Educators, a former West Point deputy commandant, students and Jewish War Veterans stood together against prejudice and bigotry at a Black History Month observation earlier this week at The Museum of American Armor in Old Bethpage.
In attendance were such leaders as Lorna Lewis, the first woman of color to preside over the New York State Council of School Superintendents; Col. Jason Halloren, retired, former deputy commandant of West Point; and Bill Tinglin, an educator who works to build bridges between African Americans and Jews. Also in attendance were students and educators from The Charter Academy School in Hempstead.
“We are living in a moment when some would prefer that our students learn a version of America that is easy, uncomplicated and unchallenged,” Lorna told an audience of about 125 attendees.
“But history – real history – is not meant to comfort us,” she said. “It is meant to teach us. It is meant to sharpen our moral judgment. It is meant to remind us of who we have been so we can decide what we must become.”
The event highlighted African American contributions to military service as well as such legal milestones as President Harry Truman’s 1948 executive order integrating the U.S. military.
“We gather to honor African American History Month – a time not only to reflect on struggle, but more to recognize service, courage and enduring contributions to our nation,” Halloren said. “Few chapters reflect that spirit more clearly than the story of African American soldiers during World War II and the transformation of our Armed Forces that followed.”
The program illustrated how mission-driven organizations can work together to strengthen communities.
“Black History Month reminds us that African American achievement is woven into the very fabric of American democracy,” Tinglin said. “But I submit to you…Every day must be a recognition of our shared humanity. Every day must be a commitment to dignity. Every day must be a decision to stand on the side of justice.”
At the event, students had the opportunity to sign an enlargement of Truman’s executive order that integrated the American military.
Three Florida high school students are threatening to sue Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state of Florida over a recently announced statewide ban on a new Advanced Placement course on African American history.
The threatened legal action was announced Wednesday on behalf of the AP honors students who accuse the state and its Republican governor of censoring public education while heavily favoring white history over Black.
“Certainly there are other advanced placement histories, such as AP European History, AP U.S. History and AP World History, all predominantly generated towards white people,” high school junior Victoria McQueen, one of the potential plaintiffs, said at a press conference alongside civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who would be representing them.
Crump, left, stands with the three Leon County high school students who are threatening to file a lawsuit against Gov. Ron DeSantis and his administration over Florida’s ban of a proposed AP course on African American studies.
Alicia Devine/Tallahassee Democrat via Associated Press
“If he does not negotiate with the College Board to allow African American studies to be taught in classrooms in the state of Florida, these three young people will be the lead plaintiffs in a historic lawsuit,” Crump said of DeSantis.
The pilot program on African American studies was banned in Florida under DeSantis’ so-called “Stop WOKE Act,” which he signed into law last year. The legislation places restrictions on how racism and other aspects of history can be taught in schools and workplaces. It includes a ban on teaching “critical race theory,” a college-level framework of study which argues that racism is embedded in legal systems and government policies.
Florida’s Department of Education (DOE) said a number of topics ― including on critical race theory, Black queer studies and intersectionality ― need to be removed in order for the course to be taught in the state’s schools.
A “Stop the Black Attack” rally in Tallahassee, Florida, on Wednesday, protests recent state legislation and policies that are seen as racist.
Alicia Devine/Tallahassee Democrat via Associated Press
“As Governor DeSantis said, African American History is American History, and we will not allow any organization to use an academic course as a gateway for indoctrination and a political agenda,” said Florida Department of Education Communications Director Alex Lanfranconi in a statement Wednesday.
The College Board announced Tuesday that it will present its official framework on the course on Feb. 1 after considering feedback it has received from high schools and colleges that have already participated in the pilot program nationwide.
“This framework, under development since March 2022, replaces the preliminary pilot course framework under discussion to date,” the nonprofit organization said, without sharing any specifics on how the official course may differ from the pilot.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has called the AP course “indoctrination, not education.”
Florida’s DOE, in a letter to the College Board last week, said the AP course includes historically inaccurate content and “significantly lacks educational value.” It suggested that the course be amended for any future consideration.
“Who would say that an important part of Black history is queer theory?” he said. “That’s the wrong side of the line for Florida standards. When you try to use Black history to shoehorn in queer theory, you are clearly trying to use that for political purposes.”
