The New Tea Party
Here's the secret reason behind all these attacks on school boards.
Welcome to The Experiment, where the only reason we’re not bailing on season two of The Morning Show is Holland Taylor. No spoilers this week as Jack Hughes traces the uncanny similarities between HBO’s Succession and the real-life drama of horrible people, the House of Windsor, and Ken Whalen makes his debut here with a terrific tale about his mother, rest her soul, and I have a theory about why we’re seeing school boards get attacked across the country.
As always, we recommend things to do (catch the Forget the Alamo gang at the Texas Book Festival), read (Did you know the first script of Dallas Buyers Club was co-written by an AIDS denier? Vanity Fair has the inside story), watch (BBC’s Ghost on HBO Max), and listen to (“Liquor Store” by Remi Wolf is the hype song you needed).
And if you’re new here, why don’t you sign up for a free subscription?
But first, are you noticing the same thing I am?
No, I’m not asking whether you’ve noticed that parents seem especially on their Karen game lately when it comes to school boards, which are supposedly “muzzling” their children by requiring masks, “segregating” them by not letting unmasked children (or in California, unvaccinated children) into the same classrooms with other children, and “indoctrinating” them by teaching them about racism.
It seems like America’s moms got up one day and decided to be pissed off at school boards. A conservative activist in Seattle did his own research and traced the roots of anti-racist thought leadership back to an academic discipline called Critical Race Theory, but that just gave a nomenclature to what now looks like an incoherent rage being directed at school boards across the country in 22 states. After Donald Trump named CRT as the “target of an executive order” in September 2020, six states have passed laws banning its teaching in public schools with 16 more thinking about it, though it’s important to note that no public school teaches Critical Race Theory.
Would it surprise you that this isn’t really about Critical Race Theory? Of course not, dear reader, because in addition to being so good-looking you are also a model of discernment. You know that just because death threats are being directed at school board members in Loudoun County, Virginia and school administrators are so scared of Concerned Parents in Southlake, Texas that they are both-sidesing the Holocauts, the explanation isn’t, “Well, a lot of white people are upset these days about being told they’re racist.” The little butters wrapped in foil that you get in a diner aren’t that pat. You might as well say, “Everything happens for a reason” or sing “All You Need is Love” at a wedding for all the good it will do. You need a helluva lot more than love to make a marriage work, and you need more than a shrug emoji to explain why all of a sudden Americans are Big Angry at school boards and not, say, county public health authorities or city councils. For that matter, why aren’t parents storming public universities where they actually teach Critical Race Theory?
There’s something else going on, because it’s not just about racism. In a suburb of Seattle, a school board had to end a meeting about masking because parents were making too much noise banging on the windows, which is when things got worse.
Following the cancelation of the meeting, the protesters began yelling obscenities. One man grabbed a flag pole and confronted two of the board members. An object was thrown at them as they fled the scene. One school district official was blocked from leaving the parking lot when protesters surrounded his car.
In a suburb of San Diego, anti-mask protestors carrying “Let Them Breathe” signs forced their way into a school board meeting, forcing an adjournment. In a suburb of Nashville, those who testified in favor of masks were told by anti-maskers as they left the building, “You can leave freely, but we will find you and we know who you are.”
You’re noticing it, too, right? This is only happening in the suburbs.
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I’ve written about the white-flight district to the west of Austin where Concerned Parents protested the hiring of a diversity consultant. Leander to our northwest has been pulling books from the library shelves for months after complaints. Moving clockwise, Round Rock’s school board has a couple school board members who have made so impossible to even discuss mask mandates that the school board might censure them. At another suburban Austin school board meeting, one dude stripped to make a point about masks.
In Austin proper, three people showed up to the meeting where the board ratified the superintendent’s decision to mandate masks on school property, and each was friendly. A few angry callers opposed the mandate, including one who said that masks could kill children, but otherwise, nada.
And it’s not that we don’t check the anti-racism boxes that so inflame Concerned Parents across the country. A few miles to the west, they’re mad about a diversity consultant? Heck, we’ve got an equity department!
There is every reason in the world that Austin should be the epicenter of this grassroots rebellion aimed at school boards. And on the Parents Defending Education’s IndoctriNation Map, there are “problem” districts all over central Texas, even the Texas School for the Deaf, but not Austin. “There are problems everywhere,” says the website, which begs the question why no parents are concerned about the largest district that is inarguably the most committed to masks, testing, vaccines, and anti-racism.
***
The problem is so widespread that the National School Board Association sent a letter to Joe Biden begging for help (“America’s public schools and its education leaders are under an immediate threat”), and on October 4 Merrick Garland announced a local, state and federal partnership to counter the “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.” The onslaught of anger at school boards even achieved the pinnacle in American politics: the Saturday Night Life cold open.
If this problem is so widespread, why aren’t we seeing it in Austin? Why do we see it in Loudoun County, Virginia, and not Alexandria or Arlington, or for that matter in Washington, DC? Why do parents only get angry in the suburbs and not in the cities right next door?
Because this tsunami of cortisol flooding school board agendas this year is not an accidental groundswell of popular anger but a politically contrived effort specifically engineered to swing the midterm elections to Republicans. It’s not about the kids at all but about getting parents angry enough to vote Republican.
