In my last column, I asked, “Can Fayette County’s families remain immune to the negative cultural impacts into the foreseeable future?” It’s a question that worries a significant number of people across our nation.
We are now witnessing in Fayette County and across the state a growing number of people gaining access to positions of influence who do not recognize certain standards of right and wrong, instead relying on a “truth” based on how they feel. These woke elitists are contemptuous of their fellow citizens.
Painful thoughts and words
My column discussed how newly minted young teachers could bring divisive philosophies into our school system from the ground up. Many of our young, far-left political activists in the community were not pleased.
After reading my column on Facebook, local commentator Chris Donnelley snarled: “How. Fu[redacted]. Ridiculous. I TRIED to read it, but it’s just so moronic that my eyes began to bleed. Steve is a bigot. Steve is a fear monger. Steve thinks he’s much smarter than he is. And Steve is a sad, pathetic, little man …”
Donnelley was one of the nicer far-left millennials. Here is the previous column. Read it if you dare.
Clear political objectives
Let’s be honest, no one should be surprised that local left-leaning millennials who according to their own doctrine are white privileged, inherently racist, and oppressive would have a meltdown over my column. They are easily confused when condemning people of similar demographics without trying to implicate themselves.
Digital magazine Salon cited a poll that found 70% of millennials said they would be somewhat or extremely likely to vote for a socialist candidate (“New poll finds 70% of millennials say they’re ‘likely’ to vote for a socialist,” Salon, Oct. 29, 2019). Bernie Sanders received more primary votes from Americans under age 30 than Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump combined proving the point.
I highly recommend the book “Race to the Bottom,” by Luke Rosiak. You will find it amazing how few people it takes to overturn a local political system.
Even voters in San Francisco are rebelling over too much focus on race and intersectionality, recalling their school board members and the district attorney, but that’s crazy California, right?
The collapse of the Republican high achievers
Luke Rosiak dedicated an entire chapter to Loudoun County, Virginia. In 2015, the county had the highest median income in the nation, and the county board was totally Republican. Black families in Loudoun making up around eight percent of the population had an estimated median income of $112,000 in 2019.
By 2020, Loudoun school Superintendent Eric Williams was pressured by a small group of parents with unsubstantiated claims and began spending hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to “engage in the disruption and dismantling of white supremacy” to appease this active and vocal group. He hired the consulting firm Equity Collaborative, LLC out of California. The methods used by the consultants are well documented in the book.
The school district began generating reports and programs using the CRT philosophy of evaluating fairness in the system based on “outcomes.” There was no presumption of innocence for students, parents, or teachers of any race other than black using the core premise of CRT that people who accept “Anglo-American norms” should be considered white, and thus oppressors.
Loudoun schools were essentially controlled by a handful of parents in a lopsided committee created by the school superintendent that encouraged schools to create racially segregated clubs, punished and purged those with opposing views, pre and post-tested individual school board members on racial literacy and consciousness, mandated racial literacy training for all school employees, and dropped the entrance standards to the new prized science magnet school to students with a “C” average.
No one could prove the school system was beginning to fail because the basic performance standards were declared inherently racist. It took a massive rebellion from parents to finally dismantle what a few disruptive people in the community created.
The situation was so alarming that it shaped the election for Virginia governor, catapulting a Republican candidate who had no chance of winning to a stunning victory.
Superintendent Williams left a school system that was once the envy of all others for a small school district in Texas. He received no help from the band of radical parents he aided because they believed the basic tenet in CRT, “interest convergence, the belief that when a white ‘ally’ like Williams does everything a CRT practitioner could be expected to, he must be doing so only out of self-interest, thereby demonstrating his continued racism.”
Denial is a terrible thing. Please do not think that a similar situation could not occur in our community.
Schools can and should teach about the history of racism, but not indoctrinate children into the cult of race essentialism, collective guilt, and racial superiority theory. Leave that debate to the universities.
The new breed of local elected officials who “feel their truth” and have no system of principles or values to fall back on can ruin a community very quickly.
The heartbreak of destruction
The new young socialists believe they have advanced opinions and that we need them to provide direction because the rest of us are either too stupid or too evil. As an example, here is a product of an American college of education, this 20-something history teacher offered her personal teaching philosophy on social media (TikTok), and it was rebroadcast by The Quartering.
In this context, “anti-racism” is a Kafka trap, a rhetorical device, where the more you deny your personal racism, the more it’s proof of your guilt as a racist. The teacher gets the children to admit they are racists based merely on their race.
