♡ ♥ ♡ ♥ February 14 ♥ ♡ ♥ ♡

You do know what day this is, don’t you? Are you prepared to properly celebrate this day? Today is the anniversary of Oregon’s admission into the Union. Oregon became the 33rd state on February 14, 1859, 8½ years after California and 30½ years before Washington.

Fun Facts for Black History Month:

Oregon was admitted as a free state, a tradeoff with the South that allowed slavery in the southwestern states.

Click to enlarge

Not a problem for Oregon, as its original constitution contained a “whites only” clause. The Oregon Territory had outlawed slavery in 1844, with its Black Exclusion Law. As the name implies, African-Americans were not allowed into the territory. Slave owners were given three years to free them. Black persons who did not leave were arrested and given at least twenty, but no more than thirty-nine lashes across their bare backs. The process was repeated after six months for anyone found still in the state.

  • The Black Exclusion Law was repealed in 1925.
  • An amendment to the Oregon Constitution in 1927 allowed Blacks to vote.
  • Interracial marriage was legalized in 1951.

(Additional but only tenuously related Fun Fact: The University of Oregon was founded in 1872; Blue Ribbon Sports, precursor to Nike, was founded in 1964.)

If you are curious about that Valentine guy, here’s his story.

While We Are Distracted

Filled with outrage or scorn about the Bowling Green Massacre or the Nordstrom attack on Ivanka? While we’ve given our attention to these and other inanities, there’s serious stuff going on – very quietly. Here’s a couple:

  • Representative Lamar Smith, the Texas Republican who chairs the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, held a hearing titled “Making the E.P.A. Great Again.” Rep Smith’s plan to make the EPA great again is to replace their science advisory board with scientists employed by the industries it regulates.
  • The newly-appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, is wasting no time attacking net neutrality. Net neutrality requires Internet service providers to deliver consumers equal access to all legal content and applications without favoring or blocking particular sources. The Internet has become, in effect, a public utility. It would be like the electricity provider slowing down your service because they made a deal with certain brands of appliances and you don’t have that brand.

It’s what we don’t know that’s really going to hurt.

Don’t Know Much About History

The Texas State Board of Education approves the textbooks used by five million students in its public schools. Because of the size of the Texas market, many textbook publishers print the Texas-approved books to sell in other other states. (Advances in technology are making it easier to publish other versions for other markets.) This is particularly problematic with history texts, as the politically-charged Texas board is firmly controlled by right-wing nutcases.

Students are taught that slavery was only an incidental cause of the Civil War, after states’ rights and sectionalism. (The state’s right being the right to own other human beings.) Textbooks make no mention of the Ku Klux Klan.

Texas students learn that slavery was simply part of immigration patterns that “brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.” As part of the effort to purge liberal bias from curricula, Thomas Jefferson is ignored, but the purported “Christian” foundation of our country’s beginning is emphasized. Textbooks also stress the importance of guns to our freedom. After a heroic battle, the Texas board allowed evolution to be broached as a possibility.

With our new president and a new Secretary of the Department of Education who is no friend of public education, we’ll see how things go. For now, historians in higher education are concerned about the teaching of U.S. history. In the radically changed political climate, revisionists are becoming much more emboldened, eager to flaunt their ignorance.

In the meantime, to celebrate Black History Month, the Confederate flag has once again been raised in South Carolina.

Gail Collins has a good overview of the controversy.

Evening in America

In 1967 the governor of California signed into law a bill effectively ending involuntary commitment of people suffering from mental disorders. At the time 22,000 Californians resided in state mental hospitals. Ten years earlier the number had been 37,500. These institutions were seen as dehumanizing. Involuntary commitment would now be restricted to those who were deemed as potentially dangerous to themselves or those around them. The commitment had to be sponsored by a family member and/or ordered by the court. A mentally-ill patient who refused treatment typically did not receive any at all. That governor won election to the presidency with a landslide victory in 1980.

Continue reading “Evening in America”