Elizabeth Warren's plan to denazify America

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Mindy, you are not a brand. No one is. Unfortunately, you and I may have a “brands”. Metaphorically the marks peolpe identify with us. For people, we tend to call it reputation. You have students. They may seek you out, or avoid you, based on your reputation. Your “brand.” But that’s not you the person. The personal “brand” vs personal reputation debate is a separate interesting discussion (that I’m unfortunately all too happy to get into). May I suggest a truce there?

I’ve been trying to talk about something different. How does Elizabeth Warren drive adoption of a federal program by schools? Under the system as it is, those school districts least likely adopt it need to be persuaded. You are not the target. I suspect your school might not be a target.

I’m not talking about the content of the program. I’m talking about how the program is presented to school districts. And that if not handled correctly could cause backlash in some communities.

I called it branding. Maybe that was inarticulate, but does have reasonable parallels. I’m not even suggesting branding as in the glossy synthetic stuff we see in commercials. Just something as simple as calling the program “Robust History” instead of something like “Anti-White Nationalism.”

As dumb as it may seem to you, a program called “Anti-White Nationalism” put out by the feds is going to attract far more resistance in the very districts it’s needed most. And possibly create a rally cry for opponents.

I suggested better “branding” as a way of mitigating this. Not changing the curriculum. Not corporatizing it. But, yes, “marketing” it to school districts. At a minimum, no school is going to adopt a program they don’t hear about. And they won’t adopt one that sounds like more trouble than it’s worth.

As for what you teach, you keep doing you. You and I frequently disagree, but I fully agree the world doesn’t need just clones of our thinking and am glad you are around to disagree with me.

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They can know me as me. Period.

Who I am here does not material change in other places. If people have marketing on the brain when they imagine others, that is not my problem, except in how that makes people assume my actions in this world are a cynical attempt to “deploy my brand”. It is not. That’s the social problem that branding causes, that people who expect “brands” expect a cynical image and project a cynical image. That is a huge problem and is contributed to our isolation and likely a key factor in contributing to the rampant mental health crisis in the US.

Are you going to insist on brands? As @gracchus, adopting corporate ideas has not been particularly helpful, and has contributed to many of the problems found in public education today. Let’s move away from that and treat education as it should be treated - a human right and a public good. Not everything should be shoved into a for-profit model and tarted up with marketing and branding.

Or… and hear me out, now… call it what it is… history. Each class is named for what it’s covering - US, world, European, national history, African American history, Native American history, history of food, history of sports, music, culture, etc. etc. There is no need to over think this. You want to have a class on white nationalism, that’s a great idea. Call it what it is - a history of white supremacy.

And once again, there most certainly needs to be a robust “anti-white supremacist” curriculum. Why? Because it’s a serious issue with a history and a present that absolutely needs to be understood and wrestled with, especially BY WHITE PEOPLE.

And the people that pisses off, well… they probably need it more than the rest of us. We need to dismantle the white supremacist structures if we’re ever going to improve our society with regards to racism. There is no clever trick to get this into the public imagination, no branding will root out such deep ideology, especially when you’re trying to use another aspect of that very same ideology. You have to work to reveal the ideology for what it is, and then work to change the underlying structures and the general understanding of what is possible.

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All the more reason to call it that. If community and school district board members are resisting an educational programme because of that specific name, they should draw the scrutiny of federal law enforcement as well. White nationalism is a terrorist ideology.

There’s no way to sugar-coat a curriculum like this, and no way to compromise with or meet white nationalists halfway. As with courses on the Holocaust, a curriculum like this calls for bluntness, discomfort, and a clear delineation of right and wrong.

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No, I’m suggesting a truce on whether people have “brands”. We used to call them reputations. I’m not even trying to argue whether personal brands are good or bad, just that they appear to exist. And I agree the “deploy my brand” is effed up way of thinking.

I’m in full agreement. Again, I’m talking about how get schools to do it. Elizabeth Warren is suggesting federal involvement. It can’t be done by fiat. It has to be done by adoption at a local level. I’m suggesting that might meet resistance and she should prepare for that resistance.

Exactly. And the people it pisses off live in communities and will stir up shit against dismantling. But they need community support to be effective. So make it harder for them to stir up shit and get support.

You’re so fixated on the word 'brand" you seem to be missing the point. What would you call presenting a program so that it is positively received even by those normally resistant to it?

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If it’s in opposition to white supremacy, white supremacists aren’t going to buy in, no matter how you “brand” it. There is no magical way to get them on board. None. We know this because they did not do that in the 60s. They literally shut down the school system across entire states rather than integrate.

So, no, “new messaging” will not fix this problem. Federal intervention along the lines of what was tried before will help. The only reason it did not fix this problem earlier, was because of a dog whistling campaign to resegregate schools. Public schools are more segregated now than they were in the 1990s, because pressure was taken off local school systems to comply with federal regulations. Progress had been made in some places, but the end of busing due to white middle class pressure on the local level that ensured that federal pressure was lessened.

