Tuesday night during a rally in Phoenix, President Trump stated:
“They’re trying to take away our culture. They’re trying to take away our history. And our weak leaders, they do it overnight. These things have been there for 150 years, for 100 years. You go back to a university, and it’s gone. Weak, weak people.”
This past December, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation published their Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation Implementation Guide. On page 7 of the guide they state:
“Since the first European settlers arrived on our shores centuries ago, American culture has placed the relative worth of whites above all others, and at times violently enforced this through annihilation, enslavement, colonization and cultural genocide. The adopted and embedded mindset and belief has restricted the quality of life for people of color, while limiting opportunities for success and limiting the realization of the full potential of our democracy.”
I stand in agreement with the Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation efforts. In so doing, I agree to take an active part in building through dialogue across difference an accurate recounting of history, both local and national.
This does not take away our history, but it does require a truth-telling of our history in full.
It does not take away culture, but it does require a transformation of those aspects of culture that have privileged whites over all others since that very first European settler landed.
These things go back 400 years, not just 150 years or 100 years.
As an academician at the world-class University of Illinois and its top-ranked School of Information Sciences, I agree to work as an ally and I do it as a community inquiry practice working to further a pedagogy of the oppressed.
And I hope all of us, and especially @POTUS @RealDonaldTrump, work together with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation on this great initiative.
https://www.wkkf.org/news-and-media/article/2017/06/wkkf-announces-14-truth-racial-healing-and-transformation-engagements-throughout-the-united-states
http://www.racialequityresourceguide.org/TRHTSummit
http://www.npr.org/2017/08/23/545508739/are-you-ready-yet-to-accept-donald-trump-for-who-he-is