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A NEWSLETTER WITH AN EYE ON POLITICAL MEDIA

Of Parents, Teachers, and Those Who Exploit Their Anxieties

The history of movements at both ends of the spectrum fomenting rage at
conscientious teachers

(Just) a little context, please. Regarding Tuesday and the Democrats'
"ugly reality" (Politico) and their "reeling" from the election results
(The New York Times) and how "this is 2009 all over again" (former DCCC
chair Steve Israel), ask yourselves two questions:

* How many of the stories you have read, seen on TV and online, or heard
on the radio have mentioned the fact that 11 of the past 12 Virginia
gubernatorial contests were won by the party that lost the previous
presidential election ... just like on Tuesday?

* How many of the stories you have read, seen on TV and online, or heard
on the radio have mentioned the fact that no Democratic governor of New
Jersey has been re-elected in the previous 44 years ... until Tuesday?

I'm not saying it was a good night for Democrats. I just think the
tiniest bit of historical context might help stem some of the panic.
Much of the Virginia coverage has focused on what Axios called the
"Anti-CRT" forces that allegedly "won" across the nation, though it
offers the corrective

that "[s]chool officials are concerned there's been intense hype and
misinformation ... about what's actually being taught in most
schools." The Washington Post's Hannah Natanson
also reports
the story under the ridiculous (but likely not the reporter's fault)
headline

"Youngkin Pledged More Parental Control of Education, but Changes May
Prove Difficult." In her piece, we learn that Republicans are "tapping a
national vein of anger among some conservative parents, who insist their
children are being indoctrinated with critical race theory." But next we
learn that "[t]he theory, a college-level academic framework that holds
racism is systemic in America, is not taught at the K-12 level in
Virginia-or anywhere else in the country." So good for the Post, in
this case. One of the biggest problems with American journalism is the
fact that politicians' lies are rarely corrected in the places where
they are robotically repeated-one reason why all that work by its
fact-checking teams does the world little good. The fact-check needs to
directly follow the lie.

Axios also claims that what we are seeing is the triumph of a "non-Trump
Republican surge
."
This could hardly be more nonsensical. It's Trumpism with or without
Trump, aided by the mainstream media's constant need to normalize the
dangerous turn taken by the modern-day Republican Party. What its
candidates are running on are lies in support of racism and ignorance,
combined with contempt for the actual mechanics of governance. How else
to explain a campaign that closes with an advertisement attacking a
Pulitzer Prize-winning 1987 novel by a Nobel laureate (who happens to
be a Black woman) in an AP English class, as if this were a genuine
question that should decide who should be the next governor of Virginia?
I asked a similar question last week
, but
that was before I saw the power of this transparent nonsense. Who can
honestly believe that this line of attack is unrelated to the toxic mix
of hatred, aggressive ignorance, and racist fear that Trump doubled down
on-but was already present in the party of Reagan and Gingrich? That
the media say Youngkin's campaign marks a turn toward a "post-Trump,"
less racist GOP demonstrates the unwillingness of our political media to
face up to the ugliness that lies very near the center of our political
universe. And by refusing to call racism by its real name, they are
contributing to its success and are therefore implicated in the damage
it does both to our democracy and to the victims of its mendacity.

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This political moment reminds me, in a way, of the 1968 New York City
teachers' strike-a fight that caused tremendous lasting damage to
liberalism and helped to pave the way for a resurgent right-wing
backlash in the form of the Nixon-Agnew administration and all that
followed. Historical analogies are always flawed in significant ways,
but what that moment has in common with our own is the foolish (and
usually phony) demand that teachers need to be policed when choosing
their curricula. Back then, a group of largely Jewish public-school
teachers found themselves "transferred"-which to them meant
"fired"-from their positions in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville area of
Brooklyn by the newly ensconced largely Black administration there.
Black parents in Ocean Hill-Brownsville were understandably worried that
their kids were falling behind on tests and dropping out at astounding
rates; some were frustrated that predominantly white teachers didn't
live in the community in which they taught, and they thought Black
teachers-or at least those chosen by local Black leaders-might
achieve better results. But like Virginia voters, they fell victim to a
group of political hucksters who exploited their legitimate concerns on
behalf of a political agenda that had virtually no relevance to the
actual problems the community faced.

