Background Briefing: June 28, 2020
Trump Cares More About Dead Confederate Soldiers Than Live Black Americans
We begin with the sick priorities of our nation’s leader who cares more about dead Confederate soldiers than live black Americans as he signs an executive order to protect Confederate monuments announcing “Long prison terms for these lawless acts against our Great Country”, apparently oblivious of the irony that it was the Confederate traitors whose lawless acts against our Great Country caused the Civil War. With Mississippi voting to remove the Confederate emblem from its state flag, we examine the awakening underway that Confederate monuments and U.S. military bases named after Confederate Generals are enduring insults to the descendants of slaves since they were erected during the Jim Crow era when the treasonous history of the South was whitewashed. And while Trump panders to his racist base, school textbooks in this country continue this nostalgia for evil dressed up as cultural values. Joining us to discuss the denial and distortion of our history is James W. Loewen, a best-selling author and sociologist who taught race relations at Tougaloo College in Mississippi and the University of Vermont and is the author of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong now updated with a new introduction titled Lies My Teacher Told Me in the Age of Alternative Facts. We assess whether the national and international movement underway to address systemic racism and economic inequality will sweep away these vestiges of cruelty and inhumanity in spite of an Administration led by a cruel and heartless man who puts kids in cages and wants to take away healthcare from millions of Americans at at time when a pandemic has killed over 127,000 of our fellow citizens, while health officials warn that as many as 20 million Americans may have contracted the coronavirus rather than 2.5 million officially announced.