Glenn Youngkin’s campaign for Governor of Virginia was fueled in large part by attacks on public schools. Youngkin said that the state’s public schools were indoctrinating students with critical race theory. He pledged to put an end to it. After he took office, he continued his rant against CRT; he even set up an email site where parents can complain about teachers. And to add to his rightwing cred, he banned mask mandates. A number of school districts are suing him to preserve their mask mandates.
Dana Milbank wrote about the elite private schools where Youngkin sent his own children. They very explicitly teach critical race theory. Youngkin knew what was going on: he was a member of the board.
Milbank wrote:
Not only is Virginia’s new Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin banning the fictional menace of critical race theory from public schools, but he’s also turning the commonwealth into a little Stasi State. He’s setting up a tip line so parents can report to the government any school official they consider to be teaching something “divisive.”
“We’re asking for folks to send us reports,” he told a conservative radio host Monday, The Post reported. “We’re going to make sure we catalogue it all,” he added, “to make sure we’re rooting it out.”
The state’s deputizing of residents to act as informants will have the obvious effect of deterring even mentions of slavery or race, which means Youngkin has imposed a de facto “memory law” whitewashing Virginia’s, and the country’s, deep and ongoing history of white supremacy…
The public schools of Virginia do not teach critical race theory.
But do you know which schools do teach “divisive” concepts, including something resembling critical race theory? The private D.C. schools Youngkin had his children attend. And you know who was on the board of governors of one of those schools while it was beefing up its anti-racism policies? Glenn Youngkin.
Youngkin, a professed fan of public school parents’ rights, exercised his own parental rights not to send his children to Virginia public schools but rather to National Cathedral School and St. Albans School, twin private all-girl and all-boy schools in D.C. under the auspices of the Episcopal Church.
National Cathedral’s website listed Youngkin as a member of its governing board from 2016 through 2019, and he was chair of its finance committee. To their credit, both National Cathedral and St. Albans were, during that time, leaders in developing anti-racism teachings, even before the murder of George Floyd heightened national awareness of systemic racism. Youngkin’s spokeswoman, Macaulay Porter, said that Youngkin “stepped off the board after 2019” and that both schools “changed a lot over the years.”
DEI — Diversity, Equity and Inclusion — has been a priority at National Cathedral for many years. The school has an extensive staff devoted to the initiative, as well as programming that includes affinity groups such as diversity forums, an equity board, an intersectionality council and a student diversity leadership conference. A National Cathedral strategic plan approved by the board in 2018 — during Youngkin’s tenure — “includes the mandate to ‘Advance an Inclusive Educational Environment,’ ” which involved “integrating related action steps into the fabric of everything we are and do as a school community.”
Among the other things National Cathedral has done: made time in the school schedule for “critical conversations around topics of race, anti-racism, social justice, and inclusion”; added courses such as “Black Lives in Literature” and “Courageous Dialogues”; developed new hiring protocols “as a result of our anti-bias work” and required diversity training for all staff members; and included in the school’s summer reading list books such as Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism….”
St. Albans has undertaken similar anti-racism initiatives. Among the books promoted on the school’s website are “White Fragility,” “Critical Race Theory: An Introduction,” Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s “Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy and the Rise of Jim Crow,” and Ibram X. Kendi’s “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.”
St. Albans also directed faculty to read Kendi’s “How to Be an Antiracist.” Fox News and other conservative outlets this past fall blasted a St. Albans’s “anti-bias” policy draft.
Youngkin’s own children were lucky to have attended schools that make its students grapple with uncomfortable and, yes, “divisive” issues. So why is he now using the powers of the state to intimidate teachers who would give Virginia’s public school students the same advantage?
Easy enough to answer: Because it will win him votes.
and the winner is Ruth Hasseler!
and the second question is: Why is this ploy working? Robert Paxton claims that truth has nothing to do with fascism. Ponder.
Interesting question. Some answers:
Because the agitprop is effective, as he learned from the former Racist in Chief? Because there’s nothing like owning the Dems? Because he is himself racist (racist is as racist does)? Because he wasn’t sure how to run a state and thought that 1984 was an instruction manual for this? Because he is an amoral opportunist making use of racism among the Trumpanzees? Because all those book burnings will reduce Virginia’s fuel costs? Because he so admires the successes of the East German Ministry for State Security (the Stasi) and the Soviet People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (the NKVD)? Because he feels a responsibility to proactively prevent any outbreaks of thinking in the state of Viriginia?
Because IQ45 and DeSatan are his brothers from another mother?
When we look in the dictionary under Republican, the synonym should be hypocrite. This story is neither shocking nor surprising. Of all the various Christian sects, the Anglican church is considered to be the most progressive of all the major sects. The Episcopalians were the first to accept gay membership and women as ordained priests. Like Trump and DeSantis Youngkin is not the “bumpkin” he pretends to be. He is playing the part to gain votes from the poor working class of the commonwealth. Too bad this news did not come out during the election.
It would not have made any difference to make this public during the election. The voters who accept these outrageous falsehoods would rationalize away the decision to vote for this man.
Just to underline what you wrote here, rt: Youngkin appears to be some kind of devoted Episcopalian himself, from what I’ve read. He was raised in that church, and he and his wife at one time started a church in their basement “based on Episcopalian principles,” later expanding it to a farm property/ building which he donated and I gather still supports. As suggested by having been on the board of National Cathedral during its adoption of DEI curriculum, his choice of schools for kids was not casual.
