Tag: racism

“A Template for Academic Freedom”

A shorter note than usual this time, to refer you all to a new weapon in the battle against censorship in education in the U.S.

Three faculty members–Valerie Johnson of DePaul University, Jennifer Ruth of Portland State University, and Emily Houh of the University of Cincinnati–wrote this two-page template for an Academic Senate Resolution that faculty at any institution can adapt to present to their own Academic Senate. The goal is to “get as many faculty senates as possible to adopt a resolutions called ‘Defending Academic Freedom to Teach about Race and Gender Justice and Critical Race Theory.'”

You can see the actual template here–it’s a Google doc that faculty can download to a local computer and edit for presentation to their own Academic Senate.

It’s refreshing to see the legalese of “WHEREAS” used, for once, in the name of fighting censorship:

WHEREAS state legislative proposals are being introduced across the United States that target academic discussions of racism and related issues in American history in schools, colleges and universities.

WHEREAS the term “divisive” is indeterminate, subjective, and chills the capacity of educators to explore a wide variety of topics based on subjective criteria that are inapposite from the goals of education and the development of essential critical thinking skills;

WHEREAS educating about systemic barriers to realizing a multiracial democracy based on race or gender should be understood as central to the active and engaged pursuit of knowledge in the 21st century to produce engaged and informed citizens;

…THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that Senate resolutely rejects any attempts by bodies external to the faculty to restrict or dictate university curriculum on any matter, including matters related to racial and social justice, and will stand firm against encroachment on faculty authority by the legislature or the Boards of Trustees.

That’s just a short excerpt. If you are a faculty member at a higher-ed institution, go to the link and download it. If you know a faculty member, point them to it. This is a way to help do our part in this battle against censorship meant to shut down education on racism, sexism, and other ongoing human problems that have and do exist in the U.S.

Pushback on book banning and gay silencing in Texas

Two stories involving academic freedom in Texas came out recently within a few days of each other. The first involves librarians who created the Twitter hashtag #FReadom (freedom and reading = freedom to read) to inundate the Texas legislature hashtag #txlege with protests against the growing movement to ban books that Republican legislators and Republican governor Greg Abbott feel are inappropriate.

It will be no surprise to constant readers of the HP, or anyone who is fighting to save our democracy from Republican legal attacks, that the basis of the banning is that “certain types” of books must be banned from school libraries if they “make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex.” That is from Texas Rep. Matt Krause’s October 25, 2021 letter to the Texas Education Agency “demanding that school districts report whether they carry titles from a list of 850 books” or any others that carry out their malevolent purpose of helping white males understand how they benefit from racism and sexism and helping them to reject that privilege. In other words, the same old claim that we first encountered last November in Donald Trump’s Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping: teaching people about racism is racist. As we said way back then,

The duplicity here makes one want to cry out. Here is the pretzel: acknowledging racism at work in America today is actually racist. To bring up race is, somehow, to have a “racialized view” of America, and, beyond that, to bring up racism is to be an apologist for slavery.

…Fighting racism and working for civil rights is also not racist. To claim that fighting racism forces people to think about race, and only race, and therefore is racist, can only be the product of a deep stupidity or a deep evil. It’s very hard to say which would be worse.

…This is more of the same idea that acknowledging race and racism is racist. We should all be allowed to be “color-blind”. This phrase, as used in this Order, represents a false assumption, which is that America, or at least most Americans, are not racist and do not ever made judgments about people based on their race. Therefore, being told to think about race is ruining this paradise by introducing race-based thinking, and therefore, racism.

…While one might find fault with a diversity training program that singles out white people as racist when we know that it’s a part of human nature the world over, we are after all in this case talking about the U.S., where centuries of institutional racism have worked to promote the interests and well-being of white Americans at the expense of black, Latino, Asian, and Indigenous Americans. So in a U.S. diversity training, the focus will indeed be on how white people can renounce the privileges racism offers them. If white Americans don’t do that, they cannot “let people’s skills and personalities be what differentiates them.”

…If one group have worked to institutionalize racism, then yes, they participate in racism and benefit from it, even if they’re not fully aware of the full extent of that participation and benefit. It become so normalized that it’s just the fabric of life. Sexism works the same way. Making people aware of the benefit, or privilege, they experience is a first step in teaching the basic lesson that discrimination must be actively opposed, and that can’t happen until it is personally acknowledged. The work doesn’t stop there. Acknowledging one’s own participation in discrimination is just the first step to fighting it, and being part of the solution.

Yet this ploy of shutting down teaching about racism has only gained steam, as more and more Republican lawmakers at the local, state, and federal level successfully use it as part of their cancel culture (in which democracy is canceled).

Part of what makes them successful is the threatening, overbearing, intolerable dictates they send to their targets. In this case, Krause’s letter to the TEA contains these not-to-be-questioned, immediately-to-be-obeyed orders:

1. Please identify how many copies of each book in the attached [850-book] Addendum your district possesses and at what campus locations including school library and classroom collections.

2. Please identify the amount of funds spent by your District to acquire the books identified in request No. 1 above.

3. Please identify any other books or content in your District, specifying the campus location and funds spent on acquisition, that address or contain the following topics: human sexuality, sexually transmitted diseases, or human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), sexually explicit images, graphic presentations of sexual behavior that is in violation of the law, or contain material that might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex or convey that a student, by virtue of their race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Items 1 and 2 are very heavy lifts, requiring a good deal of record-searching. Item 3 is the poisonous type of intimidation that comes from someone making a long list of “forbiddens” that is meant to seem so all-encompassing that people will just back down under its onslaught and not try to fight it.

We choose to fight it by reading it through. The first list of topics is clearly meant to be red-hot; that is, most likely any book on any of these topics is perverse and bad for students. This includes human sexuality, a rather broad topic. We know from long experience that human sexuality is dog-whistle code for “sex ed or birth control”, HIV and AIDS the same for “homosexuality”, and explicit or graphic sexual behavior is also, in most cases of Republican protest, code for “gay”.

