The Washington Post's sickening hit piece on "the man behind Florida's new black history standards"

William Allen is the former chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and an emeritus professor of political science at Michigan State University. He is also a member of Florida’s African American History Standards Workgroup, the body that developed Florida’s new black history standards.

Indeed, according to the Washington Post Allen is “the man behind Florida’s new Black history standards” and “the public face of the state’s efforts to rewrite how Black history is taught.” The “rewrite” overrides the College’s Board’s leftist writeup. Therefore, it has incurred the wrath of left-wingers, including those at the Washington Post.

The left’s main grievance is that the new standards erase Critical Race Theory-based teachings. But since the left usually denies that it favors teaching CRT, it has focused on a different grievance — the fact that the new standards include a statement that some slaves were able to learn valuable skills in servitude, and later put them to use as freed men and women.

As I’ll argue below, this statement runs contrary not to historical truth, but — worse — to the thrust of contemporary racial leftism. Hence, the need for the Post to attack William Allen, the “public face” of the new standards, is two-fold. The standards reject CRT and they suggest that even the worst oppression can present opportunities for some of the oppressed, if they show initiative.

Before I discuss the particulars of the Post’s hit piece on Allen, I should mention that I serve with him on the board of the American Civil Rights Project. But even if I didn’t know and respect him, I would still be appalled by the Post’s drive-by attack.

Here is how the Post introduces Bill Allen to its readers:

The 79-year-old retired professor of government and political science has a résumé notable for appointments to high-profile positions by conservative Republicans. In 1984, Ronald Reagan named Allen to the National Council of the Humanities, followed three years later by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

In 1998, Virginia officials chose him as the executive director of the State Council on Higher Education.

(Emphasis added)

Thus, the Post tries to diminish Bill’s impressive resume by attributing his accomplishments not to his considerable merit, but to the favor of conservative Republicans. I’m still waiting for the Post article that calls the résumé of Antony Blinken or Jake Sullivan “notable for appointments to high-profile positions by liberal Democrats.”

In the Post’s view, a credential obtained via appointment by a conservative official counts for less than one obtained through appointment by a liberal. Clearly, the Post considers conservative officials (including Ronald Reagan) inferior to their liberal counterparts. This blatant bias should make it impossible for any fair-minded person to take anything the Post says seriously.

The Post also notes that in 1986, Allen ran for the U.S. Senate in California, finishing 10th out of the 13 candidates in the Republican primary. But Allen’s unsuccessful Senate bid of 37 years ago has no relevance to his work on Florida’s black history standards.

The Post probably brought up the ancient Senate bid so it could tell its readers that Allen’s 1986 campaign was managed by John Eastman, who 34 years later would spearhead Donald Trump’s last minute bid to avoid defeat in the 2020 election. This, too, has no relevance to the Florida standards. For the record, Eastman was 27 years old at the time of the California race and had not yet entered law school.

Other than charging Allen with guilt by association (including with Reagan), what does the Post have to say about him? It says that in 1989, Allen was “caught up in a kidnapping case involving a high school student on tribal lands in Arizona.”

The Post’s Lori Rozsa provides no details about this case, and for good reason. According to this report, Allen and a former U.S. Civil Rights Commission psychologist, accompanied by a TV crew, visited an Arizona Indian reservation to interview a 14-year-old Apache girl, the subject of a custody battle between her natural mother and the white couple that had adopted her. Allen and the psychologist picked the girl up for the interview on her way home from school. They then took her to her mother who, nonetheless, filed a kidnaping charge against Allen.

The case was dropped, as it had to be because it was ridiculous. But the Post’s Rozsa tries to leave the impression that there was something to it.

Rozsa also reports that in 1989 Allen gave a speech called “Blacks? Animals? Homosexuals? What is a minority?” She says nothing about the content of the speech.

I haven’t found the text of the speech, but as I understand it Allen’s argument was that that blacks and gays shouldn’t seek special protections as minority classes. This isn’t the prevailing view, but it doesn’t shock the conscience. I assume that’s why Rozsa didn’t discuss the speech, hoping instead to shock the conscience with the provocative title and make Allen sound like a right-wing nut.

As noted, Allen is a professor emeritus at Michigan State. He is also an emeritus dean of James Madison College at Michigan State. I don’t think Michigan State selects right-wing nuts to be professors and deans.

What really rankles the Post and other race mongers about Allen is not his 1989 speech or the bogus kidnapping claim. Allen’s sin, and that of the Florida standards which were approved by all 13 members of the committee, is the unwillingness to indoctrinate Florida high school students in CRT teachings. In addition, although he and his colleagues certainly want Florida students to understand the evils of slavery, they also want to present students with the full, rich history of blacks in America. This includes inconvenient facts that cut against a narrative of relentless gloom, doom, and horror.

One such fact is the one I mentioned above — some slaves gained useful skills during slavery and later put them to use as freed men and women. There’s no genuine dispute about this. The left-wing College Board’s black history standards contained a similar statement.

So the statement has the virtue of being true. But it also has another important virtue. It shows that blacks even in the worst conditions — conditions incalculably worse than any they face today — can sometimes turn hardship to advantage.

This reality is consistent with Allen’s family history. He told ABC News that his great-grandfather was a slave but “had the pluck to seek out opportunity” and “made a commitment to build his family’s life in this country.”

Contrast this positive message with the message leftist race mongers peddle. They contend that self-reliance is largely futile because of systemic racism and therefore that blacks can get ahead only by playing the victim card and obtaining benefits and privileges from benefactors, namely the government and liberal elites.

Consider the course offered at Princeton in which the professor teaches students that blacks should be considered “disabled” due to systemic racism. This may sound extreme — and it is. But it’s also the logical culmination of what the left has been preaching about race for years.

Which message is more likely to produce personal success — with pluck and commitment you can succeed in America or you are disabled? The answer is obvious. I doubt that feeling sorry for oneself, or feeling inferior even if through no fault of one’s own, ever helped anyone succeed.

Was Bill Allen right all those years ago when he argued that blacks shouldn’t desire special protection as a minority class? I don’ know. However, I’m pretty sure blacks shouldn’t seek to be deemed, or be taught to consider themselves, “disabled.”