It Takes Being Self-Employed To Call For Education Instead Of Indoctrination In K-12
This is a sign of how sick and toxically infested with the racist race profiteering of Kendi and the like our society has become.
Conor Friedersdorf writes in The Atlantic:
Ndona Muboyayi wants to improve the education that public-school children, including her son and daughter, receive in Evanston, Illinois, where her mother's family history goes back five generations.As a candidate for the school board in District 65, which educates children up until eighth grade, she wants to close the academic-achievement gap separating Black and brown students from white ones, help children who need special education, and address what she sees as a lack of support for students whose first language isn't English. That agenda would be ultra-progressive in many communities. In Evanston, however, Muboyayi is challenging not the right, but the left.
In a recent article on the Black Lives Matter at School curriculum in Evanston, I quoted Evanston parents who favor diversity, racial equality, and inclusiveness but object to lessons that they believe cross a line into indoctrination. All the parents I interviewed would be quoted only anonymously, out of fear that they would be harassed online or even lose their jobs.
Muboyayi, 44, a member of the NAACP Evanston/North Shore Branch and the Congolese Community of Chicago, shares their concerns about the curriculum and is now among its most outspoken critics. She attributes her willingness to talk openly to the fact that she is self-employed. A business consultant and translator, Muboyayi attended public schools in Evanston as a child and then moved away. When she returned with children of her own in 2018, she anticipated that they would receive the empowering, racially inclusive education she remembered. Instead she was confronted with a curriculum she deems disempowering, divisive, and ill-suited to helping students of color succeed in school.
She and her family had been living outside of Toronto before they moved back to Evanston, where she grew up.
When we got here in 2018, within the first year, my children were being taught about white supremacy and white privilege and that all white people were rich and racist. My son and daughter came home like, What is this?Friedersdorf: What was the problem with those lessons, beyond your children not liking them?
Mboyayi: My children have always been so proud of who they are. Then all of a sudden they started to question themselves because of what they were taught after arriving here. My son has wanted to be a lawyer since he was 11. Then one day he came home and told me, "But Mommy, there are these systems put in place that prevent Black people from accomplishing anything." That's what they're teaching Black kids: that all of this time for the past 400 years, this is what [white people have] done to you and your people. The narrative is, "You can't get ahead."
Of course I want my children to know about slavery and Jim Crow. But I want it to be balanced out with the rest of the truth. They're not taught about Black people who accomplished things in spite of white supremacy; or about the Black people today who got ahead, built things, achieved things; and those who had opportunities that their ancestors fought for.
Friedersdorf: Tell me more about the narrative you want to challenge.
Mboyayi: One day my daughter told me she was taught that all white people are privileged and part of a system of white supremacy. My son said the same thing. So I reached out to my daughter's teacher to find out what exactly was being taught. It was pretty much like she said: that all white people were part of this system of white supremacy, and that all white people, because of the color of their skin, had privilege. I said, "But that's not true." And the teacher said, "Well, what do you mean?"
I have traveled a lot. My father was a university professor and taught in both the United States and Paris, France. And when I visited, I saw white people in public housing. I've been to Belgium and Switzerland and seen very poor white people. I've visited other parts of Europe. I lived in Canada for 10 years. There are poor white people in Canada as well. I'm not saying systemic racism doesn't exist, but class exists too, and I don't believe that all white people have privilege. That white person who's living in the Appalachian Mountains, who has no means or prospect of changing their situation--do they, too, have privilege? Compared to me and my kids?
I've spent a lot of time in Central Africa because my dad is from the Congo. And some of the propaganda that's being spread right now here in Evanston is similar to some of the divisiveness that took place in Rwanda before the massacre. I'm not saying that is what's going to happen here, but when you start labeling people in a negative manner based on their race or ethnic group, this leads to division and destruction, not finding common ground and positive solutions.
Friedersdorf: Does it rankle you, as a Black person, when people define white culture with positive stereotypes, such as showing up to places on time?
