Should high school kids in the US have an opportunity to take 'Advance Placement' courses in 'African American Studies'? Yes, if they study texts by people like Colin Powell, Barak Obama, Clarence Thomas and Patti Obaweyo Golem. No, if they study worthless shite. The College Board is offering both options but it seems likely that the thing will fall between two stools. Essentially, the reading requirement is too high for any possible benefit received. In any case, parents will be spooked that the thing is about 'Black Queer Theory' or getting boys to dress up like girls or woke shite of that sort.
The bigger problem facing the American academy is the decline in interest in admission to 4 year College. COVID has played a part in this. A tighter labor market and the rise of modular, on-line, skill acquisition has changed the incentive matrix. On top of that we have ChatGPT and other AI based apps which can write academic essays which pass muster. Clearly the world has changed while the Academy has its head stuck in the sand.
Obviously, for Jason Stanley, this is a sure sign that Fascism is upon us. He writes in the Guardian that
A wave of Republican enthusiasm for banning concepts, authors and books is sweeping across the United States. Forty-four states have proposed bans on the teaching of “divisive concepts”, and 18 states have passed them.
So, it seems, voters don't want their tax dollars to be used to brainwash their kids with 'divisive concepts' destructive of fraternity and patriotic pulling together as a Nation. What's wrong with that?
Florida’s Stop Woke Act bans the teaching of eight categories of concepts, including concepts that suggest that “a person, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, bears personal responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the person played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin, or sex”.
This is also the view endorsed by the law and conventional morality. Surely, it would be illegal for publicly funded institutions to tell kids that they are guilty for things they haven't done? What's next? Must dark skinned people atone for the 'sin of Ham'? Must women accept second class status because of something Eve did?
Many of the laws also target Nikole Hannah-Jones’s influential 1619 Project.
What is wrong with targeting bad historiography? Must kids be taught stupid lies when, using Wikipedia, they can easily find out they are being indoctrinated in nonsense?
These laws have already started to take effect. Administrators and teachers have been forced out of their positions on the suspicion of violating these laws,
if so, they should sue for wrongful termination. Mere suspicion of an illegal act is not enough to warrant the sack.
and what has started as a trickle may soon become a flood.
Or it may not.
Unlike a culture war, the GOP’s recent turn has no place in a democracy
Rubbish! Democracies can decide not to fund stupid nonsense. Tax payers have votes. Their representatives have every right to pass laws which prevent stupid 'culture war' shibboleths being forced down the throats of innocent children.
In January, Florida’s board of education banned AP African American studies, on the grounds that it included concepts forbidden by Governor Ron DeSantis’s law, including critical race theory and intersectionality, as well as authors such as Kimberlé Crenshaw, bell hooks, Roderick Ferguson, Angela Davis and Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Kids aren't being stopped from reading any of these authors. The Governor says there is no 'educational value' in a particular 'Advanced Placement' course of studies. This seems plausible. On the other hand, it may be that AP African American Studies involves indoctrination in advanced mathematical techniques. If so, Stanley would oblige us by providing evidence that the Governor is wrong.
The College Board chose to remove these authors and subjects from its curriculum, claiming, as it turns out dubiously, that it did so independently of Florida’s pressure.
The College Board is welcome to yield to 'pressure' from those better advised. Why does Jason find the thing sinister?
These laws have been represented by many as a “culture war”.
Jason had said, just a couple of paragraphs previously, that culture wars are justified in a democracy. Clearly this is a representation he himself makes. Why the scare quotes?
This framing is a dangerous falsification of reality.
But Jason did that framing himself! Obviously, he doesn't read over his own shite before sending it off to the printers.
A culture war is a conflict of values between different groups.
No it isn't. Mummies have different values from Daddies as do babies from puppy dogs. But no war ensues. It is only where one side wishes to obliterate or wholly dominate the other, that we speak of war as opposed to cultured interchange between espousers of different value systems. Thus, when the Archbishop dines with the General and the Foreign Secretary joins the table, though very different values may gain expression, there is no war. There is a well-bred exchange of views.
In a diverse, pluralistic democracy, one should expect frequent conflicts.