Footnote: his youngest is still high-school age. When they moved to Richmond, they enrolled him in the fancy private Georgetown Prep (Bethesda)– which has a mask mandate. [chuckle]
Georgetown Prep is a socially conscious school (my son know kids who attend and I know the parents). There is a mask mandate, a vaccine mandate and mandatory testing every week. If Youngkin didn’t like the policies, he was free to dis-enroll his child and go elsewhere (FYI -all the private schools in the area have covid protocols in place to stay fully open safely), but he didn’t.
As much as I don’t like HOW Youngkin is enacting policies in VA, we must remember that he is an elected and paid official for the State and he is giving his constituents what they asked for. Some people will be happy and others will not….that’s how politics works. It didn’t help that McAullif did an Arne Duncan 2.0 (even if the wording was taken out of context) and pissed off some parents who were undecided. VA schools were closed the longest and parents were rightfully angry at how things played out. He did what he did to get votes and if VA residents don’t like what Youngkin is doing now, they have the option to vote him out in the next round.
A mask mandate is fine for Youngkin’s children, but not for the students in public schools. I read on Twitter that of 180,000 students in Fairfax County, VA, only 24 showed up at school without masks
That’s great that so many showed up wearing masks. That means that parents and students believe in the science and in doing the right thing. When people are mandated to do things they don’t want to do, they tend to resist even harder (it’s psychology) and louder. My son’s school held a vaccine clinic (April and May) for all students and anyone living in the household. No one was mandated to get vaccinated yet most did….because they knew it was the right thing to do and they wanted to keep school open and teachers safe. Masks and testing were mandated. The remainder of the students are slowly getting vaccinated as their covid tests come back positive and the boys have to refrain from sports and “enjoy” a week of school online.
LisaM,
Do you live in an area where families are inundated with anti-vaxx and anti-mask propaganda?
Youngkin ran on a platform to normalize that propaganda.
It is very dangerous to help the right wing propaganda machine by blaming the victims of the right wing propaganda machine.
McAuliffe stood up for what was right. That is why he was destroyed. He was a danger to the right wing. Period.
Blaming McAuliffe because the right wing propaganda machine falsely presented an out of context sentence as meaning something other than what it did is the direct road to fascism.
Pushing the false narrative that the person at fault is the victim is exactly what the right wing propaganda wants you to do. It legitimizes and amplifies their criticism. “He shouldn’t have said” (what he didn’t say) is the direct road to fascism.
This is the same propaganda that is used to destroy teachers unions. It incentives the far right pro-privatizers to continue to twist any person’s words — including your very favorite politician’s — into something that is not true.
bethree5,
I think there is a huge disconnect when white parents who defend Governor Youngkin post things like this:
“Georgetown Prep is a socially conscious school (my son know kids who attend and I know the parents).”
And this Oct. 28, 2018 NYT articles reports: “Back at Georgetown Prep, Kavanaugh Is Hailed as a Hero”
Were there any parents and students who didn’t hail Brett Kavanaugh as a hero, at this “socially conscious school”. Or did they just not feel comfortable speaking out?
When someone views Georgetown Prep as a fine example of a “social conscious school” because they know some parents, but then rails against public schools as teaching some non-existent but supposedly very bad and dangerous DEI, then I think that “truth” is in the eye of the beholder.
Youngkin’s goal for school privatization may be Christian nationalism.
LisaM– “he is giving his constituents what they asked for.”
His constituents are the citizens of VA, not just the 51% who voted for him [not a mandate by any stretch of the imagination]. There is no poll of the voters on masks in schools, nor any indication what proportion of the 51% was all over that issue, as opposed to simply against another round of McAuliffe.
Not only that: prior to election, he said he disagreed with statewide bans on mask mandates. 8/12/21, to WaPo: “a Youngkin spokesman … said he would not go quite as far as DeSantis, claiming that as governor, Youngkin would leave the policy decision about masks up to local school districts and ‘strongly encourage’ them to let individual parents decide.” And again, after his inaugural ceremony on Jan. 15, Youngkin told WRIC-TV in an interview that he would not attempt to block localities from implementing their own requirements. ‘Localities are going to have to make decisions the way the law works and that is going to be up to individual decisions.’ That particular statement was immediately contradicted by the wording of his executive order, and veiled threats to withhold funds from districts which don’t allow parent opt-out.
How you can call that just politics is beyond me.
Also, Lisa, re: your response to Diane on Fairfax (“When people are mandated to do things they don’t want to do, they tend to resist even harder (it’s psychology) and louder”)– Fairfax defied the govr’s EO & still has a mask mandate. If 24 out of 180k is all that a mandate drums up in harder and louder resistance, I’m thinking there ain’t much there there.
Because he has a financial stake in the Viginia public school textbook series Rasse und Selle now in preparation?
This isn’t critical race theory. No school teaches this. Anti racism is what this school teaches.
We have to be careful not to feed their fire.
True that
Thanks for that, Stef. I thought I had read up pretty well on CRT, yet that distinction had escaped me. I read up some more!
Is this particular political leader so different from his other so-called conservative brothers? No. They are all cynics. Whatever it takes to get power. Whatever it takes to make sure that a minority rules a majority. They fear a majority might upset the applecart of their economic dominance. That is why two Supreme Court Justices went to the same high school. That is why densely populated cities are gerrymandered into nearby suburban districts so they are under represented. These people are not conservative. They spew conservatism, but are really just cynics who know what they can spew to create power.
