Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism

Re:Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism by notahacker on Saturday November 27, 2021 @10:24AM (#29360838)

When school districts are coming up with lists of books by black authors or with civil rights subjects to ban them and cancelling black author appearances, and parents are explaining that they support such measures because they don't want their kid to feel guilty for being white or that it's all Critical Race Theory, it's a bit disingenuous to pretend that the only objections being voiced by parent groups is that selecting black authors is a bit arbitrary. (Funnily enough I don't see such massive pushback when teachers set kids the objective of reading a book with a European author, or a book written over 100 years ago...)

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Re:Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism by Jensson on Saturday November 27, 2021 @10:35AM (#29360917)

> When school districts are coming up with lists of books by black authors or with civil rights subjects to ban them and cancelling black author appearances, and parents are explaining that they support such measures because they don't want their kid to feel guilty for being white or that it's all Critical Race Theory

But that is about banning topics, not being upset because your kid came home with a book by a black author. I agree that is bad, but that wasn't what this discussion was about.

> (Funnily enough I don't see such massive pushback when teachers set kids the objective of reading a book with a European author, or a book written over 100 years ago...)

Yeah, some of the pushback will be motivated by racism, but labelling all pushback as racism wont do you any favours.

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Re:Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism by notahacker on Saturday November 27, 2021 @12:38PM (#29361846)

When some parents are banning books by black authors, other parents are getting angry about their kids being allowed to or even encouraged to read books by black authors, and no parents are getting angry at teachers for any reading suggestions not related to things culture warriors really hate like the suggestion that black people are normal and racism is a thing, it seems pretty absurd to suggest that the pushback is unlinked to the parents' views on race.

Perhaps a small minority of parents picketing the first black kids to arrive at their kids' school, did so out of sincere belief that race had no more place in determining catchment areas than admissions (and the whole all white status quo from carefully drawn districts was just something they incidentally sought to protect), but anybody arguing that the real intolerance wasn't the people pushing back against black kids arriving at their kids' school but the people who suggested the pushback was mainly driven by racism would obviously be arguing in bad faith...

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