History teacher: ‘So, yes, teaching is political’
The teacher explains, “The education system, the curriculum, school zoning, funding, standardized testing, all of these things can create and further lead to class and racial inequalities and impact life chances for our students. Especially as a history teacher, my students deserve somebody who is going to confront and challenge the injustices and untruths that are in our history that have led to discrimination. So, yes, teaching is political because as we develop curriculum and have conversations with our students, equity and anti-racism need to be in the forefronts of our minds as well as giving our kid’s the means to gather factual information and form their own opinion.” (The video is here.)
That’s more than indoctrination, it’s oppression, authority figures within the school system convincing young children they are inherently racist, evil, and not worthy of positive recognition. Just as wicked, those same authorities are telling black children they are incapable of learning or experiencing success.
At some point, you will need to take a stand.
[Brown is a former mayor of Peachtree City and served two terms on the Fayette County Board of Commissioners.]
No matter how the wind howls, the mountain cannot bow to it. – Chinese Proverb.
touch grass steve
Tucker Carlson must’ve been on vacation last week so no new material for Steve. Instead we get another retread of non-existent woke schools and teachers in Fayette County poisoning our kids minds. Of course he cites the usual outlier cases from elsewhere in the country as anyone could about literally any issue, made-up or not.
I sometimes wonder if Steve is intentionally flogging this and other non-existent fear-mongering problems in order to exert more right-wing control over schools and local governance or if he actually believes it to be a clear and present danger. My guess is sadly that it’s both.
I love how he cites nameless “millennials” as his latest group to turn your rage upon, knowing his crowd is triggered simply by the word millennial. Of course he throws in a Tik Tok reference and Bernie Sanders for good measure.
My favorite part of his latest demagogic screed is the beginning where he says “…a growing number of people gaining access to positions of influence who do not recognize certain standards of right and wrong, instead relying on a ‘truth’ based on how they feel.” Of course he’s right about this – only it’s people like him and others who vilify teachers and scientists and deny the outcome of elections when their preferred candidate loses. He “feels” that kids are being poisoned by chronically underpaid marxist teachers. It doesn’t need to be true, he just needs to feel that it’s true. After all he can cite a few isolated cases among a population of 300+ million so that should be enough. I wonder if he makes the same leaps about outlier cases of police brutality?
You saying cases of police brutality are outliers, that some “feel that it’s true” and would be considered “few isolated cases among the population of 300+ million”? You going to lose your CNN credentials if you keep talking like that.
Not sure what you mean here.
You seem to have compared police brutality to what you call Steve’s demagogic screed. If you are describing police brutality as “another non-existent fear-mongering problem” then Joy Behar will be kicking you out of her bed.
It may come as a shock to you, but most of the outside world doesn’t live on a steady diet of cable news. As far as how you interpret my comments, frankly I wouldn’t know where to begin.
Mr. Brown is giving a warning. He is saying it could happen anywhere and to pay attention. He is absolutely correct. You want to keep the county the way it is, then he is correct to tell you to pay attention.
Thank you to Mr. Brown for writing these columns. They are extremely informative.
Do you wake up and just scream at the sky all day?
This article (and your last) is mostly just meaningless poison to try to get people to hate each other.
It would be so much more refreshing and lend even the slightest credibility to Steve’s character if he were more vocally concerned about guns in schools; poor teacher salaries and morale; and overall underfunding of schools. But in true keeping with the en vogue right wing obsession du jour, the focus is on what’s being taught. Because exposure to new or long-suppressed ideologies is utterly terrifying. Like those eyeglasses Steve’s sporting.
Unable to find a new nonexistent problem to rile up readers, Mr. Brown returns to the same nonexistent problem he attempted to use last week to scare us. Notice that he cannot make his case from examples in our county or within our school system, so he highlights extremes and outliers in other states and presents them as inevitable.
So, if you are a “Chicken Little” like Mr. Brown, I’m sure your sky is falling. If not, appreciate our wonderful county, the excellent public services provided here by the police, courts, recreational managers, and, yes, the school system. Let’s be thankful this week instead of terrified of being victimized by the nefarious “other” that Mr. Brown is always pleased to provide.
Good night St. Fiction, talk about trying to spook the spooks. Your buddy is only posing the question IS Fayette county next, not that they are. Using your logic a crime-free community would not need police, or a healthy community with no COVID cases does not need to take precautions. Just wait till a problem exists and then address it. Now that is terrifying.
Good point Uncle Bruce. It is always good to plan ahead for catastrophes. I think Mr. Brown’s concerns should be placed on the list right behind preparation for the ocean engulfing Atlanta and Stone Mountain erupting into a volcano. You never can tell when these cataclysmic events might occur!
On a more serious note, I hope you and all of the posters at The Citizen have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.
Now you are just being plain ridicurous.