In response to the racism inherent in Critical Race Theory (“CRT”)—i.e., that blacks are victims and whites are evil—18 states have passed laws prohibiting schools from engaging in race-based teaching. South Carolina was one of those states and, according to a laugh-out-loud funny article in the Washington Post, the law is working. Incidentally, the article isn’t intended to be funny. It is, instead, intended to be a heartrending human interest story about a martyred leftist female teacher who violated the law and got caught.

In its general appropriations bill for 2021-2022, the South Carolina legislature, for the first time, inserted a specific clause aimed at blocking leftist-style racism and sexism in education:

For the current fiscal year, of the funds allocated by the Department of Education to school districts, no monies shall be used by any school district or school to provide instruction in, to teach, instruct, or train any administrator, teacher, staff member, or employee to adopt or believe, or to approve for use, make use of, or carry out standards, curricula, lesson plans, textbooks, instructional materials, or instructional practices that serve to inculcate any of the following concepts:  (1) one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex; (2) an individual, by virtue of his race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously; (3) an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his race or sex; (4) an individual's moral standing or worth is necessarily determined by his race or sex; (5) an individual, by virtue of his race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex; (6) an individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his race or sex; (7) meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by members of a particular race to oppress members of another race; and (8) fault, blame, or bias should be assigned to a race or sex, or to members of a race or sex because of their race or sex.  Nothing contained herein shall be construed as prohibiting any professional development training for teachers related to issues of addressing unconscious bias within the context of teaching certain literary or historical concepts or issues related to the impacts of historical or past discriminatory policies.

In other words, the kind of racism that has always characterized Democrats—in the bad old days, blacks were bad, and whites were good; in the bad new days, blacks are good, and whites are bad—is forbidden. And the new sexism in which Democrats delight (men bad; women good) is gone, too. Yay! Check here to see if your state has a similar law.

(Note to South Carolina voters: If you don’t elect conservatives, this provision will vanish from future appropriations.)

In Chapin, South Carolina, a white woman (the heart of the modern Democrat party) thought the law didn’t apply to her. In a classroom decorated with BLM and LGBTQ paraphernalia, she told her AP English class to read from Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, a decidedly CRT piece of racial literature.

What happened next came as a surprise to Mary Wood: Two of her students reported her for violating the new law. They claimed that Coates’s work (and, presumably, Wood’s subsequent class discussion) made them “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” because of their race. Indeed, wrote one student, it was like “reading hate propaganda towards white people.”

How do we know about this? We know this because the WaPo wrote a long article about Woods’ martyrdom. And when I say martyrdom, you need to understand the pathos of the article, beginning with the image (the standard “brave leftist woman staring at the horizon with her hands on her hips”) and the first paragraphs:

As gold sunlight filtered into her kitchen, English teacher Mary Wood shouldered a worn leather bag packed with first-day-of-school items: Three lesson-planning notebooks. Two peanut butter granola bars. An extra pair of socks, just in case.

Everything was ready, but Wood didn’t leave. For the first time since she started teaching 14 years ago, she was scared to go back to school.

Was Wood fired? No. Was her house firebombed? No. Was she deplatformed? No. Did people spit on her in the streets? No. Instead, she was told not to teach racially divisive material in her classroom. Also, there was a debate about whether she should be fired for exposing her school to a loss of state funds. And people looked at her funny in the grocery store.

The article goes on and on about the horrible choices teachers like Wood must make. Actually, there is no choice. Abide by the law or don’t teach at the school. But Wood and her ilk have never believed the rules apply to them, and they’re put into an emotional tailspin when they do.

For Wood, that tailspin means she doesn’t know whether she can “trust” her students. Of course, if she’d just teach them writing and analytical skills from books that explore universal human constructs, she wouldn’t have to worry about trust.

The article is way too long to summarize properly here. Let me just say that it’s worth reading. First, it’s incredibly funny. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh.

Second, it shows that, if the public is willing to act against these leftist classroom tyrants, the laws work.

And third, it’s a useful insight into how these leftist teachers view their roles—and, believe me, it’s not about education. It’s about indoctrination into ideas antithetical to the Constitution and classic values of equality and liberty.

Fourth, Wood represents the majority of American teachers, whether they’re in leftist or conservative enclaves. They all come from the same teaching and accreditation programs, which exist to replace learning with leftist ideology in America’s classrooms.

Image: American classroom by Andrea Widburg