The second list is just the usual “anything that makes white students aware of white racism is racist against whites because it makes them feel bad when they haven’t done anything wrong–“why are you blaming white kids in 2021 for slavery??”–and/or judges them guilty until proven innocent. “…consciously or unconsciously” at the end is particularly revealing of the extent to which these lawmakers are drunk on their power. Whatever the intention of the material, if a white male individual finds fault with it, out it goes.

Governor Abbott’s letter to the Texas Association of School Boards carries on in the same vein:

A growing number of parents of Texas students are becoming increasingly alarmed about some of the books and other content found in public school libraries are extremely inappropriate in the public education system. The most flagrant examples include clearly pornographic images and substance that have no place in the Texas public education system.

These parents are rightfully angry.

Books and “other content” that have “clearly” pornographic images and… “substance”… The vagueness is, to borrow a phrase, at once conscious and unconscious. Using scary umbrella words like “pornography” is a conscious attempt to pre-empt any pushback on the Republican book banning process. Who would defend pornography, or ask what you mean by the word, ask for concrete examples and definitions? What kind of monster would get fired and possibly jailed for doing that?

Using 100% meaningless words like “substance” is a conscious attempt to pile on more threat–these things are so bad we can’t even name them; we just hint that it’s even worse than printed materials. In this way, it’s unconscious of the fact that it’s so vague as to be meaningless. Unless you are terrified into submission by the mere thought of the governor rebuking you, you’re going to laugh at the random and obviously bogus use of the word.

Parents feature repeatedly in Abbott’s letter. But how many is “a growing number”, and how are they finding out about “some” of the books and “other content” in public school libraries that are “extremely inappropriate”? The lack of hard data is damning. Anyone can say “lots of people don’t like this”; proving it is another story. Allegedly, the inventory that Krause demands will be Step 1 in carefully reading and assessing each title to judge its appropriateness. But one feels this will not really be the case. Instead, every material on the 850-item list will be confiscated and–who knows?–perhaps burned by police or the army in a public square, with speeches and rioting, just like the 1930s.

In a tiring lack of surprise, many of the books the Republicans want to ban are about interracial romance, homosexuality, and trans experience.

The librarians protesting this deserve support. As one of them, Carolyn Foote, put it so well:

“One of the chilling effects is people get scared, and you get siloed. You’re afraid, you’re alone,” says Twitter takeover organizer Carolyn Foote, a library consultant who spent 29 years as a school librarian. “We hope people realize they’re not alone—there are people and librarians fighting for students to have rights to literature and information.”

Yes – the best thing to do when confronted with a threat meant to shut you down is to open it up to the world.

Meanwhile in a related story, Texas also has a law mandating that public school sex ed “course materials and instruction relating to sexual education or sexually transmitted diseases should include:

(1) an emphasis on sexual abstinence as the only completely reliable method of avoiding unwanted teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases;

(8) emphasis, provided in a factual manner and from a public health perspective, that homosexuality is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public and that homosexual conduct is a criminal offense under Section 21.06, Penal Code.

The first note is clearly established by precedent in schools around the country to be Christian pedagogy. The 8th is confusing–is it really illegal to be gay in Texas? Sadly, a 1973 law is still on the books–that’s the Section 21.06 of the Penal Code–and so each county and/or city in the state has to vote on and pass non-discrimination protections to make it possible for gay people to live there. Some universities in Texas have also passed anti-discrimination laws. But these simply put gay people in those counties, cities, or schools in the uneasy position of being free from discrimination but still identified as criminals.

This is why books about being gay or sex education materials that discuss homosexuality are on the Republican hit list. This kind of oppression is already almost completely successful at muzzling and erasing gay people: currently, only 6% of sex ed programs in Texas public schools use materials that include LGBTQIA+ needs and experiences. So the most recent book banning campaign is certainly meant in part to flush out that remaining 6% and get rid of it. Teachers are also forbidden to mention homosexuality or gay people in class.

It’s easy to target people who are already defined as criminals, and then you just expand out from there to anyone you don’t like: immigrants, people for whom English is a second language, black and brown people, and anyone else you label with increasingly vague and threatening names, like “liberal”, “leftist”, “socialist”, etc. These people produce “pornographic” “materials” and “substance” and then force them on school children. Again, the hope is that everyone will be too afraid to be identified with this to ever push back.

The real inappropriate material here is the assault on our democracy. Book banning is not part of it. People banning is not part of it. Do what you can where you are to prevent or overturn these laws through legal channels, and remember that you are not alone.

November 2021 round-up: attacks on academic freedom in Florida and Texas

There’s a lot to include in any wrap-up of the battle going on in the U.S. right now to make colleges and universities nothing more than weapons in the hands of Americans who want to dismantle our democracy. Through sheer chance, we began our coverage of the University of Florida on the first of this month, and that story has continued to evolve throughout November. In our November 1 post, we described how three political science faculty members were refused permission to serve as expert court witnesses during a lawsuit challenging Florida’s new voting restriction law because, as UF president Kent Fuchs put it in a written statement,

It is important to note that the university did not deny the First Amendment rights or academic freedom of professors Dan Smith, Michael McDonald and Sharon Austin. Rather, the university denied requests of these full-time employees to undertake outside paid work that is adverse to the university’s interests as a state of Florida institution.

That is, UF employees will not testify against a state policy because then the state will cut funding to the university. The idea that state universities will lose funding if their faculty criticize the state is a new one, at least in the U.S., and it makes “the state” sound a lot less like Florida and a lot more like “the State”, as in “state-controlled media” or “state-controlled education”.