We would expect conflicts even in a homogeneous autocracy. One set of advisers may urge a liberal course. Another set of officials may bitterly oppose any type of reform. On the other hand, a pluralistic democracy may be able to easily avoid any escalation of conflict because of an over-lapping consensus that things are best decided by free and fair voting procedures subject to judicial oversight. Consider Brexit. There was plenty of conflict on the issue but once the Supreme Court pronounced judgment on the legality of the Government's proceedings, that conflict disappeared. Interestingly, a number of young, relatively inexperienced, colored politicians in the Conservative Party suddenly rose into the Cabinet. This nonplussed the 'Re-moaners' who had painted the Brexiteers as crypto-Nazis.
Yet laws criminalizing educators’ speech
there is no criminalization here. Educators may be sacked if they teach things their employers don't want them to teach. Thus, if I am hired to teach Calculus but teach Chinese instead, I will get the sack no matter whom I work for. This isn't proof of anti-Chinese bigotry.
are no such thing – unlike a culture war, the GOP’s recent turn has no place in a democracy.
It has always done so. It is well settled in law that voters can decide what they want taught in Schools funded by their own tax payments.
To understand why, consider their consequences.
There is only one consequence. Tax payers defund Institutions which are doing things which they don't want done. One may ask, 'Why is the Government paying policemen to catch rapists but not giving money to rapists to enable them to support themselves in between committing crimes?' The answer is that the tax-payer wants police officers to catch bad guys. She does not want the tax payer to fund the life-style of criminals.
The concepts these laws centrally target include addressing structural racism, intersectionality and critical race theory.
But teaching kids worthless shite doesn't address any real world problem. To tackle 'structural racism', you need to have a good knowledge of Statistical techniques, relevant legislation and case law and plenty of case studies of actual 'pattern and practice' investigations which succeeded in getting 'consent decree based reform'. African American jurists, economists and political scientists have provided this material. Teach that by all means. But 'intersectionality' is simply stupid. There can't be 'double dipping' on the basis that a particular person belongs to more than one protected category. Everybody has to choose one and only one 'ratio' as most favorable to themselves and press their case on this basis. On the other hand, one is welcome to say that the jobs associated with administering affirmative action should be monopolized by those from the relevant class. People advocating in their own class interest are less obnoxious than 'woke nutters' working themselves up into a lather of righteous indignation. We know in advance that they will soon start screaming about Nazis.
Structural racism is the view that certain persisting structures and practices have resulted in unjust racial outcomes, for example the American racial wealth gap, where Black Americans have 10% of the wealth of white Americans.
So, the only thing which matters is identifying the correct 'Structural Causal Model'. This requires a knowledge of Law& Econ and advanced Statistical techniques. By contrast, what Jason is championing is brain-dead shite as worthless as his own oeuvre.
In a celebrated essay for the Atlantic, Coates – one of the banned authors
nobody has been banned
– investigated banking and mortgage practices of redlining and lending that left Black Americans for generations unable to acquire wealth through purchasing homes.
Teach Pigford v Glickman by all means. But that's a far cry from 'Black Queer Theory' which, let me tell you, Black peeps don't want their kids to be taught. On the other hand, we'd have no problem with a course on 'Elderly White Professors taking it up the arse from priapic dolphins while everybody falls about laughing'.
Intersectionality, introduced by Kimberlé Crenshaw in widely cited and impactful work, is
utterly stupid. I demand special treatment on the grounds of my age, stupidity, race and sexuality. You bring in gender, religion, and the fact that your husband is a transgender bunny rabbit. This way lies madness.
the concept that certain groups are at the intersection of multiple oppressions – for example, Black women face discrimination not just for their race but also for their gender
but Black women may be doing better than Black men of similar background.
(and that such discrimination takes its own unique form).
Or doesn't. What works is having protected classes and letting people choose one and only one for themselves.
Finally, critical race theory is, in essence, the study of these concepts:
by lazy, stupid cunts almost as wholly worthless as Jason
the ways practices in various domains – in housing, schooling, banking, policing, and the criminal legal system – entrench persisting racial disparities and inequalities (such as the racial wealth gap, or segregated schools), even when there is no individual racist intent.
But where there is a vast difference in productivity or mobility. There is little point pretending that Society is responsible for Income and Wealth inequality when open markets have increasing salience.
The laws are manifestly incoherent.
Not to jurists. That's why smart lawyers make a lot of money.
The failure to teach about structural racism will make Black children born into poverty feel that their parents and grandparents are responsible for their own impoverished position
which Black children? Thomas Sowell? Clarence Thomas?
relative to white children, and so will make Black children feel “anguish or other forms of psychological distress” because of “actions … committed in the past by other members of the same race”.
