The woman says to look out for the words. She is sitting on a chair in front of the room. She is well-dressed with elegant boots, a demure sweater, and colorful jewelry. "'Equality,' 'diversity,' 'inclusion,''marginalization,'... These words are called CRT. You need to speak out if you see these words in your kids homework.
I am in a meeting with a right-wing mom. It is an organization that caters to mothers who are bent on protesting at school board meetings to stop the supposedly evil critical race theory agenda from being taught in public schools and address other typically conservative concerns.
Critical race theory is not taught in public schools.
There are 20 of us. We are all white, mostly women, and on the younger side. I am in my 40s and seem to be the oldest person in the room. A group of children, including my son, the only one in a mask, are scampering in a play area down the hall while a young woman with a baby in her front carrier watches them. There is a sign on the wall. Children should be heard. It was respected. I was encouraged. I loved it. It was appreciated. Guided with compassion. Freedom to learn without coercion is given.
It's very vague what that last phrase means.
I have been concerned about the increasing right-wing views of white suburban women for several years. I used to think of Nazis as villains in movies like Indiana Jones and sad stories from my grandfather. As the last Holocaust survivors are dying, I am aware that fascists are creeping back into the world in frightening ways.
I wanted to know how I could fight the misinformation that is affecting my friends and neighbors. The basic facts about COVID-19 are being dismissed as part of the liberal mainstream corporate media. I was called a child abuser by people on the street because I made my son wear a mask, even though bodies from COVID victims were stacking up in hospitals and filling the morgues. People are going crazy. Why are people dismissing science and history? How could we make the nation more saner?
I was curious about activist groups that target suburban women. These groups were trying to make life more dangerous for my child. The local right-wing women's group believes that masks should not be allowed in school. We were told to stop worrying about kids dying. They did not want racism and its history in the United States to be taught. Some people don't believe in white privilege because the Union soldiers who fought in the Civil War were overwhelmingly white. I don't understand that argument either. Some feel that history should not be included in curriculums if it makes people uncomfortable.
Every teacher I knew was dealing with students who were angry and disruptive, and struggling with COVID restrictions. Staffing shortages were caused by teachers burning out from stress. Jim Crow laws, the civil rights movement, and the repercussions of slavery in America are topics that school instructors dare to teach.
Some people don't believe in white privilege because the Union soldiers who fought in the Civil War were overwhelmingly white. I don't understand that argument either.
I joined a local right-wing Facebook group for moms. It requires aspiring members to answer some questions before they are granted entry. Why do you want to join? I want to be more involved with my children's school. A week later, the group's moderator contacted me privately. Can you tell me more about the most pressing issue you have?
It was very bad. Security was very tight with this group. They weren't going to let a mom use a few generic answers.
I messaged back and said that I was interested in keeping kids physically in school. I don't want my child to go to zoom school again. I was telling the truth about that. It is one of the few opinions I share with conservatives.
I was allowed into the group by the moderator after he sent me a thumbs-up.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that the members were all Republicans and that opinion was not always unanimous. The more far-right posters were argued against by several moms. A woman objected to children reading a book in class. She wrote with a broken heart. A direct message from a person who appeared to be a student was underneath a picture of a computer screen. We are currently reading a novel. Calpurnia brings the kids to church with her, and another black woman is very racist towards Scout and Jem. My teacher said that black people can't be racist because white people have a higher power over them.
There were a lot of angry reactions to this post. One mother pushed back. The woman at the church complained that Calpurnia had brought white children to the Black church, which was one of the few places where Black people felt free and safe. It is absurd to call the woman racist. The comment got a couple of likes and no feedback.
I was surprised that some big media outlets were giving them a platform. One of the founding members of the group did an interview with The New York Times about parental rights.
The New York Times! I was shocked. None of the women who ran the pro-Democrat groups in my town were interviewed by the local paper.
My eyes popped out of my head when I scanned the comments.
After the initial poster expressed concern about The New York Times possibly misquote her, another mom wrote that it would be fine. I learned the hard way after the BBC messed with me.
The radio station. The women were being talked to by the BBC.
I needed to know more.
Some of the mothers may have become suspicious of me. Maybe I liked too many comments by the moms pushing back against the anti-CRT posts. The very liberal comments that I had posted on other public news articles may have been found by the moderators. I saw that the location of the event suddenly disappeared when I expressed my interest in joining an in-person roundtable discussion event. I told the group that the event location was important to me.
She messaged back, "Just a heads up, I think most people will not be hiding." Is that something you will be comfortable with?
