{"id":363969,"date":"2021-10-27T14:35:18","date_gmt":"2021-10-27T14:35:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/radiofree.asia\/?guid=069013e5ad66597ac2ef35af1af7cb90"},"modified":"2021-10-27T14:35:18","modified_gmt":"2021-10-27T14:35:18","slug":"jim-crow-politics-have-descended-on-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/10\/27\/jim-crow-politics-have-descended-on-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Jim Crow Politics Have Descended on Education"},"content":{"rendered":"\"A<\/a>

The United States is at war with itself, and education is one of its more recent casualties. The institutions crucial for creating informed, engaged and critical citizens are under siege. One consequence is that the language of democracy is disappearing along with the institutions and formative cultures that make it possible.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

The signs are everywhere. <\/span>Jim Crow politics are back with a vengeance. Both during and in the aftermath of the Trump presidency, the Republican Party has dropped any pretense to democracy in its affirmation of authoritarian politics and its embrace of white supremacy.<\/span> This has been evident in their weaponizing of identity, support for a range of discriminatory policies of exclusion, the construction of a wall that has become a resurgent symbol of nativism, and under the Trump regime the internment of children separated from their undocumented parents at the southern border. <\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

The rush to construct a home-grown form of authoritarianism is also clear in the passing of a barrage of voter suppression laws introduced in Republican-controlled state legislatures<\/span>, all based on baseless claims of voter fraud. Voter suppression has become the new currency of a rebranded form of racialized fascist politics. As of September 1, 2021, 361 bills had been put into play in 47 states while 19 states have passed 33 laws that make it harder for Americans to vote, particularly poor Black people. Neoliberalism\u2019s survival-of-the-fittest ideology has turned even more toxic. The right-wing appetite for maliciousness and cruelty now translates into a form of learned brutality\u2014allowing people to think the unthinkable and embrace the tenets of white supremacy.<\/span> <\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

Voter suppression laws fuel white supremacy and fit nicely into the racist argument that whites are under siege by people of color who are attempting to dethrone and replace them. In this case, such laws, along with ongoing attacks on equality and social justice, are defended by right-wing extremists as justifiable measures to protect whites from the \u201ccontaminating\u201d influence of immigrants, Black people, and others considered unworthy of occupying and participating in the public sphere and democratic process. Similarly, voter suppression laws are defended as legitimate attempts to provide proof of \u201creal Americans,\u201d code for defining people of color as \u201c<\/span>counterfeit citizens<\/span><\/a>.\u201d In actuality, these laws are not only racist in intent, but are also meant to enable permanent minority rule for the Republican Party, the end point of which is a form of authoritarianism. <\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

The attacks on critical race theory are a barely disguised effort by white supremacist to define who counts as an American and has a long legacy in which those groups deemed unworthy of citizenship disappear. The language of historical and pedagogical erasure extends from the genocide inflicted on Native Americans to the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow and includes the incarceration of Japanese Americans during the second world war and the rise of the racialized carceral state. There is more at work here than the whitening of collective identity, the public sphere, and American history. There are invocations of whiteness, as Paul Gilroy suggests, that enhance \u201c<\/span>the allure of [a] rebranded fascism<\/span><\/a>.\u201d<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

The Republican Party\u2019s labeling of critical race theory as \u201cideological or faddish\u201d both denies the history of racism as well as the ways in which it is enforced through policy, laws and institutions. For many Republicans, racial hatred takes on the ludicrous claim of protecting students from learning about the diverse ways in which racism persist in American society. For instance, <\/span>Republican Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida has stated<\/span><\/a> that \u201cThere is no room in our classrooms for things like critical race theory. Teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other is not worth one red cent of taxpayer money.\u201d DeSantis has not only labeled critical race theory as \u201cfalse history,\u201d but he has also extended the discourse of his virulent attack on any vestige of critical education and critical race theory to almost unrecognizably repressive lengths. <\/span>As Eric Lutz points out<\/span><\/a>, DeSantis has taken the<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

culture war a step farther, signing laws that will require students and staff at public universities to be surveyed on their political beliefs; bar higher education institutions from preventing access to ideas students may find \u201cuncomfortable, unwelcome, disagreeable, or offensive;\u201d and force-feeding K-12 students \u201cportraits in patriotism\u201d that contrasts America with communist and totalitarian regimes.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

In this updated version of apartheid pedagogy and historical cleansing, the call for racial justice is equated to a form of racial hatred leaving intact the refusal to acknowledge, condemn, and confront in the public imagination the history and tenacity of racism in American society. Apartheid pedagogy transforms the criticism of racial injustice and structural racism into a breach of law and makes it an object of malignant state oppression and violence.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

The attack on critical race theory restricts what educators can say and teach in the classroom and does so by invoking the language of fear and retaliation. As Heather Cox Richardson points out in her October 16, 2021, newsletter, teachers who refer to the work of Frederick Douglass, the Chicano movement, women\u2019s suffrage and equal rights, the civil rights movement, Indigenous rights, and the American labor movement all run the risk of losing their jobs in states such as Texas. Many teachers are not just confused about what they can and cannot say in the classroom about social justice issues but also live in daily fear over the consequences they may face \u201c<\/span>for even broaching nuanced conversations about racism and sexism<\/span><\/a>.\u201d Such fears point to more than the curtailing of freedom of expression and the idealizing of history by whitewashing it. They also identify America\u2019s slide into a re-branded fascist politics that is difficult to ignore. This type of indoctrination and intrusion into shaping the curriculum makes it clear how right-wing Republicans view what it means to be a \u201cpatriotic American.\u201d The threat of white supremacy has even been acknowledged by President Joe Biden in a speech he delivered marking the Tulsa race massacre. Biden warned that U.S. democracy was not only in danger but that Americans had to recognize and challenge the \u201c<\/span>deep roots of racial terror<\/span><\/a>.\u201d<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

Legalizing Racial Oppression and Apartheid Pedagogy<\/span> <\/span><\/h2>\n

The racialized climate of fear, intimidation and censorship is spreading in the United States. This is evident in the fact that anti-Critical Race Theory (CRT) bills have been introduced or passed in 27 state legislatures across the country in order to prevent or limit teachers from teaching about the history of slavery and racism in American society. These reactionary attacks on critical thought and emancipatory forms of pedagogy echo an earlier period in American history. Such attacks are reminiscent of the McCarthy and Red Scare period of the 1950s when heightened paranoia over the threat of communism resulted in a slew of laws that banned the teaching of material deemed unpatriotic, \u201c<\/span>and required professors to swear loyalty oaths<\/span><\/a>.\u201d<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

Such repression is never far from an abyss of ignorance. Right-wing attacks on critical race theory also ignore any work by prominent Black scholars ranging from W.E.B. DuBois and Angela Y. Davis to Audre Lord and James Baldwin. There is no mention of even Derrick Bell, the founder of critical race theory in the 1980s. Nor is there room for complexity, evidence or facts, just as there is no room for either a critique of structural racism or the actual assumptions and influence that make up CRT\u2019s body of work. Such attacks raise fundamental questions about the goal of higher education and role of academics in a time of mounting authoritarianism.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

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