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The Tulsa Beacon

 

Ray Carter

Center for Independent Journalism

Ray Carter is the director of OCPA’s Center for Independent Journalism.

State officials want the Supreme Court to overturn McGirt

Tulsa Beacon

The State of Oklahoma has filed numerous petitions for a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court, highlighting cases state officials say demonstrate the need for the court to reconsider and overturn its ruling in McGirt v. Oklahoma, which effectively decided that Indian reservations comprise most of eastern Oklahoma. In McGirt, the court ruled…

Stitt says states should govern abortion

Tulsa Beacon

Gov. Kevin Stitt has joined 11 other governors to file an amicus brief that argues the U.S. Supreme Court should overturn prior rulings and leave regulation of abortion up to state governments. The brief has been submitted in a Mississippi case that involves one of the most direct challenges in decades to prior U.S. Supreme…

White, women middle-aged teachers promote racism, OAEA activist says

Tulsa Beacon

Would-be school teachers at the Oklahoma Aspiring Educators Association’s recent Racial and Social Justice Symposium were told that both public schools and many of the teachers within them are tools of white supremacy. But featured speakers at the online event offered a solution: Purge the teaching profession of many of its current members, who are…

Phillips Seminary speaker links racism to Christianity

Tulsa Beacon

A featured presenter at an Oklahoma race-relations program says Christianity is linked to racism. Participants were also told survey data showed “stark, indisputable differences” between the views of black citizens and all other races in Oklahoma—even though those sweeping proclamations may have been based on a survey subsample of few as 44 black Oklahomans, a…

OSSBA rips ban on teaching racism

Tulsa Beacon

A top official with the Oklahoma State School Boards Association (OSSBA) has declared a ban on teaching children that people are inherently racist based solely on skin color “is harmful to our students” and will “confuse teachers.” Another top OSSBA official has declared it a “lie” to tell children that skin color doesn’t matter and…

All Lives Matter

Tulsa Beacon

The first session of Advancing Oklahoma, a “statewide conversation on race” involving five civic organizations, launched this month with a presentation by George Henderson, who became one of the first black professors at the University of Oklahoma in 1967. A key part of Henderson’s message: All lives matter. “I believe this: Ultimately, at the end…

Jenks Sign

Jenks’ reading skills drop? Only 44 percent are reading proficient

Tulsa Beacon

The Jenks Public Schools district has been identified as the best school in Oklahoma in a national review, despite that same evaluation finding less than half of students at the district read at grade level. In no other state were less than half of students proficient in reading at a state’s “best” school. The website…

Forced viewing of anti-Trump film prompts OU lawsuit

Tulsa Beacon

A lawsuit filed by a former University of Oklahoma women’s volleyball player reveals that scholarship athletes were required to watch and discuss a political documentary that compares former President Donald Trump and his supporters with violent segregationists in the 1960s. Because she expressed disagreement with that premise, Kylee McLaughlin’s lawsuit said she was subsequently ostracized…

Oklahoma history books mentioned 1921 for decades

Tulsa Beacon

A common theme of commemorations of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre was that the event was swept under the rug, particularly in public schools, for most of the past 100 years. Some officials say the way public schools have handled the 1921 massacre provides another glimpse of how students can be shortchanged by a one-size-fits-all…

Promoting racism: Author calls white people ‘racist’

Tulsa Beacon

Women and minorities who achieve success and obtain positions of power are not evidence that the United States is not a racist, patriarchal society dedicated to white supremacy and male domination, according to Robin DiAngelo, the author of White Fragility. “Systems of oppression are deeply embedded in the foundation and fabric of a society and…