Now, after two years of “Critical Race Theory” and “LGBTQ grooming” hysteria accompanied by threats from Proud Boys and other extremists, we finally are getting to see what the American public education system is going to look like after our local school boards are taken over by MAGA conspiracists and far-right ideologues. And what it looks like is an overt attempt to utterly dismantle public schools so they can be displaced by private operations.
The newly elected board supermajority in Berkeley County, South Carolina—dominated by trustees affiliated with the far-right Moms for Liberty organization as candidates—met for the first time on Wednesday night and promptly fired the school district’s first Black superintendent and its Black staff attorney, prompting the teachers gathered in the meeting room to walk out en masse. The board—which had earlier heard concerns about the massive teacher shortage the district currently faces—clearly was pleased with that response. It appeared that was what they had hoped for.
Former board chair David Barrow asked Mac McQuillin, his replacement, to explain the terminations.
“I’m not going to discuss personnel matters,” McQuillin snapped.
Later in the meeting, after most of the people in the room had departed, the board moved to ban teaching critical race theory “in any form,” but eventually held off after Barrow pushed back. He asked McQuillin if he could define critical race theory; McQuillin promptly trotted out a bogus definition provided by the far-right Goldwater Institute and read it aloud:
Of course, this has literally nothing to do with Critical Race Theory, which in fact is not a “perspective” but an academic framework based on the idea—one well-grounded in factual history—that racial discrimination and inequality are built into the American systems of law and governance as well as its culture. It says nothing about “canceling” or “judging” people, and is agnostic about affording minorities “more influence.” Moreover, even if the district uses this fake definition, banning its teaching would still be a naked violation of the free-speech protections provided by the First Amendment.