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Sarah Inama, a 35-year-old 6th-grade teacher at Lewis and Clark Middle School in Meridian, Idaho, was ordered by her school district to take down two posters from her classroom.
One poster read “Everyone Is Welcome Here,” with images of children’s hands in various skin tones. The other read “In this room, everyone is welcomed, important, accepted, respected, encouraged, valued.”
Ada School District officials didn’t welcome the signs, saying they conflicted “with the intention of Policy and Section 33-138, Idaho Code, Dignity and Nondiscrimination in Public Education Act.”
Their unspoken interpretation of the policy? Apparently, not everyone is welcome in Ada District schools; that the posters “discriminate” against the only ones who should be there, presumably white and Christian males and females. Welcome to a local case of MAGA-Trump thought and speech control.
Too ‘woke’
Inama’s offending signs are deemed “woke” espousals of Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion, or DEI, now the taboo that public institutions, private corporations, and universities are fleeing like the plague. Under the Trump-Musk co-presidency, all must show inhospitality to cultural diversity and equal rights, or face defunding, abrupt firings, or closure.
“Are you now or have you ever been a proponent of DEI?” is today’s version of the dreaded “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” during the ‘50s large-scale McCarthy witch-hunt that destroyed many lives and careers.
Under Trump, any hint of DEI, like teacher Inama’s signs, is furiously being scrubbed from the federal communications and media. The most avid canceler is the Pentagon under Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (he of the white Christian Nationalist tattoos).
Scrapped from the Pentagon’s websites are information honoring World War II Native American Navajo Code Talkers; Mexican American Medal of Honor recipients;the heroicBlack Tuskegee Airmen; and the Japanese American Regimental Combat Team, the Army’s most decorated unit. Removed then restored were the webpages of Black general and Medal of Honor winner Charles C. Rogers and Black baseball great Jackie Robinson’s military service record (he was court-martialed and acquitted in 1944 for refusing to move to the back of an Army bus).
Cancel spree
The anti-“cancel culture” cancel spree doesn’t stop there. According to The New York Times, among the 199 words and phrases banned under Trump are “’biased,’ ‘climate science,’ ‘female,’ ‘women,’ ‘socioeconomic,’ ‘underprivileged,’ and ‘cultural heritage.’”
Also on the list are “race“ and “racism,” minorities,” “inclusion,” “inequality,” etc. In ridiculous and ignorant Orwellian excess, Hegseth’s DEI purge erased “Enola Gay,” the name of the B-29 plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima because of the word “Gay.”
These deletions go hand-in-hand with actual reversals of hard-fought civil rights gains. The federal government has stopped “explicitly prohibit(ing) contractors from having segregated restaurants, waiting rooms and drinking fountains; transgender persons are now banned from military service; and so on.
Lexical and content cleansing is just part of Trump’s wide-ranging crusade against the United States’ constitutional order. For the next four years, Americans must also endure the daily havoc Trump wreaks on the US economy and workings of government – the whiplashing trade tariffs, the mass firings and re-hirings , the partisan weaponization of executive power, the slashing of university and scientific research grants, the sudden animosity to international allies but amity to anti-democratic enemies.
Worse than McCarthyism?
Proscribing diversity, equality, and inclusion likely portends a broader and deeper chilling effect than McCarthyism, not to diminish the latter’s devastating impact on the social fabric and the lives of countless Americans.
McCarthyism targeted a specific ideology and its organizational and political expressions. But Trump and Musk are not refighting the Cold War. They are instead demonizing, even criminalizing, the timeless humane values of compassion, coexistence, cooperation and their concrete expressions.
A pernicious worldview drives their crusade. Elon Musk, who personifies the writer Ayn Rand’s glorification of extreme selfishness, explains it all: “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy,” he told the manosphere’s high priest Joe Rogan. Empathy is OK, Musk said, but not if it leads to “civilizational suicide.”
Apparently, kindness, care and respect for other people’s rights and well-being, democratic freedoms, checks and balances, freedom of thought and speech, Medicaid, Social Security, and other social protections from the excesses of private wealth-seeking – stuff that make us civilized are dangers to civilization itself.
Fortunately, not everyone in Meridian, Idaho is willing to embrace such disdain for humane values and practices that have bound communities despite complex and sometimes intractable differences.
Students from Renaissance High School in the West Ada School District walked out in support of Inama and other teachers who openly advocate inclusiveness. Local groups and businesses rallied behind her and the students. Inama restored her “Everyone Is Welcome Here” signs.
Officials are reconsidering the ban. The school kids showed they were the adults in their school district. – Rappler.com
