Joe Biden on Sunday stressed the importance of knowing American history in its entirety, “good and bad”, as he commemorated the brutal crackdown 58 years ago on a civil rights march.
“History matters,” said the Democratic president during a speech in front of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, in the state of Alabama (south), where hundreds of peace activists were violently repressed by the police on March 7, 1965.
This “bloody Sunday” had traumatized the United States and had resulted a few months later in the Voting Rights Act, a federal law guaranteeing access to the right to vote for all.
These demonstrators “forced America to face the truth and to act,” said Joe Biden, accusing the opposition of wanting, today, to “hide the truth” historical.
“You can’t choose to learn only what you want to know,” he said, as a debate rages on the teaching of the slavery and segregationist past in schools across the country. “We must know everything, the good and the bad”, he hammered.
Several conservative states have passed laws since 2020 banning the teaching of “critical race theory,” an academic concept that has become a catch-all formula for racism awareness programs.
Florida Governor Ron de Santis, who harbors presidential ambitions, recently defended the banning of a high school course on African-American history, accused of “indoctrinating” young people.
In his speech, Joe Biden also called for remaining “vigilant” on the right to vote threatened, according to him, by the Supreme Court, which partly unraveled the Voting Rights Act, as well as by “dozens of restrictive laws” adopted in the conservative states.
The 80-year-old president, whose political career has hinged largely on the support of African-American voters, urged Congress to pass sweeping electoral reform, which was blocked by Republican lawmakers. Without much chance of being heard.
06/03/2023 07:51:23 – Selma (Etats-Unis) (AFP) © 2023 AFP
