I don’t mean to badmouth teachers as a whole. Lots of ‘em do their damndest in tough situations. Still, these stories of families threatened for standing up for their children, their cultural heritage, themselves, history lessons based on political convenience rather than true history, and children being publicly humiliated. Well, these are among the many reasons we choose not to take part in The Education System.

Anyone else find that unintentionally hilarious (I mean, in a NOT kind of way)?

I personally think it’s a little messed up for them to have even allowed parents to act in despicable ways around kids at their school or to distribute that email in the first place.

Having spent my entire childhood fighting and enduring teacher-endorsed bigotry at school (and my entire adulthood reliving it, especially during Nov-Dec for SOME reason), let me predict the future here.

When asked, the school will insist that maybe they might not have completely fully 100% agreed with everything that a select few of the parents might have possibly been kind of doing, but there was nothing they could do about it because that would be violating those few bad apples’ freedom a’speech, regardless of whether the staff on average might have disagreed a little bit with some aspects of what some of them could have been interpreted as doing.

This is bullshit. If what the parents and their children were doing was in any way disruptive or insensitive, then the school administrators absolutely do have the legal right and responsibility to tell them to get the fuck off of school grounds, and they absolutely do have the right and responsibility to enforce it if they refuse. Immunity denied, assholes.

That, is why there is this “focus on racism”.

I think you nailed it. It’s a power struggle, and those who are losing in so many areas of their lives resent losing what they see as one more thing “that has always been that way.” It’s especially galling to lose “it” to one of a group whose members they used to be able to look down upon, but no longer can.

Hence, the jealousy over native owned and run casinos, the past anger over “welfare queens,” and the current bashing of immigrants who are “stealin’ our jobs!”

All of these are easy targets, simple targets, and avoide the hard thinking and hard work required to go after the real source of the problem – typically a combination of a series of stupid economic decisions by individuals compounded by a system that both encourages stupid economic decisions and transfers wealth from the have nots to the haves and have mores at every opportunity.

On a related matter: There is a particular pattern of thinking/behavior in which people hold on to their familiar patterns of behavior despite being told that it is causing offense to others. They say, “I don’t mean any harm, so why can’t I keep doing it?” instead of saying “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cause offense, and I’ll try not to do it again.” One is just as easy to say as the other.

I am always surprised at how many otherwise sensitive and courteous people insist on their right to inflict pain or give offense in matters between ethnic and cultural groups. I always think that perhaps I have not described the matter clearly enough. “I don’t know why it bothers you so much — it doesn’t bother me, so why should I change?”

I am reminded of the dictum “A lady does not unintentionally give offense to others.” Some people apparently think it is their political responsibility to give offense, and that if they are even polite, they have lost some personal battle.

Frowner, thanks for the thoughtful account of your own journey. I think a lot of that sort of thing underlies not only the Thanksgiving debate, but day-to-day interactions between different cultural groups.

For many people, of course, it’s a power struggle, and they more they feel they have lost power in other areas of their lives, the more they take it out on other people.