Reaction was swift, from inside and outside UF. The next day, higher ed reporters wrote that “Administrators denied requests from a fourth professor who had asked to participate in litigation supporting mask mandates against [the state of] Florida…

The professor, the pediatrician Jeffrey L. Goldhagen, was asked to testify and serve as a declarant in litigation that followed Gov. Ron DeSantis’s executive order that forbade mask mandates in schools as the Delta variant of Covid-19 tore through the state. Goldhagen is chief of the division of community and societal pediatrics at the University of Florida‘s College of Medicine, in Jacksonville, and a professor in pediatric palliative care. Goldhagen said he would have spoken about why masks work and why children need protection from the virus.

…Goldhagen’s case appears to contradict the university’s earlier explanation for why the political-science professors’ testimony was blocked. The campus’s president, W. Kent Fuchs, and provost, Joe Glover, wrote on Monday night that the political-science professors would be “free” to testify “pro bono on their own time without using university resources.” Goldhagen wrote in the disclosure he submitted to the university that he would not be using university resources and indicated, when asked if he would be paid more than $5,000 annually, that he would not. He told The Chronicle that administrators never separately asked him if he would be paid at all.

The very next day–November 3–it was revealed that a faculty member at another state university, Florida International University, who supported the Florida voting restriction law was allowed to testify in its favor by FIU:

Court records show that the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee hired a Florida International University professor, Dario Moreno, as an “expert witness” in League of Women Voters of Florida v. Lee, which challenges the restrictive voting law.

At Florida International, a public university, administrators signed off on Moreno’s outside-employment request with little fanfare. The “Outside Activity/Conflict of Interest Form” includes no comments or feedback to Moreno — just a couple of sign-offs by his superiors. Though the filled-out form does not specify the lawsuit, it names a law firm — Shutts & Bowen — listed on the same court documents that name Moreno as an expert witness for the Republican committees.

…Moreno, who could not be reached for comment, is an associate professor in the politics and international-relations department. He has previously been paid by the Florida Legislature to defend Republican-drawn redistricting maps in court. According to a 2015 article in the Tampa Bay Times, Moreno had been “hired by the Florida Legislature to be an expert witness in defense of every GOP-drawn redistricting map since 1994.”

Uproar over the discrepancy led UF to issue a statement saying their faculty could indeed testify against the voting law, but only if they were not paid. FIU put no such stricture on Moreno as he testified in favor of the law, and he billed for 112 hours’ worth of compensation.

Where does the fault lie–with the State of Florida’s Republican-led government, which may send a message to its colleges and universities that any criticism of the government will be punished? or with those institutions, like UF and FIU, that are all too willing to accept this situation? or with the general public, which includes people who support the situation and people who do not support it, who do nothing?

Silke-Maria Warnock, a faculty member at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, throws down the challenge we are all facing:

It’s rarely a good sign if you find yourself wondering how to translate certain German words: Gleichschaltung,for instance, or vorauseilender Gehorsam. But reading the news out of the University of Florida, where two administrators informed three faculty members that they were not permitted to testify as expert witnesses in a court challenge to Florida’s voter-suppression laws, will send you down that road.

Gleichschaltung is the process by which institutions are brought under the control of totalitarian ideology. It is frequently rendered as “coordination” or “synchronization,” but those terms lack the terrifying connotation of switches flipped, one by one, until the same ideological current flows through every previously independent institution.

Vorauseilender Gehorsam means “obedience ahead of the command.” The Yale historian Timothy Snyder translates it as “anticipatory obedience,” and that is close enough, but it doesn’t quite capture the scurrying servility implied in “vorauseilen,” to hurry ahead.

We don’t know on whose orders David E. Richardson, dean of the university’s college of arts and sciences, rejected the request of Daniel A. Smith, chair of its political-science department, to testify as an expert witness in the voting-rights case; or on whose orders Gary Wimsett, UF’s assistant vice president for conflicts of interest, rejected the requests of Michael McDonald, who studies national elections, and Sharon Wright Austin, who studies the political behavior of African Americans, to do the same. All three faculty members had previously testified as expert witnesses against the state in other cases, and the university had never declared them to be subject to conflicts of interest.

Unless we want to believe that two different administrators independently invented the same policy from scratch and presented it in near-identical terms, we have to conclude that Richardson and Wimsett acted on orders from above. The notion that they simply anticipated such orders is, in some regards, even worse… Whether they got their orders from the trustees, the president, the provost, or from Gov. Ron DeSantis or one of his minions will emerge in due course. But no matter where the directive originated, both men should have refused to carry it out. They should instead have offered their resignations. You do not obey such commands, you do not hurry ahead to destroy your university’s reputation at the bidding of an authoritarian regime.

…The implications of the assertion that the faculty must not act in a manner adverse to the regime’s interest — “activities that may pose a conflict of interest to the executive branch of the state of Florida create a conflict for the University of Florida” — are staggering. If you are not allowed to bear witness against voter suppression in court, why would you be allowed to study the effects of voter suppression in the first place, or to teach your students about them? Such research and such teaching are not in Ron DeSantis’s interest, either, and by the logic of Richardson’s denial, any activity that is not in Ron DeSantis’s interest is not in the interest of the University of Florida.

…the university’s decision to declare itself an arm of DeSantis’s government rather than an independent institution beholden to the production and dissemination of knowledge and expertise represents an instance of Gleichschaltung that will be more difficult to reverse. It will only get worse. That it is the democratic franchise itself that is at stake in the court case in question only highlights how deep the threat is. Access to the vote is to democracy as freedom of speech is to the university: fundamental, constitutive. Democracies go bankrupt the same way everybody else does: very slowly, then all of a sudden. We are still at “slowly.” All of a sudden is scheduled for Tuesday, November 8, 2022. If Florida’s administrators have ever asked themselves how they would have acted in 1932, now they know.

The date of November 8, 2022 refers to the next election day, when Governor DeSantis is up for re-election.

Of course, it’s not just Florida. If our CRT page has taught us anything, it’s that democracy is under attack in all 50 states, and that higher ed is a much-hated target. Most recently, the University of Texas at Austin has halted a research study “on the effectiveness of antiracism training for white children”–the original “critical race theory” topic that began our own coverage of CRT.

