A complete anti-racism curriculum for all ages

In case your local school is mostly shut down and you want to make sure that your kids get the essentials, from the front of a house in the Boston suburbs…

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(the neighborhood welcomes People of Color as long as they can afford the two-acre zoning minimum (about $750,000 for a vacant lot, and don’t forget to set aside $20-40,000 per year for no-longer-deductible-unless-Biden-gets-elected property tax))

Should children give their lunch money to the Massachusetts Bail Fund? “Mass. Bail Fund Answers Criticism After Freeing Convicted Sex Offender Accused Of New Rape” (WBUR):

A bail fund in Massachusetts is defending itself after freeing people facing serious crimes, including a convicted rapist who has since been charged with a new rape.

The Massachusetts Bail Fund said in a statement Wednesday that it bails out people based on financial need “regardless of charge or court history” because it believes pretrial detention is “harmful and racist.”

The Cambridge-based organization, whose motto is “Free Them All,” said criticism over its practices only serves to “prop up a white supremacist institution” that studies have shown imposes higher bails on people of color than whites for the same crimes.

From boston.com, “Convicted rapist let out after bail fund pays for his release allegedly rapes again”:

On July 15, the Massachusetts Bail Fund paid the $15,000 in bail to release a registered Level 3 sex offender awaiting trial on rape and kidnapping charges stemming from a 2018 case, according to authorities.

On Wednesday, he allegedly raped again. And authorities are now openly criticizing the fund for setting Shawn McClinton free, referring to him as a “sexual predator.”

McClinton, 39, was arraigned Thursday in the Dorchester division of Boston Municipal Court on new charges of aggravated rape, kidnapping for the purpose of sexual assault, strangulation, and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. His bail was set at $500,000 on these charges, and Judge Lisa Grant revoked his open bail from the 2018 case, according to a news release from Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins’s office.

On Tuesday night, McClinton allegedly met up with the victim, and they went from Quincy to Dorchester. When she tried to leave on Wednesday, McClinton allegedly wouldn’t let her and raped her at knifepoint. The victim reportedly suffered cuts and bruising and ultimately was able to escape. A passerby saw her afterward and called 911, authorities said.

(see also Richard Pryor regarding racial injustice in imprisonment: “I thought Black people killed people by accident”)

How about M4BL The Movement for Black Lives? Their May 2020 “vision” and “policy demands for Black power, freedom, & justice” says that the Jews in Israel are committing “genocide … against the Palestinian people.” If there is a full-scale genocide being perpetrated by Jews, why should the top priority of the righteous be the behavior of the police in Minneapolis, Baltimore, Portland, and some other U.S. cities? Nobody has accused these police departments of genocide. Why not give money to Hamas so that they can #Resist the Jewish-run genocide?

Let’s look at the reading list with some excerpts from Amazon…

I Believe I Can is an affirmation for boys and girls of every background to love and believe in themselves. … [the author] Grace was bullied throughout her childhood

Why is this limited to affirming “boys” and “girls”? What about children with other gender IDs?

Farmer Will Allen and the Growing Table: Will Allen is no ordinary farmer. A former basketball star … he can see what others can’t see. When he looked at an abandoned city lot in Milwaukee he saw a huge table, big enough to feed the whole world. No space, no problem. Poor soil, there’s a solution. Need help, found it. Farmer Will is a genius in solving problems. In 2008, the MacArthur Foundation named him one for his innovative urban farming methods, including aquaponics and hydroponics.

Might this mislead youngsters regarding farming economics? How can a hydroponic farm built by Will Allen compete with a regular farm in Mexico plus a truck to bring the produce to Costco? (Wikipedia says that at least one of this guy’s urban farming projects went bust.) If the answer is “we need to eat it right after it is picked” then might it still be cheaper to airfreight the produce than to grow it in a city with exotic life support? (NPR says that I’m wrong: “How Hydroponic School Gardens Can Cultivate Food Justice, Year-Round”)

Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You is an adaptation for youngsters of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America: (from a reader) This is one of the greatest history books I’ve ever read. I was highlighting passages on pretty much every page, mostly because so much of what’s here was new to me. Hey, I’m an upper middle class white guy who’s trying to examine my own privileges, understand more of why there’s so much racism in this country and learn how I can do better. This book, which was undoubtedly extremely difficult to write, is an amazing resource, one I’ll be referring back to probably for the rest of my life. We all owe Ibram X. Kendi a tremendous debt.

Wikipedia says Ibram Kendi is director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University. So people who don’t want to spend $20 on these books can pay $77,662 per year to watch a video by Dr. Kendi. (If “privilege” is all about being white, how is it that “in 2016, Ibram X. Kendi became the youngest person ever to win the National Book Award for Nonfiction” (“How to Be an Anti-Intellectual” from City Journal)? Shouldn’t Americans who identify as Black need to work harder and for more years in order to get to the same places as Americans who identify as white?)