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Finally we have an in-depth look at CRT in our schools

The Washington Post ran quite a story over the weekend. It's datelined from Traverse City, Michigan, where a bunch of white high school kids decided a few months ago that it would be fun to hold a Snapchat "slave auction" in which they traded Black kids for money:

The Snapchat group, titled “slave trade,” also saw a student share the messages “all blacks should die” and “let’s start another holocaust,” according to screenshots obtained by The Washington Post. It spurred the fast-tracking of a school equity resolution that condemned racism and vowed Traverse City Area Public Schools would better educate its overwhelmingly White student body and teaching staff on how to live in a diverse country.

....But White parents say their hometown was never racist — at least not until an obsession with race began infecting the school system through its embrace of CRT, an allegation school officials have denied. Now, these parents say, their children are coming home from school feeling ostracized for their conservatism and worried they must adhere to a liberal agenda to earn good grades on their assignments.

Basically, in the face of irrefutable evidence that their hometown does indeed harbor white racist sentiment, conservative white parents insisted that racism never existed until a bunch of Black and liberal white folks imported it.

But there's more. Here's a brief timeline of how things unfolded:

Last summer: In the wake of the George Floyd murder, the school district creates a social equity task force.

Late April: The task force meanders along until the Snapchat incident, at which point school administrators ask if an anti-racism resolution can be sped up.

May 24: Indeed it can! At the end of May a draft resolution is unveiled to the public.

June 14: The resolution is discussed at a school board meeting. It is widely supported, which is no surprise since it's pretty standard fare. It basically says that the school district condemns racism; promises to support staff training; will review curriculum to provide opportunities for students to learn about "diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging issues"; and will continue to buy more diverse books for school libraries. The resolution is here if you want to make sure I've described it fairly.

June 28: The resolution, which had prompted only a few dissenters two weeks before, is now the subject of a massive backlash. At a packed board meeting, the speakers were almost all white parents outraged about the resolution:

By that time, school board members — wary of the building backlash — had already reworked the document. The second version lacks the line about applying a “social equity and diversity lens” to the curriculum. It also no longer suggests the district will add “marginalized” authors to their libraries, nor that Traverse City schools will give students more opportunities to learn about “diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging issues.” Officials furthermore deleted the terms “racism” and “racial violence” from a list of things the school district condemns. Also deleted is a passage that stated “racism and hate have no place in our schools or in our society.”

The board had already decided it was too risky to condemn "racism" and "racial violence"! Nor did they want to boldly stand up for the proposition that "racism and hate have no place in our school." As for the libraries, forget it. They're fine as is. Nor did the revised resolution include any lefty talk about diversity.

Needless to say, there's not much left except for a bit of pabulum. Nevertheless, the white parents group became convinced that the whole thing was just Critical Race Theory with a thin veneer over it. This despite the obvious fact that nothing even remotely related to CRT is in this resolution. So where could they have gotten this idea?

Hmmm. Where indeed?

82 thoughts on “Finally we have an in-depth look at CRT in our schools

  1. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

    Well, given Michael Moore, director of Fahrenheit 11/9, has a place up by Traverse City, I would recommend we use him to interview the accused parties to determine the extent of their economic anxiety.

  2. Spadesofgrey

    Sorry, but this was nothing but a joke to the nominal "acceptance" of a con job known as " CRT" aka Trotskyist backed capitalism.

    Whining the resentment fantasies line make you look like a moron on humor.

  3. Salamander

    So, the parents didn't become racist until they learned that racism was a problem? Their children didn't become racist until they learned it was bad, so of course, they're rebelling? Normal healthy rejection of authority? "Freedom"?

    That's even sadder than scratchers.

    1. Spadesofgrey

      That is because nothing you say is racism. CRT is racism itself. Do you need grabbed by your nostrils to understand???

  4. Spadesofgrey

    Why did they even create a bogus group based around the overblown George Floyd thing in the first place???? You he conservative/liberal line is a waste of space, dialectical nonsense. I bet many of those so called "conservatives" aren't " conservative " at all.

  5. cld

    The obvious error is they made a public issue out of it by getting the school board to pass the resolution. If it isn't about harming others it will always freak out conservatives.

    If you're going to do a thing like this, just do it, don't talk about it, because after it's done they'd have to be able to show some kind of harm that it did.

    1. kahner

      asses must be covered. if the principal released a public statement he'd be on the hook for the backlash from these racists and quite possibly lose his or her job.

  6. Jerry O'Brien

    School board "standard fare" does rankle a lot of ordinary people, even if they don't know what critical race theory is. I think it's okay that they watered it down.

    Look, some people even react against the bumper sticker "Mean People Suck". Although if the school board had only said that much, they might have been better off.

