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The 'Critical Race Theory' Monster Hunt Is Beginning to Wreak Havoc on Local School Boards
Charles P. Pierce
5-6 minutes
Do they realize how crazy it really is out there these days? Do they realize how the tendrils of crazy now instantly connect with what they’re doing—or not doing—in Washington with the crazy at the local level? From
the AP:
Opponents of Washoe County’s curriculum proposal camped on the eastern side of the entrance to a packed local school board meeting on Tuesday, wearing MAGA hats and carrying signs that read “No CRT,” “CRT teaches racism,” and “The School Board works for the people!” To combat concerns about ideological indoctrination, the Nevada Family Alliance has proposed outfitting teachers with body cameras to ensure they aren’t indoctrinating students in classrooms.“You guys have a serious problem with activist teachers pushing politics in the classroom, and there’s no place for it, especially for our fifth graders,” Karen England, the group’s executive director, told trustees Tuesday.
Body cameras?
Body cameras? I guarantee you that this will happen, somewhere, sometime in the next decade. Sooner, if the government changes hands in 2022 and 2024. Already, the 2024 presidential hopefuls are in the lounge before boarding the bandwagon, and they’re on their third round of drinks. From the
Orlando Sentinel:
[Florida Governor Ron] DeSantis, following a national conservative playbook, said he wanted to prevent instructors from “teaching kids to hate their country.” The governor, speaking via a video connection, told the State Board of Education that he does not want to stop children from learning about slavery or the civil rights movement, only to make sure they don’t hear “narratives that are not grounded in facts.” He wants to prevent, he has said, students from learning a “false history,” where they “look back and denigrate the Founding Fathers, denigrate the American Revolution.” In his short address, he offered no instances where Florida teachers had offered inaccurate history lessons but cited problems in schools in Arizona and New York.
Well, he wouldn’t, would he? The magic words work better if you don’t get too specific.
But observe how quickly the weaponization of the words “Critical Race Theory” happened. True, very few of the people who toss the phrase around know what it actually is, but its political utility doesn’t depend on something as silly as that.
From the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
[The] Cobb [County School Board]’s resolution, which was approved during its work session, was introduced by board Chairman Randy Scamihorn, who said he brought up the topic because educators allegedly said on social media they were using part of the theory in their classroom discussions. He said critical race theory is a Marxist concept that pits one group of people against another. “It’s revisionist history and history should be thorough,” Scamihorn said.
What in the name of bearded cartwheeling Jehovah does
that mean? If history is “thorough,” then it’s going to contain a lot that Randy probably would consider “revisionist.” In fact, the 1619 Project, which is really what these people are talking about when they talk about critical race theory, is nothing if not an attempt to make American history
more “thorough.”
This preposterous monster hunt is gumming up primary and secondary education, and scrambling up the people who are supposed to be running them. In Germantown, Wisconsin, the school board already has banned and un-banned the teaching of CRT once. From the
Journal-Sentinel:
Board member Michael Loth cast the only dissenting vote in overturning the April 12 decision. He said he didn't like how critical race theory involves Marxism and how Marxism has failed in countries such as Venezuela. "I work with three men that escaped Venezuela in the last 10 years, and their stories are not pretty. So when I say I don't want Marxism taught through CRT (critical race theory) in the school, that's what I mean. I'm protecting your students," said Loth.
Germantown: the Caracas of Washington County.
It’s getting strange out there.
Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.
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