The Fascists Are Among Us –
Make no mistake.
Two recent news stories left me deeply worried about the future of our democracy. Don’t get me wrong, the fact that mainstream media can’t stop reporting about Donald Trump’s shenanigans and his hold on the GOP is troublesome enough. But these two stories have an additional insidious aspect because they refer to education and our schools. The controversial policies involved target young people, when they’re still more vulnerable but also more malleable.
I start with the first, less tragic story.
A Black highschool student, Darryl George, was repeatedly suspended from Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu, Texas because the school administration decided that his hair was too long. Darryl has locs, a form of protective hairstyle which also includes braids, twists, and knots. The school district’s dress and grooming policy requires that:
Male students’ hair will not extend, at any time, below the eyebrows or below the ear lobes. Male students’ hair must not extend below the top of a t-shirt collar or be gathered or worn in a style that would allow the hair to extend below the top of a t-shirt collar, below the eyebrows, or below the ear lobes when let down.1
As one can see in the picture above, Darryl pins his locs in a barrel roll on his head and they don’t come close to his eyebrows or earlobes. And on September 1, 2023 the CROWN Act went into law in Texas, which prohibits schools and employers etc. to discriminate against hairstyles and hair texture which is race-based.
Let’s look at the CROWN Act: it stands for Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair Act. Its long title calls it “An Act to prohibit discrimination based on an individual's texture or style of hair.”2 The bill was first introduced to the House of Representatives in 2021 and passed in 2022. Although it stalled in the Senate, more than 20 states have since then adopted the legislation. Including Texas.
After months of suspension and disciplinary actions because of his hair, Darryl George and his family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against school officials and the governor of Texas and other state leaders. Barbers Hill Independent School District also filed a lawsuit, asking a district judge to make a decision about their right to demand the student get his hair cut.
On February 22 a Huston area judge ruled that the school district’s dress code did not violate the CROWN Act; with a reasoning that literally splits hairs. The judge based his reasoning on the fact that the CROWN Act doesn’t say anything about hair length. One of the witnesses, State Rep. Ron Reynolds, co-author of the CROWN Act, pointed out that the hairstyles which the CROWN Act tries to protect are impossible with short hair, that’s why the law doesn’t mention length. Makes sense, right? But no, Judge Chap B. Cain III played it safe and told Darryl George to either change the wording of the state’s law or that of the school’s dress code. George’s lawyer will file a federal injunction.
Why am I going on and on about this? Does it really matter if a student can have long hair or not? I guess it depends whether you agree with a statement Greg Poole, the superintendent of the Barbers Hill Independent School District, published in the Houston Chronicle:
Being an American requires conformity.3
Say what? One has to yield to group pressure if one wants to be an American? One has to conform in order to belong to the group “Americans”? I don’t advocate absolute individualism; if you’ve followed my Substack for a while you know that I deplore selfishness and egotism. If everything is connected, as I claim, then to be overly concerned with oneself is ultimately unsustainable. People need rules so that communities can live together fairly peacefully, but these rules have to make sense. To conform, to obey – this sounds way too authoritarian to me and smacks of fascism. This will be more obvious after I share the second case.
This story is sad and tragic. A 16-year-old non-binary student who attended Owasso High School in Oklahoma died on February 7, a day after they were attacked by three older girls while they were using the bathroom which matched the sex on their birth certificate. Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt had signed a law in 2022 which required public school students to do so. “The goal of this bill is to protect our children”4, said Republican Representative Danny Williams who authored the bill. It didn’t protect Nix and other LGBTQ+ youth from being bullied and harassed at school. On the contrary, the ultra-conservative policies of the Republican-majority House and Senate in Oklahoma have led to higher rates of bullying, threats of violence, and discrimination against LGBTQ+ students. These policies include a ban of the use of non-binary gender markers on IDs and birth certificates, a ban of transgender women and girls to compete in women's and girls’ sports teams, bans against public drag shows, and restrictive laws prohibiting gender-affirming care for minors. This created a dangerous climate of intolerance where many students in Oklahoma’s transgender community feel seriously stigmatized and misunderstood.
Even after Nex Benedict tragically lost their life, Oklahoma’s superintendent for public schools, Ryan Walters, insists that the Oklahoma policies are justified.
There’s not multiple genders. There’s two. That’s how God created us,
he said when questioned about Nex’s death, and he added that he didn’t believe that non-binary or transgender people exist. And he feels that radical leftists exploit this tragedy for political gain.
In January, Walters had appointed right-wing influencer (how I detest this word) Chaya Raichik to the state’s Department of Education Library Media Advisory Committee. She operates several far-right and anti-LGBTQ media accounts under the handle Libs of TikTok: The accounts promote hate speech and transphobia, and spread false claims, especially relating to medical care of transgender children. Walters justified Raichik’s appointment with a statement which claimed that she is
on the front lines showing the world exactly what the radical left is all about lowering standards, porn in schools, and pushing woke indoctrination on our kids.5
But it gets better: on February 23 Oklahoma State Senator Tom Woods stated at a public forum that LGBTQ+ people are “filth” and that he doesn’t want them in “our state”.
We are a religious state and we are going to fight it to keep that filth out of the state of Oklahoma because we are a Christian state – we are a moral state. We want to lower taxes and let people be able to live and work and go to the faith they choose. We are a Republican state and I’m going to vote my district, and I’m going to vote my values, and we don’t want that in the state of Oklahoma.6
So there you have it. If these two stories don't remind you of Nazi tactics I don’t know what would… In both cases the school policies are authoritarian, almost tyrannical. They are implemented by anti-democratic individuals who favor Christian Nationalism, an extremist ideology which the former president has fully aligned with. The potential of social media for demagogy and manipulation would have been Joseph Goebbels’s wet dream. Anti-left, anti-gay, hyper-nationalism, hyper-conformity — déjà vu! Let’s be alert!
I'm devasted by the fascist goosestepping of politicians everywhere. Enlightenment & Love is all we need 🙏💖
Today's America seems incredibly foreign to me... It's nothing like the America I knew 25 years ago... ☹️