Lynching memories

More black Americans don't visit national parks, according to an impeached former judge, because they associate them with lynchings.

You read that right.

"African-Americans have felt unwelcome and even fearful in federal parklands during our nation's history," said Alcee Hastings, who is also a Florida congressman, "because of the horrors of lynching."

Carolyn Finney, a former professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who was denied tenure there because her work didn't meet academic standards, is now a diversity adviser to the U.S. National Parks Advisory Board. In a book, "Black Faces, White Spaces," she said "oppression and violence against black people in forests and other green spaces can translate into contemporary understandings that constrain African-American environmental understandings."

The tree, she said, in insisting the parks become more inclusive, is a racist symbol.

"Black people also wanted to go out in the woods and eat apples from the trees," Finney said." But black people were lynched on the trees."

A coalition of civil rights, environmental justice and conservation groups, of which the diversity adviser is a member, has suggested among other policy recommendations, that national parks hire staff with more diverse backgrounds, increase funding to identify aspects of the American story absent from parks, and identify ways of increasing diverse stakeholder engagement.

The ugly coalition

He's apologized for it now, but former Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell said last week the votes of "ugly women" will help elect Hillary Clinton president in November.

"Will [Republican candidate Donald Trump] have some appeal to working-class Dems in Levittown or Bristol? Sure," he was quoted in The Washington Post as saying. "For every one, he'll lose 1 1/2, two Republican women. Trump's comments like `You can't be a 10 if you're flat-chested,' that'll come back to haunt him. There are probably more ugly women in America than attractive women. People take that stuff personally."

Indeed, they did. One of those was Pennsylvania Democratic Senate nominee Katie McGinty, whose campaign is chaired by none other than Rendell.

"Gov. Rendell's comments were completely off-base and inappropriate," said Sabrina Singh, the candidate's spokeswoman.

McGinty, she said, was not available for comment.

It's not the first sexist verbal slip for the former Philadelphia mayor.

Among his previous gaffes were one about the choice of then-Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano as homeland security secretary in 2008 being appropriate because she had "no life," "no family" and thus could use nearly every waking hour to work.

Flags flagged

The school principal at Fruita Monument High School in Colorado overreacted in an all too typical way recently when a student showed up in the school parking lot with a Confederate flag. Instead of reasoning with the one student about the inappropriate symbolism of the flag to some people, he banned all flags, including the American flag.

Students said the principal intended to back up his threat by expelling students from school or keeping them from walking at graduation.

Feeling an assault on freedom, five students returned to the school in parade formation the following day with even more flags, most of them American.

"I don't see how you can pull someone's right to walk in graduation because they were being patriotic," senior Keegan Bogart said.

One veteran even showed up to stand in solidarity with the students.

"We're all proud of this [American] flag," he told KKCO. "Thousands of people have died for this flag. I think we should be behind the kids."

Quickly, the principal caved, lifting the ban and telling students they would be permitted to fly appropriate flags, including the American flag.

Not lacking confidence

The head of the National Education Association, testifying before a Senate committee on the recently passed Every Student Succeeds Act, said the body shouldn't listen to her because she's head of the nation's biggest teachers union but because she's a darn good teacher.

"I'm a really, really good sixth-grade teacher," Lily Eskelsen Garcia said. "I give myself goosebumps. I'm amazing."

She wasn't done, eventually detailing how if the bipartisan Senate that passed the George W. Bush-era No Child Left Behind Act had listened to teachers like her, who would have warned them against so much testing, they might not be worrying about it today.

"I have about 14 hours worth of really good advice to give you," she said. "They told me I have five minutes, so I'll talk really, really fast. Number one, and I cannot stress this enough: I am a really good teacher. You should really listen to me."

The Senate panel isn't the first place she has patted herself on the back. Noting before a Wayne State University audience in 2014 that teachers are often known for their humility, she said that wasn't her.

"I am not humble," she said. "I'm an amazing teacher. I was the Utah Teacher of the Year."