Right now, the New Hampshire Legislature is considering legislation (Kahn amendment) to add the study of bigotry and hate to N.H.’s standards for an “adequate education.” It would seem like a timely effort but, curiously, it’s been proceeding quietly, tucked into bills of unrelated subjects (SB727, 1297S, HB1135). Also curiously, while allegedly studying bigotry and intolerance and hate, there is no mention of Black oppression or slavery or Jim Crow laws or African-American history at all (but 20 references to the Holocaust). The term “racism” never appears in this bill.

The legislation sets up a commission to define “best practices” for teaching about the Holocaust (specifically) followed by more general terms of bigotry, etc. The commission make-up is specifically directed to include members from: the Catholic church, New Hampshire Council of Churches, Cohen Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Jewish Federation of NH, and the Anti-Defamation League along with “2 survivors or direct descendants of either the Holocaust or another genocide.” No African-American representative was included on this commission. Not a single one. Nope. The NAACP wasn’t invited. Wow. Invisibility is the foundation of oppression.

So, as citizens across the country chant “Black Lives Matter,” as a cop in Minneapolis can casually suffocate a black American citizen in front of a crowd, as discrimination continues across America, the New Hampshire senate chooses to omit black voices from this “adequate education” bill. Wow.