Recently, a Virginia parent stepped up to the microphone at her local school board meeting and threatened to come back with “loaded guns ready” if they voted to mandate masks in schools. In Texas after George Floyd’s murder, James Whitfield, a popular new Black principal, sent to the school community an uplifting and well-received email that acknowledged the existence of systemic racism. More than a year later, after the trumped-up scaremongering about Critical Race Theory took hold, Whitfield was fired.
As noted by This American Life, which chronicles this and other stories in an episode called Talking While Black, “. . . the script has flipped. Public conversations have moved from let’s all try and understand and talk about systemic racism to let’s never mention systemic racism. . . . We went from anti-racist books crowding the bestsellers list to banning kids’ books about Rosa Parks.”
It’s happening everywhere, particularly at public school meetings. As Mike, an Afghanistan veteran, husband, father of three, and Down Home North Carolina member from rural Johnston County, puts it, “Why did everyone in my county just go crazy at the school board?”
First it was uproar over Critical Race Theory. Then masks and vaccines. More recently it’s been accusations about “pornography” in schools, targeting LGBTQ students. Mike notes, “Something that didn’t exist and was never a problem seemed to have been made into a problem.” His brothers, in two different parts of the country, see the same thing in their school districts.
There’s no question that the pandemic has created a crisis for parents, kids, teachers, staff, and education policymakers in schools throughout our increasingly polarized country. But exploiting that pandemic stress and fomenting division for political gain is also a well-funded, organized, right-wing strategy. Christopher Rufo, the conservative activist and darling of Fox News most responsible for whipping up CRT hysteria, spells it out: “We have successfully frozen their brand—‘critical race theory’—into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category.”
In other words, as Michelle Goldberg writes in The New York Times, “people like Rufo have succeeded in turning critical race theory into a catchall term for discussions of race that conservatives don’t like.” Rufo revealed his true intent to Goldberg a few months later: “I’ve unlocked a new terrain in the culture war, and demonstrated a successful strategy . . . We are right now preparing a strategy of laying siege to the institutions.”
“In practice,” Goldberg then explains, “this means promoting the traditional Republican school choice agenda: private school vouchers, charter schools and home-schooling.” She quotes Rufo: “The public schools are waging war against American children and American families. Families, in turn, should have a fundamental right to exit.”
Or perhaps it’s an organized conservative push waging war on public education?
To Mike, the Down Home member, it certainly feels like something fishy is going on. Why else are people in his community suddenly going crazy, and why is Madison Cawthorn, the right-wing provocateur and a childless congressman from a district 300 miles away from Mike’s kids’ school, showing up at their local school board?
The right wing, capitalizing on their manufactured hysteria under the guise of promoting “parental rights,” is sowing division—and distracting attention away from real issues schools face–in communities across America. One such homespun-sounding group, “Moms for Liberty,” has strong ties to and gets funding from GOP elites and conservative organizations like the Heritage Foundation. As Media Matters notes about the group’s purported focus, “’Parental rights’ means strategically harassing public schools.”
Ultra-conservatives, continuing their years’ long assault on public education through systematic underfunding, are also pouring money into school board races across the country. Allen West, the Texan Republican who makes Governor Greg Abbott look like a liberal, notes: “The most important elected position in the United States of America is school board . . .The election to have the least amount of voter participation in the United States of America is the school board.” This latter point makes it easy to manipulate pandemic stress and stage a takeover.
Down Home’s Gwen Frisbie-Fulton describes the ground-level havoc: “We are pretty alarmed with what we are seeing here in North Carolina: Proud Boys showing up regularly in different counties to intimidate parents attending school board meetings, extremist groups approaching high schoolers outside their schools, QAnon candidates filing to run for office, a Stop the Steal participant being given a seat in our statehouse after the elected official passed away. . . The far-right wants to replicate Virginia’s ‘parental rights’ playbook in North Carolina, and we’re keeping an eye on it.”
Down Home is doing a lot more than that. In collaboration with North Carolinians for Safety, Truth, and Reason, they’re holding forums to talk about what’s happening and why, empowering parents to show up consistently and effectively so “school boards know we need them to stay the course and not be bullied by whoever can say the most outlandish things at board meetings.”
One such online forum, “Help! I’m Speaking at School Board!,” invited a member of a rural county’s Board of Education to talk about what her job is like nowadays. Describing the aggression and misinformation at public meetings, she also revealed that the vast majority of written comments board members receive support mask mandates and more inclusive library books and lessons. But you’d never know it because media coverage amplifies the often belligerent people who currently dominate the space—that’s why it’s so important to show up. Those on the Zoom call immediately felt less alone and inspired to speak up in person. Down Home and NCSTARS gives them the tools: how to find out when your school board meets, what makes an effective public comment, practice in doing so, and lots of encouraging handouts and follow-up.
As Down Home’s Frisbie-Fulton notes, “It all fits together, and we are here to help folks understand that and organize against it.”
Such efforts don’t just counter the craziness we’re seeing. They also offer a window into how grassroots organizations successfully engage community members about what’s affecting their daily lives, and what they can do about it. It’s what Down Home North Carolina and similar groups do day in and day out to build solidarity, courage, and effectiveness. It’s the heart and soul of making America a better place for all.
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I know about Down Home North Carolina through my involvement with Airlift, which raises money to support grassroots organizations in key areas throughout the country to engage and empower people normally left out of the political process, turning non-voters into voters. Check it out!
In addition to the many links included in the post, check out these for a deeper dive:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/20/the-man-behind-critical-race-theory
https://www.nbcnews.com/southlake-podcast
https://www.texasmonthly.com/arts-entertainment/southlake-podcast-race-debate/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/21/fox-news-lie-school-board-domestic-terrorists/
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/01/critical-race-theory-voting-rights-gop/621383/