Considering how rapidly the right’s “war on woke” is expanding, it was perhaps inevitable: Self-identified “mama bears” on a Texas school board are angry that a classroom had a poster showing people of different races holding hands. Last week, the school board in Conroe, Texas, a small city north of Houston, turned the right-wing mania for censorship into a dark parody of itself. At issue? A poster that seemed to imply that interracial friendship is possible.
According to ABC 13 Eyewitness News in Houston, things started when school trustee Melissa Dungan declared that she had spoken to parents who were upset about “displays of personal ideologies in classrooms.” When pressed for an example, according to the news report, “Dungan referred to a first grade student whose parent claimed they were so upset by a poster showing hands of people of different races, that they transferred classrooms.”
“I wish I was shocked,” Dungan said of the poster. “I am aware these trends have been happening for many years.”
If you’d read the article, you’d know that it is not all it is.
If you have, in fact, read the article, read it again. To the end. Maybe take in some of its links too.
This is not ‘just’ a racist tantrum. It is a billionaire-funded fascist takeover. Lazily dismissing them won’t work. People need to start turning up to school board meetings to outnumber these fucking psychopaths. Even if no one is paying them to do it.
I didn’t mean “that’s it” as if it’s merely a racist tantrum. In fact, calling it a tantrum like the article does infantilizes the problem - as if they’re harmless babies and we can ignore their crying. I didn’t mean to imply it’s “just” a racist tantrum. Rather, what I meant is that we need to call racism racism and be precise with language, not lazily dismiss them as “anti-woke” as if that means anything.
I take your point about language. It is important to say “racist” when you mean “racist”.
But they’re also targeting LGBTQ+ people and women, and any other group they can use to distract attention from the fact that billionaires are robbing us blind lest they lose one tiny drop of power.
So, in this case, “anti-woke” is a perfectly reasonable term to use. Not least because if we want to destroy these fuckers, it will take every single one of us making common cause, not fighting about who gets top billing.
This is about racism but it is about racism because it is about power. Power protecting itself by throwing everyone else under the bus. “Look! Over there! The poor people have all your money!”
We cannot defeat them by retreating into identity siloes. Obviously, we all have different specific battles to fight but they’re all the same war. Against fascism. We do need a language that acknowledges that.
Fair. Connecting this specific spate of racism to the broader fascist trend of smearing everyone who isn’t an affluent straight white male christian (i.e. part of the in-group) is good politics, but there’s already a word for that: reactionary
I refuse to let them define themselves.
Yes, that is a fair point and one I’d missed a bit from your original post. I appreciated the scare quotes in the article but you’re not wrong.
That said, I don’t know if you’re exactly right either. “Woke” was co-opted by the fash. I don’t think we should just let them have it. A good starting point is for every interlocutor to stop them and ask them to define the word every time they use it. The word is not the problem.
They call themselves anti-woke; by calling them anti-woke you are letting them have it. Practically giving it to them, in fact.
You’re only letting them have it if you also let them define it. They are anti-woke. Woke (aware of structural injustice) is not a bad thing to be. 90% of the population has every reason to be woke because 90% of the population is subject to structural injustice. But far too many have been distracted by the idea that some other fucked-over group has it better than them, or gains consolation from not being quite at the bottom of the pile.
It’s a neat trick but so easy to expose. And one of the simplest ways to expose it is to make them spell out what they think it means.
You pulled that percentage out of your ass. 😏
White-passing Americans (white or white-mixed) make up 71% of the country. 35% are white men. Based on the most common numbers I’m seeing, 30% are straight and cis. 80% of America is Christian (fug it’s that high???), so that gives us roughly 22% straight white cis christian males.
That huge mass of people is predisposed to being anti-woke because they stand to lose the most from anti-racism and anti-sexism and queer acceptance and religious tolerance etc. Structural injustice isn’t just a historical accident, it was a deliberate creation by the ruling class through the usage of genocide and slavery and apartheid to ensure that a huge minority of the population would be too comfortable and to loyal to their rulers to ever revolt and would stand up for their privileges against the mobs of the havenots.
Call them anti-woke if you want. They’re also settlers, reactionaries, and Amerikkkan Nazis
90% of the population are either too poor not to be suffering structural injustice, or are relatively well off but still too Black, too queer, too female,. Class and race cannot be separated. If we ignore the people who are struggling just because they’re blaming the wrong people for their struggles, fascism will win.