The Friday "Week in Review" panel at the PBS NewsHour started with the Republican half of the 2024 presidential campaign, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Anchor Geoff Bennett brought up a previous interview, where College Board CEO David Coleman claimed Ron DeSantis somehow had nothing to do with all the revisions in that AP African-American Studies course to make it less of a radical leftist propaganda course.
PBS NewsHour promoted that strange public-relations exercise, which flies in the face of the timeline. NPR also helped in this effort to deny DeSantis a win. But what made this truly eye-opening is Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart claiming he was in the first generation of his family "to not have to pick cotton." Capehart grew up with his mother in New Jersey (his father died early in his life). He's implying his mother had to pick cotton. Where do they pick cotton in New Jersey?
CAPEHART: What Ron DeSantis is doing is deeply, deeply insulting. What he's basically saying to the nation and to African Americans, in particular, it's that your role in the building of this country, the maintenance of this country means nothing, that, without you, we could have gotten along just fine.
And that's what's so — it's insulting. It's hurtful. And think about this, Geoff. The fact that you and I are sitting here right now, you in an anchor chair, me as a guest, on television, could that have happened 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 1619? No, it couldn't. It couldn't have.
And one thing I like to remind people, particularly young people, history is not really history when you're talking about African Americans in this country. My cousins and I are the first generation in my family to not have to pick cotton. We are the first generation that did not have to live under Jim Crow. I'm 55 years old. That's how long this has been a democracy.
So, Governor DeSantis, if you want Americans to truly understand how great this country is, you cannot understand how great this country is without filling in those gaps and holes with the history of African Americans in this country.
It's become tiresome to hear leftists push their lying spin that taking the worst critical-race-theory junk out of this course -- and as we know, Capehart is a CRT denier, it's not taught anywhere in high schools -- is to obliterate any notion of black history in American history. But this does suggest we might need to know more about the Capehart family history!
Maybe Post "Fact Checker" Glenn Kessler needs to give Capehart a deep probe, like he did to mock Republican Sen. Tim Scott's claims of his family picking cotton.
