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[quote=Anonymous]Not sure if it's worth commenting, since there's so much "liberals are bad" "no conservatives are bad" tribalism going on in this discussion. I think both ends of the political spectrum are engaging in dishonesty and demagoguery here. So as not to be completely dismissed for #bothsidesing the issue, I think the right is doing more of it and for less compelling reasons.

Still, on the left, you have this "anti-racist" framing where they play dumb about "CRT" claiming its nothing more than a law school class rather than trying to understand at all where the complaints are coming from. And it's not simple racism. And it's not "we don't want to teach historically accurate things about race in America." It's not even the idea that past racist acts have current repercussions that continue to harm Black people. Rather, it's when lessons about those issues draw a harder ideological edge that parents start having problems. The idea that white Americans should devalue the real achievements that have been made in and by the United States over time. The idea that one is racist by merely existing in the U.S. because of structural racism. The idea that all acts are either racist or anti-racist and there is no in between. The idea that white Americans should walk around with hair shirts as penance for the acts of their predecessors.

Meanwhile, the right seems determined to ignore the ongoing effects of racism. Often they want to pretend that every individual is born in a vacuum and any success or failure is merely a function of hard work and merit. (Recall, if you will, the right-wing freak out over Obama's "you didn't build that" speech where he recognized that, "if you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges.")

I don't agree with OP that the right's attack on public education is some scheme to make the populace dumb and docile. Mostly, I think the effort is more venal and less ambitious than that. The privatization effort is intended to help subsidize religious education through things like vouchers. It's intended to weaken the teacher's unions which mostly trend Democratic. It's intended to help funnel public education dollars to people friendly to the privatizers -- through, for example, charter school operators who award sweet contracts to Republican friendly management companies. There's often a racist component to the privatization effort as well, with mostly white parents sending their kids to private schools away from Those People.

I feel sorry for teachers and middle-of-the-road school board members and administrators who are just trying to provide a solid education to children in the community while the commentariat goes nuts, making wild accusations - some invented whole cloth, others by blowing up the normal missteps into something more sinister.

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