Category Archives: Social Studies

“I don’t think y’all can contest any of the sentences”

Federal appeals court judges in Georgia gave a hostile reception Thursday to a lower court decision that ordered Cobb County to scrape off evolution disclaimer stickers from almost 35,000 science textbooks.

Judge Ed Carnes, who dominated the questioning, said the three-sentence disclaimer seemed to him to be “literally accurate.”

Carnes told the lawyer representing parents who filed suit against the stickers that since the US Supreme Court has previously referred to evolution as a theory that “I don’t think y’all can contest any of the sentences.”

Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper found that the stickers, which say evolution is a “theory, not a fact,” improperly endorsed religion.

In a 44-page decision released in January, Cooper agreed. He acknowledged that the disclaimers had a secular purpose, and avoided religious reference. But, he continued, “the sticker communicates to those who oppose evolution for religious reasons that they are favored members of the political community, while the sticker sends a message to those who believe in evolution that they are political outsiders.”

The Cobb school board adopted the 33-word stickers on March 28, 2002, amid a storm of protest from parents who disagreed with a new science curriculum that allowed evolution instruction. Since 1995, the board had curtailed the teaching of evolution, leading some teachers to rip sections on evolution from science textbooks.

The disclaimers were placed inside the front pages of Cobb science textbooks in the fall of 2002. The stickers read: “This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.”

A recent Washington Post profile of Cobb County traced its evolution from an ultra-conservative backwater into a 650,000 Metro Atlanta suburb where there people actually raise questions about governments that require warning stickers on science textbooks that contain science and laws requiring citizens to own a gun.

Of course, this is the county infamous as a key location in the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan and where Leo Frank was lynched in 1915; it was also ground zero for the Newt Gingrich’s “Republican Revolution” of 1994. Cobb is certainly one of the most “liberal unfriendly” places in the USA, as I know from teaching high school in next door Fulton County.

Cobb County schools have not yet required that U.S. history textbooks carry a disclaimer sticker that reads: “This textbook contains material on democracy. Democracy is used as synonym for capitalism in this book and the material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.”

The Silencing of Carlos Delgado

When baseball free agent Carlos Delgado signed with the New York Mets a couple of weeks ago Mets manager Willie Randolph said: “”Carlos is a great hitter, but we liked the whole package.” But, Randolph and the Mets really weren’t interested in WHOLE package because they aren’t intersted in his politics.

At his coming out party as a Met, the media bombarded Delgado with questions about his protest of the U.S. war on Iraq. Delgado’s refusal to stand on the field during “God Bless America” the past two seasons attracted nearly as much attention as his home runs.

In 2004, when Delgado was playing for the Blue Jays he told the Toronto Star: “I think it’s the stupidest war ever. Who are you fighting against? You’re just getting ambushed now. We have more people dead now, after the war, than during the war. You’ve been looking for weapons of mass destruction. Where are they at? You’ve been looking for over a year. Can’t find them. I don’t support that. I don’t support what they do. I think it’s just stupid.”

But now that he’s been traded by the cost-cutting Florida Marlins to the Mets, the slugger said he has no problem with Randolph’s rule that Met players “stand at attention and honor the flag.”

In a web-only article for The Nation David Zirin reports on the “Silencing of Carlos Delgado” and his decision to break from his anti-militarist convictions and the path blazed by the baseball great and social justice activist Roberto Clemente.

The Silencing of Carlos Delgado

by DAVE ZIRIN

[The Nation,posted online on December 7, 2005]

Sometimes sports mirrors politics with such morbid accuracy you don’t know whether to laugh, cry or hide in the basement. Just as the Bush Administration shows its commitment to democracy by operating secret offshore gulags and buying favorable news coverage in Iraq, the New York Mets have made it clear to new player Carlos Delgado that freedom of speech stops once the blue and orange uniform–their brand–is affixed to his body.

