School Board Candidate Becca Williams, Critical Race Theory, and Republican Wet Dreams
I can’t wait for the rallies cheering the return of polio infections as a victory for free choice.
The Republican Party of San Diego has a local torch bearer as part of the far-right’s national crusade against education, based on fear and loathing of curriculum they don’t like.
Meet Becca Williams, candidate for San Diego Unified’s Board representing District C.
She’s not marching around in a Klan robe or waving confederate flags. She doesn’t have to.
A mailing paid for by the local GOP does all the dirty work while she gets press focusing on her opposition to mask wearing and mandated vaccinations.
It’s been suggested that she’s the “breath of fresh air” freeing our schools from the tyranny of teacher’s unions. You might want to hold that thought for a few moments…
These days, the GOP’s euphemism for scaring white people is the term Critical Race Theory. It replaces “state’s rights,” “forced bussing,” “welfare queens” and “Willie Horton” as code for scaring white voters, along with added extras “brainwashing children” and “cultural Marxism.”
CRT is a handy term, one that is not “an externally applied pejorative,” according to Christopher F. Rufo, a small-time conservative activist who catapulted to fame when “I’m not a racist” Tucker Carlson publicized his work.
The short version of what’s going on here is that this is pushback for the national awakening that occurred after George Floyd was murdered. Books examining racism climbed the bestseller lists; public and private institutions went through periods of self-examination, and the term “anti-racism” became a part of people’s everyday vocabulary.
It mattered not that CRT by itself was once upon a time simply a legal theory normally taught at the graduate college level. The right has bundled up anti-bias training, inclusive history instruction, and mentions of the structured disadvantages stretching across American society into one neat little package. And now it’s become evil incarnate.
Any discussion of race, racism, diversity, equity, inclusion, whiteness, social-emotional learning, slavery, school segregation -- is now called critical race theory.
In Texas, Senate Bill 3 dictates how slavery and issues of race are taught. It says slavery can’t be taught as part of the true founding of the United States and was nothing more than a deviation from American values. After studying the law, a group of educators proposed to the Texas State Board of Education that slavery should be taught as “involuntary relocation.”
The definition of CRT is malleable enough so a teacher in Florida felt compelled to resign after a co-worker removed a bulletin board featuring prominent Black Americans like Martin Luther King Jr. and Colin Powell alongside the Pledge of Allegiance—because it was allegedly deemed “not age-appropriate” for students.
A Virginia gubernatorial candidate won a close race by promising to ban CRT on his first day in office. Schools in the Old Dominion didn’t have CRT as part of their curriculum, but no matter. It was easier for Youngkin than yelling n****r at every stop.
CRT has become such a right wing hot topic that Carl DeMaio has added to his list of reasons why the public should support the grift at Reform California.
The local GOP’s promotional material for Williams cuts right to the chase:
She won’t stand for a misrepresentation of US history, She will fight for an honest, academically excellent curriculum.
These divisive and deceptive “woke” ideas will devour everything unless We The People stop them and stand for the preservation of childhood development and innocence.
Becca will forcefully oppose critical race theory in our schools which is steering our children away from the gratitude we should carry for those who built America.
Becca will respect parents and their decisions for school choice and support charters vouchers.
San Diego Unified’s policies concerning race and gender have attracted national attention. The Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, used to provide intellectual ammo for the shock troops of the far-right, has published articles by Christopher Rufo denouncing mandatory diversity training for teachers, and ethnic studies curriculum in local schools.
Rufo’s no dummy, and selectively edits his presentations to cater to the worst fears of right wing audiences, especially those buying into the Great Replacement Theory talked up by Tucker Carlson and others about white people facing exclusion in US society.
Part two of the right wing effort to denigrate public education –gender curricula – hasn’t gained much traction in San Diego, likely because the sky hasn’t fallen with the election of openly gay representation on virtually every level locally. There was an attempt to push back on Sex Ed programs, but it ended up being little more than a KUSI story and an online petition.
Circling back to Becca Williams, the political contention about her candidacy providing an opportunity for a “lone voice” in opposition to the current majority at the SDUSD Board is suspect.
It is true that she’s captured some of the energy and money flowing into anti-mask/anti-vaxx/anti-remote learning activism. Author's aside– I can’t wait for the rallies cheering the return of polio infections as a victory for free choice.
But if you look closely at Williams’ background there are suggestions that there’s something else going on. For lack of a better term, I’ll call it a “gussied up” approach to framing education in a manner designed to promote a specific kind of outcome.
At the heart of the programs in her Texas schools was/is the Core Knowledge curriculum (designed by E.D. Hirsch) for teaching world history and American history and geography. Although this approach retains a certain level of popularity with non-educators, this behaviorist approach, i.e., plenty of rote learning backed up by tests as a measure of critical abilities, has been rejected in practice for much of the last five decades or so.
From her schooling at very conservative Catholic colleges, to her (along with her husband, David) role as a founder for Valor Schools (Austin Texas, with an address in La Jolla) there is a repetitive thread to be found in opposition to progressive educational approaches.
The Core Knowledge premise that consciousness — introspective thoughts and feelings — can neither be observed nor controlled via “scientific” methods, discounts the complex socioeconomic factors beyond the classroom environment affecting intellectual development. That might be okay in a perfect world without historical and cultural impacts on humans, but that’s not the world we live in.
This is a suit and tie and polite approach toward an America where Leave It to Beaver and suburbia are the norms. It’s vanilla Make America Great Again. In reality its true believers have acquiesced to anything and everything coming from the stochastic terrorist wing of the far right.
Remember the outrage of Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy following the January 6 insurrection and his subsequent behaviors? That’s what I’m talking about.
I’m not writing this essay because I think Becca Williams is a bad person.
I just think readers should reflect on what she represents in the minds of those in the political party that’s associated itself with a host of bad things, from support of racism to book bans to climate science denial to supporting The Big Lie.
This IS the Republican brand now.
Oh, and then there’s all the anti-intellectualism associated with COVID denialism. Stop and think for a second what going down that road could ultimately mean. Flat earthers, anyone?
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Finally, let me express my ambivalence over the policies and practices historically in place at San Diego Unified. It’s an opaque institutional force, one that’s easy to believe is behind the worst forms of behaviors having nothing to do with educational achievement. I say this as a parent (of a former student from that system) that actually did the work of fighting for better funding during the lean times and witnessed (too many) school board meetings.
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Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com