Should JCPS break up? Well, you either support oppressive legislation or you don't.
Time to rally the troops has passed. Time to identify the allies is over. It is quite binary at this point. You either support oppressive legislation or you do not. You either support teaching slavery as having benefits for the shackled or you do not. You are either willing to demonstrate your support for the school system to not be divided or you do not. Sideline spectating and hiring diversity officers and wishing the best for the city and Jefferson County Public Schools is toothless.
As some just brace for the impact that such wicked legislation will have on Louisville, others spectate and speculate. Many are just watching to see where the next controversial tweet or viral video from the warriors of equity comes from. Others will secretly call the war-torn gladiators in support and tell the warriors who risk jobs, career ascension, relationships with families and friends to keep it up and to war on for the people. All the while these spectators risk nothing more than some cell phone data minutes hitting retweet or calling the bludgeoned, bloody, and bold soldiers who have answered the battle cry well before the latest racist attacks on education.
Be clear, the binary lines have no region for neutrality. The cronyism and sectarianism that threatens to divide this city needs opposition to stand in and up. Local companies, universities, churches and organizations that claim to support equity and goodwill to all, need to make it plain and clear. The public rejection of legislators and legislation must be openly addressed by proving that that company did not hire an equity officer to be cliché and compliant. The rejection of anti-intellectualism, should be metered by local and distant universities not only teaching truths but addressing the lies and publicly saying as a university that it universally opposes the politicos that pen and even opine such putrid proposals.
Breaking up JCPS won't solve anything. GOP is too focused on power, not student success.
Legislators must write bills that protect progress
No one can be exempt. If you are an elected official, please officiate! There is nowhere to fall back to. Unless the river is an option, which is where these bill writers will gladly have Black Americans and others dwell and eventually die. Oppose every word written and write a different bill that protects the progress, although minimal, that this state and Black blood-built country has made. Super majority Republican party be damned! Mount up and move into battle position. Then, engage!
There are four actions that are needed in order to oppose the ill intent of lawless legislation. Any and all can activate the following actions. Albeit, those who have a broader audience and access to the wrongdoers and benefactors of current and possible future policies should be out front. Denounce, deny, dedicate and demonstrate. Maybe the simplest one is to denounce: the desire to study JCPS transportation, division of the school district, adoption of curriculum that is pro-slavery and erases truth. Deny any support, flimsy or firm, to bills that problematize real equity or make real equity evil. Dedicate time, resources and opportunities to not just stop, but destroy racism.
Curriculum omissions are strategic: Editing education maintains racism, sexism, classism and unearned elitism
Demonstrations of learning is something Jefferson County Public Schools promotes
Students must demonstrate that they understand the concept, lesson, curriculum, etc. We need all willing sects of community to demonstrate loving. Although a verb, tears, tweets, tagging and whispered shallow talk is a zero in the grade book of gains. Substantial demonstrating yields tangible, visible and undeniable evidence for upending unjust laws and legislation.
Supremacy, oppression, sexism, racism, bigotry and barbarism are springs in the mattress that this nation rests on. It is time for those who have been sleep deprived because of these unhealthy and pain causing springs to show how woke you are. We, the woke, even the semi woke, at this point, should be too tired to pander and placate. Go ahead, demand the school board and every other board show you what side they are on and how they are unapologetically and publicly working to not have the future of this city flanked by maddog political motives to redline righteousness and bleach thought.
Claude McKay, a pivotal figure in the Harlem Renaissance, penned a poem titled, If We Must Die. He calls for nobility, purpose, directness and dueling. Even in the war cry from McKay, he does not guarantee a loss. He proclaims if (alluding to possibly not) we must die. This is where we are pastors. This is where we are parents. This is where we are professors. This is where we are politicos. This is where the people are. This is where we are presidents of UPS, Amazon, YUM, Ford, LG&E, University of Louisville, General Electric, Humana, GLI and a host of others - most of whom have equity officers. The murderous cowardly pack is not just attacking Jefferson County Public Schools. Sure, it would be easy to banish this bad business to just the schoolhouse; however, the sinister shove of the schoolhouse quadrupled by the silence of the righteous will send this town to soot at the bottom of the river that coincidentally served as a border for bondage during (colonial) slavery.
Frederick Douglass, another pro-equity titan in the history of America said, in his often chopped up speech, What to a Slave is the Fourth of July, "It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake." This attempt to wreck the work of a school district and a city that admittedly has some warts, while ignoring the contagious rash of racist, sexist, elitists that modernize Jim Crow laws must be met with fervor and clear articulation of an unwavering position for righteousness. Mealy-mouthed whispers and oscillating loyalty must be divorced.
McKay said, the mad and hungry dogs are around us. Time to bite back. It has been time.
John Marshall is the Chief Equity Officer of JCPS, essayist, speaker, life member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc, president and owner of an Educational Equity firm, and father. Follow him on X. LinkedIn, Threads, and Facebook.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: JCPS district break up is legislative anti-woke ploy against equity
