Dear Editor,
Asante sana (thank you very much) for your timely discussions! The lead article of your July 10, 2014 issue, “Poll: 63 percent of Americans believe Blacks are responsible for their own condition,” was in circulation just after my return from Denver as a delegate to the National Education Association Representative Assembly (NEA – RA) of 10,000 educators who teach in public schools and colleges throughout our country. At our conference last year, in Atlanta, I surprised everybody by getting a New Business Item (NBI) passed to add Africa in Antiquity into the curriculum . But this year when attempting to introduce one on Reparations, all the racism showed its head! Did you know that the word, TERROR could not be used in written discussion of the plight of African people? It is clear to me that our combined NEA (formerly African American) and the AFT (originally White) have changed the conversations. The now exclusion of issues of RACE mirrors the shift in the desegregated school and the disappearance of issues of African peoples. No wonder so much of the population is detached from the truth of race and terror in our land. Schools are the main media culprit! The effort to forget or rewrite history is in full swing! We must stop this right now and take control of our history replacing the lies of multi-media with TRUTH.
Sincerely,
Tchaiko Kwayana, National Board Certified Teacher