Recently conservative democrat Jim Cooper, a longtime representative from Nashville, announced that he will not run for re-election since Nashville was cut into three parts by the republican legislature. Tennessee will have to deal with cynical leadership for the next generation. My republican representative was re-elected after he demonstrated that his view on abortion was that it should be illegal except when it was his own illicit relationship. We are stuck with this for a long time to come.
Well said. I like the term “cynical opportunists” to describe most of the radical right wing hypocrites.
They are all cynics. Yup. Learned that from Glorious Leader. But, as Vonnegut says in Mother Night, “You are what you pretend to be, so be very careful what you pretend to be.”
In these Independent religious schools they DO NOT “teach” CRT. The kids attending (and the families that pay for them to go) “learn” kindness, compassion and empathy by actually DOING required service over the years they are enrolled. They read books/literature in ELA (Bob Shepard would love the teaching methods!) and History and discuss the impacts on todays world, or compare/contrast in relation to events. It’s an attempt to make the students better human beings. They live DEI everyday that they attend school because of the mission statement of the school.
The Independent schools must present some form of “curriculum” for DEI/SEL in order to be accredited by the state. It is easy for them to throw something together since it’s who/what they are. Public schools OTOH, “PURCHASE” their DEI/SEL curriculum FROM the very reformsters who have done a pretty good job of destroying public schools via testing mandates and poor “standards”/curriculum. DEI/SEL (and the data collection that goes along with it) in public schools is pretty crappy and that is what parents are reacting to and what Governors like Youngkin are fighting against. Let’s tell the truth!
My son attends an Independent -Catholic faith based school (we are watered down Christian and Jewish in faith) and the most impactful experience he has had involved a food kitchen where the student volunteers escort the poor to a table, tell them the menu choices, take the order, and then serve the food. The idea is to make the poor feel human, to offer them some dignity by speaking to them. My son couldn’t believe his eyes when in walked a teenager with his younger siblings and no parent……very eye opening experience!
I taught in a public district in the New York City suburbs. The district was extremely socially conscious. Elementary schools and the middle school conducted food and clothing drives, and music students performed for local nursing homes at holidays. The high school did a “midnight run” one Saturday night a month to distribute soup and sandwiches to the homeless in NYC. High school students also prepared a Thanksgiving meal in the high school cafeteria for our needy families and local residents.
That still happens to a degree in some public school districts but usually related to a certain club or a music/art elective. It’s small scale because it’s not school wide/school pride. It’s also because public schools are not seen as a “community” anymore. When public schools are rated on test scores, the mission is not to become better humans, but to become better test takers(widgets/data points). Most kids now can’t wait to get out of school (prison) at the end of the day. I’ll take better humans over high test scores any day!…wouldn’t you?
Agreed. Many of the schools in suburban NYC still have a sense of community identity and pride despite all the “reform” nonsense. I think it is easier to inspire community spirit in a smaller school district.
I think retired teacher has put her finger on it. This is not so much a matter of private vs pubschs. It’s about small vs big. When you’re in the DC suburbs (LisaM correct me if I’m wrong), the schdists are operated at county level, they’re simply ginormous. Any effort has to be stdzd to a degree. I imagine it’s tough to fire up a sense of community mission when the message is imparted from a remote admin covering 100-200 schools. There, you could only get a small-community feel from a private school. (Or perhaps a charter?)
In a small city like mine [30k], there are neither private schools nor charters, and it’s not so much about small schools per se. The hisch has 1900 kids, that’s not small. And they do indeed operate through ‘clubs’ as Lisa says: 200+ active members of the hisch’s community service club, plus other service projects via sports teams, musicians et al. The 6 elemschs have regular projects such as veggie gardens raised by students on school property with harvest donated to soup kitchen. The 2 midschs do clothing drives & more.
But the town itself is a booster org for community service, with many more opportunities for students (and adults). The little weekly rag is full of proud announcements of service accomplishments– Scouts (indivs & troops), the 6 Prot-2RC-1GrOrth-1Jewish Reform Temple all with large congregations & attached preschools, Rotary et al; the cancer-fund thrift store staffed by local volunteers and so on.
Not all private schools are soaked in political correctness but in NYC, many are. Maybe most.
Oh, it’s intense in the elite schools. Much, much moreso than the public schools in NYC.
Diane,
I have posted before a link to that letter written by a CONSERVATIVE high school senior at Harvard-Westlake private school, one of those even more radical and supposedly ultra-left “politically correct” LA private schools. That letter brilliantly tore apart that myth about political correctness that conservatives like Bari Weiss were finding it lucrative to push.
It just isn’t true. The media cherry picks some examples but then magnifies it into a false narrative. The Harvard Westlake senior showed how Bari Weiss had done just that — and he wrote it as an admirer of Bari Weiss. He used evidence, not vague allusions to knowing some parent or some nice kid and invoking them as if that is evidence.
We are supposed to believe that Georgetown Prep – where Brett Kavanaugh is honored and adored – is a fantastic example of a “socially conscious school”, therefore schools that maybe teach ideas that make privileged white parents uncomfortable like Harvard-Westlake are bastions of radical left wing political correctness. Even though the conservative students in them make a far more evidence-based case for why that isn’t true.
Not saying there has never been any annoying “DEI” powerpoint slides included in a presentation, but there are likely just as many if not more implicitly racist references in other books and readings that go completely unnoticed by most white parents. Even as admirable a book series as Joy Hakim’s A History of US (written at the end of the 1990s) includes sentences that are problematic.
If Georgetown Prep is supposed to be the model of the kind of “socially conscious school” that white parents find acceptable, it is true that other private schools will seem as if they are bastions of far left ideology and political correctness.
