The Richmond Kickers Soccer Club makes for tremendous community entertainment but the club also uses their spare time, and games, to give back and support the community. Segment from 8@4 presented by VCU Massey Cancer Center from the Virginia Wayside Furniture studio.
History standards flap over Native Americans is excessive
“Migrant” is perhaps more accurate than “immigrant” in describing the people that first populated North America. The distinction is subtle – migrants move from one place to another; immigrants move from one country to another.
Nevertheless, the description of American Indians as “America’s first immigrants” in the Virginia Department of Education’s revised draft of the K-12 history standards evoked heated criticism and finger-wagging commentary (Michael Paul Williams’ column “Not up to Standards,” Nov 19).
In fact, no human is truly indigenous to America. All Americans, if not immigrants themselves, are descendants of ancestors who migrated here.
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Yuval Noah Harari’s book “Sapiens” describes early humans’ migration from Asia through Siberia, then across the Bering Strait to Alaska. When the glaciers that blocked the way from Alaska to the rest of North America melted, a passage opened for the first humans to move south. Their descendants soon populated all of North and South America and are the forefathers of the American Indians that the draft history standards referred to as “America’s first immigrants.” Absent political boundaries, “migrant” might have been a more appropriate term.
The excessive blowback at the “immigrant” label is only surpassed in absurdity by the groveling apology from state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow. Scouring the public square through a cynical lens of racism, the critics’ cry of “whitewashing” for the clumsy but not completely inaccurate use of a politically charged term is incendiary and irresponsible. And when racism is irresponsibly asserted, we must not be afraid to engage in thoughtful discourse rather than wither for fear of being cancelled.
While we await the final draft of the state’s history standards, I recommend Harari’s “Sapiens” and Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs, and Steel” as required reading for students interested in a thorough and objective account of our earliest ancestors.
Patrick Moran.
Henrico.
