Conservatives are still ranting about critical race theory, which they insist is the most atrocious, disgusting thing that ever happened in America. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, trotting out some stale 1950s talking points for Newsmax, claimed that communist China thrived on US race divisions that only exist because CRT radicals keep talking about it.
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Pompeo tweeted Tuesday:
If we teach that the founding of the United States of America was somehow flawed. It was corrupt. It was racist. That's really dangerous. It strikes at the very foundations of our country.
America is not built on Peter's rock, apparently, but a flimsy foundation of fantasy. It's an existential threat to the nation if teachers at any point in our educational system broach difficult topics. Conservatives should theoretically love Hamilton's relatively feel-good approach to American history: The founders included people of color and they can even rap!
Conservatives don't do complicated. America is either perfect or terrible, like any predominately Black neighborhood. Either US slavery and segregation are sanitized, even ignored outright, or white kids will hate themselves and maybe stop voting for Republicans when they grow up. Like the tobacco industry, Republicans can't stay in business if their customers realize their product is toxic. They have to hook them early before they can make an informed decision.
“Critical race theory" is the blanket term for what conservatives consider an anti-America campaign. Conservatives don't actually count as “American" the Black people who fought and bled so America would come somewhat close to fulfilling its promises. If the “great white men" of history are presented honestly, often as actual antagonists to freedom, young white men might choose different role models. We can't have white kids respecting Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman more than Thomas Jefferson and Confederate General Negro Slavecatcher.
The latest “Satanic panic" is that schools are teaching kids to hate whitey or, more to the point, mention that slavery existed. Unless your child is a total sociopath, they'll probably have questions: “Wait, people owned other people and that was considered OK because of the color of the slave's skin?" Noted rightwing trolls Tucker Carlson and Matt Walsh think we should start monitoring teachers so parents are assured that their kids don't actually learn anything.
Carlson says we can't know for sure if teachers are telling Little Susie that she's a colonizer unless we put cameras in every classroom. He likens it to cops wearing body cameras, except when discussing the video footage of George Floyd's murder, Carlson said, "Now by itself the video proves nothing. Videos never do prove anything conclusively." That was less than a year ago.
Walsh is arguably scarier than Carlson (maybe it's the beard) and agrees that we need to hurry up and film teachers in their native habitat.
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There should be a camera in every classroom and any parent should be able to access the footage whenever they want to find out exactly what teachers are doing and saying to their kids
Public school teachers are government employees put in charge of children. They should have zero privacy in that capacity. Full and complete and absolute transparency is the only way.
Walsh would likely protest most bitterly if parents with trans kids pulled footage to confirm that conservative teachers weren't misgendering them. Or if parents checked to see how often girl students were called on compared to their male classmates. Then he'd rail about “Big Brother" and the surveillance state.
This argument is too stupid to engage with fully, but I'm not sure most parents would support round-the-clock recordings of their children that other parents could review because they're afraid a teacher might say “systemic racism." That's almost beside the point because public schools can barely afford teachers let alone telescreens in every classroom and the server space necessary to store the footage.
It wasn't that long ago that conservatives wanted to arm teachers in preparation for the next regularly scheduled school shooting. They apparently consider actual education far more dangerous.
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