For the last two years, Delgado chose to follow the steps of his personal hero, Roberto Clemente, the Pittsburgh Pirates great and the first Latino elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and use his athletic platform to speak out for social justice. Clemente blazed a trail for generations of Latino ball players by standing up for the poor of Latin America and never accepting being treated as anything less than human. Delgado’s contribution to this tradition of pride in the face of conformity was to refuse to stand for the singing of “God Bless America” during the seventh-inning stretch. This was his act of resistance to the war in Iraq. “I think it’s the stupidest war ever. Who are you fighting against? You’re just getting ambushed now,” Delgado told the Toronto Star in 2004. “We have more people dead now, after the war, than during the war. You’ve been looking for weapons of mass destruction. Where are they at? You’ve been looking for over a year. Can’t find them. I don’t support that. I don’t support what they do. I think it’s just stupid.”

Delgado’s anti-militarist convictions grew from spending time and money to help clean up the small island of Vieques in his native Puerto Rico. The US Navy had used Vieques for decades as a bombing-practice target, with disastrous results for the people and environment.

When asked by the Star if he was concerned about taking such a public stance, Delgado, then a player for the Toronto Bluejays, responded, “Sometimes, you’ve just got to break the mold. You’ve got to push it a little bit or else you can’t get anything done.”

But now, Mets’ management is pushing Delgado back into the mold. The shame of this is that despite a guaranteed contract and support in the streets, Delgado isn’t pushing back. He said at the November 28 press conference announcing his trade to the Mets from the Florida Marlins, “The Mets have a policy that everybody should stand for ‘God Bless America’ and I will be there. I will not cause any distractions to the ballclub…. Just call me Employee Number 21.” And we saw him grin and bear it when Jeff Wilpon, son of Mets CEO and owner Fred Wilpon, said, “He’s going to have his own personal views, which he’s going to keep to himself.”

If opposition to the war were a stock, Delgado bought high and is selling low. There couldn’t be a better time than now, a better place than New York City, or a better team than the Mets for Delgado to make his stand. Instead, he has to hear baby-boy Wilpon say to reporters, “Fred has asked and I’ve asked him to respect what the country wants to do.” One has to wonder what country the Wilpons are talking about. The latest polls show Bush and his war meeting with subterranean levels of support. Delgado could be an important voice in the effort to end it once and for all.

He also might have received significant organizational support from Mets General Manager Omar Minaya, the first Latino GM in Major League history, and from Willie Randolph, the first African-American manager of the Mets. Randolph even told reporters, “I’d rather have a man who’s going to stand up and say what he believes. We have a right as Americans to voice that opinion.” But Minaya merely commented curtly, with an artic chill, “This is from ownership.” But Delgado still caved.

The frustrating fallout of all this is evident in media attacks on Delgado for refusing to continue his act of protest. At first glance, it would be welcome to see, for example, Newsday’s Wallace Matthews’s writing, “Even if you disagree with his politics, Delgado’s willingness to break out of the mold corporate America loves to jam us in set him apart from the thousands of interchangeable young men who thrive athletically and financially in our sports-crazed culture…But no. One of the few pro athletes who had the guts to say no is now a yes man. And the silencing of his voice, whether you agree with it or not, is not a victory for democracy but a defeat.”

But where were the critics when the then-protesting Delgado was being booed as a visiting player in New York? And where were they when radio commentators suggested he “just shut up and play”? For those of us who amplified his views, and used his stance to speak not only about the war but also the plight of Vieques, his silence is bursting our eardrums.

Ironically, one of the parts of the press conference that was genuinely touching was Delgado’s thrill at finally being able to wear a jersey with the number 21 of his hero, the great Roberto Clemente. When it came to political principle, Clemente was a giant who never backed down in the face of bigotry: He lost his life in a 1972 plane crash as he was delivering aid to earthquake-ravaged Nicaragua. To Clemente, the Wilpons of the world were little more than mosquitos buzzing in his ears. Delgado could have been our Clemente. Instead, to use his own words, he is just Employee Number 21.