The name of the university is different, but the attack is the same:

This follows a complaint to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights that the project is racially discriminatory, among other criticism. his follows a complaint to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights that the project is racially discriminatory, among other criticism.

–It’s astounding and depressing that a single, horrible argument has gained so much credibility: that teaching about racism is racist. Our first CRT page post, Truth v. Myth: Trump’s Executive Order on Diversity Education, thoroughly explores this double-speak. Teaching Americans that racism existed in the past and still exists in the present, and takes the form of white racism against non-white people in our laws (institutional racism), is, the argument goes, racist because it makes white people feel bad by assuming that they are racist until they prove themselves non-racist. It is imperative, in this argument, that no white person ever feel bad or consider whether they participate in or benefit from racism, institutional and otherwise, and the deeper, much more screwed-up message is that non-white people are racist. Non-white people assume that white people are racist, which is racist.

To be brief, in a society where racism against non-white people is deeply embedded in law and social more, every white person does indeed have to make an effort to change this situation, and remove racist laws and representations from our nation.

To return to this particular UTA story, it seems logical that if CRT is “new” and suspect, it should be objectively, scientifically tested through studies of its impact. That’s what was happening at UTA. But its opponents could not take the chance that the study might prove that white children were not damaged by learning about racism, and so have shut it down, with the university’s meek acquiesence–or its gleichschaltung:

Numerous professors are asking the university to allow the research to proceed during the internal and external reviews, arguing that UT Austin’s institutional review board previously approved the project, as did peer reviewers during a competitive internal funding process.

These professors warn that halting research due to outside complaints threatens the integrity of the study at hand and, more generally, chills free inquiry into timely subjects such as antiracism.

UT Austin “leadership’s decision to pause elements of the study based on the mere filing of a complaint, and before any assessment of whether the complaint poses a credible claim, compromises the integrity of the research and the academic freedom to conduct research and draw conclusions rooted in evidence,” 18 UT Austin education professors said this week in a letter to President Jay Hartzell and Provost Sharon Wood.

…“The leadership’s decision to pause any aspects of the study has the effect of legitimizing actions that, however unfounded, seek to suppress scholarly pursuit of truth and the advancement of scientific knowledge.”

The purpose of the study, according to a recruitment flier, is to explore “overall engagement with the GoKAR! program, as well as the potential for the program to reduce bias and increase awareness of racism.”

The study hit a speed bump after Mark Perry, a professor emeritus of economics at the University of Michigan and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, filed a complaint with the Dallas OCR office alleging violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race.

UT Austin “blatantly violates Title VI by illegally engaging in racial discrimination on the basis of skin color by promoting, sponsoring, offering, and marketing a discriminatory program that engages in racial segregation,” Perry wrote to the OCR. “In violation of Title VI, the University’s GoKAR! Program operates illegally and exclusively for caregivers and their 4-5 year old children who both must identify as white and illegally excludes and discriminates against and excludes non-white caregivers and their 4-5 year old children on the basis of their race and skin color.”

…Victor Saenz, chair of educational leadership and policy at UT Austin and the first of the 18 education professors to sign the letter of concern, said via email that he wanted “to clarify that we’ve been in constant communication with all levels of UT leadership throughout this review process.” The university is “working expeditiously to help resolve this matter to ensure our faculty are being fully supported.”

Saenz’s letter to Wood and Hartzell tells something of a different story: “We are deeply concerned by the request to pause any aspect of the research. The university’s actions raise serious concerns regarding the differential treatment of research based on subject matter and viewpoint. In our experience, and in consulting with individuals who have extensive experience interacting with the [OCR] and/or expertise in academic freedom and civil rights, this is an atypical and unprecedented response from a university.”

…Referencing several critical blog posts and news articles about the study, some of which suggest that the project amounts to training, not research, [a letter from UTA faculty] says that “to succumb to political coercion, especially as it relates to scholarship that confronts anti-Black racism, white supremacy, and any other forms of oppression, compromises the central function of a public university. The university’s actions send a message that risks censoring and chilling professor speech based on viewpoint, running afoul of central tenets of the First Amendment.”

Yes, Perry is saying that a study of white children’s responses to educational materials that will help change racist attitudes about non-white people is racist because it doesn’t allow non-white children to participate–it’s segregation. Perry is deeply concerned that non-white children are not being given the chance to learn how not to be racist, perhaps against other non-white children, but given everything we have learned about this topic, it seems safer to bet that Perry wants non-white children to learn not to be racist against white children.

If only this type of university-supported attack on science, the objectivity of higher ed, and our national commitment to liberty and justice for all were truly “atypical and unprecedented”. This snowball is quickly growing and the hill it rolls down becomes steeper and steeper.

We’ll end as we always do–everyone must do their part to stop this takeover and dismantling of our democracy. Get involved in whatever legal and non-violent ways that you can, where you are, locally and nationally. Stop the gleichschaltung before it becomes a way of life.

Jen Psaki on the proposals to penalize teaching the history of racism

You know the drill: another week, another installment in our unhappy, once short, now long series on examining the Biden Administration’s January 20, 2021 Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government, which you can find here on the official White House site.

On March 18 we wrote about the Iowa state legislature working to incorporate the anti-justice language and intent of the Trump Executive Order 13950 of September 22, 2020 (Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping), which we spilled so much ink on late last year. The University of Iowa is being pressured by the state legislature to end diversity education for students and staff.

Then on March 23 we posted about the Idaho state legislature attempting to do the same. Then, just over a month later came the terrible update: they did. On April 29 the Idaho House approved legislation aimed at preventing public and charter schools and universities from teaching critical race theory, which examines the ways in which race and racism influence American politics, culture and the law.

On May 14, we posted about New Hampshire, whose House Bill HB544–“An Act relative to the propagation of divisive concepts”–is yet another move to make teaching Americans about racism illegal.

