Fresno State professor: How Bullard High’s racial crisis is linked to America’s politics

When asked why the only Black conservative U.S senator voted not to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to be confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina said, “Because she represents the liberal agenda.” This begs the question, “What is the liberal agenda?”

In a nutshell, the liberal agenda is the creation, development, and refinement of the 1940s capitalist regulatory welfare state better known as “The New Deal.” It supported the working class via the new Social Security law and the right to unionize. Then came the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which led to Sen Scott’s successful career. The GOP attacked the New Deal as being socialist/communist.

Today’s liberal agenda had its antecedents in the northern wing of the Democratic Party pondering the lyrics of the party’s theme song at that time (1945), “The House I Live In, That’s America To Me.” This song has been made famous by the voices of Paul Robeson, Frank Sinatra, Neil Diamond, and Mahalia Jackson.

The northern wing of the Democratic Party embraced the rapidly changing racial demographics with the massive number of Puerto Ricans immigrating to New York City (think “West Side Story” ), the immigration of Mexicans into the Southwest, the migration of Black West Indians to the northeast quadrant, and earlier, the “Great Migration” of Black Americans from the deep South to the urban cities of New York, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, and even Los Angeles. These social groups as well as “Big Labor” became the voting base of the post-WWII party. The lyrics represent this development:

“What is America to me . . . A certain word ‘democracy’. . . the grocer and the butcher . . . The faces that I see . . . All races, all religions, that’s America to me. The place I work in, the workers by my side . . . The dream that’s been a-growing for 150 years.”

The new Democratic Party not only embraced the changing multi-cultural America but also the class question and how public policy should be used to protect and serve working class women and men. This embrace attained its clearest expression when President Harry S. Truman supported the Democratic platform of 1948, “To Secure These Rights” of America’s racial minorities.

In response, the southern wing of the Democratic Party bolted and formed their own party, the “Dixiecrats,” which was a synonym for the Ku Klux Klan. Upon the collapse of this party, its members moved to the White Supremist party of George Wallace and his American Independent Party in 1968, and eventually to today’s conservative and right-wing Republican Party. After witnessing Confederate flags hoisted in the Capital by the 2021 insurrectionist mob, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy said, in embracing this racist behavior, that his party is a “Big Tent” party and even the KKK of America is accepted within it.

There is a direct line from this history to what occurred on May 10, 2022, within Fresno-area high schools. Racist and dehumanizing images of Blacks were posted on social media by a few students at Bullard High School; as a result, in resistance and solidarity, over 400 students from other schools such as Edison, Fresno High, Sunnyside and McLane walked out in protest.

These horrific images were of slavery and racism within the Jim Crow era. Ironically, these images represent the thesis of the GOP-hated “1619 Project” and “critical race theory (CRT).” One may legislate against the teaching of this pedagogy or ban or burn books with this literature in them, but all students know that with their personal computers, both the project and CRT are merely a click away from their social consciousness.

The walkout is reminiscent of the counter-culture generation of the 1960s, in which white and minority teenagers protested racism, poverty, and war. Their adversaries were the youth appendage of the GOP, “Young Americans for Freedom” who hated and fought against a changing America.

Unbeknownst to them in their confusion, they embraced some facsimile of George Wallace’s mantra, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever!” In a twisted logic, this sentiment may have been what drove a few students to post racist images at Bullard High School.

Malik Simba is a professor emeritus of Afrian studies and history, California State University Fresno.