Jason's argument hinges upon the notion that Blacks are stupid. That's racist dude.
The “anguish” and “psychological distress” these laws forbid are only anguish felt by the dominant racial group, white Americans.
Like we haven't seen countless films about the 'Hillbilly' girl who gets to Quantico coz she got top grades but Hannibal Lecteur immediately spots her as 'White Trash'. My memory is that Hannibal eats a bunch of people before sailing off into the sunset with 'Clarice'.
In other national contexts, everyone would clearly recognize the problematic nature of laws of this sort.
Only if they were as stupid as shit.
Germany’s teaching of its Nazi past creates clear anguish and guilt in German children
because Germany lost and got occupied. Later, it occurred to the Germans that pretending to feel lots of guilt was a good excuse to be a NATO 'free rider'.
(and perhaps for this reason, Germany is the world’s most stable liberal democracy?
Fuck off! Having lots of American troops on your soil while you make plenty of dosh selling capital goods to China and buying gas from Russia may militate for liberal democracy but of a wholly contingent sort. The fact is, if Putin hadn't fucked up his Ukrainian invasion, the East West split in Germany would have become pronounced. The East would be like the Visregard countries. The West would form a separate block with Scandinavian and the Benelux countries. But, if La Pen comes to power in France, the Germans would be cool with that too.
If the German far right passed laws forbidding schools from teaching about the sins of Nazism, on the grounds that such teaching does in fact quite obviously cause anguish and guilt in German children, the world would not stand for it for one moment.
The world wouldn't give a shit. Netanyahu would make some noise but would be bought off. The plain fact is Europe is turning anti-Semitic. The only thing that would get the Germans in trouble is revived claims for land they lost in 1945. Look at Austria. In their textbooks they don't use the word Jew or Holocaust. Austrians are presented as the victims of....urm...well, not Hitler, obviously, because he was Austrian. It must have been somebody else.
Even Israel’s far-right government strenuously objected when Poland drafted a law that would make it illegal to suggest that Poland had any responsibility for Nazi atrocities on its soil.
Unlike Austria, the Poles were in the right.
Why isn’t there greater outcry when such laws are passed to protect the innocence of white Americans?
Because trying to bully Americans is a dick move. Don't forget that African Americans have always been the foremost patriots of that country. Due to I iz bleck, they may be nice to me and send me links to learned articles by Loury or Fryer or some other such brain-box.
It is frequently claimed by proponents of such laws that banning discussion of structural racism and intersectionality is freeing schools of indoctrination.
It is freeing them of stupid nutters who want to talk about 'Black Queer Theory' and why everybody should get gender reassignment surgery at least once before they leave Elementary School.
And yet indoctrination rarely takes place by allowing the free flow of ideas.
More particularly if your ideas are shit and people run away from you when they come dribbling out of your arse.
Indoctrination instead rather takes places by banning ideas.
Nope. Indoctrination means actively implanting one idea and removing any conflicting idea. Banning stuff is not indoctrination.
Celebrating the banning of authors and concepts as “freedom from indoctrination” is as Orwellian as politics gets.
No it isn't because those authors' texts remain available in the market. Orwell was critiquing the type of Socialist state which Jason drools over.
So what is the ultimate goal of these bans?
The goal is to give kids a good education so they can get good jobs and do well in life. We can't stop private schools teaching any old shite, but tax-payers won't pay for kids in Government schools to be brainwashed by woke nutters.
In the first instance, these laws are there to protect white innocence
Virginity? That would be cool. Tax payers would pay more if they could be sure their daughters wouldn't get preggers at the age of 13.
– that is why they are so popular with many white parents, who carry their own burdens of guilt (similar laws would be popular with many Germans, for the same reason).
Some people feel guilty coz they masturbate a lot. Jason would say that the Government should spend money making those people feel even more guilty- only if they are White. Teechur shuld explain to darkies that their incessant wanking is the fault of 'the Man'. Biden is secretly selling your jizz to the Japanese.
But there are deeper and more problematic aims of these laws.
No. The aim is clear. Kick woke cunts out of State Schools. At the very least, don't fucking pay them with tax dollars. Let Soros fund that shite.
Democracy involves informed decision-making about policy.
No it doesn't. That's why Jason is allowed to vote. Elected representatives in the Legislature constitute Committees to examine proposed laws or to conduct their own inquiries. It is at only that stage that 'informed decision-making' takes place.