But for those of us who suspect that the reason that Georgetown Prep community could seem to universally fawn over and idolize Brett Kavanaugh at a sports event might be evidence that people with contradictory opinions don’t feel comfortable speaking out.
Which tells me that holding out Georgetown Prep as some admirable example of a socially conscious school is wrong. It is a school that will teach the kinds of “socially conscious” ideas that Youngkin’s family will feel very comfortable with.
NYC-
Thank you for writing this. Religious schools have a checkered past and present. The Koch network has a vested interest in pretending they are saintly.
Don’t forget Gorsuch– he went there too! (Just 2 classes behind Kavanaugh.) Jerome Powell, too (although a decade older)… I like him. This school obviously some kind of feeder to high politics. The 3 are quite different from each other, socio-culturally speaking, so I’m not sure what conclusions we can draw (other than Old Boys Club…)
LisaM,
Please provide some clear evidence to support your view that your kid’s private school is doing a superior job of teaching kids about diversity than a typical public school.
What is this “out of the box” DEI curriculum? I want to know what you are certain that students in public schools are being exposed to that convinces you that public schools as bastions of horror where students might be exposed to dangerous out of the box DEI programs.
Honestly?
There is just as much criticism of DEI in private schools as in public schools, and just because white people feel comfortable with the amount of DEI that their kid is getting does not always mean that makes it a “superior” program. DEI – whether out of the box or not – is about having an inclusive school that recognizes that just because white parents are fine with something does not mean that it is fine.
Posts like yours reinforce the lie that there is some huge dangerous DEI that needs to be stopped in public schools.
You just legitimized the ridiculous propaganda that the far right wants legitimized.
Opposition to CRT didn’t arise organically in Virginia because parents were concerned with “bad out of the box DEI”. It was manufactured.
NYC PSP…..I just want to let you know that I have been instructed by the owner of this blog site not to engage with you and I have obeyed since this site is run out of her home. Have you done the same as you have been instructed? I do read your incoherent, paragraphs long screeds and rants at me so please don’t accuse me of not engaging in the warfare you so desire as I am trying to be polite.
It’s become glaringly obvious how many well educated and well meaning people with important opinions/views no longer post on this blog site (do they even read anymore?). I don’t have to wonder why. All I have to do is read the posts by the same few people. It’s a shame, because this is the place I found my answers about why I wasn’t happy with my public schools.
LisaM, I don’t censor opinions. I try to encourage civility. On daeveral occasions I have asked people to back off. I do what I can. I think this blog is unique for the level of engagement and intelligence of readers. I post what interests me. If others find it interesting, they continue to read. If they don’t, they won’t.
NYC
Readers like me at the blog recognize that there is a commenter who falsely labels you intemperate while that commenter makes outrageous and outlandish pronouncements.
Thanks, Linda, very kind of you to say.
LisaM, please know that I—just one regular at this esteemed blog—enjoy both your AND nycpsp’s regular commentaries here. If I leap up against a particular post of yours, it’s because it sparked in me a contrary opinion based on my own experience– not that I’m trying to cancel yours– which helped me clarify my own thought process– learned something from the exchange, and include your experience going forward, Same goes for nycpsp. You may have to muddle thro as she’s not good at self-editing (which she will readily admit), and she tends to seem to leap to conclusions about your perspective– but I think you’ll find she’s just trying to engage in a dialog, and welcomes clarification and counterpoints.
It’s always difficult to make oneself understood in writing (without all the social, facial cues), as we have such a variety in ways of expressing ourselves with words. But what I cherish about both your and nycpsp’s input is– thank, you, a little pushback! Nothing so boring as an echo chamber.
LisaM, I am sorry you don’t consider my tone civil.
You posted this:
“DEI/SEL (and the data collection that goes along with it) in public schools is pretty crappy and that is what parents are reacting to and what Governors like Youngkin are fighting against. Let’s tell the truth!”
If you are going to legitimize “Governors like Youngkin” by presenting them as “fighting against” something that you claim exists, am I allowed to ask you to provide any evidence whatsoever about something I have never seen in any public school my kid attended.
You have presented this bogeyman you say exists in public schools — and certainly that is right wing propaganda — but I don’t see it. And when I ask you about it, you object to my tone?
You said “let’s tell the truth”. If your “truth” is that Governor Youngkin is fighting against something bad that you believe happens in public schools, then I am certainly going to challenge on that being true. Because from where I stand, I see no evidence to support it and plenty of evidence that contradicts it.
63% of White Catholics who attended church regularly voted for Trump. If those same people are parents bragging about their church schools’ generosity to the poor- its self-serving and merits no respect for compassion nor for a belief in equality for all sexes and races.
While many fret about the Idiot and the gov of FL, Youngkin is, to me, the most sinister type of cult middleman. He is poured from the mold of Rob Portman, a mold from which more tools of bland malignancy will be formed. A nice, white, unassuming, quiet-spoken persona that sounds reasonable until you actually decipher the words and dog whistles to uncover the venal intent. Take, for example, a statement Youngkin made just a few hours after taking office:
“We’re not going to teach our children to view everything through a lens of race. Yes, we will teach all history, the good and the bad. Because we can’t know where we’re going unless we know where we have come from. But to actually teach our children one group is advantaged and another is disadvantaged simply because of the color of their skin cuts across everything we know to be true.” Let’s take this sentence by sentence to understand the loaded meaning behind each and how they create a sum that is much more than its individual parts.
