A bizarre racist outburst at a Texas school board isn't an isolated event — it's part of a national pattern

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.”

  • JoBo
    3·
    11 months ago

    The concept of whiteness needs to go. But white people are no more a homogeneous blob of identity than Black people, or LGBT people, or Jewish people (some of whom are white). I’ll oppose those who turn to racism and bigotry as a solution to their problems. As I do Louis Farrakhan for his anti-semitism, homophobia, misogyny and general cunty conservatism. Being oppressed is not an excuse to do some oppressing of your own. But it’s really fucking easy to see how people fall into that trap. And really fucking racist to believe that Black people can’t be authoritarian fuckwits, or that Jewish people can’t oppose Israel, or that white people can’t be oppressed by poverty.

    Steven Avery and Brendan Darcy were fucked over because they are poor, not protected because they are white. Black people are fucked over with impunity because the colour of their skin is a marker of powerlessness. Women and LGBT people are fucked over because that which is feminine is despised.

    This is a really useful example of what I am talking about. The woman was mistreated because she was Black. She got (a form of) justice because her family is rich.

    She later woke in a hospital bed with no memory of what had happened and minus her clothes. Now 26, the woman said she believed the officers had treated her in the way they did because she was black. According to the woman, when she came round in hospital she spoke to the police officer at her bedside, who said she was very well spoken and asked where she was born. When the woman replied: “Hampstead”, the officer radioed a colleague and was overheard saying: “I think we made a mistake…”

    As soon as she opened her mouth … “I think we made a mistake.”

    • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
      46·
      11 months ago

      The concept of whiteness needs to go. But white people are no more a homogeneous blob of identity than Black people, or LGBT people, or Jewish people (some of whom are white).

      I completely agree, and in fact, abhor whiteness because it seeks to turn all so-called “white” people who accept it into such a homogeneous blob of identity. That’s why it was invented!

      What I’m trying to say is that the white identity, itself, has to be abolished. As long as whiteness exists it will be used by the US/NATO empire to enforce its own hegemonic rule over its imperial subjects in the Global South and on subjects in its internal colonies.

      It’s important to note that whiteness is a lot more complicated than just skin color. Did you know white women that married Japanese men were sent to internment camps? Their fair skin did not protect them, because by race mixing they lost the privilege of being “white”.

      … I have no idea where I’m going with this. I just think white people being woke isn’t enough. White people need reject whiteness, not just be made aware of it.