Florida bans its schools from teaching critical race theory

[Valcazar]

Hispanics are identifying as 'white' now as well.
But its the mixed thing that's gonna ruin the supremacist's day.

Hispanics have always had part which identified as white. Hell, in the US it is specifically on the census form if I remember ("Hispanic, White" // "Hispanic, Non-white".) That has always been the obvious next choice.

Mixed won't ruin supremacist's day. You just redefine how the lines get drawn. Mixed people are white or non-white depending on what is most useful at the moment. There are some hardcore types that will always be upset about it, but most people will just become white if other white people agree they are white.

Easy to explain. That teacher is paid by the state. They don't have free speech in the classroom. Especially when it sows division and hate. Fuck CRT.

I suppose it is an argument. "We demand you teach racism because teaching the truth makes our white kids uncomfortable" is stupid and destructive but I can see the "state employees need to have their speech controlled on the job" argument from a formal legal point of view.

Not what's happening here. Here you have a government directive made on political / public policy grounds that a certain type of history / current events cannot be taught. The directive comes from the governor. Now if a teacher teaches his / her own shit outside the curriculum, he can be fired. He's not doing his job. But what if the directive interferes with the curriculum on political grounds? Can the governor dictate that each Democratic president in US history be portrayed as an imbecile in a specially written curriculum? And that all Republican presidents be portrayed as super heroes?

That seems like an interference in free speech, as the curriculum is being set up on partisan political grounds.

So that's the question and you totally missed it.

I'm not sure they do run afoul of free speech though. Like you said, if you bake the "Republican presidents must be portrayed as heroes" directly in to the state curriculum requirements, then not doing it is a breach of your responsibilities to the curriculum. So I think you can defend it in court because I'm not sure there is anything that requires the curriculum to be well designed.

 

[mandrill]

Hispanics have always had part which identified as white. Hell, in the US it is specifically on the census form if I remember ("Hispanic, White" // "Hispanic, Non-white".) That has always been the obvious next choice.

I'm not sure they do run afoul of free speech though. Like you said, if you bake the "Republican presidents must be portrayed as heroes" directly in to the state curriculum requirements, then not doing it is a breach of your responsibilities to the curriculum. So I think you can defend it in court because I'm not sure there is anything that requires the curriculum to be well designed.

But isn't that because the issue has never arisen before?

 

[Valcazar]

But isn't that because the issue has never arisen before?

I'd have to look.
I think "you didn't teach the curriculum" probably has arisen before, in the context of teaching creationism or evolution. So there may be some law there.
This is grade school and high school after all. University might have rules about tenure and so on, but I am pretty sure the government can insist teachers teach false facts if they want to.
(They just usually don't have to because social stigma would be enough to prevent people from teaching controversial issues.)
But you might be right, they may never have had to pass laws because schools would fire a rogue teacher and you didn't have whole schools updating their curriculum in defiance of the state.
I don't really know.

 

[mandrill]

I'd have to look.
I think "you didn't teach the curriculum" probably has arisen before, in the context of teaching creationism or evolution. So there may be some law there.
This is grade school and high school after all. University might have rules about tenure and so on, but I am pretty sure the government can insist teachers teach false facts if they want to.
(They just usually don't have to because social stigma would be enough to prevent people from teaching controversial issues.)
But you might be right, they may never have had to pass laws because schools would fire a rogue teacher and you didn't have whole schools updating their curriculum in defiance of the state.
I don't really know.

Not "teaching the curriculum" if you get a headstrong fuckbrain insisting on telling the children that God created Man and the dinosaurs in 100 BC and evolution never happened is just professional incompetence and insubordination. Classic workplace misconduct and a discipline and dismissal issue.

But the governor censoring what is taught for political reasons is a whole different kettle of fish, I would think.

 

[Valcazar]

Not "teaching the curriculum" if you get a headstrong fuckbrain insisting on telling the children that God created Man and the dinosaurs in 100 BC and evolution never happened is just professional incompetence and insubordination. Classic workplace misconduct and a discipline and dismissal issue.

But the governor censoring what is taught for political reasons is a whole different kettle of fish, I would think.

That's the real question - has there ever been a law insisting?
I'm pretty sure there were laws saying it was illegal to teach evolution or anything that contradicted the bible.
I don't think they were ever struck down as unconstitutional, they just lost the argument over what should be taught.