The first sentence restates the tired “when I look at people, I don’t see race” cliché. As I have learned in life, people who say that are either deeply racist or deluded into thinking anything that has ever happened in their lives has not connections to race. Not the property taxes they pay, not where their children go to school, not in the construction of our transportation grid,
The second sentence is a real doozy. History (as do some other things) happens. It is not “good” or “bad.” The judgments we apply to events and trends in history may lead to conclusions that people interpret as “good” or “bad,” but history itself can never fit these descriptions. But by framing the question like that right off the bat, Youngkin and his kin have already won the argument. Because once you conclude that teaching about uncomfortable parts of history can be considered “good” or bad,” you have diminished and perverted the very definition of history.
Now the third sentence, read alone, is about as anodyne as it gets. Who could argue against that. But the lead in to that sentence, the fact that you’ve decided some history is “good” or “bad” has already changed the meaning of it. It’s the sentence after that that gives away the game. And here’s the politically–cynically pragmatic–smart thing he did. Those moderates about whom MLK Jr. warned us about will likely interpret that final sentence quite differently if it were explained in context. However, by accepting the premise of the framing that happened before, one can, with a straight face in front of a sympathetic audience, say “this cuts against everything we know to be true.” It fits. Especially if you don’t know much to begin with and resist any education to the contrary as propaganda.
[As an aside, the favorite tactic I’ve noticed in comments, the news, and especially in the seemingly concerted effort of reactionaries to infiltrate book review sections of sites like Amazon that downplay books touching on the subject of race. The common thread I’ve seen is that all of them get into the technical aspects of slavery to make it the topic any subjective discussion as antiseptic as possible. These are new ways of saying “the peculiar Institution.” And not one of them addresses Jim Crow or the intervening history to MLK Jr. and Civil Rights Movement. But even the details of that are too much. If there’s one lesson to be learned, it is “I Have A Dream” and we tailor that any way we want: I have a dream that all lives matter and that our nation is colorblind when it comes to race.]
Things like how slaves were treated, the details of Jim Crow, lynchings, redlining, destruction of communities for convenience of others, separate but equal, etc., now become more than just history, they can become “good” or “bad.” And like the myth of Santa Claus, we can’t just spring this on children! All of a sudden events become malleable for political reasons, reasons to maintain governmental fictions. And if the teaching of those events and how they fit into what it means to be “American” can be tailored, then the things that are inconvenient are “bad.” And they can be excised from history classes because they might make someone feel bad about who they are. And under until the coming national regime, the one that is being test-marketed in Virginia right now, it will all be legal, fair, and accepted.
It especially appeals to the moderates MLK Jr. warned us about. Youngkin could not have been created any better by Republicans in a lab. They are the ones who extract themselves from the communities they profess to support. They are the ones who feel we’ve made great strides in civil rights–after all, you can pretty much eat at any restaurant and sleep at any hotel (getting there and driving while Black is another story). They are the ones who are “concerned” that their children will come home hating themselves for the color of their skin. Therefore, history should be tailored to their needs and expectations, not some radical ideas that no one cares about anyway.
So pay attention to the kinder, gentler fascism that is embodied by people like Youngkin. His career might well be the playbook under which future generations of Americans–your children and grandchildren–will live.
Let’s talk the technical aspects of slavery. At the slave auctions, they put off the auctioning of the girl children and teens until the end of the day because those the white, “Christian” “gentlemen” paid the most for, by far, and were most interested in purchasing. In my book, that one fact about this history says it all.
That’s why, when I taught American Literature, I made sure that my students read “The Slave Auction” from William Wells’s Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States (1853).
And, ofc, the “kinder, gentler fascism” quickly morphs into, takes on, its true form in the process of consolidation of its power against the resistance it encounters upon assuming power.
It is absolutely necessary for teachers of American history and literature to step up, right now, and defy the fascists. Doing so is a moral duty.
Adrent warned us about the banality of evil. Paxton suggested the steps fascism takes. Reality and truth are pushed away in pursuit of power.
Bob Shepherd
With all the talk of Virginia being a Blue State or a Swing State, we forget that it was the home of the Confederacy before the carpetbaggers moved into the DC suburbs . We forget that the modern right and its phony intellectual facade was born in UVA / George Mason before the split. Skunkin is just following the fine Southern tradition of the landed gentry.
“You got more than the blacks, don’t complain
You’re better than them, you been born with white skin,” they explain
And the Negro’s name
Is used, it is plain
For the politician’s gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game”
So much for being a post racial society.
But not even Dylan suspected that it would be so effective as to turn these people into a suicidal sacrificial death cult. As Kurt Anderson just wrote in the Atlantic.
We also forget that Florida was one of the most brutal States of the Jim Crow South.
The question is; do the carpetbaggers who took their Pensions down with them change the State or do they become Southern. From all appearances it is the later at least in Florida.
Thanks for the Dylan and the history lesson, Joel!
There is a danger to representing the south in terms of slavery. The danger is that one tends to ignore the period of White Supremacy that rose during the time after reconstruction, flowering in the early years of the Twentieth century. This south was largely a response to the rise of the majority white population that had never owned slaves (about a third of the white population actually owned slaves). This was a group impoverished by low wages and the encroachment of agricultural disaster in the form of the boll weevil. Southern proto fascists dove deep in the pool of racism to cement their political power. The result was Wilmington and Tulsa and hundreds of lesser incidents that taught the lesson of obedience to a white ruling class.