Over the summer I played golf at a course near Nashville. The club paired me with a thirtysomething gentleman. The two of us exchanged questions about what we do. His answer: “I’m an autoworker.”
Of course he was. There are legions of them in Tennessee. I got to hear about expertise in using fancy equipment to pack off the next generation of Nissans. Or was it Volkswagens or even GM’s? It does not matter. All these companies are paying real money to their Tennessee employees. In turn these people manipulate cutting-edge capital equipment to build product that yields profits and customer satisfaction.
The 1949 got Ford going pre-Michigan income tax (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Swing a cat in Tennessee, hit an autoworker.
Swing a cat in Michigan in the 1950s, hit an autoworker. The places are a five hundred miles apart.
In 1967, Michigan instituted its income tax. The rate is now 4.25 percent. Municipalities can tack on a wage tax. Detroit’s is 2.4 percent. People in the major places therefore pay about 7 percent. Prior to 1967, there were no such taxes in the state. Just like Tennessee today—no income tax.
What happened to Michigan’s share of the national economy since 1967 is staggering. In Taxes Have Consequences: An Income Tax History of the United States, the new book I wrote with Arthur Laffer and Jeanne Sinquefield, the reader will blink at the chart depicting it. Since that year, Michigan has lost nearly 40 percent of its share of national population and nearly 50 percent of its share of national income.
In 1967, Michigan had about 6.3 percent of the nation’s inhabitants. Now it has 3.9 percent. It had about 6.7 percent of the nation’s income. Now it has 3.5 percent. The place has sunk like a stone.
In 1967, Michigan Gov. George Romney acceded to an income tax, so that, as the official reasoning went, corporate taxes might be reduced. That happened for a while until those corporate taxes went right back up again.
It is a myth that manufacturing in the United States declined in the 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s. The permanent slouching of manufacturing came with the Barack Obama presidency. (See this graph.) Manufacturing did great over the first forty years of the Michigan income tax. It did great in nice part by leaving Michigan and going to other places, like zero-income-tax Tennessee.
From the perspective of corporate accounting, the income tax was serious business. If Detroit workers prior to 1967 were making a certain amount, the company then had to pay them 7 percent more to stay whole. Actually more than 7 percent, because the federal tax structure is progressive. Moreover, employee benefits customarily have been a function of nominal wages. The company would have payroll obligations some 10 percent higher because of a new state income tax like Michigan’s of 1967. Ten percent could easily be the whole or more of a profit margin.
The finance people will note to the accountants that capital obtainable at a 10 percent margin will not be at a 2 percent margin. Therefore, for the company to get the money it needs, it has to leave Michigan for better climes.
What if a company sticks it out, commits to making things work in the new-income-tax state? Michael Jensen’s classic research on the 1980s showed what happens. Jensen ranked the Fortune 500 over that decade by return on reinvested profits. GM and Ford were dead last, numbers 500 and 499 (Big Mo Philip Morris was first). The two big Detroit automakers said we are going to reinvest in this place, now with the income tax, and they got creamed. There was nothing to make—the cost structure sailed the would-be profit bucks off to government.
Trying to work with the state income tax means ignoring market advice, burning capital, and staving off inevitable moves. In time, the moves happened. Income departed Michigan even more than population (see Illinois today), such that the place is half itself compared to what it was with respect to the nation when Romney acted in 1967.
The social transformations made up another huge side of the story. African-Americans got out. The Great Migration refers to the big black population movements from the South to the North beginning with the European Great War of 1914. Henry Ford rang the bell and a healthy share came to Michigan.
Then there was The Other Great Migration, as in the standard book on the prehistory of the matter by Bernadette Pruitt. Blacks got out of Michigan beginning in the 1970s and packed off for places often in the Old South from whence they had come, especially Texas. There they lived large in the zero-income-tax state. If August Wilson had lived up to our own time, his latter decades stories would not have taken place in the locales of the Great Migration but the Other one.
Michigan Gov. Romney was timber for the 1968 presidential ticket. He was done in by a remark that authorities or someone had been “brainwashing” him about the prospects of American success in Vietnam. The brainwashing had been active the year before, when he had high hopes for his state on signing the income tax into law.
