All Politics is Local

That’s what an erstwhile Democrat and Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill said some 40 years ago. He’s right: every elected politician is beholden to his constituents and to no one else (at least legitimately so), and those constituents are the citizens in his district.

It doesn’t get any more local than school board elections, and lately, it hasn’t been much more political than with those school boards whose members choose to ignore their constituents, the parents whose children those members demand to indoctrinate. That indoctrination, coming deliberately at the expense of reading (because literature is just stuff by a bunch of old, dead, white patriarchs), writing (because sentences and paragraphs in the American English way are White Supremacist constructions), arithmetic (because that’s just racist), is carefully centered on critical race theory, our nation’s evil Founders, and the divisiveness of celebrating our national flag, our national anthem, our Pledge of Allegiance—that last to the point that those school board members ban our Pledge’s recital in class and at school board meetings.

And so parents—who became exposed to the indoctrination sewage being inflicted on their children while locked up in their homes during Government-mandated lockdowns related to the Wuhan Virus situation—have begun fighting back, emphasizing their localness and getting political: calling out those abusive school board members and running for school board positions themselves—and overwhelmingly replacing those abusive members.

One example—an example of increasing typicality—is this.

Leigh Wambsganss is one of those parents who sparked a grassroots, anti-CRT revolt in Southlake, Texas, that mobilized record turnout in local school board elections to defeat pro-CRT board members by landslide margins.

Even though the Left so hates having its diktats challenged that Leftists overtly threaten the Wamgsgansses of the parents for their impudence, Wambsganss had this:

it’s like once you walk through that fire, you’re untouchable. And the more national news we got and the more we were hit, the more invincible we became. Because now you can say anything, it just doesn’t matter to us anymore.

Because the point of it all—the hugely important point—is this, also from Wambsganss:

If we are going to take America back, we have got to take our public school systems back. And the only way you’re going to do that is win your school board elections.

Preach it, Sister.

A Question

was asked.

What do you think is the most effective way for companies to support diversity initiatives?

…and answered, by yours truly.

Stop carrying out diversity initiatives. Those are just unserious virtue-signaling nonsense.

Instead, businesses (among other entities) support and/or carry out their own training programs, and they should support K-12 charter, voucher, private school education, so as to build over time a population of qualified adults that is reflective of the population at large.

From that diverse population of qualified individuals, then select and hire based on merit rather than on virtue signals.

College Entrance Discrimination

A letter writer in Monday’s Wall Street Journal Letters section wants the Supreme Court to rule in favor of racial discrimination, at least as practiced by Harvard, in the Students for Fair Admissions v Harvard case.

If the plaintiffs…win, you can bet that elite college- and graduate-admissions offices around the country will establish workarounds to assure that opportunities remain for admittance of significant numbers of underrepresented minorities.

Therefore, he asserts,

The justices would be wise to take a pass on the Harvard case, or to affirm the lower courts’ decisions.

Which decisions upheld Harvard’s practice of racial discrimination for admission to its ivy-coated halls.

Harvard, to the letter writer’s first plaint, already uses “workarounds”—opaque and obscure criteria for assessing admissions “essays” and “descriptions of what this means to me” for starters—in selecting entrants on the basis of race while nonselecting other entrants on the basis of race.

Were the letter writer serious, he’d stop demanding free passes for the “underrepresented minorities” solely on the basis of their under-representation; that’s just racism under another guise. They’re underrepresented because they’re not qualified.

The solution is not free passes at the late date of college admissions applications, it’s getting these high school “graduates” actually educated and qualified.

More importantly, the solution is working to correct the K-12 systems and broken families that are the cause of unqualified-ness. But that takes actual work, and it’ll be a generational struggle to correct the ills so deeply embedded in what we’re pleased to call our education system. That solution is not the feel-good quick fix of which the Left is so enamored.

Another letter writer, however, takes a markedly differ view of the matter.

It [The Supreme Court] ought to take this case and apply strict scrutiny to the rationales advanced to justify treating some students more favorably than others merely on account of their ancestry.

But that doesn’t go far enough. As Chief Justice John Roberts already has said, [t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. On this, he’s right.

There is no justification for discriminating on “account of ancestry.” No more strict scrutiny; end the use of race as a discriminant, no matter how far down the list of selection criteria. Any—any—use of race as a selection criterion is rank racism.

Full stop.

Arithmetic and Social Justice

California education officials—at least that’s how Williamson Evers, Senior Fellow, Director of the Center on Educational Excellence, refers to them; you and I might have different, colorfully metaphoric terms—want to base arithmetic training in K-12 on whether the classes have sufficient social justice in them, rather than on whether 2+2 equals 4 (Polish proverbs are not allowed, either). California’s Instructional Quality Commission is looking at requiring arithmetic to be taught in accordance with A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction: Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction.

This manual claims that teachers addressing students’ mistakes forthrightly is a form of white supremacy. It sets forth indicators of “white supremacy culture in the mathematics classroom,” including a focus on “getting the right answer,” teaching math in a “linear fashion,” requiring students to “show their work” and grading them on demonstrated knowledge of the subject matter. “The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false,” the manual explains. “Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuates ‘objectivity’.”

This, of course, is…nonsense.

If the Left, or their so-called educators, were truly interested in “social justice,” they would desist from their blithe, if carefully unspoken, assumption that blacks (all minorities, come to that) are inherently inferior, intrinsically incapable of mastering arithmetic—or anything else—as well as can any other group of human beings.

But if they did that, the Left would have to find a different means of feeling superior to others so that they could feel good about themselves.

Instead, they cling desperately to their (not so) soft bigotry of low expectations.

A Free Speech Oral Argument

(Pun not necessarily intended.)

The Supreme Court heard oral argument in the case of a 14-year-old girl who tried out for, and didn’t make, a varsity cheerleading team and subsequently vented her frustrations in a Snapchat rife with “colorful metaphors.”

The girl’s school punished her with a year-long suspension from cheerleading, she demurred from the punishment, lower courts agreed with her, and the school continued its protest to the Supremes.

Attorney Lisa Blatt, representing the girl’s school, had this, among others, at oral argument, as paraphrased by Just the News:

Schools aren’t trying to police political, religious, or critical expression, or impose the heckler’s veto…. They want to address digital bullying, harassment, and cheating….
A student who is upset at her teacher can safely text her views to friends but not picket the teacher’s house, Blatt told Chief Justice John Roberts: the “manner” of speech is the issue, not the offensiveness of it.

And

[Blatt] rejected the suggestion that students can get in trouble for simply sharing unpopular views: wearing a Confederate flag symbol “alone” is protected, but not using it to “terrorize” a black student.

Blatt seemed unable to address those arguments in detail, however.

What about students or teachers who think a student’s positions on police, politics, or religion are themselves offensive?

What about students or teachers who think a student’s disagreement with another student’s (or teacher’s) positions on police, politics, or religion is harassment or bullying?

What about students who think another student’s wearing of a Confederate flag symbol “alone” terrorizes them?

We’re on a short, slippery, downhill road off the edge of a very high, steep cliff when we begin expanding limits on speech.