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Cancel culture indeed...
Phillips’ fight with Collin College is part of a broader struggle over education here in the swath of suburbs and exurbs of the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, once conservative strongholds that in recent years have become more diverse — racially, culturally, and politically — as business-friendly tax policy draws emigration from across the nation and abroad. But the influx of new people and ideas has produced a backlash: The area was home to an unsettling number of Jan. 6 defendants, and in recent years, Philips says, there has been a resurgence in far-right extremism.
Much of the struggle is playing out in schools. Despite right-wing pundits’ continued braying about “censorship” and “cancel culture,” the local brand of revanchism has pushed to penalize educators who speak their minds and ban books that challenge conventional wisdom or present uncomfortable truths.
At Collin College alone, four professors have been let go amid controversial circumstances over the past two years, including one who lost her job after a mean tweet about Mike Pence. Across the region, at least nine superintendents at public schools have announced plans for resignation in just the past few months, according to The Texas Tribune. In a nearby town, a high school principal made local history as the first Black person in his post — and then lost his job amid a panic over “critical race theory.” Meanwhile, conservative activists push for a mass purge of objectionable reading material from public school libraries.
These are local stories that, together, have national implications. They serve as representative cases of what it looks like when the MAGA movement, having lost power at the national level, establishes effective control over the very institutions that ensure a baseline understanding of political history — local public schools. And in doing so, the movement is able to push out educators and ban books that do not suit its ideological views.
www.rollingstone.com
Phillips’ fight with Collin College is part of a broader struggle over education here in the swath of suburbs and exurbs of the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, once conservative strongholds that in recent years have become more diverse — racially, culturally, and politically — as business-friendly tax policy draws emigration from across the nation and abroad. But the influx of new people and ideas has produced a backlash: The area was home to an unsettling number of Jan. 6 defendants, and in recent years, Philips says, there has been a resurgence in far-right extremism.
Much of the struggle is playing out in schools. Despite right-wing pundits’ continued braying about “censorship” and “cancel culture,” the local brand of revanchism has pushed to penalize educators who speak their minds and ban books that challenge conventional wisdom or present uncomfortable truths.
At Collin College alone, four professors have been let go amid controversial circumstances over the past two years, including one who lost her job after a mean tweet about Mike Pence. Across the region, at least nine superintendents at public schools have announced plans for resignation in just the past few months, according to The Texas Tribune. In a nearby town, a high school principal made local history as the first Black person in his post — and then lost his job amid a panic over “critical race theory.” Meanwhile, conservative activists push for a mass purge of objectionable reading material from public school libraries.
These are local stories that, together, have national implications. They serve as representative cases of what it looks like when the MAGA movement, having lost power at the national level, establishes effective control over the very institutions that ensure a baseline understanding of political history — local public schools. And in doing so, the movement is able to push out educators and ban books that do not suit its ideological views.
When the MAGA Movement Comes for Your School
North Texas yields a frightening window of what life is like when Trump supporters hold all the power
www.rollingstone.com