I wondered if she was trying to frighten me. I said that was fine.
I had written the location down before it disappeared from the event post.
My son and I drove to the meeting. The group had been correct. Nobody in the packed room was masked when I joined the meeting. I sat down and brushed my teeth. My son wore a mask while I was fully vaccine free. He was the only one.
The speakers at the meeting discussed how to run for, campaign and pressure school boards. Many parents complained that they had to enroll their children in private schools because of mask mandates. It was a common story. Most of these families had enough money to pay for private school fees because they wanted to take a stand against masks, according to the impression I got. I was the least well off person there.
There was anger directed at the teachers. One mother told them to rat out the teachers. Find a lawyer who can challenge the teachers. A woman said that teachers don't know what they're doing. They pull it off the internet. There is no discipline for teachers who take their credentials away, according to a third woman. The battle lines were clearly drawn.
I raised my hand. What do you say to people who are going to put bounties on teachers? You are marching outside the homes of school board members. School board members are getting death threats.
Several women flinched at the word "bounty." One woman said she disliked the term "bounty" but she could see the need for monetary compensation for those who turn in teachers that were doing things parents found unacceptable. She said there were no repercussions for teachers who broke the law. I don't mind if we have to pay people to report teachers. It is an incentive for people to wake up.
It was not clear what laws these teachers were breaking. I can tell you that teachers got punished if they broke the law.
A woman raised her hand. She said that they want to change school boards, but elections aren't until 2023. What should we do until then? We can't allow them to attack our kids. We have to do something.
I didn't like the look in the woman's eye. Is there any chance of insurrection being suggested here? What was she saying?
A woman nodded. We have tried playing nice. They dig in their heels. We need to start being a bit less nice.
One woman said she disliked the term 'bounty' but she could see the need for monetary compensation for those who turn in teachers that were doing things parents found unacceptable. I don't mind if we have to pay people to report teachers. It is an incentive for people to wake up.
I didn't like where the discussion was taking place. The topic was returned to safer ground by the moderator. She smiled and said, "Be pleasantly persistent." Be annoying. The woman at the school board meetings always shows up. When the meeting organizers see you, be the person who says, "Oh, God, her again." Be that person. Please try to get people to vote.
It was fair enough. A lot of the debate was similar to a Run for Something meeting. The Run for Something movement was started after Donald Trump won the presidency to encourage young progressives to start their own campaigns. The right-wing women's group seemed to be following the same model as the Run for Something meeting, but there was an anger among the group members that I had never seen before.
I found myself liking the women in the room despite my uneasiness. They were charismatic. They were enthusiastic. It is rare for mothers to allow their children to play with their low-functioning autistic son. This made me even more uneasy. I realized that these women were dangerous because they were so friendly. Their condemnation of history lessons was repulsive. They were trying to suppress the truth by labeling the facts of racism in the U.S. as divisive. Quality, diversity, and inclusion were not virtues to be celebrated but words to say. I was disgusted by this devious bit of relabeling. There was a clear far-right agenda at work here.
I joined a group that appeals to mothers. Moms have been hit hard by the Pandemic. Thousands of women leave the workforce to take care of their children because of the lack of child care. People who are lonely, frustrated, financially stressed are more likely to be targets for radical groups. Women who are isolated at home with their kids can find solace in the right-wing women's groups. It can be frightening for some people to start nodding along with all the rhetoric about the evils of critical race theory and COVID conspiracy theories if the women are also offering you coffee and friendship and child care.
I am a member of the local right-wing women's Facebook group. It has helped me understand how motivated these people are. I plan to attend a few upcoming school board meetings to defend the teaching of American history, especially in regards to racism and what it means to be Black in this country, as my membership could end up being revoked.
I can not stop thinking about the woman who said that we can't sit around and let them attack our kids. We have to do something. Those of us fighting against the far right need to be more aware of how energetic and organized they are and the lengths they are willing to go in order to get their way. Right-wing activists are attending school board meetings in hopes of changing the education of our children and the future of the United States. It is time for us to be more active to make sure this doesn't happen. We need to fight for our children's safety and their right to learn our nation's history. The parts are ugly.
When ugly history is ignored, it tends to get repeated.
As a Peace Corps volunteer, Cohen lived in the Gobi Desert and worked as a paramedic in several states. Cohen's work has appeared in several publications. She writes on her website Merry Misandrist. Cohen is a part-time student. She is known to go up to five hours without coffee.
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The article was originally on HuffPost.
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