Republicans should probably do something about the left’s erasure of gender boundaries before biological males begin to compete in women’s sports. Oh, wait…
Republicans should probably do something about the left’s radical definitions of hate speech before they use it to criminalize speech they simply don’t like. Oh, wait…
Republicans should probably do something about academia’s push to mainstream state-sanctioned racism under critical race theory before such curricula makes its way into K-12 schools. Oh, wait…
For years, Republicans have observed creeping leftist indoctrination within the American educational system with amusement, as something to mock and fundraise off while aggressively woke children seeped into the leadership of the nation’s most powerful institutions, from legacy newsrooms to corporate board rooms. Such actors now enjoy the influence to manipulate both public policy and social norms, shifting the cultural window of acceptance to feature the widespread use of pronoun bios and post-pandemic, post-vaccination mask-wearing as signs of virtue.
In May, National Geographic began to feature a new pronoun bio in the form of the “Race Card Project.” The group’s founding director, Michele Norris, published submissions after years of collecting postcards that asked individuals to jot down six words that came to mind on hearing the word “race.”
Most of the submissions made public were relatively predictable, with some bathed in the abject victimization they’re taught to subscribe to based on their identity while others spoke of their shame for being white.
"I'm ashamed for my ancestors' race." pic.twitter.com/fuzuSDMfdb
— National Geographic (@NatGeo) June 7, 2021
To Norris’s credit, the project’s director zeroed in on the individual, offering an outlet to air grievances about conversations on race without the knee-jerk vilification of “white supremacy” against those rejecting the progressive-or-bigot binary.
“Through this work, we get to see people as they see themselves,” Norris wrote. “They chose what they wanted to talk about, what they wanted to interrogate or examine. As a result, we get to see a part of the world that is usually walled off.”
Another side effect of the project, however, appears on its way to include a new virtue signal in professional bios to coincide with the inclusion of one’s almost always obvious pronouns.
In a mass email to readers, the magazine’s Editor in Chief Susan Goldberg included the six-word “Race Card” under her job title. It reads, “white, privileged, with much to learn.”
From a mass email the editor of National Geographic sent out. America surely has the most insufferable elite. pic.twitter.com/hjL7w4IQ0h
— Rod Dreher (@roddreher) June 7, 2021
Seems harmless enough, as just another form of passive progressivism no different from the inclusion of pronoun bios. The quiet adoption of this kind of signature bio over time, however, carries the accelerated pace of defining oneself by one’s race, a dramatic escalation of the cancerous identity politics that lies at the heart of the culture war. In the divisive process, minorities are taught to believe such things as that they aren’t intelligent enough to obtain a state I.D. to vote.
Culture precedes policy. Conservatives who don’t understand that are the ones who allowed decades of campus radicalism to produce the power-players of the political establishment today. Republicans who didn’t understand that are the reason Donald Trump rose from television celebrity to American president and still remains the most popular figure in the GOP post-presidency.
There’s a reason face masks, which quickly became markers of a political stripe, remain legally required on all U.S. flights despite coronavirus cases and transmission falling so low some news organizations have even stopped weekly tracking.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg defended the mask policy last week, telling ABC News, “It’s a matter of safety, but it’s also a matter of respect.” It’s another slippery slope when the government begins to regulate standards of “respect.”
Liberals will mock this piece as another article of conservative fanaticism raising undue hysteria in the culture wars, marking race cards as innocent activism and nothing to worry about. They said the same, however, about each minor development in the culture wars 20 years ago.
