CONCORD New Hampshire s Republican lawmakers have inserted, and the governor has signed, a state budget that prohibits the teaching of so-called divisive concepts related to race and gender by public schools, state agencies and contractors. But what exactly does that mean?
Though the term divisive concepts no longer appears in the language attached to the two-year $13.5 billion state budget, many of its themes are repackaged into several lines of legislation beginning on page 154 of the 220-page bill, according to civil rights groups and educators.
“One of the central problems with this bill is its ambiguity in what constitutes a banned so-called ‘divisive’ concept, ” said Gilles Bissonnette, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire. “One part of the bill aims to permit ‘workplace sensitivity training’ while other portions of the bill ban speech aimed at addressing ‘unconscious racism’ in the workplace. Similarly, one part
Wentworth Cheswill was first African American elected to public office in U.S. history > > >Published: 7/4/2021 8:00:05 PM
Nearly 30 years ago, Charlotte DiLorenzo moved to Newmarket from Massachusetts, where she had lived her whole life. The lack of racial diversity in her new home state was nothing less than culture shock for her.
“I lived in Beverly, I grew up in Lynn, I worked in Boston. I was sort of used to being in diverse communities and being around a lot of diverse people,” DiLorenzo, who is Black, said. “Things were so different.”
Unknown to DiLorenzo at the time, and to many New Hampshirite today, the same Granite State that Dilorenzo met in 1993 is home to the nation’s first African American person elected to public office – in 1768.
Boggis: To honor Ona Marie Judge Stains, use her proper name
JerriAnne Boggis
Attached to each of our names is a unique and personal history. These days, I can tell the state of my mother’s mind by the name she calls me. When she says my full “government” name “JerriAnne Elizabeth Creary,” the rote formality tells me she does not remember who I am. When she calls me “JerriAnne,” I know the fog of dementia has lifted briefly and I glimpse the mother I know. But when she looks at me and says “Jer” my heart melts. I’m both a child yearning for her mother and an adult filled with nostalgia.
• Dec 28, 2020
How well do you really know George Washington? If you’re picturing wooden teeth and a cherry tree, you will want to tune in for NHPR reporter Casey McDermott s conversation with historians Alexis Coe and Erica Armstrong Dunbar. Their work challenges conventional wisdom about this founding father and brings to the forefront Ona Judge, the runaway enslaved person he pursued to Portsmouth, N.H..
Air date: Tuesday, Dec. 29, 2020. Originally aired June 24, 2020
Transcript
Casey McDermott:
I m Casey McDermott, in for Laura Knoy and this is The Exchange. When is the last time you read a presidential biography that does not just focus on that particular politician s biography of their childhood or perhaps their early political career, but also includes lists of things like his pettiest acts or his frenemies. Today on The Exchange, we ll revisit the legacy of perhaps the most mythologized founding father, George Washington, with historian Alexis Coe. She challenges us to rethink not only what we think we know about our first president, but also the notion of whose stories are told and how those stories shape our idea of democracy today. Spoiler alert: A lot of that has to do with who s in power or at least who held power when those stories were being written.