Americans agree that issues of race and gender divide us.
Democrats want schools to teach about them.
Republicans don't.
College classmate Jeffrey Laurenti drew my attention to a Monmouth University opinion poll. Laurenti is a political scientist, and a former senior analyst with a boutique foreign policy think tank. He lives in New Jersey, where he has been active in Democratic politics. He served as an Obama elector in the 2012 election.
 |
| Laurenti |
Guest Post by Jeffrey Laurenti
Opinion research published today helps illuminate the targets on which political aspirants on the right like Ron DeSantis, and the media organs of the right like Fox, are homing in.
Data compiled by the Monmouth Poll show that while teaching on racial aspects of history is uncomfortable mainly for the large subset of whites who identify as Republican, a significant majority of the American public at large acknowledge that racial gaps need to be more forthrightly addressed -- including blacks, Asians, and Hispanics, and the large subset of whites who identify as Democrats. In focusing on issues with assertedly ethno-racial reverberations like immigration and violent crime, the right is essentially appealing to its existing base, not expanding it.
The gold mine for the right, however, seems to be on issues touching on what the pollster delicately calls "gender identity," where significant majorities of blacks, Asians, and Hispanics profess discomfort with dealing directly with debates on such concerns in classrooms. The only demographic flagged in this survey that favors broadening, rather than restricting, teaching about gender identity issues in schools is... white Democrats. No wonder the hysteria about transgender that's sweeping Republican-controlled legislatures.
Of course, to the extent that the right can exploit issues that may pit black interests against those of Asian and Hispanic voters, they may be able to move the needle on racial "wokeness," but that's far less cost-free an area on which to focus than the transgender concerns.
----
Here is a summary of the poll results, with details available by going to the link for the full details:
 |
| Widespread agreement that race is central to our politics |
And then the sharp partisan divide over whether schools should address sensitive issues.
[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com and subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]
11 comments:
The good news here is that "plain vanilla gay" homosexuality has been largely accepted by our society, with rights and respect now growing in every area.
However, not to be deterred, bigots have now set their sights on transgender individuals, an even smaller percentage of the gay community, and Republicans have happily pivoted to pander to this disgusting prejudice.
The silver lining here just could be that the attention will accelerate education, understanding and eventual widespread acceptance, as happened with interracial marriage and women wearing trousers.
Race has been this nation’s most divisive issue since before it was a nation and it obviously still is, which is why we’re still talking about it. The same mentality that brought about the civil war persists today, and the GOP has become their refuge. That’s why they violently resisted when local governments decided to take down tributes to treason and slavery. They and their cult leader still mourn the loss of those “beautiful statues and monuments,” as Trump called them.
The Republican Party increasingly represents those who believe the U.S. was intended by God to be a White, Christian, male-dominated, heterosexuals only nation. It increasingly reminds me of what my father spent years risking his life to defeat in WWII.
Wow, some true blue propaganda for breakfast. Don't drink the Kool-Aid.
Apparently, the guest blogger doesn't know what he is talking about. The pollster called it "gender identity" because that is what it is called by the "Radical Rainbow Mafia" (RRM) and their "alternate facts" allies.
Is he really that ignorant or is it a ploy? Most Americans Oppose the harmful and absurd gender agenda of the RRM. Here is a partial list of groups and individuals who oppose the RRM: LGB Alliance (international organization), conservative evangelical Christians and other conservatives, Kara Dansky (attorney, feminist and lesbian), Dr. Debra Soh, lesbians who are Not on board with the RRM, many feminists, people who understand biology, Caitlyn Jenner, J. K. Rowling, many female athletes, females who don't want males invading their dressing rooms, restrooms, locker rooms, shelters, prisons, etc.
Republicans are generally against the truth when it goes against their world view. Galileo ran into the same problem a while ago. Science and facts are not republican’s friends. It’s difficult to suppress the truth, but Galileo was put on house arrest. I would note we don’t still believe that the universe center is the earth, at least I think republicans accept that.
Women do not wear "trousers." Women wear pants, slacks or jeans. Hello
For the Catholic perspective, there is a good article in the Catholic Herald online, dated 5-18-21. Hint: The Catholic Church under Pope Francis also does agree with the RRM.
It’s estimated that 1.6 million people over age 13 identify as transgender in the U.S. out of a population of 337 million. That’s less than 0.005 percent of our population.
About 40% of our population has a favorable opinion about the psycho who tried to overthrow the government of the U.S.
The former may seem odd, but the latter are a far greater threat.
Saying that Republicans/conservatives “don’t want schools to teach about race, and/or gender“ is an inaccurate, low-resolution summary. The objection is not to those topics; it’s to a particular left-wing slant on those topics.
Hardly anyone objects to schools teaching in the history of slavery and Jim Crow in this country. But that’s very different from teaching that history based on the hyper-ideological negative view of America expressed in the 1619 Project’s view that racism is the defining characteristic of this country, which many mainstream historians have criticized as an extreme position unjustified by the actual facts.
Republicans/conservatives have been accused of “book banning“, when often what they want to do is keep sexually explicit images out of school libraries. The book Gender Queer, for instance, has explicit images of oral sex. Is content like that supposed to be in school libraries? The left demands it.
Some schools want to teach the topic of gender as defined by “queer theory”. Our schools are not even doing a good job of teaching reading and math. Maybe they should get that taken care of before taking up limited educational time with this sort of ideological content.
Parents and others who take these positions are often characterized by the liberal mainstream media as “right-wing extremists’. That’s just the usual propaganda from the usual sources of woke ideology.
Look at your pay, your student debt and
Now the anti public education dwarfs and you have the reasons to hand in your letter resignation which many teachers are doing by the school bus load.
Oh, Brudda…
Some do, but a very significant percentage still yhink "cavemen" used Dinosaurs for transportation, about 6,000 years ago.
Post a Comment