Rhody McCoy, a Black educator who had previously specialized in teaching
"teenagers considered too violent for regular classes," was hired to
oversee the new experiment with community control, with the blessing of
the city government. A Washington, D.C., native, McCoy had attended
Howard University and then moved to New York to teach in public schools,
by which time he had become an acolyte of the separatist teachings of
Malcolm X.

McCoy hired a man named Herman Ferguson as one of his school principals
just months after Ferguson had been indicted on charges of conspiring
with radical Black activists to murder liberal civil rights leaders
Whitney Young and Roy Wilkins. (He would later be convicted and jump
bail.) Ferguson authored an article calling for "instruction in gun
weaponry, gun handling, and gun safety" and played Malcolm X speeches
over the school loudspeakers all day. Next, McCoy transferred 19
teachers and administrators-18 of whom were Jewish-from Ocean
Hill-Brownsville, despite this being a clear violation of their union
contracts. When they filed a complaint, he announced, "Not one of these
teachers will be allowed to teach anywhere in this city. The black
community will see to that."

Albert Shanker, the Jewish head of the United Federation of Teachers
(UFT) union, pointed out that the argument of the community control
school boards was similar to the one in which "Southern governors demand
the right to do as they wish in the name of states' rights," and that
the issue would end up working not for liberals, but for conservatives.
After all, he continued, how to prevent the harassment of teachers who
are "teaching about the UN" in conservative neighborhoods? Shanker asked
his old friend and ally, the Black labor leader Bayard Rustin, for help.
Rustin mobilized Black labor union leaders and activists to support the
UFT. When he spoke at rallies, Rustin repeated Shanker's critique of
community control: "What will prevent white community groups in Queens
from firing black teachers-or white teachers with liberal views? What
will prevent local Birchites and Wallaceites from taking over their
schools and using them for their purposes?"

As McCoy was hiring replacement teachers in violation of the UFT
contract, Shanker called for a citywide teachers' strike in support of
reinstating the transferred teachers. He argued, "This is a strike that
will protect black teachers against white racists and white teachers
against black racists." Next, just as the school year was beginning,
McCoy announced the replacement of 350 UFT members who had gone out on
strike. When the teachers won in court, Shanker called for McCoy to step
down and abolish the local governing board. This had the effect of
mobilizing the Black community to support their own. Shanker then threw
gasoline on the fire when, on behalf of the union, he distributed
500,000 copies of a leaflet left in employees' mailboxes at a junior
high that called Jewish teachers "middle east murderers of colored
people" and "bloodsucking exploiters"; it also accused them of
"brainwashing" Black children into "self-hatred." It concluded, "The
idea behind this program is beautiful, but when the money changers heard
about it, they took over." Aryeh Neier, who was then executive director
of the New York Civil Liberties Union, called Shanker's distribution
of the leaflets "a smear tactic reminiscent of the McCarthy era against
the governing board in an attempt to create guilt by association."

Victorious in court on September 11, 1968, the teachers returned to
Ocean Hill, but Black militants blocked their entry and a crowd gathered
to shout anti-Semitic epithets and chants. New York' s liberal
Republican mayor, John V. Lindsay, sought to mediate, and Shanker got
most of what he wanted in negotiations. The teachers were by and large
returned to their original posts. But the poison remained behind, and
almost all of it was understood on all sides to be the fault of
"liberals."

What is the point of my rehashing the above (which is drawn from my
history of postwar American liberalism, The Cause
,
where you can find footnotes for all of the above)? Well, what's
playing out in Virginia is the mirror image of what happened in
Oceanside-Brownsville 53 years ago. This time, it's white supremacists
using teachers as the scapegoats for the problems they face in their
lives, and unscrupulous politicians exploiting their fears and
disappointments to try to keep their constituents ignorant. In both
cases, the people who will suffer are the students-and the teachers
trying to help them, for little money, little respect, and endless abuse
by people who don't give a shit about anything but holding on to the
levers of power, by whatever means necessary.

See you next week.

~ ERIC ALTERMAN

Become A Member of The American Prospect Today!

Eric Alterman is a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn
College, an award-winning journalist, and the author of 11 books, most
recently Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie-and Why Trump Is Worse
(Basic, 2020). Previously, he wrote The Nation's "Liberal Media"
column for 25 years. Follow him on Twitter @eric_alterman

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