These laws are intended to render such deliberation impossible when it comes to minority groups.
If so, this is a case of 'impossible attempt'. We don't care about laws which make it illegal for homosexuals to levitate not because we don't care about homosexuals but because nobody can fucking levitate.
The United States suffers from immense racial disparities,
they have lessened greatly. Indigenous people are no longer being massacred or chased off their land.
which result in periodic outbreaks of political protest. Without an understanding of the structural factors that keep schools and cities segregated, and certain populations impoverished, Americans will not be able to react to these outbreaks with understanding – they will find them befuddling.
Worse still, Yale University currently lacks a Department of Arse wiping. The result is that nobody at Yale understands that they need to wipe their arse after taking a dump. They get very befuddled when confronted with a toilet roll. They spread butter on it and try to eat it. What they do to a bidet, however, is too obscene to relate.
These laws eliminate the knowledge and understanding required to react democratically to Black political protest to structural injustice.
Only in the same manner that Yale's lack of Arse Wiping instruction is causing Jason to have a very shitty bum.
The authors targeted by these laws do not just theorize about problematic structures – their work is also essential for understanding solutions.
Rubbish! The solutions are part of 'Law & Econ' as Obama, who argued cases before Posner, well knows. Woke shite, however, is mischievous- as he pointed out.
For example, Roderick Ferguson writes about social movements for liberation, including student movements.
Movements in Elementary Schools? Middle Schools? Believe me, by the time kids get to High School they know more about 'Queer of color' stuff from Netflix shows about teenage werewolves incessantly bumming each other while aristocratic European Vampires provide maidens of color with a more pleasurable alternative to tampons.
These laws make it illegal to teach students about the history and strategy of social movements targeting structural injustice.
This is particularly important during an on-going school shooting. The last thing kids want, when they are cowering under their desks is for teechur to sidle up to them and start Queer critiquing shite.
More generally, these laws make it illegal to teach students about how to form social movements to challenge dominant interests and structures.
Why are kids not being taught how to make Molotov cocktails? There are cases of young people having to travel all the way to Syria to get basic instruction in Leninist techniques of class warfare.
Most frighteningly, these laws are meant to intimidate educators,
Whereas school shootings tend to embolden them
to punish them for speaking freely by threatening their jobs, their teaching licenses, and more.
Many are anally raped by Billionaire donors to the Republican Party.
The passing of these laws signals the dawn of a new authoritarian age in the United States,
which is why Jason is organizing an underground railway to get colored folk out of Red States and transport them to Canada.
where the state uses laws restricting speech to intimidate, bully and punish educators,
what about their anal cherry? Can it really be that Republican Governors are so forbearing as not to fuck educators in the ass while making them squeal like little piggies? Is that really the story Jason wants us to believe? Pull the other one, Jason, mate!
forcing them to submit to the ideology of the dominant majority or lose their livelihoods, and even their freedom.
not to mention their anal cherries.
It is clear that the chief agenda of the GOP is to advance a set of speech laws that criminalize discussion in schools of anything but the white heterosexual majority’s perspective.
Which is preferable to the perspective of woke nutters. The fact is women and homosexuals and colored people rose up by their own efforts, their own enterprise, their own patriotism. They made bigger and bigger contributions to society and soon those who insulted them came to be seen as stupid losers who were bound to fuck up their own lives or those of their families.
But Jason Stanley is one of those stupid losers. He spews hate on everybody he dislikes but has nothing useful or intelligent to impart. He might as well be a Socioproctologist except, ever since I lost my job as Membership Secretary of the Institute (once again, this was due to allegations of sexual self-abuse), we are no longer enrolling new associates.
The media’s portrayal of these laws as moves in the “culture wars” is an unconscionable misrepresentation of fascism.
The media knows very well that the 'woke' have shat the bed. The Republicans are gaining a temporary advantage from this but those nutters never really mattered. They will soon be forgotten. Meanwhile, a new Cold War has begun. Suppose Zelensky is killed by one of Putin's agents. If he is succeeded by a leader of the Azov battalion, we will still support him even if he appears 'Fascist'. Indeed, if a Chinese led Eurasian power-block gains the whip-hand, we will stop talking about democracy. We will take our allies where we can find them. But, will the US be one of them? Or will it revert to splendid isolation? Either way, Stanley's moment in the Sun has passed. Crying wolf about Fascists under the bed is a game for children.
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