Virginia Republican candidate for governor Youngkin has gone full antiSemite. A group supporting him released an ad claiming Jewish money is funding radicals educators (they mean school boards) who are forcing children to learn critical race theory, which is not taught in schools. Also subjecting them to sexual assault, their term for transgender students existing. Republican strategy for winning back suburban white women, who are pro choice, want equal pay and childcare. Jews and men in skirts and scary brown people are coming for your children!!!
Wisconsin state legislature banned use of the word patriarchy in public schools. It's full on substitute fairy tales for history.
Youngkin now running ads showing upset white woman whose son had nightmares after being assigned Toni Morrison's award winning novel Beloved. He promised if he is elected governor white students won't have to read anything that makes them uncomfortable. The son was an 18 year old senior in advanced placement English and the school required parental consent before students are assigned sexually explicit material. Beloved can give a person nightmares because slavery was a nightmare. It was not a benign institution of loving masters and faithful slaves. When I was little I read fairy tales where they lived happily ever after. I also read children's books about polio and migrant workers and the brave children who integrated schools. When I was 12 I read The Children of Vietnam, with explicit photos and descriptions of napalm. At 13 I read Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, with explicit photos and descriptions of concentration camps and torture. And they gave me fucking nightmares because those things were nightmares. Millions of Black people lived with slavery for centuries but an 18 year old white boy can't be expected to spend a few hours reading about it because it's too uncomfortable.
The campaign ad neglects to mention the traumatic book reading was ten years ago, the mother is a longtime right wing Christian activist, the son graduated from college and law school and is now an attorney for National Republican Campaign Committee.
Son was also intern in Trump white house. Not illegal of course but these aren't random concerned citizens.
Oklahoma has removed Raisin in the Sun and To Kill A Mockingbird from school libraries. Under their don't make white people uncomfortable law, these classics are now prohibited. Glen Youngkin's son attends a $40,000 a year private school where curriculum includes books by Toni Morrison. Thoughts and prayers to poor traumatized rich white boy having to read about unpleasant things.
To Kill A Mockingbird? The movie that hit me like a ton of bricks when i was still in high school? The movie I still regard as one of the great movies of all time? A literary classic and Pulitzer prize winner? Tell me you're kidding. They''re taking Pulitzer prize winners off the shelves? Could anything get more stupid? OMG, or as they would say in the deep South which the story is about, Jesus H. Christ! This was also a favorite expression of my father who was raised in rural Alabama. Oh, and he loved the movie. Don't know if he read the book but I'll bet he did. By the way, I'm certain he could relate to the story and he told me stories he witnessed that were similar.
A Texas state legislators released a list of 850 books that might make white people uncomfortable and asked school districts to tell which ones are in their schools and how many copies. Presumably so he will know how big a bonfire to build. They include classes, Pulitzer prize winners, books on issues of race, Nazi Holocaust, LGBTQ issues, factual information on sex, even a book about Navy Seals.
I thought that was the whole purpose, to stretch people's minds. I know almost nothing about art but here's a print I bought from the student book store when I was 1 7 because it appealed to me for some unknown reason that remains unknown - A Bar at the Folies-Bergère by Édouard Manet