So, we take away their resources to do so. They don’t want their precious Chads and Beckys to live alongside and get an education with students of color and working class students. Fuck them. We put the money and resources and new kinds of curriculum into minority majority schools and into schools that serve low income families of whatever race. Give schools some sort of workable targets to hit with regards to standards, but don’t try to standardize the approach. Give teachers a good, robust education, FUCKING PAY THEM WHAT THEY DESERVE, give them REAL autonomy in the classroom, and that will actually be helpful. Additionally, how about we stop treating children of color and working class like prisoners who need to be disciplined to do good work. Treat them like young people who have just as much promise and potential as their richer counter parts, but give them better resources than their already advantaged white, rich counterparts. Give them money, autonomy, and the best teachers.

You’re the one who was saying that all we need to do to fix systemic racism and classism in our public education system is to brand things differently. That’s part of the problem and has been - corporatism in the public education system.

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Reaching out to people? Connecting to people? Those are not the same as branding. A brand is an artificial construct that is meant to get people to relate to it like a person. We drink Coke because we think of Coke as our friend. I didn’t get my kids to brush their teeth by getting them on board with the tooth brushing brand, I did it by building a trusting and loving relationship with me so that they would listen to me when I said it was important.

And, sure, with me in particular their relationship with me might be a relationship with a simulacrum of parent that I’ve intentionally created because I believe my core self to be too toxic to expose other people to, but that’s a mental illness, not a model for other people’s behaviour.

I think you are trying to suggest that connecting with other people and branding are two words for a similar idea, but that’s only true if we see our relationships with other people as essentially transactional. In a branding scenario my metric of success is whether or not they adopt the idea I’m presenting. In a connection scenario my metric of success is whether or not we come out of the scenario understanding each other better. In an education scenario my metric of success is whether or not my students come out with more knowledge and wisdom. Those aren’t different words for the same thing (except in the dominant philosophy of our era that disregards humanity).

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I’m not talking about getting white supremacists to buy into jack squat. I’m talking about getting school districts to buy into a program Elizabeth Warren is proposing.

I’m not talking about solving racism with branding. I’m talking about getting school districts to buy into a program Elizabeth Warren is proposing.

Tying the program to federal funding would have been a fair retort. Great idea! Are you fine directing money away from schools that may be more prone to teaching future racists? That’s a fair opinion. But it seems a piss poor way of getting school districts that most need to buy into a program Elizabeth Warren is proposing to buy in.

Edit: I’m bringing this all up because I’ve seen some of the troubles of getting schools to adopt current teaching standards (and I mean state mandated, non-controversial ones). They say they do, but half ass it. What’s going to happen to standards or a program that might draw controversy?

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This. You can soft-peddle the name of the curriculum change, get preliminary buy-in from the white nationalists, spend a lot of time and money developing it, then they will absolutely work to sabotage even the softened curriculum. Then you’ve got a compromise curriculum that is also, somehow, “controversial.”

We learned this with the ACA. Stop compromising with groups that are just going to sabotage any progress, whatsoever. It’s like Stockholm Syndrome. They’ve kidnapped our society and people keep saying we need to hug it out.

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Agree - what are we to do - wait till they start killing people to get tough? Oh! Right! They have already started killing people…

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You do realize that white supremacists have a long term strategy of running for local offices, such as local and state school boards, so that they can control the narratives, right? As such, local control continues to be a large part of the problem here. Federally mandated programs aimed at ending white supremacy is what should have occurred years ago, and it’s what we need to deal with this ongoing problem. We also need to stop worrying about hurting the feelings of people who wish to impose white supremacist rule on the rest of us.

Schools in well-heeled districts have pretty deep pockets, and redirecting funds to schools that need that funding isn’t taking anything away from those students.

If they refuse to cooperate, you take over the school system. They want to take their kids out, they’re welcome to, but schools systems need to be transformed with regards to racism and classism. You keep saying that you’re not talking about branding with regards to content, but you absolutely are.

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No, I’m absolutely talking about branding with regard to content. What I’m not talking about is altering content to create a brand. You can chose which drives which.

You teach history. As passionate at you are about the subject, I would assume you would be an advocate. Do you ever suggest someone should take your class or someone else’s? Do you tell them the benefits of learning? That can all be done without altering the content. You are molding a perception of learning history. A set of expectations around a class. For a particular course, you are creating a {no no, can’t be a brand. Something else}.

Refuse to cooperate and you take over the school? If you want to operate by fiat, then duh, why bother persuading anyone of anything. Just command it and it’s done. Historically that’s worked out pretty well, right?

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Which I feel is not helpful.

That is not branding. It’s not.