The surprise? We don’t have a new state to report on this week. And we’re not going to bend your ear forever about this attack on democracy.

Instead, a very short video of Jen Psaki, press secretary for the Biden Administration, dealing with it more concisely and definitively than we ever could. If the link doesn’t work, go to YouTube and type in “Psaki on Proposal to Penalize Teaching History of Racism.”

Enjoy hearing from someone else this week who is as devoted to Truth v. Myth as we are!

Idaho bans diversity training, or, Trump is not gone

Here we are once again, forced to return to our short series examining the Biden Administration’s January 20, 2021 Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government, which you can find here on the official White House site.

On March 18 we wrote about the Iowa state legislature working to incorporate the anti-justice language and intent of the Trump Executive Order 13950 of September 22, 2020 (Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping), which we spilled so much ink on late last year. The University of Iowa is being pressured by the state legislature to end diversity education for students and staff.

Then on March 23 we posted about the Idaho state legislature attempting to do the same. Now, less than 2 months later, comes the terrible update: they did.

The Idaho House on Thursday approved legislation aimed at preventing public and charter schools and universities from teaching critical race theory, which examines the ways in which race and racism influence American politics, culture and the law.

…The measure, which passed with a 57-12 vote and no Democratic support, would prevent educators from making students “affirm, adopt or adhere to” belief systems claiming individuals of any race, sex, ethnicity, religion or national origin are responsible for past actions done by members of the same group. It also would prohibit teachers from forcing students onto belief systems that claim a group of people as defined by sex, race, ethnicity or religion are inferior or superior to another.

Republican Idaho lawmakers are concerned federal authorities could force belief systems on Idaho students through school curricula — calling the ideas often found in critical race theory “contrary to the unity of the nation and the well-being” of the state.

Backers said the bill is an anti-discrimination measure intended to spell out expectations for Idaho schools and universities following an executive order by President Joe Biden issued in January titled Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities.

–We’ve written a lot already, in the posts linked above, about this abuse of language that calls a law designed to prevent people from talking about and acknowledging racism an “anti-discrimination” law. By locating racism or other prejudice safely and firmly in the past (people today are not “responsible for past actions done by members of [their] group”), the law makes discrimination against non-white Americans seem dead, a relic of the past, and something people today would only bring up in order to hurt innocent Americans, make the U.S. “seem” racist, and destroy the nation.

To say that addressing our problems is “contrary to the unity of the nation and the well-being of the state” is openly weird. The “well-being of the state”? This sounds more like language from the Soviet Union, Animal Farm, or some Unabomber-type manifesto than language from a U.S. legislature.

The nation’s well-being springs from… actually being well. The U.S. is strong when we live up to the principle of liberty and justice for all. The U.S. is weak, and in danger, when we don’t. Dictating that the health of the nation is something floating in the ether that exists separately from our daily lives on the ground, what we do and say, how we treat everyone in our nation, the laws we pass and the people we elect, is contrary to the well-being of our state.

This quote from one Idaho lawmaker is frighteningly transparent about the real goals of this bill and its supporters:

Republican Rep. Lance Clow, chairman of the House Education Committee, supported the measure. …“I’m sure,” he continued, “minorities were feeling compelled to take certain beliefs and certain directions that now, on the flip side of that, you know, this white Anglo Saxon Christian feels like, well, maybe the tables have turned, and maybe we should have recognized there were problems in the past, and maybe we didn’t.”

…hearing this white man say he’s “sure” about what “minorities” have gone through, their being forced to “take” “certain” beliefs and “directions” is already bad. When he goes on to say that the “flip side” of this is “white Anglo Saxon Christians” “turning the tables” on other people–we presume “minorities”–it gets a lot worse.

Stay with us here, because the “logic” of the last part of his sentence is tortured: if we recognize that racism and other prejudice against non-“Anglo Saxon Christians” happened in the past, and we realize that was wrong, then we don’t want to make the mistake of allowing the prejudice that is taking place against “Anglo Saxon Christians” right now in the present go on any longer, lest we fail to learn from our past experience.

Anglo Saxon?? It’s astonishing and infuriating to see constant reminders that white supremacy has taken deep root in every part of our nation. What will these white supremacists do when, relatively soon, demographic trends will result in an America where white people are the “minorities”? We need only to look as far as the racial oligarchy in South Africa under apartheid for an answer.

As recently as 30 years ago, people who tried to bring up “reverse racism”–the allegedly widespread racism against white people that was robbing them of opportunity–would be laughed out of the room. Times have changed, and that 30-year timing is relevant, as it was the Reagan administration in the 1980s that began the drastic backlash against civil rights that resulted in, among other things, the growth of the religious political right and anti-democratic hate masquerading as protecting “real” Americans and the “real” America–with “real”, of course, meaning “white”. It used to be that people had to say “real” as a code for “white” because they would get in trouble if they paraded their racism. Again, times have changed, to the point where this legislator can openly refer to “Anglo Saxons”.

The 2020 Census data is being parsed right now, and it is, as predicted, being used to re-apportion and shift political representation in Congress. It’s no secret that these anti-American, racist bills are being written and passed by Republican-majority legislatures. There’s a long road ahead of every American who believes in democracy to fight and overturn these laws, before standing up for democracy is “controversial”:

Democratic Rep. Steve Berch said the legislation would have the opposite effect. “What this bill winds up doing in practical terms is intimidation,” he said. “This bill, not necessarily intended, but for sure there are people who will use this bill to intimidate teachers, school administrators, school clerks to make sure they don’t do anything that might in any way be considered controversial.”

Trump is not gone – silence = death

We’re back once again, unable to move on from our short series examining the Biden Administration’s January 20, 2021 Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government, which you can find here on the official White House site.

On March 18–just 5 days ago–we wrote about the Iowa state legislature working to incorporate the anti-justice language and intent of the Trump Executive Order 13950 of September 22, 2020 (Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping), which we spilled so much ink on late last year. The University of Iowa is being pressured by the state legislature to end diversity education for students and staff.