Mboyayi: That's exactly how I feel. The education system tends to erase or mute Black people from different backgrounds and experiences. They make this assumption that all Black people are a monolith--they all speak the same way, think the same way, and conduct themselves in the same way.
Showing up on time has nothing to do with being white. It's something that you're taught or not taught. My father taught me at a very early age to keep my word. If you say that you're going to be somewhere at some time, be there. What system of white supremacy was he influenced by?
Side note:
Given that articles and interviews like this are pretty common for The Atlantic, I wonder why a certain person here sneered that it's a "woman's magazine."
Lenona at April 4, 2021 6:47 AM
The narrative that black people are being held back by systemic racism is a corrosion that is destroying our society, white and black.
Conan the Grammarian at April 4, 2021 7:55 AM
> destroying our society
Kinda think Asians and Latins may take care of this problem.
Crid at April 4, 2021 9:16 AM
IDK. Once you've created an aggrieved segment of any society, it doesn't just go away.
And now you've to the whole "Stop Asian Hate" movement highlighting a few incidents as a trend in order to bring Asians into he aggrieve minority movement.
We're being split by race to create a tribal and balkanized society. Once that's done, the agents of discord who are splitting us up can offer themselves as mediators, as the only power bloc capable of protecting each segment and adjudicating disputes.
Conan the Grammarian at April 4, 2021 10:42 AM
Yes, it certainly seems the racial panic over the last few years has done its damage. By the way, how's BLM doing? They've been quiet since January. So I checked the BLM Global Network website. The ladies are doing quite well. BLM is sitting on a $60 million bank and they've expanded into supporting unionization, Medicare For All, and LGBTQXXX issues. Their current list of seven demands includes three Anti-Trump measures. No link or information anywhere about the Chauvin trial. They may have outlived their usefulness, but the threat lingers.
Looking ahead, this didn't take long; criticism of China being conflated with anti-Asian racism.
https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/mike-huckabee-asian-hate-crime-vote-supression-racist-tweet-035737431.html
The anti-Asian meme has been a tough sell; one reason being there are not enough state actors who can be credibly accused, particularly of state sanctioned violence - as with the police.
Spiderfall at April 4, 2021 11:27 AM
And now you've to the whole "Stop Asian Hate" movement highlighting a few incidents as a trend in order to bring Asians into he aggrieve minority movement.
I saw a clip on our local news last night of a "Stop Asian Hate" rally being held in a park in Seattle's Chinatown/International District. One of the speakers, a young Asian woman, was railing against "white supremacy."
I thought to myself: does she think that white supremacists are hiring all of these black thugs who appear to be behind most of the vicious attacks on Asians? Or that these are white supremacists in blackface?
JD at April 4, 2021 11:28 AM
Looking ahead, this didn't take long; criticism of China being conflated with anti-Asian racism.
I think there is something to that.
Although I loathed Trump, he wasn't wrong to refer to the virus as the "China virus" since it originated there and, in my opinion, most likely from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (an accidental, not intentional, release), something that, if it's true, China will never ever ever ever admit.
However, this country does have people who are racist and does have people who are pretty fucking stupid and sometimes racism and fucking stupidity are combined in the same people.
And when these kind of idiots hear "China virus" they see an Asian person and think "Oh, that person must be Chinese and, therefore must be responsible for the virus so I'll go beat the crap out of them."
Remember, if you will, the attacks on Middle Eastern people in this country by idiots in the wake of 9/11. There were even attacks on Sikhs by ignorant idiots who think "turban = Arab."
JD at April 4, 2021 11:40 AM
And that's the system that's put in place. If the kid is repeating it to his mother, it's working.
Karl Lembke at April 4, 2021 12:20 PM
"I thought to myself: does she think that white supremacists are hiring all of these black thugs who appear to be behind most of the vicious attacks on Asians? Or that these are white supremacists in blackface? "
If you only watched mainstream news, you would think all those attacks were from whites.