 

[mandrill]

That's the real question - has there ever been a law insisting?
I'm pretty sure there were laws saying it was illegal to teach evolution or anything that contradicted the bible.
I don't think they were ever struck down as unconstitutional, they just lost the argument over what should be taught.

Wasn't there an old legendary case from the Deep South in the interwar period called "The Scopes Monkey Trial"?

 

[Valcazar]

Wasn't there an old legendary case from the Deep South in the interwar period called "The Scopes Monkey Trial"?

Very famous, yes. They even made a play and a movie about it (Inherit the Wind)

Scopes lost at trial and on appeal (the court rejected 1st amendment applied because he was an employee of the state).
Since then, other cases have overturned laws banning teaching evolution but on the grounds their purpose was specifically religious - not on the grounds the state couldn't tell teachers what to teach.
I don't know what other case law is specifically relevant. Now that this is coming up, I am sure someone will put together an article on the relevant precedents.

 

[mandrill]

Very famous, yes. They even made a play and a movie about it (Inherit the Wind)

Scopes lost at trial and on appeal (the court rejected 1st amendment applied because he was an employee of the state).
Since then, other cases have overturned laws banning teaching evolution but on the grounds their purpose was specifically religious - not on the grounds the state couldn't tell teachers what to teach.
I don't know what other case law is specifically relevant. Now that this is coming up, I am sure someone will put together an article on the relevant precedents.

Just casting a fishing line here, but isn't there a logical argument that directions on what to teach which have a political purpose - i.e. strongly pushing a particular political viewpoint - instead of a didactic purpose should be examined carefully.

If QAnon won the Alabama state legislature and the worthy state congressmen enacted that high school teachers had to teach their classes about the Reptilian Overlords, how would that stand up in court?

 

[basketcase]

Easy to explain. That teacher is paid by the state. They don't have free speech in the classroom. Especially when it sows division and hate. Fuck CRT.

Would be useful if the law actually defined what "Critical Race Theory" is.

 

[Valcazar]

Would be useful if the law actually defined what "Critical Race Theory" is.

I doubt they would. That would give the game away.
I think they are just defining it more like "you aren't allowed to say anything that makes white people feel bad".

Just casting a fishing line here, but isn't there a logical argument that directions on what to teach which have a political purpose - i.e. strongly pushing a particular political viewpoint - instead of a didactic purpose should be examined carefully.

If QAnon won the Alabama state legislature and the worthy state congressmen enacted that high school teachers had to teach their classes about the Reptilian Overlords, how would that stand up in court?

I don't see why it wouldn't.
I mean, I think the tactic is normally to forbid something rather than to demand something get taught, but I don't think anyone has ever considered it illegal in the US for the state to say what should be taught.
They usually foist it off onto school commissions, but that's just passing a law saying "the commission will decide the curriculum".

Did a quick search and it seems this article from 2019 has some relevant info: https://kappanonline.org/legal-balancing-act-public-school-curriculum-underwood/

Seems you may be right that something like this could run afoul of previous rulings.

And in Gonzalez v. Douglas (D. Ariz. 2017), a federal District Court ruled that two Arizona curricular statutes banning ethnic studies courses were unconstitutional. The court found an Equal Protection violation in that there was evidence of racial animus in the creation of the statute, and it found Free Speech violations in that there was no legitimate pedagogical rationale behind the statute.

That was district court though, so hardly settled.

 

[mandrill]

I doubt they would. That would give the game away.
I think they are just defining it more like "you aren't allowed to say anything that makes white people feel bad".

I don't see why it wouldn't.
I mean, I think the tactic is normally to forbid something rather than to demand something get taught, but I don't think anyone has ever considered it illegal in the US for the state to say what should be taught.
They usually foist it off onto school commissions, but that's just passing a law saying "the commission will decide the curriculum".

Did a quick search and it seems this article from 2019 has some relevant info: https://kappanonline.org/legal-balancing-act-public-school-curriculum-underwood/

Seems you may be right that something like this could run afoul of previous rulings.
That was district court though, so hardly settled.

Thanks for all the hard work. TBH, I would not have known where to start w a less obvious US constitutional issue like this one.

The Reptile Overlords example is simply weird and presumably highly partisan. You could illustrate the same issue with a Far Right element gaining a majority on the local school council and mandating teaching the wee ones about how a good man called Adolph Hitler tried to change the world for the better and was undermined by the International Jewish Conspiracy. But perhaps the out there is the overt racism that this would involve.