Slavery was a terrible institution, but in many ways, I wonder if the period of white Supremacy was even more damaging to the people it harmed. As the Great Migration pulled African-Americans out of the south, they were to learn that the northern streets were no more paved with gold than the dusty lanes of the delta.
So critical race theory is in schools?
This is just so crazy and laughable. One day “something” IS/next day “something” ISN’T. It doesn’t matter what the topic…..CRT (DEI/SEL), Covid, politics etc.
CRT as defined by the far right propaganda machine is NOT in schools. White public school students are NOT taught to hate themselves. Maybe your kid in his private school is taught to hate himself for being white, but students in public schools are not.
Schools teaching history in a way that right wing white supremacists find uncomfortable IS happening in many public schools.
If you and flerp don’t like that, that is your right.
To repeat, if you define CRT the way that the far right does – as teaching your poor victimized white child to hate himself – then CRT IS NOT in public schools.
If you define CRT as a school teaching the warts and all history of the US in a way that makes white supremacists uncomfortable, then it is certainly in public schools.
I don’t know why that is so confusing to anyone.
If you and flerp dislike both of them, it does make sense to fudge the difference and combine them into one horror-filled curriculum of “CRT”. That is exactly what right wing propaganda does.
Well if one or two books on a reading list is critical race theory . then it has been in schools since I read “Black Boy” by Richard Wright in 1967. ” Farewell To The Bloody Shirt ” did not make it till a 101 level American history course. But I would bet it made it into AP level course in HS in the 60s . Of course NYC is not Virginia or any of the Confederacy.
Again I would ask you how many Public School dollars are devoted to diversity training out of the total budget of a district. How much actual time is spent in training or in the classrooms.
I would ask the same question of these Elite Private Schools.
I suspect the answer amounts to eyewash. And the complaints about it hogwash. More PC than H.S.
See my comment, below, Flerp. An answer to this.
Hypocrisy, thy name is GOP
Indeed
“And be these juggling fiends no more believed, that palter with us in a double sense.” –Willie Shakespeare, Macbeth
Based on my small sample of anecdotal experiences, I would bet the answer to your final question is the latter. I lived in the South from ages 11 to 30, so for better or worse, it shaped much of what I’ve become. I left because I saw the entrenchment and growth of bigotry and fascism and I’ve observed that it’s followed me all across the country. Many parts of Ohio in 2022 seem like Louisiana in 1990. Actually, the South now dominates the country. It’s one of the reasons I wouldn’t mind seeing this country broken. If I’m going to be governed by ideas, then I’d rather have them coming out of Massachusetts than Alabama.
There is no better expression of this trend than the music if Drive-By Truckers (truly the worst and misleading name of a band ever). I was initially drawn to DBT because their songs really expressed the underside and daily life of average people in the South. But it all changed with the release of their last three albums, beginning with American Band. In it are songs that ask the right questions about a society that is influenced and shaped by the politics and culture of the deep South. Their description of Southerners “bash[ing] their heads against the future” is the most succinct imagery that sums up today’s reactionary right.
Meant in response to Joel’s comment above.
GregB
Lofgrin calls it the NASCARIZATION of Ohio. The cultural shift North of Southern-ism to his native state. My first experience with the South was in 1963 as an 11 year old returning with my parents from Miami by car. It broke down 20 miles outside Jacksonville Fla. While walking alone on the side walk two Elderly Black men hobbling along with canes walk into the street to let the little white boy by on the sidewalk. It kind of stuck with me. That was the tail end of Jim Crow but I would argue that the legal basis for discrimination may have ended . But it was replaced by other means of asserting superiority. From White Christian Academies to segregated Charters while de funding Public Schools . To the resistance to progressive economic changes and Unions all seen by Southerners as benefiting an undeserving other in some of the poorest and the Whitest States . … They are banging their heads against a wall . (I will check out some more of the “Truckers” )
Perhaps it was never limited to the South. Large minority populations from the Great Migration keep places like Long Island and NY State from looking like Ohio. You can not claim that Long Island has been the victim of mass de-industrialization. Although upstate was one of the first places to experience it as far back as the late 40s.
There is White economic anxiety here yet it is not tethered to a reality of incomes and standard of living. Simply the race card is effective all over . Long Island is also among the safest places in the Country to live. Yet the Willy Horton card plays well here every time. The media even the “Liberal Media” do their part to shape the narrative. By almost every metric NYC is safer today than it was near the end of Bloomberg’s term, when he was touting how safe the City was. “The safest large city in America”. You would not know that from the reporting . The message is clear, fear the big Brown man.
When I moved to Massachusetts from Indiana (which only geographically isn’t the Deep South), I expected to encounter less racism than I had grown up seeing around me. If anything, it was worse–more entrenched. From the country club Yankees to the South Side Boston Irish, it was everywhere to be found and in a particularly virulent form. The only difference between the former and the latter was the subtlety of the execution of their white supremacist beliefs.
I’ve noticed the same. Racism and its effects are in every corner of this nation, but some parts are better at hiding it than others. But these days, there’s not much of a need to hide it anymore. I can still remember being warned not to stop for gas between Indianapolis and Bloomington if I didn’t have to. Parts of it remind me of Neshoba County.
Martinsville, between Bloomington and Indianapolis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Carol_Jenkins
Horrifying.
I was traveling there when this case was resurrected. You may be interested in this website if you don’t know about it already. Would certainly use it class today if I were teaching.
https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/explore
Outstanding, Greg. Thank you. A contemporary update of the pioneering work by the brave and indefatigable Ida B. Wells-Barnett.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14977/14977-h/14977-h.htm
Nikole Hannah-Jones has this Twitter name: Ida Bae Wells.
