A school board outside of St Louis revoked an anti-racism resolution that had been created after the George Floyd murder to address discrimination in a mostly white school district. The school board, three years later, is now led by new conservative members.
Here’s what the resolution pledged to the community: “We will speak firmly against any racism, discrimination, and senseless violence against people regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, immigration status, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or ability.”
That was too much for the new conservative school board leadership. The board’s vice president said that the resolution’s reference to “systemic racism” is too vague and means different things to different people. Another new board member said that the resolution serves no purpose and asks: “How effective has it really been?”
That may be the best example of cognitive dissonance ever spoken. How effective? Perhaps, not at all, if she and other community members are still allowing racist values into the school system.
What such a resolution intends is to set a course. It wasn’t policy specific, but was created to serve as philosophy to move forward.
Here’s another “vague” set of principles:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to from a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…”
Guess what, Mr. School Board Vice President- those words also mean different things to different people. But they set the course; the direction; they provide the foundational philosophy to move forward.
The current debate in America between right and left is the direction one side or the other is taking us. I heard a speech by Governor DeSantis, echoed by interviews from his audience that the “leftist agenda is destroying our American values.” Those values regard sexual orientations, gender identity, economic principles, how government is to function, and their conservative position is that racism and sexism are issues of the past.
An absolutely hilarious video of Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Green surfaced from the Turning Point Action Conference where she attempts to discredit the direction of Democrats from FDR to LBJ to Biden. She points to the New Deal, the Great Society, and Build Back Better, as examples of Democratic spending, big government control, and economic socialism. Instead she literally outlines the progressive agenda to build social infrastructure, programs to protect the environment, promote education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, transportation, preserve Medicaid, and our labor force.
You know…that “more perfect Union” to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…”
We can argue til the cows come home on how to focus on each, the programs to provide for each, and the methodology to accomplish each, but denying those principles cannot be the direction we choose.
Neither should we deny a school district proclamation to speak loudly against racism, discrimination and violence without bias.
Who is leading who in the “wrong direction” with their ideology?