    1. Spadesofgrey

      Again, why create something from a cherry picked arrest gone wrong in a different state??? This is the problem. Why even bother??? Then we wonder why Democrats underachieved in the election despite Trump's below average popularity??? Places like these represent 750000 swing voters in 5 states that are critical for Democrats, for 2 elections have failed to do well in.

      The George Floyd thing was one of the greatest modern political flops, in politics.

  7. Doctor Jay

    Wow, who is so tail-twisted that they have posted half the comments in this comment section, most of which don't really make much sense, because they are trying to write Tweets in a comment section or something.

    I mean, the dude (if they are a dude) seems obsessed with some crazy discredited political system for one thing, which nobody talks about here, and nobody cares about here.

    I mean, nobody much here even cares that much about critical race theory, though I bet they know better than that person where it came from and what it addressed.

    No, what people care about here is, you know, treating black Americans well. And not having "slave auctions". Even as a joke. Is it your contention that it was a joke? Because it's hurtful.

    Of course, when I was in 8th grade a schoolmate - sort of a friend - kicked me square in the balls as I came out of the locker room for PE.

    I asked him maybe 10 years later why he did it. He said, "You sure looked funny".

    So up yours with your "joke".

    1. Spadesofgrey

      Again, who is the prick that cannot see the joke??? If the school board members had done nothing and just gone about their jobs, this would be a nothing. Mike Judge warned people of those "types" in a King of the Hill episode. Mike is pretty Libertarian Lefty as well. Far from a conservative(as we also see in Idiocracy.).

      1. cld

        What would be great would be if you could print out a picture of yourself with HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN????? boldly over it and your phone number, so if anyone calls you'll know that, on the one hand they're obviously spying on you, but at least they're paying attention, then you'll know who they are.

        And you could extend the exercise and have the picture printed in different newspapers all over the country, and when people call to say they've seen you in all these disparate locations you can go to these places and seek the guy out and demand to know what weird thing he's doing that's making all these people stare at him and think he's you, what is his problem, omg, what??

        Then take his picture.

        This would be a great vacation and a thing you could talk about.

        1. cld

          I'm sorry, I left out a key step,

          when you print up copies of the initial picture you have to go out and staple them up on utility poles all over town.

          I apologize again for the confusion.

    2. Beth Thompson

      I was thinking that someone seemed to have a lot of time on their hands. But you beat me to mentioning it.

  8. realrobmac

    My racist father told me he had completely stopped being racist, but then Barack Obama somehow made him racist again. That's what this whole thing reminds me of.

    1. peteshan

      Presidenting While Black was certainly hard for some to see. Presidenting While Completely Looney Tunes, however, the same people seemed quite relaxed about. It is a puzzlement.

    1. Spadesofgrey

      By creating stuff like Traverse school board did, your stoking culture wars. Why did they bother??? That is the point of the post below. Basically it's saying that your a racist.

  9. Clyde Schechter

    Dare I suggest that this is a case of nutpicking, akin to the rampant nutpicking about "CRT" that is rampant on the right wing?

    Look, this is a large country, and in any large group of people there are going to be loonies who do all sorts of outlandish, highly objectionable things. Those students who held the "slave auction" no more represent the typical American conservative than the corporate HR people/consultants whose idea of DEI training includes putting white employees through confessions that look like they were plagiarized from a Stalin-era show trial, or going on line and advocating genocide of whites represent the typical American liberal.

    But those are the kinds of things we hear about on the internet and in the media. It's great clickbait. It's terrible as a basis for figuring out actual policy and laws.

    1. galanx

      Yeah, what can you expect from nutpicking such a racist hotbed as a Democratic/Republican mixed small city in northern Michigan? Why, it's practically Klan central.

    2. kahner

      nonsense. CRT related whining and lying and victim blaming is the current hotness across right wing media and hate groups.

    3. HokieAnnie

      No it's not nutpicking. Go watch the footage of the Loudon County, VA school board meeting where white parents pretty much did the same thing in reaction to innocent affirmations to be a welcoming school community.

    4. peteshan

      You may of course suggest it, but you would be wrong. The problem is not really the kids, you see, horribly though those particular specimens acted, the problem lies with the grownups who see a problem with educating those youths out of their idiocy. This is, certainly, an example but it's illustrative of a tendency that has recently been spreading. But perhaps you don't read the papers.

      1. Clyde Schechter

        Well, you are right that I don't read the papers--at least not the print versions. But I follow a lot of news sites on line.

        And my point is that what shows up in the news is probably not an accurate picture of what's going on in the country. A few days back, Kevin Drum rightly suggested that we need a serious, in-depth investigation of what sorts of "CRT" (very broadly construed) things were taking place in the school systems. This piece today, contrary to its headline, is nothing of the kind. It's an anecdote. An appalling one, but an anecdote. And, as they say, the plural of anecdote is not data.