That Parents Defending Education group that hosts the “IndoctriNation Map”? It is headed by a Republican operative with ties to several organizations funded by the Koch brothers, and its law firm that counts Donald Trump among its clients. There are many other examples of the supposedly grassroots groups linked to Republican politics. As with the Tea Party movement more in 2009, conservative political operations are giving infrastructure and guidance to rage.
But this time, they’re being more targeted. If they tried this in Austin, it’d go over about as well as the last time the KKK tried to stage a rally in Austin. It was a few goobers surrounded by thousands of liberals. Instead, they’re focusing on the suburbs that are trending away from Republicans, and it’s become the biggest issue in the Virginia’s governor race.
“On day one, I will issue an order banning the teaching of critical race theory,” the Republican nominee said of something that, again, is only taught in college.
“There’s just so much focus on the schools, and it’s visceral,” said a former chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia. “It’s not like, ‘Oh, I’m against the debt ceiling.’ This is like, ‘You’re destroying our children’s education.’ And, look, angry people vote.”
I realize positing that there might be a political motive behind a nationwide effort to whip white moms into a froth is like suggesting that pharmaceutical companies might have other motives besides helping people. But when you see the same story repeated over and over again at the local level across the country, it’s too easy to see a popular uprising rather than what it is: A thing one dude in Seattle started that was picked up by Donald Trump to try win over the suburbs and now weaponized by a Koch-funded political apparatus to achieve the same result.
And it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with teaching a single kid one blessed thing worth knowing.
Update: Come to find out there is a how-to guide from Tea Party Patriots Action on how to attend a school board meeting. Hilariously, the guide designates July as the month to attend school board meetings, which is the same month most school boards take off.
Jason Stanford is the co-author of NYT-best selling Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth. His bylines have appeared in the Washington Post, Time, and Texas Monthly, among others. He works at the Austin Independent School District as Chief of Communications and Community Engagement, though he would want to point out that these are his personal opinions and his alone, but you already knew that. Follow him on Twitter @JasStanford.
Más
How we’re getting through this
Rethinking metabolism
Wanting something new
Joining Team Tom Hardy
Searing scallops with tomatoes
Enjoying bad NYT book reviews
Learning better interview techniques
Forgetting the Alamo with The Daily Beast
Forgetting the Alamo at Texas State University
Forgetting the Alamo at the Texas Book Festival!
What I’m reading
Roxanne Gay: “Dave Chappelle’s Brittle Ego” - This is so smart that I decided not to write anything about Chappelle’s odious comedy special.
If there is brilliance in “The Closer,” it’s that Mr. Chappelle makes obvious but elegant rhetorical moves that frame any objections to his work as unreasonable. He’s just being “brutally honest.” He’s just saying the quiet part out loud. He’s just stating “facts.” He’s just making us think. But when an entire comedy set is designed as a series of strategic moves to say whatever you want and insulate yourself from valid criticism, I’m not sure you’re really making comedy.
Judd Legum, et al: “The right-wing operatives orchestrating the attack on America's school boards” - The Tea Party, but for school boards.
The National School Board Association (NSBA) is sounding the alarm. In a letter to President Biden on September 29, the NSBA said that "malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased" and "these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes."
Peter Staley: “The Controversy Behind the Scenes of Dallas Buyers Club” - This movie could have gone so sideways, y’all.
The script was a horror show for AIDS activism. We had done a fairly good job in recent years of snuffing out the impact of AIDS denialism, especially after what happened in South Africa. Whenever the denialists’ slick documentary was added to a film festival’s program, we’d bombard the organizers with pro-science how-could-you’s. They’d pull it from the program every time. If the script I had just read made it into theaters with a roster of A-list stars, AIDS denialism would be reborn. And people would die unnecessarily as a result.
A.E. Stallings: “Peacocks” - I will never not love the line “a cloak of visibility.”
Armoured in light, in light arrayed,
A cloak of visibility!
They say the colour will not fade,
Because it is not there to see,
The brilliance new, because new-madeBy shedding light, by flash and flaunt.
What I’m watching
B and I saw the new James Bond movie. I had a delicious nap for most of the first half of the movie; having no idea what was happening in the second half, I mostly watched his wardrobe.
CBS has just launched an American version of the BBC Series Ghosts. I love the set up: a couple inherits a haunted house, and after the wife has a near-death experience, she can see and talk to all the ghosts. Took me a couple episodes, but I’m in. It’s better than a show you can leave on in the background, and it requires virtually zero emotional investment. It’s a perfect show to workout to. I watch it on AppleTV+.
What I’m listening to
Loved Trixie Mattel’s show at ACL. “Malibu” was a hoot.
Serena Isioma, a self-described “non-binary rockstar,” was kinetic good times at ACL last weekend. “Sensitive” is her hit, but “Really, Really” is the song that caught my attention.
Do you need your own hype song? Because Remi Wolf has you covered with “Liquor Store.”
If Amy Weinhouse and Nina Simone had a baby, she’d probably sound like Joy Crookes. I added “Poison” to our playlist, but the whole album, embedded below, is worth a weekend listen.
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