Now, we find the same effort being taken up by the Idaho state legislature. Coincidentally, the Chronicle of Higher Education article from which this quote is taken was published on March 18:

Boise State University officials say their suspension of diversity classes this week was motivated only by reports of an unspecified incident, but the action comes amid a pointed attack by Republican state lawmakers on the university’s efforts to educate students about racism.

The university on Tuesday abruptly suspended 52 sections of a diversity and ethics course, citing concerns that “a student or students” were made to feel “humiliated and degraded” in class “for their beliefs and values.” No official report has been filed, and officials said they have only heard about the incidents second- and third-hand, but the university is investigating.

The Idaho State Senate made its decision-making process very explicit:

The course suspensions at Boise State came the same week that the Idaho State Senate passed a higher-education budget that cut $409,000 from Boise State’s appropriation — the amount the university said it spent on social-justice programs — and shifted the money to Lewis-Clark State College, the Idaho Statesman reported on Wednesday. Some Republican lawmakers had wanted to cut much more in order to send a clear signal to the university that they were against its efforts to educate students about racism and social justice.

…it’s hard to imagine an American legislator publicly saying “I am against educating students about racism and social justice” and still considering themselves a) a good American and b) supported by our founding principles.

“We don’t want funds expended for courses, programs, services, or trainings that confer support for extremist ideologies, such as those tied to social justice, racism, Marxism, socialism or communism,” Rep. Priscilla Giddings said earlier this month, according to Boise State Public Radio. In 2019, 28 House Republicans signed a letter to Marlene Tromp, who was then the new president of Boise State, urging her not to support initiatives intended to promote diversity at Boise State, Idaho Ed News reported.

It’s almost impossible to parse this ridiculous statement, which says that social justice is an ideology, and that social justice and racism are the same thing. Social justice and racism do represent opposite extremes of humanity, from good to evil, but that is their only connection. To place social justice (a good thing) in a list with racism (a bad thing), and then Marxism, socialism, and communism (as practiced so far by humans, bad things), is a bold statement of hatred. We hope that since she feels this way, Rep. Giddings does not say the Pledge of Allegiance, which ends, of course, by pledging allegiance to a nation that stands for “liberty and justice for all”.

Apparently, the Republicans in the state legislator took the opp presented by a single student saying they felt uncomfortable in the Boise State diversity and equity course to shut everything down.

One might wonder why the feelings of a student quoted in the article as having enjoyed the course did not carry equal weight. But one already knows.

Trump is “gone”, not gone. Take a look at your own state’s legislation and see what they may be doing. Check the institutions of higher ed that you care about. The time to act is now, while there’s still some room to breathe.

Wondering what “silence = death” means? Check out Neutrality isn’t Justice, silence = death

Neutrality isn’t justice, silence = death

Just when we thought we were done with our short series examining the Biden Administration’s January 20, 2021 Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government, which you can find here on the official White House site, we get pulled back in.

Attempts to deny equality of opportunity by acknowledging racism do not die when an Order is rescinded. One proof is that the Iowa state legislature is working to incorporate the anti-justice language and intent of the Trump Executive Order 13950 of September 22, 2020 (Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping), which we spilled so much ink on late last year. Here’s a report from Inside Higher Ed:

With very similar language to the Trump order, the Iowa bills prohibit race and sex “stereotyping” and “divisive concepts” in diversity training. Such ideas are that one race or sex is “inherently superior” to another, that the state of Iowa is “fundamentally” racist or sexist, and that a person, by virtue of race or sex, is “inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”

Other prohibited concepts: that a person, based on race or sex, “bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex,” and that anyone should feel “discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” for similar reasons. Meritocracy and “traits such as a hard work ethic” cannot be described as racist or sexist under the bill.

The bills apply to public colleges’ and universities’ staff or student training, led by employees or contractors. Institutions may continue training that fosters a “respectful” workplace or learning environment for all.

You can revisit our series on the Trump order, where we explain how this language bars people from acknowledging racism by saying that doing so is racist–that calling out white racism against black people is, itself, racist because it identifies white people as “fundamentally” racist. It also firmly locates all white racism “in the past”, safely removing white people today from any association with it.

One quote in particular from the story on Iowa sticks with us:

Representative Sandy Salmon, a Republican, argued that there still “needs to be a paragraph in there about requiring a public institution of higher education to attempt to remain neutral on current public policy controversies.”

Neutrality. We understand the disequilibrium our nation is going through as it attempts its boldest reckoning with racism since the 1950s and 60s. We know how painful it is to everyone to disturb the equilibrium of an entire nation, to call a halt to business as usual, including all the coping mechanisms people have relied on for centuries to deal with and survive racism and sexism. That coping state is identified as neutrality, and it can seem like neutrality, a grey area between violence and safety, but it isn’t neutral. It’s charged with fear and hate. It’s the medium in which cells of injustice grow and multiply.

So there is nothing noble or helpful about calling for neutrality on “controversies” that are tearing our nation apart, and that we are finally stopping all the machinery to address and redress. It doesn’t “calm things down”. It only perpetuates the medium for injustice by refusing to call it out and destroy it.

First they force universities to go along, then K-12 schools, then businesses, then everything else. Neutrality isn’t justice, in Iowa or anywhere else. All of us have to stick with the exhaustingly difficulty work of derailing what is corrupt in our society and nation, and then, when all injustice is indeed safely “in the past,” we can figure out how to keep it that way.

There was a slogan back in the 90s amongst gay Americans fighting the unwillingness of the U.S. government–and most of society–to do anything to stop the AIDS epidemic.