It seems that the racial element makes a difference in judicial analysis and presumably that's a springboard for a challenge to the Critical Race Theory exclusion.

 

[Valcazar]

It seems that the racial element makes a difference in judicial analysis and presumably that's a springboard for a challenge to the Critical Race Theory exclusion.

Perhaps.
I honestly wouldn't know what to expect from the current court.

 

[y2kmark]

I'd be interested if you have any figures off the top of your head re the % of slave owners among the white population. There were entire regions - i.e. Appalachia - which were so isolated and so dirt poor that slave owning was pretty much unknown. And I am also guessing that the dominant planter class owned the vast bulk of the resources, incl the slaves. But I also assumed that middle class whites might own a slave or two.

As to what Americans were taught, I had no fixed opinion beyond noting that the "states' rights" theory was pretty strong during the 90's where there was a Civil War revival in mass culture incl movies such as Gettysburg and the Ken Burns' tv series and several monthlies about the military campaigns.

The South had about 25% of the total white population of America at the time. North = 20 mill. South = 7 mill.

Not being an American, I don't have a precise idea of when a workplace is a "state actor"; but it strikes me that if the legislature is enacting what can be taught at state schools, that we have reached the point where the workplace is an arm of the state. Feel free to comment?

The chance that this will survive a constitutional challenge is about nil. I think this was enacted more to energize the Repug base than from any hopes it will become practice. It's gotta pretty much backfire anyway. As soon as kids find out they are not supposed to learn something they won't rest until they find out....

 

[Charlemagne]

 

[toguy5252]

As usual the followers of the now former biggest loser in history doent even know what critical race therory is.

What is critical race theory, exactly? Well, Republicans certainly don’t seem to know, even as they profess to be terrified of it, and deploy it as a convenient catch-all phrase to scare conservatives who don’t want their kids

https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2021/06/10532043/

 

[csmitting]

https://twitter.com/i/events/1403362449043062784

The fight to whitewash US history: ‘A drop of poison is all you need’

At least 15 states are trying to ban schools from teaching critical race theory and the 1619 Project. The reactionary movement stretches back to the 1920s and the KKK

www.theguardian.com

The GOP protected the free speech of Dr Seuss and Gina Carano, but apparently any high school teacher who suggests US society is inherently racist get less free speech protection than the Grinch or a woman who ranted that the pandemic was a hoax.

Explain this to me, righties?

Also how many weeks it's going to survive without being struck down as unconstitutional?

Just curious, do you think Cad Teachers teach whatever they want? That there is no curriculum that they are required follow?

 

[mandrill]

Just curious, do you think Cad Teachers teach whatever they want? That there is no curriculum that they are required follow?

Sure they do. And your point?

 

[Valcazar]

What is critical race theory, exactly? Well, Republicans certainly don’t seem to know, even as they profess to be terrified of it, and deploy it as a convenient catch-all phrase to scare conservatives who don’t want their kids

They don't need to know. That isn't the point. The point is to tag a name to all the cultural things they want to object to so people hear anything they don't like and then think "fucking critical race theory".

 

[basketcase]

As usual the followers of the now former biggest loser in history doent even know what critical race therory is.

What is critical race theory, exactly? Well, Republicans certainly don’t seem to know, even as they profess to be terrified of it, and deploy it as a convenient catch-all phrase to scare conservatives who don’t want their kids

https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2021/06/10532043/

ANTIFA!!!!!!!!

 

[K Douglas]

Kirky, that's the worst analysis that I have ever read. Let's go through it.

If you're speech is disruptive or otherwise against corporate rules, then everyone agrees you can be fired. For example, I can't tell my buxom co worker that I am going to jerk off on her tits and if her husband tried to stop me, I'm going to beat the shit out of him. That's bad. That gets you fired.

Not what's happening here. Here you have a government directive made on political / public policy grounds that a certain type of history / current events cannot be taught. The directive comes from the governor. Now if a teacher teaches his / her own shit outside the curriculum, he can be fired. He's not doing his job. But what if the directive interferes with the curriculum on political grounds? Can the governor dictate that each Democratic president in US history be portrayed as an imbecile in a specially written curriculum? And that all Republican presidents be portrayed as super heroes?

That seems like an interference in free speech, as the curriculum is being set up on partisan political grounds.

So that's the question and you totally missed it.

CRT is not based on US history or fact. It's cultural Marxism. DeSantis understands that which is why he correctly issued the directive.