Meghan Blonder of the Washington Free Beacon reports on a disturbing piece of one congressman’s past.
As a middle school principal, New York Democratic congressman Jamaal Bowman advised against teaching about “white” historical figures like George Washington, Jesus Christ, and Santa Claus. Instead, he used his position to elevate a renowned anti-Semite and cop-killers.
While speaking at a 2018 conference hosted by the Alternative Education Resource Organization (AERO), Bowman detailed his pedagogy as the principal of the Bronx middle school he founded, Cornerstone Academy for Social Action (CASA). He encouraged educators to instill “self-empowerment” in their students by pushing back on “white” cultural figures, citing Washington, Jesus Christ, and Santa Claus as detriments to his students’ success.
“You can’t have self-directed learning without self-empowerment,” Bowman said. “If our kids don’t love themselves, if they don’t love who they are and where they come from, and they’re told that Santa Claus, and George Washington, and Jesus Christ—all these white hope, great people—are the standard, how are they going to feel about themselves?”
“And now they look at social media and they see cops killing people that look like them every other day. How do they feel about themselves? So the path towards education revolution and self-directed learning is self-empowerment.”
Roughly four years earlier, at CASA, Bowman curated a “Wall of Honor” featuring former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D., Ga.), Assata Shakur, and Mutulu Shakur—all of whom Bowman said “played a major role in moving our society … toward a world of freedom, justice, and equality.”
Years before Bowman established the wall, in 2009, McKinney attended a Holocaust denial gathering in London, where she praised anti-Semitic leaders and writers. Assata Shakur was convicted for the first-degree murder of a New Jersey state trooper in 1973, while Mutulu Shakur led a group of armed robbers who killed a guard and two New York police officers in 1981.
