The state of Texas (and many others) want to bar me and other teachers from teaching critical race theory in the classroom. We’ve never really called it that, but it is hard to talk about justice without bringing up race. At least, we should bring up the disparity between rich and poor. Considering our long and rich history it would be difficult to separate race from that.

A perfect illustration is the law enforcement philosophy of “broken windows.” Essentially, as I understand it, the idea is that if you arrest and prosecute small time criminals then you have more success preventing the big ones. It’s a philosophy that makes a great deal of sense. After all, most parents view parenting the same way.

If you get on your kids for the small stuff then they know there’s a line they can’t cross. All kids love to push boundaries. The ones that have those boundaries are usually better off. So, why shouldn’t policing and prosecutions work the same way?

In order for “broken windows” to work equitably you would have to harshly punish all crimes. Imagine a parent wailing on their kid for pushing the neighbor kid, but giving them a high five when they swindle them out of five bucks. No good parent would operate like that and most people naturally assume the justice system doesn’t either.

Except that’s not how it works and we all know it’s not. Justice never seems to work that way. The indictments of the Trump organization this week illustrate this point perfectly. According to the reporting, this pattern of alleged fraud had been going on for 15 years at least. The fact that Trump was crooked was the worst kept secret in New York. Wouldn’t his smaller financial crimes qualify under the broken windows theory?

Obviously not. So, instead we waited until everything became too hard to contain. The horse has left the barn. The toothpaste is out of the tube. The train has left the station. Feel free to insert your own euphemism here. This is usually the course of white collar crimes. They are just as illegal and while they may not physically harm anyone, they can cause just as much damage in other ways.

The drug war is yet another example. Let’s ignore for the time being whether throwing the book at an addict is a good idea or not. It is hard to ignore that not all drug offenders are treated equally. Those busted for cocaine have not gotten nearly as much punishment as those busted for crack. We shouldn’t even get started on the marijuana debate. There is considerable evidence that the disparity was purposeful. Yet, even if it wasn’t we can’t ignore the effects.

That’s where something like critical race theory comes in. Whether society’s inconsistencies and inequities are purposeful or an unhappy byproduct of good intentioned law is an open debate. History doesn’t care about feelings. We report the facts of what happened and their results. Others can debate motives and the like.

Naturally, others will point to the treatment of Bill Cosby and videos of successful African Americans as proof that this disparity doesn’t exist. Yet, Cosby is a perfect example of how it does. What kind of justice did his victims get? Ultimately, we have to ask ourselves why. What’s the common denominator here?

Unfortunately, one cannot distinguish between the impact of race and the impact of socioeconomic status. They are often one in the same. My daughter asked me if a billionaire could ever really be brought to justice. I hemmed and hawed, but couldn’t give her a satisfactory answer. It’s hard to talk dispassionately about justice without being able to give a clear answer to a child’s question. They have a way of cutting through the malarkey.

God; Guns; Gays; Prayer in Schools; War on Christmas; Politically Correct; Death Tax; Illegals; National Anthem; ACORN; Benghazi; Massive Voter Fraud; Stop the Steal; White Genocide.  These, and dozens of other bumper sticker talking points are all fodder to whip up fake outrage in the base to keep them wound up and angry over non-issues.  The latest is Critical Race Theory.  Virtually unheard of before March of this year, it is now the key topic on Fox Noise, OAN, social media, and Hate Radio all over the country.

What’s going on?  What’s going on is what always goes on…whip up an issue to piss off the base, flog it until it becomes ingrained in conservative DNA, then find another fake issue to piss off the base, flog it until it becomes ingrained in conservative DNA, rinse, repeat.  They use the tactic to drive the base to the polls and for fundraising.

Media Matters has been following these tactics for years and have publish a new review to the Critical Race Theory outrage.  Now, to be clear, Critical Race Theory has been in academia for over 40 years.  It was developed back then, primarily in law schools, including Harvard, to frame the approach to legislation in an effort to understand how racist policies from centuries ago have become ingrained in our laws.  It’s not political and has not been taught in schools to children.  This issue was dredged up as Trump started flogging the fake issue by banning discussions of race in the military and in government agencies call it “sensitivity training” and other pejoratives as part of his campaign in the 2020 election.

To show how these issues are flogged, Media Matters tracks the number of mentions of certain key words.  Here’s their recent tracking of Critical Race Theory on Fox Noise.

