“Whiteness” in 2047

Change in percentage of white children in public schools is a proxy for immigration-driven population change. As I wrote in September, white children were 81% of America’s public school students in 1972, 63% in 1997, expected to be 45% in 2022, and, assuming the same pace of annual decline, 27% by 2047.

This is trouble for everyone, especially the white population. A simple search engine “experiment” illustrates. Education Week has a paid circulation of 50,000 education professionals. I searched EdWeek.org using the term “whiteness.”

“Whiteness” is a word used with increasing frequency in progressive circles, particularly universities. The term conveys racial animus toward the white population. The EdWeek whiteness search turned up this 9-18-19 commentary: “’Mr. Turner, Are You Racist?’ A White Teacher Grapples With His Privilege.”

That search also produced news about the National Education Association. The NEA is a 2.9 million-member teachers professional association. The North Carolina Association of Educators is an affiliate. At its July convention, the NEA agreed to “incorporate the concept of ‘white fragility’ into NEA trainings and staff development, literature, and other communications.”

Concepts like “white privilege,” “white fragility,” and others highlighting problematic “whiteness” were unknown a few years ago. Imagine concepts that will be justifying educational, governmental, and corporate policy by 2047. If it’s bad now, how bad will it be in 28 years?

More on K-12’s ever-intensifying diversity challenge: A prominent education historian, Diane Ravitch, wrote a best seller in 2003: The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn. One revelation: hundred-page “bias and sensitivity guidelines” textbook publishers use to screen textbook content. The publishers want to avoid offending identity groups. Offending a sensitive group could derail approval of a textbook by state textbook adoption committees. At risk: millions in sales.

The mother lode of whiteness ideology, however, are America’s universities. I recently read The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture (2018) by Heather Mac Donald, Manhattan Institute fellow and frequent guest of Tucker Carlson. For a sense of The Diversity Delusion, watch her 38-minute YouTube interview with the Hoover Institution’s Peter Robinson. It’s had almost 500,000 views since April.

America is in a pickle. Its institutions, its leaders — all of them — have failed us for decades. But strange things can happen to disrupt disastrous trends/policies. One was the election of Donald Trump. Another would be his re-election.

Tom Shuford