Leading state minority groups are calling on the U.S. Department of Education and its civil rights division to review controversial social studies curriculum changes made by the Texas State Board of Education earlier this year. The Texas National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Texas League of United Latin American Citizens describe the recent history standards as discriminatory against the state’s minority public school students and a violation of the federal Civil Rights Act.

The request specifies attention be directed at the miseducation of minority students as well as the underrepresentation of Latinos and African Americans in gifted and

talented programs. The groups are also asking federal authorities to examine, “the use of accountability standards to impose sanctions on schools with high populations of minority students.”

“We must not allow the use of our compulsory education system to misinform and negatively impact the academic capacity of our most important natural resource – our children,” said Gary Bledsoe, Texas NAACP President and National Board Member in a statement.

State LULAC President Joey Cardenas said the groups were “shocked” by the board’s actions in emasculating minority history and vowed to ensure the revisions are prevented from making it into classrooms. He hinted at charging a possible legal proceeding against the state in an attempt to reverse the adopted measure.

“This is like a criminal assault. The message is that you have no worth. We cannot let this become official policy,” Cardenas said. “We have engaged the state in litigation before and will do so again if necessary.”

During the May curriculum hearings, former U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige and NAACP President & CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous testified against the changes.

“We are concerned about quality not quotas,” Jealous said. “We are concerned about our children learning the whole truth, not half of it.”

While African-American SBOE members Lawrence Allen (D-Houston) and Mavis Knight (D-Dallas) support the groups’ request, other members are questioning its validity.

Board Chair Gail Lowe (R-Lampasas), who voted for the social studies revisions, defended the curriculum despite condemnation from leading minority organizations. She doubted whether or not the groups charging complaints had actually read the text.

“The standards promote a better understanding about our state and nation’s legacy and is intended to give students a broad spectrum of significant historical contributions from diverse cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds,” Lowe said. “It is information for any well-rounded student.”

“I am not sure their complaint has much merit,” she added.

Board member David Bradley (R-Beaumont) says the groups are illustrating “reverse racism” by overemphasizing minority influence and said they received far more attention than deserved. Calling the complaints “contentious,” and without merit, Bradley reduced the organization’s appeal to the federal government as “whining.”

“Pulling out the race card without the facts is so intellectually disingenuous,” Bradley said. “It is preposterous for someone to claim because we have 51 percent minority students that we have to teach 51 percent minority figures. History is history, people should be remembered and recorded for their accomplishments, not just for their skin color.”

In the spring, all five minority members of the board voted against the revisions that many saw as highly ideological and politicized toward a far-right conservative frame of mind. The NAACP and LULAC point to several instances of discrimination in the text including: the downplay of violence against blacks waged by the Ku Klux Klan and the emphasis on Black Panther violence, the teaching of positive aspects of slavery and the Confederacy, teaching that white benevolence and not the civil rights movement led to gains by African Americans and Latinos since ’50s and ’60s, teaching the ails of affirmative action rather than the reasons, and the decontexualization of individuals like Jefferson Davis. Those misrepresentations can cause a chilling effect on the participation of African-American children in the educational process, the groups argue.

Newly elected SBOE members, who are largely seen as more politically moderate than their predecessors, will have the ability to suggest placing the history standards back on the agenda when the board convenes in January. But Lowe, along with the commissioner of education, sets the board’s agenda and said as of today, the SBOE will not be readdressing social studies when the 15-member elected body meets.

During an emotional final meeting in November where many longtime board members signed off due to either failed reelection campaigns or by choice, Knight gave outspoken social conservative Don McLeroy (R-Bryan) two books on slavery, while Mary Helen Berlanga (D-Corpus Christi) gave him a bookstore gift card strictly to purchase literature on Hispanics and the Civil Rights movement, in efforts to educate him on topics they felt he lacked a depth of knowledge.

“Now you can find out more about these wonderful people that you never got to study about in your history books,” Berlanga said.