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America
is at an inflection point as to whether our democracy will survive.
After the persistent perpetration of Donald Trump’s ‘Big
Lie’ that the November 2020 presidential election was stolen
from him, there are a rising number of his adherents who are taking
actions to cement this lie into the body politic via coercive and
legislative acts.
Ethnic
minorities - Asian and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Americans, African
Americans, Indigenous Americans, and Latinx Americans - are being
subjected to increasing acts of violence and disenfranchisement, and
teachers are having their reputations brutalized for demanding
protection from COVID-19 prior to resuming in-person instruction.
To
unpack this observation, we examine each in turn. In a review of the
harassment and killings of members of the aforementioned groups, we
find an escalation of especially heinous acts against AAPI citizens,
in particular, as their numbers are increasing at exponential rates,
followed in order by Latinx Americans, Indigenous Americans, and
African Americans, ranging from 100 to more than 400 percent.
This
demographic change in the nation’s racial makeup, projected to
occur over the next 20-30 years, will not only change the nation’s
skin tone but will likely rearrange the nation’s power
arrangements given the rush to restrict access to voting among people
of color. It is no accident that the new voter suppression law
recently passed in Georgia is in the legislative pipeline in other
states where their numbers are increasing.
It
is no accident that Texas, where Republican electoral victories are
on the decline, and Arizona, Georgia (twice), Michigan, Nevada, and
Pennsylvania which flipped to the Democrats from Republicans in the
presidential election from 2016 to 2020 are the primary targets. Joe
Biden and the first Vice President of color, Kamala Harris, were
elected to the White House, the nation’s second biracial
executive leadership team.
Coupled
with these actions are the vicious and increasing attacks on our AAPI
brothers and sisters from coast to coast meant to stoke fear in this
rising demographic. This voting bloc was essential to Biden’s
victories in states that Trump carried in 2016 and could set the
stage for a reordering of political power going forward unless
Republicans change their policies to become more racially inclusive.
There
appears to be no interest on their part to be anything other than an
overwhelmingly White party so Republicans’ only other option is
to limit the number of ethnic minority citizens who can vote by
erecting more rigid barriers to their balloting participation.
Autocratic and Apartheid-like strategies are a tried and proven way
to achieve this goal.
The
continuing attacks on teachers are another scheme to facilitate this
effort by demeaning them as a professional group while promoting the
privatization of public education. Since the majority student
populations currently enrolled in public schools are now of color,
there is decreasing interest by conservative White politicians to
fund their education.
This
is specifically the case in low-wealth poverty-ridden public school
districts where Republicans have funded state-level elected officials
to pass laws to allow public funding of private and religious schools
and the rapid expansion of largely unregulated charter schools. The
latter have been designated public schools although they are subject
to few public school curricular, educational, and legal guidelines.
The
objective is to reduce traditional public schools to warehouses for
the most challenging students to serve and teach. By robustly funding
private, religious, and corporate-controlled charter schools and
enrolling students whose parents’ values closely approximate
those of their middle-class counterparts, they can claim success.
The
widely heralded Success Academy Charter Schools of New York City have
employed this approach with great success. When they find that the
educational support behaviors of parents of children they enroll do
not conform to their expectations, the children are counseled out or
expelled. There are and have been several court suits to contest
these actions that have been settled with non-disclosure agreements.
Over
time, it is expected that public school teachers will be reduced to a
level of serfdom as their unions will be decimated due to their
demonization and the loss of students. Then, it is believed, public
school teachers will be more willing to submit to autocratic
authority. At the same time, their ethnic minority fellow citizens,
who have also voted prodigiously for Democrats along with them, are
literally being beaten and legislated into political submission.
Taken
together, these acts constitute a systematic move toward autocracy
and Apartheid which will enable Republicans, who are primarily White
and male, to rule over an increasingly racially diverse country.
Donald Trump was prescient in his promotion of misogynistic,
nationalistic, anti-immigrant plans, and his stacking of the federal
courts with right-wing judicial appointments during his single term
in office.
His
‘Big Lie’ about his election loss is now being codified
into enough state laws to enable Republicans to return to power in
2022 and for him to recapture the presidency in 2024 if these
autocratic, Apartheid-like legislative initiatives hold and the
harassment and violence go unchecked. The nation is in for a “…
rough ride.”
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