Post-Racial America

Greenville, South Carolina, Makes Juneteenth Safe For White People

Probably time for a mattress sale.

Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. On June 19, 1865, General Gordon Granger informed enslaved Black people in Texas that they'd actually been free since 1863. Black Americans have celebrated Juneteenth for almost 200 years, but it finally became a federal holiday in 2021. Even my hometown of Greenville, South Carolina, is celebrating — well, sort of. South Carolina state offices remain open on Juneteenth. The state legislature passed a law in 2022 that grants workers a floating holiday that they can use for Juneteenth in place of Confederate Memorial Day, which remains a state holiday. (Wonkette, at long last, will be taking the day, so make other plans amongst yourselves.)

However, lovely downtown Greenville will have a grand Juneteenth Mega Fest on June 17. Here's how it's been advertised.



These models aren't just white. They're Abercrombie & Fitch white. They don't even have Bo Derek braids.

It's as if they gentrified Juneteenth after only two years. You can almost hear the lady pictured saying, "Juneteenth use to be sooo sketchy. You'd never want to walk alone at night during Juneteenth. But now you can get great kombucha on Juneteeth."

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Education

Cool TN Lady Gonna Fill The Social Studies Standards With Awesome Stuff Like 'Barack Obama Did The Tornados'

Of course we've met her before, your Wonkette's on top of shit!

The Education Wars just never go away, and in today's dispatch from the front lines we'll look at Tennessee, where a rightwing conspiracy theory fan and anti-Muslim bigot has just been appointed to the committee that sets standards for the state's social studies curricula.

Yr Wonkette already introduced you last year to Laurie Cardoza-Moore, the nutball Tennessee bigot lady, when she was a member of the state textbook commission that was tasked with making sure only "age appropriate" materials were in them. You may recall that Tennessee was considering a measure that would have required state approval of every last item in the collections of school libraries; the bill's sponsor charmingly said that any materials not approved by the commission should be burned. Ultimately, the Lege settled for a different plan that gave the textbook commission the power to hear appeals of book challenges brought by parents, so the state could ban library books even after a local school board had gone through a challenge process and approved them. Hooray for compromise.

We guess that Ms. Cardoza-Moore must have either done a bang-up job on that commission, or at the very least that she has powerful friends in Tennessee, because clearly it's the latter thing. She was chosen for the Tennessee Standards Recommendation Committee by Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R), the slimebooger we came to know and loathe during the kangaroo court proceedings that expelled Democratic state Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson in April. Sexton also appointed her to the textbook commission in 2021, which is quite the coincidence.

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Culture Wars

Florida School District Will Protect Little Kids From Joe Biden's Socialist Inauguration Poem

It wasn't 'censored,' it was 'made unavailable' to elementary students. They can read it in middle school if they aren't shot by then.

In the latest news from the school censorship battlefield — along with the Washington Post investigation (gift link) which found that most challenges to books in US schools were filed by just 11 people, yes really — we learned yesterday that Miami-Dade County Public Schools restricted access to a book version of "The Hill We Climb," Amanda Gordon's poem from Joe Biden's inauguration in 2021.

Remember what a joyful, beautiful reading Gorman gave us that day?


youtu.be



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Education

Ohio Higher Ed Bill Requires Equal Time For Climate Change Deniers, Racists

There's an oil barge winding through the Ohio Legislature.

The Ohio state Legislature is taking its own shot at eliminating all the liberal indoctrination Republicans are certain is running amok in universities, with a bill that not only prohibits most diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and "implicit bias" training, but also requires that instructors not promote any particular view on any "controversial topic" like climate change, diversity, abortion, or foreign policy, among others. The bill has already passed in the state Senate, and is now being considered in the state House, which has a Republican supermajority. The official title of Senate Bill 83 is the "Higher Education Enhancement Act," but I'm just going to call it the Flat Earth Equal Time Act if you don't mind.

For all "controversial "topics, instructors would be required to "allow and encourage students to reach their own conclusions" and "shall not seek to inculcate any social, political, or religious point of view." Should be fun when a student sues to have openly white supremacist materials included in a syllabus. Or an oil company sues over climate science being taught accurately.

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