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Welp, those “joyful warriors” are at it again! A school in California has drawn the ire of a member of the group Moms for Liberty, aka Klanned Karenhood, aka QKaron, aka MAGA Maids Incorporated, aka The Klanmaids Tale. (I made most of these up.)
According to Newsweek, a member of the conservative moms’ group that was named a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center earlier this year reported claims to the San Ramon Valley Unified School District that an “equity teacher” at the school her daughter attends taught students about white privilege and that “white people have no culture.”
In case you’re wondering what an “equity teacher” is, the school district website says it’s working with an “equity teacher on special assignment” to “interrupt any inequitable practices in school culture and curriculum and eliminate barriers to personal and academic success.”
Now, we all know that conservative America considers “equity” to be a bad word, along with the words “diversity” and “inclusion,” so any complaints made by members of the group that got Amanda Gorman’s inauguration poem banned from a Florida school district because Gorman mentioned racial equality and gender identity affirmation should probably be taken with a grain of salt. (Or maybe several grains as these people are extra salty.) But let’s see what the unidentified Karen is carrying on about, shall we?
From Newsweek:
“As a parent of a choir student, having outside instruction regarding white privilege with the choir students was incredibly hurtful, demeaning, and demeaning to many students in the class,” the woman said on September 12. “It not only created division and confusion between the students, but it was also incorrect information.”
She added: “During this, the teacher’s discussion with the class, she stated that white people had no culture and any culture that they did have was stolen. She gave inaccurate information that the students could quickly google and figure out that was wrong.” She said the U.S. number one condiment is not “salsa,” as the teacher apparently claimed, and that the number one American dish is hamburgers, and not “chicken tikka masala.”
The mom asked for the district to investigate the incident and “rectify it.” She also called for more parents’ involvement in the teaching at the school district.
First of all, this woman lets her bigot slip show the second she complains about students being told “salsa” is the number one condiment in the U.S. and “chicken tikka masala” is the number one dish. Because—so what if they were the most popular? I mean, salsa isn’t. Most statistics currently have mayonnaise as America’s favorite condiment, which sounds about white. (Salsa does consistently make the top five though.) But if you’re up in arms about Latin foods being heralded for their popularity in America, while living in a city named San Ramon no less, it’s clear your actual issue has to do with foreign things like chicken tikka masala being preferred over traditional American things like hamburgers. It’s your xenophobia that’s the problem, not salsa. It’s just a weird thing to complain about, especially in California, which has the best Mexican food of any place non named Mexico. (Sorry, Texas and New Mexico, but it’s true.)
But maybe that’s what “white culture” is. Maybe in America, white culture is just a fear of non-white things. Of course, that would be ridiculous since much of what they enjoy came from outside their mayonnaise-flavored racial group. Virtually every popular musical genre was created by Black people. Everything white people know about food came from the indigenous, Black people, and various cultures outside of the States. So, what is American white culture? Is it just—America?
Seriously, do white people have any culture outside of so-called patriotism (actually jingoism)? White people love the expression “as American as apple pie,” but if they were keeping it real, they would extend that expression to “as American as apple pie, baseball, racism, anti-Black oppression, lynchings, hatred of foreigners, and civil rights for uncivil whites only.”
Maybe white fragility is the ultimate tenet of “white culture.” After all, this so-called liberty-loving mom—from the same group that launched anti-critical race theory complaints against Black history books that taught the civil rights movement era stories of Martin Luther King Jr. and Ruby Bridges—did what white conservatives always do when it comes to the subject of white privilege. She dismissed it as “incorrect information” without demonstrating that she knows anything about the concept of social privilege, which is covered in CRT, which is lost on anti-CRT advocates as they largely have no idea what CRT is. Maybe cultural ignorance is white culture. Perhaps the dismissal of new academic information is.
Hell, now that we’ve fallen down this rabbit hole of trying to identify things that are culturally white, how about stiff line dances, spiceless food, stopping at the legs in the shower, clapping on the one and three and adding raisins where they don’t belong?
Is Karen culture white culture? Racial profiling, minding Black people’s business, using the police as their own personal negro-removal service—are these things white culture?
How about Confederate flags and monuments? Because as much as white culture seems to be about whitewashing Black history and downplaying slavery, they sure do defend the slavery-loving traitors to death, don’t they?
The American flag is certainly white culture. White people hang it up all over their homes and neighborhoods, fashion it into clothing and table clothes (the U.S. flag code be damned), and, traditionally, they’ve forced school children to pledge allegiance to it (while complaining about “woke indoctrination). But this all goes back to the jingoism-disguised-as-patriotism thing.
Anyway, whatever white culture is, it’s clear no one from Moms for Liberty would ever appreciate a true teaching of it. It’s almost as if delusion is the ultimate white culture.
SEE ALSO:
ABC News Dragged For Calling Moms For Liberty ‘Joyful Warriors’ Who Are ‘Fighting Back’
