Originally published on AJC.com. Written by Morehouse College Journalism Professor and Reporter Nicole Carr.
A few years ago, a colleague asked me what I believed to be the “endgame” for all the chaos we had witnessed in America’s school boards.
My answer to that question was simple: It’s not about the book bans, the bathrooms or the mythical “indoctrinators” teaching our kids basic math, science and history. Rather, this was about the dismantling of trust, oversight and institutions.
We bear witness to this unraveling today as the American government plummets into extreme chaos with no end in sight, undergoing an actual coup led by oligarchs in suits rather than the “commonfolk” exhibiting the extreme behavior we have watched divide neighbors in those board meetings. The end result is a nation that mirrors the worst of itself, quelling the exceptionalism it claims and denying diversity it no doubt needs — and has always needed — to survive.
That school board chaos encompassed the uprisings of the so-called parental rights movement that topped your local news broadcast, riled up Facebook forums and demonized educators and students alike with precision and uniformed attacks marketed as “concern” for our most vulnerable population.
I was asked for my thoughts on the “endgame” because I’d been researching and reporting on the movement in a different way from 2020-2023.
That included uncovering exactly who was providing and financing this message, pushing for the passage of identical local and state legislation designed to dismantle undefinable “woke” education and how a minority coalition of loud and predominantly white people (not necessarily parents) managed to co-opt and mesh the meaning of diversity, equity and inclusion, critical race theory, public health measures and various curricula into an all-out war on educators and marginalized communities in the name of states’ or individual rights.
What we, particularly those of us in “mainstream media,” so comfortably called a conservative movement was actually pretty radical in theory and action. It was also in lockstep with movements of our past that resulted in the use of mint julep textbooks and resistance to integration well into the 1980s.
I traveled the country to talk to people being assaulted, followed home and finding what appeared to be a bullet hole in their living window after a conflict at a school board meeting.
Read the full article at AJC.com