Media Matters did a great exposé a couple of years ago about how Bill O’Reilly and Lou Dobbs whipped up the War on Christmas in 2004 which is now resurrected and marched down Bullshit Street every holiday season.  Bullshit is the proper descriptor for all of this, but it’s worse than that.  It’s corrosive and undermines people’s confidence in government, has destroyed all decorum between political ideologies and is a common tactic in totalitarian governments like Russia.  The proliferation of this bullshit makes truth unknowable.  Normally rational people spout said bullshit on social media in a continuous stream, destroying civility between digital and even actual friends.  This is how you get a HUGE proportion of Republicans actually believing Trump is still president and how whites are being systematically eliminated from society.  It’s all bullshit, but it’s also ingrained in the belief systems of millions of Americans.  Even in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary, people still believe this bullshit.

It’s tragic and seriously threatens our democracy.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Four Star General Mark Milley set right-wingers  in the House straight yesterday when he lashed out at Matt Gaetz and other Republicans who have made Critical Race Theory, a longstanding academic perspective for understanding institutional racism, their flavor of the month to whip up the base.  National Embarrassment of Texas, Dan Crenshaw, and Tom Cotton of Arkansas have used the lie that the military is getting “woke” and soft and set up a “whistleblower” website for active duty military to report “wokeness” in their ranks.  The whole thing is idiotic, and only the uninformed are wound up about it.   Near the end of an Armed Services Committee hearing where Matt Gaetz and others pushed the Woke Lie, General Milley was given an opportunity to respond to their nonsensical assertions, his response was epic and a MUST WATCH.  As of this morning, it’s been watched over 6 million times, just another example of Republicans being their own worst enemies.

 

My uncle wanted my help. See, this particular uncle is the only other progressive in our family. Most of my other family are conservatives. Mind you, they aren’t bad people. They work hard and generally don’t wish any ill will on anyone. Yet, they are the type of people that peddle this kind of stuff. I absolutely detest labels, but for our purposes here we will call this woman “School Board Karen“. He wanted me to respond to his friends.

For those that don’t want to go down the rabbit hole, this is one of many men and women that go to school board meetings and rant about critical race theory or some other such nonsense that is supposedly being taught to our kids. See, his friends were cheering this woman on.

He wanted me to respond. I could have picked over a dozen videos, but I think this is the one he sent me. I honestly couldn’t know for sure. I call it nonsense not because critical race theory is nonsense, but because this woman exists in a bizarro world that I don’t know. I’ve only done this for 24 years and the first half in a history classroom. I really don’t know what she’s talking about.

I never taught critical race theory or white supremacist theory or anything that could be labeled Antifa, Black Lives Matter, the Aryan brotherhood or any such nonsense. I taught history. In most years I taught World History, but I dabbed my toe in U.S. History once or twice. We did our best to teach the curriculum in front of us and augment it with other authentic history that the textbook skipped over.

I’ve taught in five different school districts and a private school. So, some might be tempted to say that maybe she is describing something that happens in schools you’ve never taught in. Sure. I guess anything is possible. After all, this is happening in another state. Yet, we have to ask ourselves what is more likely. Is it more likely that some rogue teacher or school somewhere is indoctrinating children with crap or is it more likely that Karen needs to take her meds?

I’ll have to admit that my response to the email was short and terse. I honestly don’t have much of a response to what this woman is saying. It’s just so ludicrous that you almost don’t want to interrupt her. You quietly make a distress call to the local mental hospital and wait for her to run out of gas. The problem isn’t this woman. The problem is that many feel the need to respond to it with anything other than laughter or scorn.

Somewhere along the way we have lost sight of something. Just because a number of people believe something, that doesn’t make it true. Not every opinion has value just because a certain number of people have it. Yet, people like our governor respond to it. They respond by creating a patriotic curriculum that does exactly what this woman is suggesting. Except, it does it to reinforce this woman’s point of view.

‘Murica is the greatest country there ever was and the greatest country there ever will be. Racism and bigotry only exist in the mind of the liberal. Events like the civil war weren’t about slavery and events like the Tulsa massacre didn’t happen. Lynching and riots weren’t about racism or even if they were, racism is long gone now.

That’s what they want us to teach. This is all in the guise of teaching students the “real” history about America. So, they want to guard against stuff we don’t teach by teaching stuff that didn’t happen. My wife is fond of saying that science doesn’t care about your feelings. Neither does history. I have no doubt there are rogue history teachers out there that try to indoctrinate their students with a political ideology. I’ve never met one and I’ve worked with a lot of them. I certainly don’t think there are enough to make a huge stink about a non-existent socialist plot to indoctrinate our children. God forbid we take the mic away from Karen, it’s ‘Murica after all.