Civil rights activist Dolores Huerta has earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom despite being alive, the White House announced last week.
Huerta will receive the nation’s highest civilian honor at a ceremony later this year along with the still-living astronaut John Glenn, still-breathing former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, still-has-a-pulse musician Bob Dylan, still-walking-the-earth former University of Tennessee women’s basketball coach Pat Summitt, and others.
Not long ago, in Texas, Huerta had a tougher time getting recognition at the State Board of Education. During the social studies standards debacle of 2010, some members of the far-right bloc on the state board argued that Huerta should not be included in the history standards because she is not an example of good citizenship and because — you guessed it — she is still alive.
Said board member David Bradley, R-Beaumont, at the time:
And then I’ve got another criteria that I use. I am very reluctant to include persons who are still alive. By definition of history you should be dead, because you never know when you might embarrass us later.
Two years later we still can’t find Bradley’s definition of history in a dictionary.
The living vs. dead argument is just one of the requirements for inclusion some board members came up with on the fly, an all too common practice for a board with a track record of picking and choosing what it likes on a whim, without input from experts or teachers, and often at the last minute before making important decisions.
So Huerta can now add Medal of Freedom recipient to her resume. Not that it will matter at the state board, because this is Texas and she’s still alive.
You can watch the 2010 exchange on Huerta below:
Personally, I think they should just come out of the closet and say they don’t want her in the curriculum because she is a socialist, *******, ****, etc. I think this country would be better served if everyone would just drop their masks and say what they really think instead of doing these fancy little public relations dances. Here I will start:
The state of Texas was founded of the white people, by the white people, and for the white people. So help the white people.
So why then do they want to include RW luminaries like Phyllis Schlafly in the curricula? Or do they expect that she will be dead before they succeed in putting her name there and get it approved?
Our goal should be to persist until she is dead, then deny her entry into the history books. That works for me.
Just a note about a state gone crazy, just yesterday, the Tennessee legislature passed and sent to the governor a state law to regulate the personal dress (as in clothing)of black kids in Tennessee public schools. Tennessee made the mistake of electing a vast right wing nut job legislature (both houses). The number of Democrats is very few. The laws and programs many of you fear for Texas are ACTUALLY BEING ENACTED in Tennessee, and the governor is signing them into law. The state is now controlled by those who would be sympathetic to the following:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=QpeiiuiPBd8&feature=endscreen
It appears that David Barton is on a new Daily Show tonight. I assume this is the same David Barton we all know and love so much. Last time, Jon Stewart was way too polite and let Barton get away with some lies. Hope that changes this time.