Japan’s Top Court Turns Down Professor’s Censorship Claim

The Chronicle of Higher Education: Japan’s Top Court Turns Down Professor’s Censorship Claim

The Japanese Supreme Court on Thursday rejected an appeal by a professor at the University of the Ryukyus, in Okinawa, seeking damages against the government for censorship of a textbook that he helped write in 1993. Observers see the ruling as upholding the education ministry’s right to screen and alter textbooks.The ministry’s screening of textbooks aroused anti-Japanese rioting in China earlier this year after Japanese education officials released a list of approved textbooks that the Chinese viewed as whitewashing Japanese war crimes and injustices before and during World War II (The Chronicle, May 27).

In last week’s case, the professor, Nobuyoshi Takashima, contended that the education ministry had trampled on his freedom of speech in ordering changes to chapters in a high-school textbook on modern Japanese society in which he suggested that Japan should have paid more attention to the feelings of its Asian neighbors. A district court agreed in 1998 that some of the changes were illegal and awarded him a monetary settlement. The Tokyo High Court overturned that ruling on appeal. The Supreme Court upheld the Tokyo court’s decision.

“I have fought 13 years and the ruling is as unacceptable as it is superficial,” Mr. Takashima said after hearing the verdict. He had asked the court for $10,000 for the mental anguish he suffered as a result of giving up his project to publish the original book.

Kazushige Yamashita, director of the division in charge of textbook screenings at the education ministry, said that the ruling was reasonable because it confirmed the legitimacy and need for the screenings.

Mr. Takashima’s case is the second prolonged case involving textbook issues to come before the Supreme Court. In 1965, Saburo Ienaga, a professor from the Tokyo University of Education, the predecessor of Tsukuba University, sued the government for censoring his textbook. That case did not reach the Supreme Court until 1997, when the court ruled against Mr. Ienaga’s assertion that the ministry’s vetting system violated the Constitution. However, the court did rule illegal the ministry’s demand for Mr. Ienaga to delete a description of the biological experiments that the Japanese army conducted on Chinese people during World War II.

Japanese courts have found government-ordered changes unlawful several times, but they have never ruled that the system itself illegal.

Zombies in the fog of war

In today’s edition of The Province, Michael Brown reports on Iraq war vet turned war resister Joshua Key.

Key is (or was) Private 1st Class in the U.S. Army. He served an eight-month tour in Iraq, decided he couldn’t return for another tour or duty and fled Canada.

Key says “I was pro-government. I was very right-wing,” when he signed up for the Army. He left his minimum wage job as a welder in Oklahoma City and then found himself in Iraq.

At the time he agreed with the “reason and cause.” “Weapons of mass destruction, that pretty scary shit,” Key told The Province. “My wife thought the same thing I did” “You’re going to do the right, so go do it.’ But it was all a lie.”

Key described how as part of “quick-reaction force” he would blast through the doors of Iraqi civilians homes, rounding up men and boys as young as 13, zip-cuffing them and loading them on to U.S. Army trucks to never be seen again.

Key says, “I’d raid these people’s homes with satellite photographs from CIA and military intelligence and I never found anything. There was nothing found in their homes and I did 100 of these raids.”

“In Ramadi, that’s where I saw most of the things that were unreasonable, no reason or justification for it,” he says.

Brown reports that “Key says he saw bodies on one side of the Euphrates River and their heads on the other, and U.S. Army soldiers kicking them about “like soccer balls.”

In July, Key crossed into Toronto and joined the War Resister’s Support Campaign. He is now living on Gabriola Island, home to many American war resisters.

Unlike the the Vietnam era, when Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau declared that “Canada should be a refuge from militarism,” thus opening the doors to American war resisters, there has been no similar declaration regarding the U.S.’s illegal war in Iraq.

While Canada does not officially support the war in Iraq, it is providing support in Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf, as well as 31 “frontline advisors.”

The cases of three American war resisters are currently being adjudicated. Jeremy Hinzman and Bandon Hughey were denied refugee status and have appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada. No decision has been released on the case of Ivan Brobeck.

Key’s lawyer points to the uniqueness of his case, since Key can speak to the both the legality of the war and to war crimes allegedly committed by U.S. soldiers because he was an active combatant in Iraq and witnessed atrocities first-hand.

Key’s story, as originally published in Le Monde, can be found here.