Brave Wokery vs Rising Red Police State

 

“Parents are entitled to know anytime their child is being taught a controversial topic and picture.” 

Barney Bishop, chairman of Tallahassee Classical’s school board in an interview with Slate online magazine, March 26th, after the above photograph of the “David” was purportedly deemed pornographic to sixth graders.

“To think that ‘David’ could be pornographic means truly not understanding the contents of the Bible, not understanding Western culture and not understanding Renaissance art.” 

Cecilie Hollberg, director of the Galleria dell’Accademia, where “David” is housed,

Forget about the brave medical doctors, confused about the restrictions of their local red state legislature’s statutes limiting or even erasing the former right to an abortion… terminating a pregnancy to save a mother’s life… and potentially committing a serious felony under local law. Just look at a reality where the lowest common denominator under any red state’s purported “parental rights” laws determines what can and cannot be taught or presented or seen by public school students. It’s not what the majority of parents want under exploding anti-“woke” legislation; it’s about eliminating from the entire curriculum what any parent or student finds objectionable.

I have tried to find out what “woke” really means, and it does service as a stand-in for White Christian nationalism almost everywhere, but the only court definition I could find calls it “activism against social injustice.” Sounds like a good summary of the New Testament. Especially, if you delve into the artwork generated to pay homage to Jesus Christ, his family and followers, where even the earliest works depict some nudity, including the above 1504 Michelangelo sculpture.

Indeed, a “Florida principal resigned this month after parents were angered that students learned about Michaelangelo's David statue in art class. Now, the mayor of Florence has personally invited the school official to visit the city, where the statue is on display… She invited the principal, school board, parents and student body to view the ‘purity’ of the statue.” CBS News, March 27th. Some parents considered the work “pornographic.”

Hard to censor the religious art throughout history as we seek to explain our cultural heritage to our youth in public school. But then culture wars are not about truth or history or religious exploration; they are about substituting one subcultures’ biases and predispositions for those of everyone else. Other than math, physics and applied sciences, most subject deal with human beings in critical historical times… and those inspired to paint, write, compose and philosophize about what they were experiencing.

Under Florida’s DeSantis sponsored “Stop Woke” act and his and his administration’s orders and resulting policies, teaching “critical race theory” (which engenders race but also, gender, ethnicity and historical truths) that leads to a student’s or a parent’s discomfort with the topic at hand – even at a college level in a state school – just cannot happen. Indeed, teachers are running scared, fearing losing their jobs or even facing lawsuits and criminal prosecution.

For example, according to WESH (March 24th), an NBC affiliate in Brevard County Florida, “On March 9, at the Cocoa campus of Eastern Florida State College, the students in a U.S. Government class ended up having a free period. That’s because one of the students said that they were uncomfortable in the day’s lesson on civil rights.” Although the campus caters to both college and high school students, this is about the civils rights realities of the 1950s, 60s and following.

“Educators throughout the state are living in fear; back in January, a Florida school district canceled a lecture on civil rights given by a professor to other instructors. Flagler College professor, J. Michael Butler, was ready to give a speech to Osceola County School District teachers called ‘The Long Civil Rights Movement,’ which proposed that the Civil Rights movement began long before and extended long past Martin Luther King, Jr. Osceola County administrators were fearful they would be guilty of advancing ‘Critical Race Theory’ which it wasn't, but in an abundance of caution, canceled the speech.” William Spivey in the March 22nd Polis.com. So much of history is disturbing, but as George Santayana once said, “Those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat its mistakes.”

Yet red state statutes proliferating a 1984-like clampdown on teaching truth or allowing art to flow are everywhere. From Texas to Idaho, from Alabama to Tennessee. Indeed, Tennessee’s legislature passed and “Governor Bill Lee had signed into law a ban on gender-affirming healthcare for transgender children as well as a ban on ‘adult-oriented performances’ in front of minors from artists including ‘male and female impersonators, i.e. drag performers… [Bella] DuBalle [pictured above], a professional drag queen based in Memphis, immediately saw through what Lee proposed as protective measures for children for what’s really going on: a blatant attempt to further marginalize and erase the LGBTQ+ community…

“Tennessee’s law doesn’t actually state anything about ‘drag’ explicitly. Rather, it places ‘male and female impersonators’ in the same category as topless dancers, go-go dancers, exotic dancers, and strippers, which, for starters, is a gross misrepresentation of how broad the art form of drag is and for whom it can be. Deeper still is the lack of clarity on who constitutes a male or female impersonator. Does that extend to actors in a play? Will trans people be subject to even further policing if they’re deemed to be ‘impersonating’ another gender?... ‘With the language being so vague, how can you pin down what we’re doing and say what it is?’ DuBalle says.”

Hey, RuPaul, on mainstream US television and now hosting a show on CBS, prepare to turn yourself in. People are standing in line to get prosecuted to test the limits of these laws. Legal institutions are providing legal experts, gratis, to fight this mirror of Germany in the 1930s, attempting to extinguish inconvenient facts that challenged the rising autocracy and legacy of racial and cultural purity. Brave wokery!

I’m Peter Dekom, and rampant censorship, a purposeful distortion of factual history and a flagrant punishment of teachers who do not tow the White Christian nationalist line, a position now mandated by so many red state statutes… sure makes me proud to be an American… not!