A bizarre racist outburst at a Texas school board isn’t an isolated event — it’s part of a national pattern
When another trustee asked Dungan if she personally objected to an illustration of cross-racial friendship, she demurred, simply declaring that she was just trying to avoid “situations like that.” Situations like what, exactly? She didn’t say. Dungan’s behavior is a perfect illustration of the “anti-woke” tap dance. The person alleging nefarious wokeness never admits to their own bigotry, instead pretending that they’re reacting to “woke” people who are “pushing” an agenda, in this case through innocuous poster art. Of course, the entire premise of the argument is rooted in bigotry, as this example shows. It presumes that the feelings of real or imagined bigots who might take umbrage at such an image are of paramount importance, and that everyone else’s freedoms must be curtailed to appease them.
Fucking thank you, Amanda Marcotte. Nail on the head.
And thank you for using the word “innocuous” because my god it’s a picture of people holding hands in a school. It probably had something like “teamwork makes the dream work” on it because holy fuck these people probably boil their eyeballs in piss before they stick them in their sockets.
Yeah, it’s good to see reporters actually pressing back on these blatant trolls with their well understood tactics. It’s a shame, however, that the more centrist media is rarely willing to do the same. It’s a common trap that people think you must give equal time to both sides in order to be fair. Reality is that some sides are so dumb and inconsequential that they don’t deserve any air time.
It’s stupid that the school district even moved the kid to a different class. They never should have caved an inch. That just empowers these maniacs to keep doing this racist, time wasting drivel.
It presumes that the feelings of real or imagined bigots who might take umbrage at such an image are of paramount importance, and that everyone else’s freedoms must be curtailed to appease them.
I don’t know why this made it click in my head but yeah, they think their imagined hurt feelings are more important than everyone else.
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.” … Some other members of the school board did, in fact, argue that there was nothing objectionable about such a poster. But Dungan was backed up by another trustee, Misty Odenweller, who insisted that the depiction of uh, race-mixing was in some way a “violation of the law.” The two women are part of “Mama Bears Rising,” a secretive far-right group fueling the book-banning mania in Conroe and the surrounding area. At least 59 books have been banned due to their efforts.
WTF
Humans are animals…
If we’re not socialized with other races while young, then we grow up thinking of other races as “them” instead of “us”. It’s instincts from when we lived in tribes and anyone that you didn’t grow up around was the enemy. But the same as a dog needing to be exposed to other animals while young so they’re used to them as an adult.
Which is why adult racists have an issue with non-segregated schools.
They want kids to grow up and be racist like they are. They want the next generation to only look as deep as skin color to determine if someone is friend or foe.
Same reason Alabama banned Sesame Street long after PBS had it in every other state.
The individual racists probably don’t understand it, but the ones leading the mobs understand the psychology behind this shit. Like how in American History X Ed Norton didn’t understand what he was doing, but the old asshole in charge was playing chess. Dont discount racists as idiots that don’t know any better. Some are actually smart and manipulating the mob of uneducated idiots.
Same reason Alabama banned Sesame Street long after PBS had it in every other state.
My mother would edit our episodes on VCR with all the spanish parts and visiting other countries out. So we could only watch that show on tape, never off the TV itself.
There is a reason why I have never felt the need to introduce her to her grandchildern.
I remember flipping channels as a kid and happening upon a Spanish-language channel that was playing a fully subbed and dubbed Spanish recording of Sesame Street. I just remember watching in awe as I saw the exact same show I’ve always watched but in a completely different language
I firmly believe that lack of exposure to people of different cultures or races leads people to be racist and not necessarily realize it. If you’re never around X, how can you know you have an inappropriate reaction to X?
To illustrate this, I didn’t know about my escalator phobia until I moved away for college. I entered the mall, saw these moving stair-things, and felt a deep fear in the pit of my stomach. I hadn’t seen an escalator since I was a toddler and, if you’d asked me on high school, I’d have denied having a phobia.
(I’ve successfully worked on my phobia over the last decade, showing that changing inappropriate reactions is possible)
I dunno, white people in the antebellum south had lots of exposure to people of different cultures/races (aka the slaves on which they were economically dependent) and they still managed to be racist as fuck. I think waving away racism as just the result of ignorance obscures its real character as straight-up exploitation of other human beings.
Yes. My experience has been that nobody is as racist as Northern men who move to Florida. My ex said he went to “the white school” in Michigan, up north is segregated for real. We had enforced school integration but as a kid I was not aware of it, just went to school with school kids - it still got sort of segregated but not really, and my kids even less so, it does work.
But then those guys move down here and are not prepared for how diverse our population is. And they react badly.
Pretty much the same in any country with a majority ethnic population. They lived in an area for hundreds, sometimes fighting wars for it, and so it’s not easy to have them give away their lands to people who are completely different down to the religion and imagine a completely different future. America is being pushed to have a civil war over it though likely to other countries interest. One that is very ethnically populated mind you.
So it wasn’t the student, it was the kids PARENT that was offended
These people are mentally disturbed and they probably shouldn’t be allowed to have kids
The two women are part of “Mama Bears Rising,” a secretive far-right group fueling the book-banning mania in Conroe and the surrounding area.
Do these idiots seriously not have something better to do than to worry about other people reading books. Good god, if I spent my whole life so worried about what other people would doing I don’t think I’d ever live.
Been racist actually takes effort, the lazy thing to do is to accept everyone equally. Because who cares?
Dungan’s behavior is a perfect illustration of the “anti-woke” tap dance. The person alleging nefarious wokeness never admits to their own bigotry, instead pretending that they’re reacting to “woke” people who are “pushing” an agenda, in this case through innocuous poster art.
That is a very good take.
Also: it’s always projection. Conservatives push an agenda, so they assume everyone else does too.
I really want people to start considering “woke” a slur. Its basically just a word the far right uses for people they don’t like, aka minorities.
I really want people to learn the actual meaning of the word - it really says it all. And normally I argue for lingual drift and accepting the changed meaning of words, but in this case most people don’t know the definition, but aside from a racial/identity implication, they’re using it mostly correctly
Woke means looking at the system critically, not believing the things politicians and public officials tell you at face value, seeing how it’s all designed to turn us against each other so we never attempt meaningful change.
In a phrase, it means “wake up to the lies and think for yourself”
This sure sounds like their next step will be insisting on segregation.
I mean, they couldn’t go with George Wallace’s “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” quite yet…
Holy crap, I was just reading his Wikipedia page. He is such a piece of shit. His wife died of cancer in May 1968. Her doctor had told him, not her, of the diagnosis in 1961 and he kept it secret from her. I knew about the segregation stuff, but that is just the shit frosting on the shit cake.
When you hear them use dogwhistles remember that Wallace actually joked afterward that he should have said “states rights now, states rights tomorrow, states rights forever”. These monsters know exactly what they’re doing.
Fuck these racist bigots