        What I'm saying is that I don't think this kind of thing is any more widespread than is the kind of stuff that gets the right all riled up with their reports of horrible things being done in the name of diversity, equity and inclusion. I think we see everyone getting whipped into a frenzy over the most extreme examples of idiocy around this issue.

        But what I say doesn't really matter. Where Drum had it right was in saying that we need an actual investigation, systematically conducted with a design for getting an unbiased depiction of reality, of what schools are actually doing. It's a shame he didn't stick to that idea.

        1. veerkg_23

          Ah, both sides. Seriously, it's time to stop. People get killed by the racists all the time. We don't need an investigation into CRT, we need an investigation into the rampant racism.

          1. Spadesofgrey

            Lol, what rampant racism?. The site was created as a joke due to being called racist, such a site didn't last long. Nor was it all white in regard to the sites creation.

          2. Atticus

            What rampant racism? What people are getting "killed by racists all the time"? This country is, by far, currently less racist then it has ever been.

    5. veerkg_23

      No. These aren't random nuts, this is a large political movement. And the "slave auction" kids are absolutely representative of the offspring of that movement.

  10. Joseph Harbin

    White parents say their hometown was never racist — at least not until ....

    As a general rule, it's not a good thing to read a sentence like that about your own hometown. However the sentence ends. And how it often ends for some people is "...not until the Blacks showed up."

    Traverse City is a city in the Northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan that is the largest producer of tart cherries in the US. Its population of 14,674 is 0.7% African American, which may help explain how one white mother of two came to be quoted saying: “We were all brought up not to take someone’s race into consideration. That’s what we’re guaranteed in America.” Those Traverse City cherries are so tart. Guaranteed to be tart.

  11. Loxley

    When your self identity is hopelessly founded on racial superiority and social privilege, any attempts to create equality and equity- even pathetically minor ones of simple courtesy such as Political Correctness- feel like a direct attack on YOU.

    They are not, of course, YOU are just weak, entitled, and frightened of losing your privilege. Rich people are the same way about their money....

  12. Atticus

    Whatever the actual definition of Critical Race Theory (CRT) is, I think use of the term has morphed into it being applied to any overemphasis on race and racism.

      1. Atticus

        I don't think that's necessarily true. I don't think anyone is saying students shouldn't be taught about slavery, about reconstructions or about Jim Crow laws and the civil rights movements. But it should be taught as history. What many people (myself included) object to, is linkimg that history to today. Implying that blacks today are disadvantaged because they may have had ancestors that were slaves. And we're especially against implying that whites today should feel any type of guilt or be obligated to compensate for historical wrongs.

        1. Anandakos

          Well you are wrong as drought. I have just completed an inventory of my Y-Line Third Great-Grandfather's 1810, 1820, 1830, and 1840 "page 2" census documents plus the 1850 Slave Pages for him. On all the big sites, the only thing shown for the first six periods enumerated is "page 1" of a given household, the free folks. One has to do "Next Page" to see the slave page.

          He owned no slaves in 1810, three in 1820, maxed out at seven in 1830, five in 1840 and just two in 1850.

          So, yeah, I feel some guilt and recognize that the sizable estate he left his children in 1852 was largely, though certainly not exclusively, built on slave labor.

          Now if you live in Michigan, you probably don't descend from slave owners, but you still get the wealth building advantages of free men and women in your family tree.

  13. royko

    I live in a different part of Michigan. We didn't have a slave auction, thank God, but we have our own longstanding issues with racism and segregation. You see a lot of it in parts of the Rust Belt.

    Anyway, our not terribly progressive majority white local schools included a section on diversity and inclusion in their long term strategic goals. It was basically a well-meaning statement that could have gone under the heading "The Least We Can Do".

    Local conservatives circulated fliers that it meant the school would be teaching CRT, and quite a few parents showed up to the board meeting to protest. The school reassured the angry parents that they wouldn't be teaching CRT (duh) and sent out an official statement to that effect.

    But now these nutty Fox viewer parents are talking about running for school board to prevent "this kind of thing" from happening again. In their telling, it was their forcefulness that got the school to back down from teaching a thing they never planned to teach. Hopefully nothing comes of it, but we could end up with some QAnon nuts on the board. Also, the school is likely to be extra timid when a real controversy comes along. The whole thing is depressing.

    Expect more of this. Fox and Trump have done a lot to energize and mobilize the nutjobs, and I don't see the toothpaste going back in the tube anytime soon.

  14. Anandakos

    It seems that those Neanderthal and Denisovan genes are acting up again. Are the only sane people in America the Africans dragged here in chains and their descendants? It seems so.

  15. cephalopod

    I really don't like the term "marginalized" authors. What do they even mean by that? Any good school library book acquisition program is going to include lots of non-white authors, but those authors are going to be far from marginalized: they'll be published by large publishers and often have won awards.

    If they want representation in the collection from authors of diverse racial, gender, and religious backgrounds, just say so.

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