That’s awesome!!!
What “Critical Race Theory” Actually Means
You have doubtless been reading in the news a lot about Critical Race Theory, or CRT. It’s the latest “enemy within” for Republican agitprop (propaganda used to agitate, or work up, the base). But as usual, these Republican “leaders” and the parents whom they’ve whipped up to storm school board meetings don’t have the slightest clue what they are talking about, so I’ll try to clear this up.
CRT is a theory put forward by legal scholars such as Derrick Bell that the body of law emerging from the decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka has been insufficient to make a dent in racism because racism is baked into our systems–that is, because it is systemic.
That there is racism built into our systems is clearly so. When black people go to get a home mortgage in the U.S., they pay higher interest rates and are more likely to be turned down than are whites with the same credit scores and histories. When black people violate a law, they are far more likely to be arrested for it than white people are. When they go to trial, they get longer prison terms. They are paid less for the same jobs. They are more likely to be told by doctors that there is nothing wrong with them when there is. They are more likely to live in places where there is poor food. Their schools have less money for operations. And so on. I’ve barely scratched the surface.
Racism is baked into our systems. But that’s not all that CRT means. It’s not simply “There is systemic racism in the United States,” though that is part of it–the obvious part. Rather, it’s a critique of the liberal legal response to racism as insufficient because it has not dealt with the underlying, systemic problems. That’s the less obvious part. CRT was espoused as a critique of Brown, busing, and other remedies and as an explanation for their failure to eliminate racism.
There, now you know, if you didn’t before, what this really means. It doesn’t mean, as idiot extremist Republicans (sorry about the redundancy) think it does, that “all whites are racist” or that “kids should be taught to hate white people” or “to hate themselves.” When you hear politicians say those things about CRT, remember that they have no clue what they are talking about, any more than if they were saying that injecting disinfectant will cure Covid.
Excellent. With the notion that some hold that there is no racism built into our Constitution, subsequent laws, and cultural history, I was going to write a response like, “Explaining the Meaning of the Dog Whistle ‘CRT'”, but I think we all know what that is.
The dogs hear those whistles clearly enough.
I feel a song coming on:
There’s a big sinkhole at Mar-a-Lago.
Let that sink in.
Donnie was our president
Although he did not win
A popular plurality,
And that is just a sin.
Ask me what I think of him.
Oh, where do I begin?
He’s a freaking hero to
The skinhead Aryans.
It ought to be a clue that he
Has such great popularity
With skinhead Aryans.
Wink wink it’s not an accident
That one so twisted and so bent
Should be a freaking hero to
The skinhead Aryans.
Well stated . On the other side of critical race theory is the far more pernicious White and also Male grievance , which existed well before CRT was ever heard of by these people and has resulted in the continuance of all you mention. Goldwater , Nixon and Reagan stoked the backlash along with the entire party that booed Rockefeller and Romney off the stage . Of course we are “a post racial Nation”. Ask Reagan’s welfare Queen or Bush and Willy Horton. Once Obama was elected the scab was peeled off Reagan’s BS. As the backlash was almost immediate.
But here is Goldwater the “reasonable conservative”.
“Security from domestic violence, no less than from foreign aggression, is the most elementary and fundamental purpose of any government, and a government that cannot fulfill that purpose is one that cannot long command the loyalty of its citizens. History shows us – demonstrates that nothing – nothing prepares the way for tyranny more than the failure of public officials to keep the streets from bullies and marauders.” Sound familiar?
That was 1964 ,I wonder who were the “bullies and marauders”. After decades of White riots the first Black riot happened in Harlem after what amounted to an assassination of a 15yr old teen by an off duty NYPD officer in July of 64. He certainly was not referring to the slaying of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner. Nor the countless other beatings and lynchings of civil rights protestors.
Thank you Bob, GregB and Joel for these excellent posts.
So why is he…
I asked a card-carrying member of the
“Divinator Club” to “look” into it.
The DC specializes in mind-reading,
predicting the future, conjuring up the
thoughts of the dead, in short, the
phenomena of clairvoyance.
Said member, after “reading” the tiny
little tea leaves of the “Big Apple”
leaves of discernment bag, responded.
“Every absurdity has a champion to defend it”.
“A more perfect formula for social dissolution
has rarely been conceived. Focusing on social
divisions rather than class solidarity, remains
a gift to the rulling class.”
A “strategy” that attacks more than it
resolves, remains a gift to the rulling
class as well.
Is Youngkin blaming CRT as the reason that his 17 year old son engaged in what his Republican party calls “voter fraud” and lied to voting officials so that they would let him vote?
Note that voting officials prevented Youngkin’s son from illegally voting as he tried to do.
Remember that Youngkin’s “defense” of his son was that his son was NOT attempting to commit the horrible crime of voter fraud that he and his Republican party believe is rampant. Note that Youngkin’s “defense” was that his son was ignorance of the law because his lousy private school education left his son absolutely certain that as a 17 year old he could legally vote. How embarrassing for every teacher at Georgetown Prep.
Ignorance of the law isn’t usually an acceptable excuse for most people who are caught attempting to commit voter fraud. But most people aren’t privileged 17 year olds whose powerful fathers would rather smear their child’s absolutely lousy private school education than teach their son the difference between a truth and a lie.
Patriotic Millionaires is a group of progressive Democrats who work to replace establishment Dems.
