State Rep. Jennifer Decker went before the Shelbyville Area NAACP a week and a half ago and gave its members some pretty startling news.
Decker is a white, 68-year-old lawyer who is trying to prohibit state colleges and universities from offering diversity programs aimed at helping African Americans and other underrepresented students.
“My father was a slave, just to a white man and he was white,” Decker said before the predominantly Black audience.
Decker’s father was a white preacher. He was born sometime around 1933 – that was 68 years after the 13th Amendment outlawed slavery.
It was a moment that, in many ways, proved how badly diversity, equity and inclusion programs – this year’s chosen bogeyman of Kentucky’s right-wing politicians – are needed in Kentucky’s schools.
Such diversity programs weren’t around when Decker was in school.
If they had been, she might have learned that few white people in America, short of those who have been trafficked for sex, should ever claim something like that. It’s deeply offensive to those who are descendants of actual slaves to hear a white person claim that they are a descendent of a slave.