IDSJ Statement on Patriotic Education Commission
October 10, 2020
Khyati Joshi is co-founder of the Institute for Diversity and Social Justice. Since 2007, IDSJ's mission has been to teach educators, administrators, families, business leaders, members of the judiciary and other groups about the ways bias and oppression have shaped and continue to impact our world.
We strongly condemn, in the strongest possible words, President Trump’s recent announcements decrying curricular instruction around systemic racism and demanding a so-called ‘patriotic education’ for our youth. Knowing real United States history means understanding systemic racism is about how whiteness and White supremacy is embedded in our legal infrastructure. Systemic racism is the Jim Crow South, the lynchings, the genocidal acts against Native American communities, the anti-immigrant state and federal laws aimed at Asians and Arabs, mortgage redlining, and the continued mass incarceration in the U.S. The disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on BIPOC communities has exposed how systemic oppression continues to be pervasive today.
You can read the full statement here.
