A highlight of today’s phase of U.S. history arises from highly publicized exclusionary actions taken by various state legislatures and others in the public sphere regarding race and sexual subject matter.
Some of these actions focus on the elimination of certain information from primary and secondary education courses and reference materials.
One topic is what is called critical race theory. Neither I, nor most of those who consider it to be a threat, really know what it means. Technically, it has been described as an academic and legal framework denoting that systemic racism is part of American society.
Why academic focus on the subject leads to dire consequences is even more unclear. Adding to the murky foundation for the attack is that courses addressing the subject exist rarely and almost exclusively at the college level.
Then there is the movement, exemplified in Florida, to sanitize the education of the country’s youth by forbidding any classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity. Any discussion of such topics is left up to parents who in reality may do so ineptly or not at all.
These legislative actions are accompanied by concerted efforts by individuals, guided by advocacy groups, to ban books in school libraries that discuss sexual identity conflicts, sexual conduct and practices and accounts of racial suppression, including indigenous people.
A troubling aspect of these movements to establish rigid classroom subject-matter boundaries is that they disregard the expertise and judgment of teachers and supervising school boards in determining how best to meet the education needs of students in their charge.
These censorship actions are rationalized as being necessary to protect school children from objectionable subject matter that may have negative psychological or behavioral impacts. The result can be cast as indoctrination, akin to development of group think, the kind of thing we condemn China for.
Another area relates to gender-based health care. Legislation enacted in many states focuses on the small number of transgender individuals in their communities. Those in Utah have been affected by a law enacted in 2022 after override of a veto by Gov. Spencer Cox barring transgender athletes from participating in girls’ sports. It was followed in 2023 with a law banning gender-affirming health care for individuals under 18 years of age.
What is especially disturbing is the commonality of these actions. They all seem to stem from nationwide agendas related to campaigns against what is called “wokeism.” The term has been defined as “the behavior and attitudes of people who are sensitive to social and political injustice,” seemingly a humane attitude that should be admired rather than scorned. The term, however, has been weaponized by the right-leaning political constituency as constituting excessive challenges by far-left liberals to community norms.
Evaluations as to whether some of those challenges go too far, even in the minds of socially conscious citizens, are certainly appropriate. But such discomfort falls far short of the vitriol by those who sarcastically fling the term woke at virtually any proposal by those on the other side of the political divide attempting to overcome prejudices that affect particular minority groups.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the referenced laws has been the minimization of sympathy for the Individuals who are adversely affected either directly or by implication by the proscriptions ostensibly imposed for the public good. There is little concern, sometimes outright disdain, for those within those vulnerable groups. They include transgender children and their parents, gay, lesbian or bisexual individuals and their families and African Americans and other racial minorities
Thus, although many of the issues involved are validly debatable, what appears to be behind the described actions are lineups of Republican controlled state legislatures, including Utah’s, to adopt laws consistent with agendas promoted by far-right conservative leadership. Part of the motivation is to put in their place the “wokes” who advocate for improvements in the treatment of particular vulnerable groups.
That the agendas are part of a nationwide movement was illustrated by the vicious excoriation of Gov. Cox by Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson after the governor’s compassion-motivated veto of the transgender athletic exclusion bill.
These attitudes cause the laws and other suppressive actions to be lacking in humanity and loaded with prejudice.
Clayton Parr
Clayton Parr, Draper, is a retired natural resources attorney who, after growing up in a small Wyoming coal-mining town continues to be deeply disturbed by the swirls of intolerance in the world outside of that of his youth.