"Remember, if you will, the attacks on Middle Eastern people in this country by idiots in the wake of 9/11."
I remember the media hyping it up and constantly repeating it over and over, but how many actual attacks there were? who knows? And as we are seeing with this, were they really blaming the right people?
We live in a world where most leftists think that thousands if not tens of thousands of unarmed blacks are hunted down and killed by police every year, when the actual number is 13 or 23 depending how it is counted.
Joe J at April 4, 2021 12:58 PM
> a trend in order to bring Asians
> into he aggrieve minority movement.
As a rule, Asians don't aggrieve, Asians achieve. If they were tripwire-responsive, the streets would be running red already... Specifically, the avenues surrounding the Harvard admissions office.
And Hispanics are famous for *working*. They too often do so while borrowing a cousin's Social Security card, which fucks things up for everyone but the employer, who gets great labor at a low price.
> the agents of discord who are
> splitting us up can offer
> themselves as mediators
Not tracking here. I'm never going to give a rat's ass what Whatzizname Kendi has to say about about anything. But I'll never care about what Laura Zombie has to say, either.
There are plenty of social vectors from profound social & economic disadvantage (including my own family) who, by their experience of American life from a poverty of origins, are not inclined to patience with gratuitous, unsubstantiated complaint.
But the main point is that at 62, I've done the work on race relations that I wanted to do... Socially, economically, religiously, sexually, whatever. I'm unlikely to have my opinion changed by idiots, and that works out great for everyone!… Because youngfolk don't GAF what I think anyway.
Anybuddy wants to hear and opinion, drop me a line.
Crid at April 4, 2021 1:21 PM
More, Conan! More! Here are two things that will go badly, things for which no one in the country will be equipped to summon the allegiance of Americans in response.
Smaller and sooner: The Chauvin trial will satisfy no one. Maybe there will be flaming neighborhoods and lots of violent death, but America will be unimproved by the consequences.
Much bigger and somewhat later, though perhaps months and not years: China is going to annex Taiwan. There's no figure in government, business or public life who'll help Americans to respond decently, or to the benefit of our national interests, let alone to those of anyone else. Kamala will probably sanction the bejesus out of Beijing; This will be preposterous, as no two world-spanning economies have ever been more tightly interconnected. More to the point, sane international politics isn't nearly as good for exploiting voters as is racial pandering & money-printing. She will not care.
The splits now nourished for tawdry political expedience mean mostly that there's no conceivable leadership for the larger challenges we'll face as a nation. Not in the federal, state or local governments, and certainly not from capitalist American enterprise, which is now almost universally denigrated as a source of pain rather than wealth, comfort and safety.
This will still be a great country in which to live, work and shop, despite the tribal & balkanized culture you describe. This is not meant as a joke, because I left after a second set of riots— But I lived most of my life in Los Angeles, and day-by-day, race relations were spectacularly good there.
I think our biggest fault line isn't color or ethnicity, it's brains. Across our lifetimes we've continued to refine our institutions to the benefit of smart people. America's become ever-less rewarding for people with an IQ under 100. (You'll notice we're much looser with immigration of unremarkable South Americans, readily issuing them voter registration cards, than we are for the bright people from anywhere.)
Americans don't know what to do with Joe Blows & mediocrities except extract their votes. China puts them in factories for the stuff we buy, and can turn on a dime to get them into the face mask business. (And when a minority starts getting really troublesome, they put 'em in camps, by the million.) India is economically ascendant, particularly in comms and IT, but I'm not sure their culture is more broadly ennobling.
But in America, all we can do with people who aren't very bright is distract them with social media and TV idiocy, parking a game show host in the White House occasionally. No one is concerned with their well-being, or with composing policy for their benefit... It's easier just to throw endless sums of money at schools (and teacher's unions) and mumble something about opportunity. And the principles of Wokedom.
Crid at April 4, 2021 7:15 PM
Teachers' unions… Because meta.
Crid at April 5, 2021 8:28 AM
Leave a comment