Schools

 Jon Chait writes about his priors, like so many others analyzing Tuesday's election. Chait has been writing about illiberal leftism for a while, and though I share many of his concerns, I don't know if his article really advances anything valuable.

Yes, I do believe that there are certain aspects of anti-racist teaching that are reductive and counterproductive. There can be a certain aspect of rubbing a dog's nose in its own poop - or in fact another dog's poop - to the pedagogy surrounding DEI education. Doesn't work for dogs, won't work for kids.

However, most of this is cherry picked nonsense. Far more dangerous is the trend on the Right to ban books and phrases from being taught in school. Chait will no doubt note this in subsequent columns, and there is a truth to the idea that you can only affect the actions of your partisans. It's pointless to wait for the GOP to not be awful on this stuff; being awful on this stuff is their key to winning elections.

I spoke with an old, rich White guy the other day. He was thrilled that Youngkin had won in Virginia. He decried the teaching of CRT, even as he acknowledged that CRT was not really being taught in schools. (He went on to note that he had many Black friends. I mean...)

On the one hand, equating a law school theory with basic DEI teaching is bullshit. It is thinly veiled racial panic. "Please don't make me feel uncomfortable about my dad/granddad/great uncle." On the other, it's clear that efforts to teach responsibly on issues of race are going to be used as a cudgel by Republicans to re-elect neo-fascists who support Trump enough to imperil American democracy. On the other other hand, no matter what happens, Republicans are going to call any efforts to teach legitimate American history as making White kids hate themselves. 

Apparently, when I teach that Thomas Jefferson was an amazing humanist and advocate for democracy, but that he built that democratic humanism on a foundation that explicitly denied the equal humanity of Blacks and Native Americans, I'm making White kids feel bad about themselves?