California’s Governor Gavin Newsom has unequivocally apologized for the California draft model curriculum, agreeing that it “was offensive in so many ways, particularly to the Jewish community.”
From Dan Pine, in the J Weekly, Northern California’s Jewish paper:
From his office in the Capitol building, Gov. Gavin Newsom last week made a full-throated apology to California’s Jewish community for a controversial ethnic studies draft curriculum that erases the Jewish story in America and takes unsubtle digs at Israel.
The draft, said Newsom, “will never see the light of day.”
In spite of the widespread criticism, some of the drafters of the curriculum have doubled down, calling for a rally and press conference next Tuesday, and accusing the groups marginalized by the curriculum of attempting to “dilute” it.
On her Facebook page, Guadalupe Carrasco Cardona, an educator at the Edward R. Roybal Learning Center and one of the drafters of the curriculum, referred to those asking for inclusion as “loud ass critics”, and pointed out that anti-semitism as a form of oppression is mentioned in the draft.
Anti-semitism is mentioned only once in the 300 page model curriculum, while Islamphobia is mentioned 59 times.
According to the 2018 publication Hate Crime in California, anti-Jewish bias events rose from 104 in 2017 to 126 in 2018, an increase of 21.2 percent, while anti-Islamic bias events fell from 46 in 2017 to 28 in 2018. The draft ethnic studies curriculum as it is written furthers discrimination and bigotry towards one of the most marginalized people in the world. Rather than mock the critics of the model draft curriculum, Cardona and her colleagues should take the time to read the public comments and take them to heart. In the meanwhile, the Jewish community and its allies are grateful for the leadership of Governor Galvin Newsom, and the California Jewish Legislative Caucus.
