The right's assault on public schools

Or: how to re-segregate schools by destroying trust

Who doesn’t want choice? The ability to choose is essential for a functional democracy. A list of options (just not too many options) makes for a healthy society, and healthy free market.

This has been the argument coming from the right for generations: let the people decide. Give them options and market forces will take care of the rest. The cream rises, etc. If you’re not frothy enough, work harder and try again. Something something bootstraps.

Yet the right’s concept of choice obscures more than it reveals. In their redefinition of the term, women are not able to choose what’s best for their bodies. At least one NFL kicker made it clear that women can choose—clothing, food, and household accoutrements for the babies their bodies will ceaselessly manufacture.

How about choosing how you get divorced? Apparently that’s not a choice the right is down with. Ben Carson and Mike Johnson have suggested ending, or at least restricting, the ability to file for a no-fault divorce, “for the sake of families.”

One more: how about choosing what school your children attend? That's certainly something we can all agree on, right?

Sounds good in practice. In reality, this is one of the most egregious generational plans that the right has waged. The right has gone on the offense against public schools ever since Brown v Board of Education offered non-white children a choice in what school they could attend.

Today, “school choice” is a not-very-quiet dog whistle for funneling public tax dollars into religious schools and re-segregating schools along caste lines. And by religious, we should be clear: Christian schools, as right-wing activists have fought against the choice of, say, Islamic instruction.

Not much of a choice, really. And that’s the point.

A very very brief history

When Brown v Board of Education was decided in May 1954, the right went into a frenzy. To them, it was a continuation of assaults on American society (read: white elites) dating back to the New Deal. They were tired of their rights being infringed upon: namely, the right to own property without being taxed. 

Sadly, that’s what it comes down to. But the contours of that quest matter.

Here’s a very very brief history, to be unpacked in future projects: