So Many Fs
“The kids don’t even want this stuff,” says [high-school English teacher, Kali] Fontanilla, noting that the ethnic studies course replaced a much more popular health class – in the midst of a pandemic, no less. “Most of them are just like, ‘Why do we have to take this class?’”
Robby Soave on when classroom race-hustling doesn’t impress the kids.
As the classroom in question is in Salinas, California, where the children in question are overwhelmingly Hispanic, and therefore supposedly oppressed, and supposedly hungry for “critical race theory,” you can imagine the complications. It turns out that when Hispanic children turn up to learn English as a second language, they’re not overly thrilled to find their time being spent on “institutional, internalised, ideological, and interpersonal oppression.” Or at being told that, on account of not being white, they may suffer from “intergenerational trauma.” Or spending class time on a “privilege quiz,” in which they must rank their imagined victimhood, while comparing “intersectional rainbows.”
However, the disaffection of supposed beneficiaries seems unlikely to deter adult enthusiasts.
Beginning with the class of 2030, all public high school students in California will now have enrol in the same sort of course that Fontanilla’s students already took.
Ms Fontanilla, who happens to be black, isn’t impressed either. Cultivating victimhood and racial resentment is not, she feels, an ideal use of her students’ time, or indeed her own. Believing that parents had a right to know exactly what their children are being taught, she wrote a letter of protest to the school board. It was read aloud during a meeting at which parents were present:
“I do not appreciate constantly being pandered to and treated differently because of the colour of my skin, especially since I did not have the freedom to not go along with it,” Fontanilla wrote, warning that the curriculum was an attempt at left-wing indoctrination. The statement elicited cheers from other parents attending the meeting. In response, the school board prohibited anti-CRT comments at its next public gathering.
And if the air of somewhat creepy condescension isn’t sufficiently obvious,
[Fontanilla] recalls that during the summer of 2020, in the midst of the George Floyd protests, the Salinas administration informed its black teachers – Fontanilla included – that they would be honoured with a gift… [It] included an “I Love Being Black” sticker, and a letter with an ancient African greeting that “acknowledges the god in me and stuff like that.” “It was just so weird,” she says.
Worth reading in full, I think. Oh, and if the dynamic sounds vaguely familiar, you may be thinking of this.
Update, via the comments:
Julia adds, “Brave lady. You just know she’s going to suffer for her heresy, don’t you?”
Indeed:
While she has received much praise for speaking out, Fontanilla has also endured considerable online harassment, including threats of violence. One told her to “have fun being a token black friend to racist conservatives your whole life.”
“They’re all basically white liberals,” she says of the harassers.
Fontanilla had already decided that she could not remain a teacher in the school district; she and her husband decided to move to Florida, where she hoped to find a better job.
You see, being so progressive, so unassailably righteous, they’re threatening violence against a black woman for disliking classroom racism. Specifically, a pernicious racial conspiracy theory that is taught to children as if it belonged in the same factual world as the date of the Moon landing or the atomic structure of palladium.
Oh, and if the idea of parents being actively deceived by leftist educators and administrators seems implausible, too fanciful to consider, then you have some catching up to do. Attempts to mislead parents, including bare-faced lies, aren’t exactly hard to find. It seems to me that when every middle and high school principal in a district is told to fabricate a fake curriculum so as to deceive parents, and thereby hide the indoctrination taking place – as happened in Rockwood, Missouri – then there’s a serious problem. To say the least.
And when the very same educators – the ones lying to parents about what’s actually going on in class – refer to “our children,” the term has rather presumptuous, indeed sinister, connotations.
A “distinguished professor” of philosophy.
I don’t really have a problem with philosophy professors contemplating such enduring mysteries of the human psyche as “But why shouldn’t I fuck goats?”.
Better there than in primary schools. Or on the supreme court.
I’d just be nervous about them founding animal appreciation societies.
They say “our children” as in your children are our chattel.
It does rather sound like a territorial claim.
See also, the recent indignation among leftist educators regarding parents who take an interest in what, precisely, their children are being taught. As if a preference for, say, chemistry or grammar over pretentious resentment and intersectional question-begging were some outrageous intrusion onto their turf.
Some of these vain and uppity creatures really do need reminding that they’re basically the hired help.
“A leftist is not an honest broker. He pretends that you and he are playing the same game, but you’re not.”
I’ve often said that modern Leftism is basically a societal hack, exploiting people’s natural tendency towards politeness (with “political correctness“), reason, and trust (everything else).
the idea of parents being actively deceived by leftist educators and administrators
From Robby Soave’s article:
The administrators even tried hiding it from one of their own teachers. Guess she wasn’t “black enough” to trust.
This is one heck of a read.
one heck of a read
Interesting. Point and counter-point
Darleen: every human and every society has flaws. There are two ways to deal with that: self-reflection and improvement (as the West has been doing for hundreds of years) or shame for our failings. This path of comparing us to the perfect condition leads in the end always to tyranny, whether during the French Reign of Terror or communism. It is a fatal conceit to imagine that some group can “perfect” society and human nature. Even God has not achieved that. As Sowell pointed out, no individual or group or government is wise enough even to set prices in the economy, never mind ordering all human relationships. The current elite in their great confidence are making almost everything worse rather than better. Thanks guys.
Karl,
Is that really a counter-point? Elizabeth hopes that Canadian Ruling Class has overplayed its hands while Michael just shrugs his shoulders and says the Ruling Class is way too entrenched to be shoved out regardless of their behavior.
I guess we’ll see.
The current elite in their great confidence are making almost everything worse rather than better.