Silence=Death was a quick, efficient way to get the message across that not talking about AIDS, or “gays”, was a way to guarantee that the death rate just kept rising. Gay Americans who had adopted the coping mechanism of silence about their sexuality, concealing it in some way, to some extent, in order to survive had to be mobilized for public protest, public political action. It was not easy. But momentum grew with the death rate, and heroic gay Americans put their lives on the line to stand up and demand equal medical treatment and attention. It was dangerous, it was hard, it put all of American society into disequilibrium as “mainstream” America was forced to acknowledge gay people as human beings with equal rights (and as people–regular people who had jobs and pets and went on vacation and hated broccoli, etc.).

Neutrality in that situation was not the answer. It’s never the answer when justice is at stake. We all need to revive this slogan for today. Find a new shape to replace the pink triangle that represented homosexuality and get those t-shirts and buttons out there on every American who knows that “neutrality and silence for all” is not our national slogan.

Truth v. Myth: Biden Order defines racism as racist! (and anti-racism as anti-racist)

Hello and welcome to part 2 of our series examining the Biden Administration’s January 20, 2021 Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government, which you can find here on the official White House site. We left off in part 1 looking at the end of Section 1 and its framing of equality of opportunity in positive economic terms.

“Sec. 2 Definitions” establishes the same for “equity” and “underserved communities”:

Sec. 2.  Definitions.  For purposes of this order:  (a)  The term “equity” means the consistent and systematic fair, just, and impartial treatment of all individuals, including individuals who belong to underserved communities that have been denied such treatment, such as Black, Latino, and Indigenous and Native American persons, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and other persons of color; members of religious minorities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) persons; persons with disabilities; persons who live in rural areas; and persons otherwise adversely affected by persistent poverty or inequality.

(b)  The term “underserved communities” refers to populations sharing a particular characteristic, as well as geographic communities, that have been systematically denied a full opportunity to participate in aspects of economic, social, and civic life, as exemplified by the list in the preceding definition of “equity.”

We know that this Order is specifically addressing racial inequity, so we will not complain that being female is omitted here from categories of Americans who have been denied equality of opportunity. It’s good to have an Order specifically focused on race. But we do expect the Administration can do two things at once and also address sexual discrimination and sexism in America as well, and as soon as possible.

The main difference here between the Biden Order and the Trump Order is that the Trump version had 9 separate definitions of the term “divisive concepts”, all of which stated that anti-racism and anti-sexism training were, in themselves, divisive concepts based on lies and, of course, anti-white racism. So we’re on better footing already here with the Biden Order, as it is short and common-sensical and acknowledges reality.

Sec. 3 Role of the Domestic Policy Council states that this DPC will “coordinate efforts to embed equity principles, policies, and approaches across the Federal government. This will include efforts to remove systemic barriers to and provide equal access to opportunities and benefits, identify communities the Federal Government has underserved, and develop policies designed to advance equity for those communities.” Again, a 180 from the Trump Order which focused on prosecuting government departments that continued diversity training that attempted to address “divisive concepts.”

Sec. 4.  Identifying Methods to Assess Equity says that the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will work with federal agencies to “[assess] whether agency policies and actions create or exacerbate barriers to full and equal participation by all eligible individuals. The study should aim to identify the best methods, consistent with applicable law, to assist agencies in assessing equity with respect to race, ethnicity, religion, income, geography, gender identity, sexual orientation, and disability. … Within 6 months of the date of this order, the Director of OMB shall deliver a report to the President describing the best practices identified by the study and, as appropriate, recommending approaches to expand use of those methods across the Federal Government.”

So far so good; we can say that by 2021 it’s a little late to say you’ll begin to assess “whether” there are barriers to equity and then “recommend approaches” to dismantling them… but if this really happens by August, we’ll be happy to wait one last time.

Next time: defining obstacles to equity

Truth V. Myth: Trump Executive Order On Diversity Training, concluded… we hope

Today, part the last of our series on the Trump Administration’s September 22, 2020 Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping (find the official White House version of this executive order here). We race through the concluding sections, noting the final problematic statements therein.

Sec. 8. Title VII Guidance. The Attorney General should continue to assess the extent to which workplace training that teaches the divisive concepts set forth in section 2(a) of this order may contribute to a hostile work environment and give rise to potential liability under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. 2000e et seq. If appropriate, the Attorney General and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission shall issue publicly available guidance to assist employers in better promoting diversity and inclusive workplaces consistent with Title VII.

–More of the same here; the noble Civil Rights Act of 1964 is perverted to support anti-diversity training and the debarment (see Sec. 7(b)) of contractors who provide real diversity training.

Let’s hit the final section for an ill closure:

Sec. 10. General Provisions. (a) This order does not prevent agencies, the United States Uniformed Services, or contractors from promoting racial, cultural, or ethnic diversity or inclusiveness, provided such efforts are consistent with the requirements of this order.

b) Nothing in this order shall be construed to prohibit discussing, as part of a larger course of academic instruction, the divisive concepts listed in section 2(a) of this order in an objective manner and without endorsement.

(c) If any provision of this order, or the application of any provision to any person or circumstance, is held to be invalid, the remainder of this order and the application of its provisions to any other persons or circumstances shall not be affected thereby.

(f) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

DONALD J. TRUMP

THE WHITE HOUSE,
September 22, 2020.

–One might laugh aloud if it weren’t for the sheer malice and evil intention of this final section. Subsection a represents a terrible perfection of perversity, saying this order purporting to describe diversity training does not prevent any entity from providing diversity training. It’s so clear that the Order precisely does prevent all agencies from promoting diversity and inclusion that the authors are either subconsciously driven to defend themselves or just enjoying their terrible power. Subsection b follows the same. Subsection c is a logical fallacy, and Subsection d is, we hope, boilerplate text, and not something assembled for this particular and particularly anti-democratic Order.

This Order may well be rescinded by the incoming Biden Administration, but that is cold comfort. The wedge has been driven into our democracy from the top down by a small number of people who are all too happy to destroy our democratic traditions. They are easily split from democracy. Let’s hope that as the wedge goes down into the full population, we find that Americans as a whole will resist the fracture.

