Today, Thursday, in Florida (motto: "America's laboratory of backwards ass fucknuttery"), the state Board of Education voted that, when it comes to American history, "Instruction on the required topics must be factual and objective, and may not suppress or distort significant historical events, such as the Holocaust, slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the civil rights movement and the contributions of women, African American and Hispanic people to our country." Now that doesn't sound unreasonable. In fact, it sounds downright progressive.
But this is Florida, which is led by screeching shitbird Ron DeSantis and the BOE is filled with craven lackeys who will suck whatever conservative scrotums are dangled in their ignorant faces. So, of course, they dickishly added to the rule for public schools, "Examples of theories that distort historical events and are inconsistent with State Board approved standards include the denial or minimization of the Holocaust, and the teaching of Critical Race Theory, meaning the theory that racism is not merely the product of prejudice, but that racism is embedded in American society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white persons. Instruction may not utilize material from the 1619 Project." Now, as these things go, that's not actually a terrible definition of critical race theory. Obviously, though, to the scrotum suckers on the BOE, acknowledging the reality of racism's role in the development of this country is a bad thing.
However, here's one other thing they added: "Instruction must include the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments." You see the problem here? The U.S. Constitution, which must be taught, contained the Three-Fifths Compromise, where slaves were counted as only, you know, 60% of a person for the sake of congressional representation. That's racism fucking embedded in the fucking founding document of the fucking country. I'm not even sure how the fuck you would teach about slavery or the civil rights movement without discussing how American society and the legal system were all about reifying white supremacy and shitting on Blacks and other non-whites.
In a goddamn
PowerPoint presentation at today's DOE meeting, the blithering cockheads who support this asserted, "The amended rule will protect students from being influenced or indoctrinated to think a certain way" and "The classroom is not an appropriate place for any adult to espouse their personal beliefs and ideologies." And if you're like me, your brain is twisting itself into a ball of psychotic rage over the hypocrisy of forcing teachers to lie about American history and then claiming that it's not imposing an ideology on or indoctrinating students.
You want your mind to complete break down? This amended rule "Ensures our students receive classroom instruction that is both factual and objective and that significant historical events are not intentionally or unintentionally distorted," as the PowerPoint from the Bowels of Ignorant Hell reads.
Teachers' unions and groups were quick to
point out that nowhere in Florida public schools is critical race theory taught. Why? Because it's a motherfucking academic theory that you might learn when you're a goddamn graduate student. You might as well say, "Stop teaching Derrida to second-graders, you bastards." But critical race theory has become shorthand for "teaching students the truth we're trying to hide from them" or, to put it in GOP-speak, "liberals hate America." As DeSantis put it, those who espouse critical race theory are "teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other," which is just fucking dumb and incendiary, and dumb motherfuckers gobble it up like it's kibble from Donald Trump's ass.
Honestly, so much of this is bound up in an attack on the 1619 Project because it says, "Fuck your bullshit history whitewash," and that scares the shit out of white people. Jesus fuck, so many white people can't even give up Columbus, that genocidal maniac. Tell them that they benefited from centuries of white oppression of other races (which seems pretty fuckin' obvious), and they're gonna explode with idiot rage. Too fucking bad. Facts are facts and grown-ups accept that shit. Children get mad at reality they can't change.
But, hey, exploiting the rubes is all the Republican Party has anymore. So we're getting laws and rules passed in Tennessee, Texas, Idaho, and elsewhere, all banning critical race theory and all reacting to a supposed crisis that is completely fucking nonexistent. How nonexistent? In Loudoun County, Virginia, at a school board
meeting this week, parents were freaking the fuck out over critical race theory and it didn't fucking matter that the superintendent kept saying that it's not being taught. But because the school system came up with an "equity plan" based on an assessment of the racial climate at the district's schools, and because shitstains in conservative media say that "equity" is the same as telling white kids that they're pieces of garbage, the parents lost their goddamn minds. By the way, Loudoun County isn't some rural, poor district. It's a rich
suburb of Washington, DC, one that has a fucked-up racial history, but it proves that rubes and racists exist at all income levels.
While part of what's going on here is that screeching about critical race theory distracts from the fucking failures of the GOP in so many places, it's actually a great deal more than that. It is the vile heart of modern conservatism in action. More on that next week.