What else do you do when the state is in direct violation of the law? In. Direct. Violation. This is what happened at Little Rock. And before you say it, no, incremental change via “branding” would not have changed the stand off situation. Political, social, and legal pressure did and will. [ETA] Years of the civil rights movement educating the white public did nothing to change the mind of the whites who wished to continue with segregation. Changing the tone or messaging to something that seems less offensive will not help. These are not stupid people we’re dealing with. Massive resistance was the white majority response in the south. Shutting down and then years of defunding minority majority schools and white flight was the response to the simple directive by the SCOTUS to integrate schools.

Guess Who’s Coming to School | The Progress
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You don’t mold other people’s perception, you share information you think might be useful to them. We aren’t in a war to control each other’s minds, we’re on the same team trying to do better. The idea that we share information to get other people to think what we think gives us the “marketplace of ideas” which is a worldview that promotes fascism. I’m not an imperialist building an empire of people who believe that white supremacy is wrong.

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When enforcing de-Nazification or similar efforts? Yes (as @anon61221983 pointed out), that’s often the only way to enforce it.

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Got any other examples of minorities being marched somewhere by armed guards?

You showed a great example of when government imposition worked out for the best. Is that always the case? Even in our own country?

I’m not going to disagree that it can be used for good. I’m just HIGHLY cautious about that type of solution.

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And it WAS working, until we (both the US and the Soviets) stopped it because of the Cold War… that’s how so many former nazis ended up in positions of power in both Germanys. And the US government stopped putting pressure on the south to fully integrate.

That’s black students being PROTECTED by the first airborne at Little Rock! They were being protected from white mobs (ADULTS) who would have lynched children! This is what 9 HS children were met by when they LEGALLY attempted to attend classes at their school!!!

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So the white mob turned their attention to a journalist covering the story:

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And what’s the solution to white racism? Letting it happen, because sometimes, federal intervention might be used for oppression?

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As my link (that didn’t one box; sorry) states, the 13th Amendment had to be enforced after the Civil War by Union troops and subsequently federal marshals.

After WWII, denazification in Germany was enforced by the occupying forces.

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If only Eisenhower had re-branded the desegregation effort, I’m sure things would have gone more smoothly with the white supremacists in Little Rock. /s

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So I have to decide between racism and potential oppression? Isn’t there something called a false dichotomy?

Have you seen who is in the White House? I’m more afraid we’ll get both! Sure, he’s not going to be there forever. An guarantees we will never see someone like him again? Or worse?

Little Rock was an example of things going right. Japanese internment and Guantanamo bracket that time period.

You’re predicating having good policies enforced because the right people are in power. I assume the wrong people will get power from time to time and will fuck things up. The good guys don’t always win.

Little Rock and Denazification were after a SCOTUS ruling and a war. There were a lot of steps along the way.

You advocate taking over schools if they don’t comply with federal requirements. To use Little Rock as an example, you’re going to have to show how not teaching something (and you yourself have said all you do is present the information, it’s up to them what to make of it) is violating the US constitution.

To use the de-nazification example , you need to effectively outlaw certain beliefs, communications, and associations. That’s not easy on US soil. You can create policies that discourage (i.e. no contracts with companies owned by people advocating X), but banning is going to be much harder.

I didn’t think Elizabeth Warren was going down either of those paths, but correct me if I was wrong.

To rephrase what I originally suggested as a metaphor: It might be a good idea to wrap some meat around that medicine so the dog gobbles down the medicine before smelling or tasting it, puking it back at you.

What the hell is wrong with that? I get it that some people want to just watch the dog die. But this is aimed at the kids, er, pups.

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Racism IS oppression. Of course the state can be used to oppress people, but the power of the state can be used to protect people. It’s called real life - it’s complicated, messy, and problematic, but the reality is that the state in this case intervened on the side of right, and has done so other times (the civil war comes to mind).

Those parents were not going to let this children in and they would have lynched them if they could have. Children. State intervention in the protecting of individual liberty and rights (the right to an education in a location of one’s choosing) was right and proper. Can we point out bad uses of state power. Of course.

Yes. Because all systems are made up of people, meaning they can be used to both enforce good and bad policies. But the white people who wanted to murder those children (and who opposed integration, much less teaching correct historical truths) were opposing not just the law, but human rights.

I very much understand the complicated nature of power, both in how it can be used to hurt and to promote greater freedoms. I DO study history, so you don’t have to point out oppressive uses of power

And OF COURSE it comes down to people. This entire 3 years should make us all well aware of that fact. The question is whether or not the system of checks and balances set up will hold. The one time it was not holding, this country went to war and had to be rebooted, but was once again compromised. We’re working to fix that now.

No system is perfect, no system is free from defects. Right now we have a system that is based on the concept of enlightenment era rights and responsibilities. We can’t pretend that we don’t live in that system. Living outside that system has consequences, which generally include going to prison or not having access to things like having a voice in political affairs. We work with what we’ve got, or we revolt against the system and live outside of it. How has THAT worked out for the people who’ve tried it?

No. How about we call white supremacy exactly what it is, and not allow white supremacists to dictate all of our actions in this world. Or should we also be teaching intelligent design in science classes, so that the Christians feel more comfortable.

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