Truth V. Myth: Trump Executive Order On Diversity Training, or, a return to McCarthyism

Hello and welcome to part 5 in our series on the Trump Administration’s September 22, 2020 Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping (find the official White House version of this executive order here). This time, we slog through Sections 4-6.

Section 4 is Requirements for Government Contractors. This Order is, after all, directed toward “Executive departments and agencies (agencies), our Uniformed Services, Federal contractors, and Federal grant recipients”, so here’s where it gets very specific by outlining policy.

During the performance of this contract, the contractor agrees as follows:

1. The contractor shall not use any workplace training that inculcates in its employees any form of race or sex stereotyping or any form of race or sex scapegoating, including the concepts that (a) one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex; (b) an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously; (c) an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race or sex; (d) members of one race or sex cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to race or sex; (e) an individual’s moral character is necessarily determined by his or her race or sex; (f) an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex; (g) any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex; or (h) meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by a particular race to oppress another race. 

The term “race or sex stereotyping” means ascribing character traits, values, moral and ethical codes, privileges, status, or beliefs to a race or sex, or to an individual because of his or her race or sex, and the term “race or sex scapegoating” means assigning fault, blame, or bias to a race or sex, or to members of a race or sex because of their race or sex.

–This is copied and pasted from Section 2: Definitions, which we covered all-too-thoroughly in part 4. As we said there, “We do not believe in good faith that the context of diversity training in the U.S. provides or supports [eight] separate, and often completely opposing, definitions of “divisive concepts.” In a nutshell, this is the third restatement in this Order of the idea that acknowledging the existence of racism and sexism is racist and sexist.

Now we get to what this means in terms of actions that federal contractors must take. First, they must send a copy of the Order “to each labor union or representative of workers with which he has a collective bargaining agreement or other contract or understanding” and each union office must “post copies of the notice in conspicuous places available to employees and applicants for employment.” We pass over the sexist language in this ostensible Order against sexism… for now.

The next item swerves from what the contractors should do to a warning that if they are non-compliant “this contract may be canceled, terminated, or suspended in whole or in part and the contractor may be declared ineligible for further Government contracts”.

Back to tasks: the contractors must “include the provisions of paragraphs (1) through (4) in every subcontract or purchase order unless exempted by rules, regulations, or orders of the Secretary of Labor, so that such provisions will be binding upon each subcontractor or vendor.” The Department of Labor will “establish a hotline and investigate complaints received” against any contractor who is “utilizing such training programs in violation of the contractor’s obligations under those orders. The Department shall take appropriate enforcement action and provide remedial relief, as appropriate.”

Unlike the usual lip service that accompanies any civil rights protections, the DOL is very likely to follow through with this for as long as the Trump Administration lasts. All the energy it never has for providing enforcement and relief for victims of race and sex discrimination will be poured into prosecuting people trying to fight race and sex discrimination.

Finally, “Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Director of OFCCP shall publish in the Federal Register a request for information seeking information from Federal contractors, Federal subcontractors, and employees of Federal contractors and subcontractors regarding the training, workshops, or similar programming provided to employees. The request for information should request copies of any training, workshop, or similar programing having to do with diversity and inclusion as well as information about the duration, frequency, and expense of such activities.”

The constant theme here is Soviet- or McCarthy-style encouragement of informants. Instead of going to your company or union first, go directly to the government and report your employer or union. Secretly inform the government about any violations you perceive. Again, if this administration had ever protected whistle-blowers for justice, this would be less infuriating. Only informants, not whistle-blowers, will be protected.

Section 5 leads, for the third time, with the same cut-and-paste 8-part (re)definition of terms and statement that acknowledging racism and sexism is racist and sexist. In fact, that’s all Section 5 includes after the brief intro text “Sec. 5. Requirements for Federal Grants. The heads of all agencies shall review their respective grant programs and identify programs for which the agency may, as a condition of receiving such a grant, require the recipient to certify that it will not use Federal funds to promote the concepts that (a) one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex; …” We are perhaps meant to be hypnotized by this repetition.

Section 6 mixes it up by not repeated the cut-and-paste.

Sec. 6. Requirements for Agencies. (a) The fair and equal treatment of individuals is an inviolable principle that must be maintained in the Federal workplace. Agencies should continue all training that will foster a workplace that is respectful of all employees. Accordingly:

(i) The head of each agency shall use his or her authority under 5 U.S.C. 301, 302, and 4103 to ensure that the agency, agency employees while on duty status, and any contractors hired by the agency to provide training, workshops, forums, or similar programming (for purposes of this section, “training”) to agency employees do not teach, advocate, act upon, or promote in any training to agency employees any of the divisive concepts listed in section 2(a) of this order. 

…(ii) Agency diversity and inclusion efforts shall, first and foremost, encourage agency employees not to judge each other by their color, race, ethnicity, sex, or any other characteristic protected by Federal law.

…(b) The Director of OPM shall propose regulations providing that agency officials with supervisory authority over a supervisor or an employee with responsibility for promoting diversity and inclusion, if such supervisor or employee either authorizes or approves training that promotes the divisive concepts set forth in section 2(a) of this order, shall take appropriate steps to pursue a performance-based adverse action proceeding against such supervisor or employee..

–More cultivation of informants here, as any employee that dares to “promote in any training to agency employees any of the divisive concepts listed in section 2(a) of this order” will be informed upon and the Director of OPM “shall take appropriate steps to pursue a performance-based adverse action proceeding against such supervisor or employee…”

Three sub-steps reinforce this message, and part ii, requiring “the agency inspector general [to] thoroughly review and assess by the end of the calendar year, and not less than annually thereafter, agency compliance with the requirements of this order in the form of a report submitted to OMB” is particularly irritating; how we wish that there were at least annual, and ideally monthly, reviews to ensure enforcement of real civil rights laws in the workplace.

Next time: the bleak conclusion