And when their Progressive/Socialist/Woke/Left-name-du-jour ideology fails, all they’ll do is throw up their hands and say it wasn’t done the correct way. The True Scotsman fallacy or “Real communism has never been tried!” — please ignore the 100 million bodies.
Point and counter-point
Just about everything in that essay is patently false.
Karl,
The comment made by Michael Wilhelmson under that post comes much closer to the truth. The article itself is a bit of a stereotypical cartoon. YMMV
I know that we all flatter ourselves that the hubris of woke carries the seeds of its own destruction but the repeated election of patent shit-weasels like Justin “Blackface” Trudeau is demanding of some explanation.
Cuenco offers one. I do not endorse it, but dismissing it as a “stereotypical cartoon” is mindlessly self-indulgent.
the repeated election of patent shit-weasels like Justin “Blackface” Trudeau is demanding of some explanation.
Agreed, but that’s a topic for another discussion and doesn’t have anything to do with Cuenco’s overly simplistic explanation.
is mindlessly self-indulgent
[ Adjusts mountie hat and jodhpurs, drinks his timmies and harumphs ]
Canadian politics is not usually known for producing unruly sights like this one – not patently false.
The patron saint of liberal elites was, after all, re-elected last year and continues to rule over a country that prides itself on its inoffensiveness – not patently false.
The industry association representing truckers has disowned them … while a recent poll put nationwide popular support for the convoy at a paltry 28% – not patently false.
Its two main political cultures descend from peoples who were defined by their conspicuous non-participation in the great revolutions of the eighteenth century – not patently false.
the colonies that would become Canada were suspicious of mass democracy, more deferential to authority, and more mindful of communal obligations: they were said to be “more Tory than the King” – not patently false.
modern Canada was born in 1867 with the motto “peace, order and good government” – not patently false.
While American cities burned in riots over race and the Vietnam war, Canadians smugly congratulated themselves for living in “the peaceable kingdom” – not patently false.
The first Trudeau’s rise to power, much like the second, was greeted by fawning crowds and adoring fangirls .. and was dubbed “Trudeaumania” – not patently false.
Justin Trudeau is the face of a Machiavellian elite that can maintain itself in power by diffusing and pre-empting the pressures of revolutionary change – not patently false.
They will just have to accept that they are up against one of the most entrenched and hegemonic ruling classes anywhere in the Western world: the “Laurentian elites” – not patently false.
Why, it’s almost like you’re full of shit!
The world’s ruling caste must be getting legitimately nervous if Canadians are getting visibly angry.
Why, it’s almost like you’re full of shit!
[ makes popcorn, pours on maple syrup ]
Wasn’t “Freedonia” the name of the fictional nation in a Marx Brothers movie?
Wasn’t “Freedonia” the name of the fictional nation in a Marx Brothers movie?
Yes, Duck Soup: “You can leave in a taxi. If you can’t get a taxi, you can leave in a huff. If that’s too soon, you can leave in a minute and a huff.”
Three balls on a stick.
One too many, or Is one missing?
Inscrutable.
I’m quite certain Ms. Fontanilla did not spell color colour.
[reads article] Yep
I do love the color you read into these stories, David. Ping
Three balls on a stick.
One too many, or Is one missing?
Inscrutable.
Pawnbroker
Ping
Bless you, sir. Thanks to group email chats and the foolproof miracle of predictive text, may you never realise, much too late, that you’ve been unwittingly sharing gossip with the very person about whom you’re gossiping, including a pointed reference to their recent weight gain.
Why, it’s almost like you’re full of shit!
It’s almost like you know nothing at all about Canadian politics or culture and are taking at face value the condescending pronouncements of the Canadian equivalent of the journalist/chattering class.
The truckers have collected one scalp already, I expect the second tomorrow, and have so far demonstrated the power and will to directly defy the RCMP, backed by a growing number of other blue collar, rural and trades folk.
The Ottawa municipality has been trying to get heavy tow services to remove the trucks in the city all week. Every single service has said “sorry, we’re out with COVID *cough* *cough*”
Continue to assume you understand what’s happening here. We don’t care.
Darleen @ 18.53
Sounds like a mission statement for the bbc.
Christopher Rufo, here.
Not entirely unrelated.
.. the condescending pronouncements of the Canadian equivalent of the journalist/chattering class.
Awww, did the nasty editor suggest that Canada might be a nation of inveterate cowards and lickspittles?
[ makes popcorn, pours on maple syrup ]
I hope this venue is not going to descend into Facebook levels of acrimony.
Speaking of which, what sort of heathen puts maple syrup on popcorn?
[ Raises nose in air. ]
what sort of heathen puts maple syrup on popcorn?
I thought it sounded rather nice. Mixed about 50/50 with butter, obviously.
I thought it sounded rather nice. Mixed about 50/50 with butter, obviously.
My God, I’m surrounded by heathens!
(But seriously, it does not actually disgust or offend me. I just needed something to sneer at in a comical fashion. You may notice that is a repeating pattern in my comments.)
Sneering at our lessers is like catnip to our blackened souls.
Maple syrup
Maple syrup
Thank you, I feel suitably blessed by the Canadian two-spirit dog.
Maple syrup
The truckers just want to date me.
Sneering at our lessers is like catnip to our blackened souls.
Please don’t take that to heart, David. July 4th just wouldn’t be the same without a “Happy Treason Day You Ungrateful Colonials” greeting. Not to mention periodic reminders of the Right Way to Spell and Pronounce Aluminum.
The truckers just want to date me.
A favorite liberal trope is indeed “you only criticize that because you secretly want it.”
There are people less than you? Kaum zu glauben!