Metro CABSE News in July
Metropolitan Cleveland Alliance of Black School Educators
Great Things Ahead!
Greetings Metro CABSE members, friends, and guests,
I'm so excited and I just can't hide it! We are planning some great things in the near future. I can't tell you now so, you will have to attend the August meeting to hear about the upcoming events. It's going to blow you away AND ignite a burning desire to get more involved or stay closely connected with Metro CABSE. See you at our August 23rd meeting!
Meeting Agenda: TENTATIVE
Litany
Guest Speaker: TBA
Secretary Report- Sandi Patterson
Treasurer Report- Pamela Gray-Mason
President's Updates- Dr. Robin Simmons
Committee Reports:
Parent Commission- Caroline Peak
Black Men Teach: Superintendent Donald Jolly II
Public Relations/Newsletter/Website: Latia Taylor
Membership: Beverly Lloyd and Latia Taylor
Parliamentarian: Herman Noland
Juneteenth: Pamela Gray-Mason
Coordinator: Dr. Mary Rice
Membership for Metro CABSE, Ohio ABSE, and NABSE
Paying your $50 dues covers your membership to both Metro CABSE (local) and the Ohio ABSE. Ohio ABSE receives $10 out of your $50 local dues. Your local and state membership supports the work we are doing on the local and state level. For Metro CABSE, it pays for the operational services as well as the scholarships we present during our Juneteenth Awards Celebration. However, it does not cover your national dues. Visit https://www.nabse.org/
to pay for your national dues. Below are the costs and benefits of becoming a member of NABSE. Your membership is annually. It will expire and needs to be renewed each year- prior to or during the month you joined. So, if you have not renewed your local membership, then go to Metro CABSE's or OABSE's website. All local affiliate memberships are funnelled through the state's website. It's important to keep our numbers accounted for because it keeps us an active, recognized affiliate through the state and national alliance.
Educators, instructors, students, principals, retirees and superintendents are eligible for participation as individual members. Annual dues for individual membership varies with member status.
$900 Life
$180 Subscribing Life
$150 Individual
$75 Retired
$30 Student
Benefits Include:
- Annual NABSE Membership Card
- Subscription to NABSE News Briefs
- Eligibility for discounted conference registration fees
- Hotel and Flight discounts
- Discounts on NABSE publications
A MUST READ FROM NABSE!
Slavery was not a vocational institution
The peculiar institution of slavery was nothing but brutal and vicious to the Africans who were enslaved and occupied the lowest rungs in American society from 1619 to 1862. For more than 250 years Black people were bought, sold, kidnapped, tortured, and murdered, among other things. Such was the consistent with their status as chattel. Yet, in 2023 the Florida Department of Education, in promulgating its Florida’s State Academic Standards – Social Studies expects its citizens to believe that slavery was, among things, a humane and charitable system in which the slaves participated in some sort of vocational endeavor.
After spending considerable time attempting to prove that there was nothing peculiar about American slavery – after all, Africans enslaved other Africans, Europeans enslaved other Europeans, thus what occurred in North America was part of a worldwide system of hereditary servitude. Social Studies Standard 68.AA.2.3 examines the various duties and trades performed by slaves (e.g., agricultural work, painting, carpentry, tailoring, domestic service, blacksmithing, transportation). Its corollary clarification benchmark states “Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
What is the benefit to which the text refers? Everything that the enslaved African did was regulated. This attempt to sanitize and humanize chattel slavery is a gross failure of mendacity. After all, enslaved Africans were brought to the colonies to provide free labor. They engaged in activities that enabled the plantation owners to maximize their profits. They performed the tasks that the Europeans did not want to perform and/or wanted done at no cost. The slave was no different from a mule or a piece of equipment that was kept until it was no longer useful or profitable to maintain.
Slavery was not a vocational institution or apprentice system from which one graduated. It was a life sentence of bondage and servitude. A casual review of the historical record tells us that more black people died during slavery than were emancipated. Thus, the notion that enslaved people acquired some sort of transferable skills that would serve them later in life, is not only inaccurate and illogical, but also a futile attempt to humanize the most inhumane of systems.
Equally troubling is Benchmark Clarification 4 of SS.912.AA.1.2, “Analyze the development of labor systems using indentured servitude contracts with English settlers and Africans early in Jamestown, Virginia.”
Africans were captured, sold, and transported against their will to the Western Hemisphere. They were not indentured servants. They did not broker any deals with those who brought them to the colonies against their will.
In their attempts to stem the tide of the backlash, the authorities cite the case of Booker T. Washington, whom they erroneously claimed used the skills that he acquired during slavery to establish an educational institution. It seems that the authors are either ignorant of, or overlooked the fact that enslaved people were forbidden to learn how to read and/or write. Anyone who was guilty of violating that plantation rule was punished to the point of death. Citing Washington as an example of the successful emancipated African, not only insults the intelligence of the educators who are charged with implementing the standards, it degrades the history of all who struggled against the peculiar institution and its beneficiaries. It also tarnishes and belittles the work of Washington and others who fought for freedom, long after the Emancipation Proclamation.
That the authors of the Standards would promulgate such blatantly inaccurate statements is evidence of the educational malpractice that is being foisted upon the children of Florida. Instead of pursuing a political agenda the authors need to rewrite the standards so that they reflect the lived experiences of Africans in these United States of America.
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Fadhilika Atiba-Weza
Executive Director
National Alliance of Black School Educators
P.O. Box 176
Troy, NY 12181
www.nabse.org
Contact US!
Email: president@metrocabse.org
Website: www.metrocabse.org
Location: P.O. Box 21176, Cleveland, OH 44122
Phone: 440-296-3262
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OhioAllianceofBlackSchoolEducators
Twitter: @oabseducators