In N.J., they’ve targeted Josh Gottheimer who supports charter schools.
Just a reminder here of how Glenn Youngkin got elected.
As The Washington Post reported it:
“Youngkin surged in the late weeks of the race by tapping into a deep well of conservative parental resentment against public school systems. He promised to ban the teaching of critical race theory, an academic approach to racial history that’s not on the Virginia K-12 curriculum….the conservative news media and Republican candidates stirred the stew of anxieties and racial resentments that animate the party’s base — thundering about equity initiatives, books with sexual content and transgender students on sports teams.”
The NY Times put it this way:
“the past half-century of American political history shows that racially coded attacks are how Republicans have been winning elections for decades…Youngkin dragged race into the election, making his vow to ‘ban critical race theory’ a centerpiece of his stump speech and repeating it over the closing weekend — Race is the elephant in the room.”
The Associated Press reported this, on Critical Race Theory and the Youngkin campaign:
“The issue had weight in Virginia, too. A majority of voters there — 7 in 10 — said racism is a serious problem in U.S. society, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of Tuesday’s electorate…The divide along party lines was stark: 78% of Youngkin voters considered the focus on racism in schools to be too much.”
Five Thirty Eight pointed out – “ the electorate that turned out in 2021 was older and whiter than the one that turned out in 2020.”
And, “White Virginians accounted for 74 percent of voters, up from 67 percent last year. In particular, Youngkin did significantly better than Trump among white women with “some college or less,” per the exit polls: He carried that group 75 percent to 25 percent, greatly improving on Trump’s 56 percent to 44 percent performance with them.”
The exit polls make it crystal clear:
WHITE WOMEN COLLEGE GRADS
VA 2020: 58% Biden, 41% Trump
VA 2021: 62% McAuliffe, 38% Youngkin
WHITE WOMEN NON-COLLEGE
VA 2020: 56% Trump, 44% Biden
VA 2021: 75% Youngkin, 25% McAuliffe
Glenn Youngkin tapped into the deep Virginia well of low-education Confederate sympathizers and outright racists, including LOTS of evangelical “Christian” racists.
The attack on public schools — by Youngkin in Virginia, and elsewhere across the country — is not some spontaneous “parent rights” outburst. It’s orchestrated. It’s being funded and set into motion by right-wing “Christians” at the Council for National Policy, a far-right group that had outsized-influence with the Trump administration.
Richard DeVos, husband of Betsy, has been president of CNP twice. Ed Meese, who helped Reagan cover up the Iran-Contra scandal, has been president of CNP. So has Pat Robertson. And Tim LaHaye.
Current and former CNP members include Cleta Mitchell, the Trump lawyer who was on that call to the Georgia Secretary of State demanding that he find Trump more than 11,780 votes, and Charlie Kirk, head of Turning Point USA who bragged about bussing tens of thousands of people to the January 6th ‘Stop the Steal’ rally and insurrection. Two of the top people at the Federalist Society, Eugene Meyer and Leonard Leo, are also CNP members. (Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett were high priorities for the Federalist Society and for CNP). Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is a member.
[Jane Mayer recently wrote a fascinating piece on Ginni Thomas, which reveals how deeply sinister she is: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/31/is-ginni-thomas-a-threat-to-the-supreme-court ]
The Council for National Policy is interconnected to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the State Policy Network and Tea Party Patriots and a host of other right-wing groups. It very much is a dangerous “right-wing conspiracy.”
Glenn Youngkin has made himself all very much a part of this.
democracy,
Thank you for this reminder of the truth.
Our democracy is in grave danger when self-described progressives embrace and amplify the right wing’s version of “truth”.
“DEI/SEL (and the data collection that goes along with it) in public schools is pretty crappy and that is what parents are reacting to and what Governors like Youngkin are fighting against. Let’s tell the truth!”
The message here: Stop being so critical of Youngkin – he’s fighting for those things that parents don’t like!
Which just happens to be the favorite message of the right wing: “Youngkin is fighting on the side of parents”. Oh sure, Youngkin was on “the parents'” side and McAuliffe was on some “other” side — the innuendo that is amplified and legitimized is that the democrat is on the side AGAINST parents.
When a completely dishonest message pushed by the far right is legitimized and amplified by self-described progressives – that Youngkin is on the side of parents, fighting against things parents don’t want – it is no wonder that the cowardly media feels safe in presenting this as if it is true.
I think we’re going to have LOTS of opportunities to be critical of Glenn Youngkin, and his Attorney General sidekick, Jason Miyares. LOTS!
The vote of the conservative religious has nothing to do with religion. They want a certain strata of white men to continue to get preference. They don’t want white men to have to compete with members of other demographic groups.
No we don’t have to change to black view points, we’re quite proud to be white. And civilized, not desperate commie scum and don’t care about low IQ scum
You are not demonstrating a high IQ with that comment.
This should be shared far and wide among Virginians.
Gabriel, yes, everyone in Virginia should learn that Youngkin is a hypocrite.
Oh really? Ahould we dig up last few years of dem policies?
None of this is true 😆 why lie?
Is that you Hillary?
Youngkin vows to give parents more input into public schools. GUESS WHAT? They already have that ability. JOIN THE SCHOOL PTA. Having taught in VB public schools for 18 years. PTA enrollment typically falls below 40% . Blame should fall on the parents, not the schools
Maybe the fact CRT teaches queer philosophy is why it is hated so much
Can you provide evidence that critical race theory teaches “queer philosophy”?
What is “queer philosophy”?