you haven’t heard about the Tulsa Race Massacre, maybe take a gander here … Tulsa Race Massacre: We Can't Fix Racism If We Don't Learn From It  … at one of the vile parts of American history.

This post isn’t about that necessarily though it is about teaching about the massacre, but it’s mostly about Ryan Walters, who took office in January, and who is, big surprise, anti-CRT [Critical Race Theory] because the right believes that if you teach white children about racism and white supremacy you’ll make them feel bad about themselves.

Here’s the deal: I’m a grown-assed man and I was never taught about the Tulsa Race Massacre, though I learned of other examples of racism in America … Slavery … Emmett Till .. Rosa Parks … church bombings … Medgar Evers … Martin Luther King … Selma … and so much more.

And yet how many of these topics aren’t taught in school, save for the obligatory hour or two spent on slavery, or a couple of classes about Civil Rights; if we fail to learn from history we’re doomed to repeat it and we are on that precipice again thanks to people like Ryan Walters who doesn’t want it taught lest white people get their feelings hurt. So I will say this once more:

I don’t feel bad about being white in America because I had nothing to do with that massacre or any of those other events; I feel horrible for what was done to Black citizens of Tulsa, who had their homes and businesses destroyed and those who lost their lives because of hate and I loathe the fact that much of that still goes on today, but how can we teach our young people, any people, that hate is wrong, that hate kills, if we don’t teach them  the history of hate?

Ryan Walters recently held a public forum at which someone in the crowd asked him how teaching about the Tulsa Race Massacre doesn’t violate his ban on CRT and he said:

“I would never tell a kid that because of your race, because of the color of your skin, or your gender or anything like that, you are less of a person or are inherently racist. That doesn’t mean you don’t judge the actions of individuals. Oh, you can. Absolutely, historically, you should … But to say it was inherent in that because of their skin is where I say that is critical race theory. You’re saying that race defines a person.”

You are not a racist because you’re white; you’re a racist because you’re a racist and never learned any better and yet Walters does not want children to be taught that; but the Tulsa Race Massacre was all about race, hell, it’s been called the Tulsa Race Massacre for over a hundred years!

The Tulsa Race Massacre occurred because a young Black man may have, or actually may not have, brushed up against a white woman in an elevator. And because a Black man might have touched a white woman, he was arrested, and a mob gathered at the courthouse demanding the right to lynch that young man. When the crowd of white men, many of whom were deputized before the massacre began, didn’t get their wish to lynch that young man, they marched to the Greenwood District in Tulsa, a thriving Black neighborhood also called Black Wall Street, and destroyed it, burned it to the ground, set private homes on fire, leaving 100,000 people homeless, and murdered some 300 Black people; it was all about race.

It was all about a Black man allegedly disrespecting a white woman in the eyes of white men, and if we don’t teach that to our children they will never learn. And we’ll see it happen again.

Lastly, let this sink in: Ryan Walters has no problem teaching about the Tulsa Race Massacre as long as you don’t mention race.

 The Republic