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.”

  • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
    46·
    1 year 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.