Two 2020 articles in the Sierra County Sun report the racist and authoritarian impulses in Truth or Consequences (school board, city commission), impulses existing in many other small towns. The issues arousing controversy led by some elected officials are of modest importance. But, when the issues are race or differences of opinion, some elected officials on both panels revealed their fear of a black presence or white dissent.
School Board members Christine LaFont and Julianne Stroup complained about a Public Education Department proposal revising the social studies curriculum with greater accuracy about race and racism in American history. In this context, demographic data indicate the strength of local bigotry. Whites constitute more than 85% of TorC’s population, just under 6,000, and of Sierra County’s population, just under 12,000. Blacks number about 36, or 0.6%, of the city population, and about 48, or 0.4%, of the county population. Although the numbers of blacks are small, racism is strong.
City Commission member Frances Luna smeared the many voters petitioning for a referendum on an energy-metering mandate with $50 monthly penalties for refusal. She also encouraged harassing these peaceful petitioners, who acted unlike citizens disguised as Indians throwing tea into the sea to protest a tax from a faraway country.
The small-town myth suggests that everyone is folksy with everyone else in a small-town, with holiday ceremonies and parades, church and school bake sales, etc. But in a politically polarized country, with politics no longer local, but national, small towns have become incubators of bigotry, vitriol, and violence. Most TorC residents, like those in other small towns, are conservatives, properly “regressives”—my term—, who are waging an asymmetric war against liberals who, with few exceptions, do not use their tactics: name-calling, motive-mongering, and threats of, incitement to, or acts of violence.
Regressives desire to return to authoritarian rule which preceded the founding of the United States yet would, ahistorically, privilege “true Americans”—whites and Christians only. Regressives, far from desiring to conserve America’s basic democratic values, want to repudiate them, including three prominent ones in its foundational documents. The first “self-evident” truth of the Declaration of Independence asserts that “all men are created equal”; the First Amendment of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights asserts “freedom of speech” and “the right of the people…to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Together, these three values imply respect for and civil treatment of others.
These truisms are necessary reminders of an important part of the definition of what it means to be American, and set appropriate standards to judge the behavior of citizens and the conduct of officials in this country. On the basis of their views, TorC regressives LaFont, Stroup, and Luna are un-American, radical in their opposition to equality, free speech, and the right to petition. Their views, accepted by colleagues and TorC voters, encourage racism, disrespect, and incivility; revert to the values of tribal barbarism—ignorance and violence—; and expose the myth of benign small towns as a myth.
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The PED proposal is bad on educational grounds, but LaFont’s and Stroup’s views are worse because they reflect the racism of many TorC voters. Their statements do not cite Critical Race Theory, but they assume that it influences the PED proposal. According to regressives’ inflammatory misrepresentations, CRT divides Americans by race and teaches hatred of whites. These regressive talking points incite resistance to education about race and racism in America—a perverse position for school board members.
Perverse also because opposition to CRT is entirely unreasonable. CRT studies the historical influences of race on institutional arrangements which have created racial disparities in the public domain. There is nothing new or secret about it. The media have long reported the facts of these disparities in employment, education, health care, housing, transportation, banking, etc.; scholars have long studied them; only now are racists overreacting to academic research which has been ongoing for half a century.
White racists have reason to react unreasonably to CRT, however. Individual racism is mostly a private matter beyond the reach of government action—leaving racists feeling secure. Institutional racism is mostly a public matter within the reach of government action by legal enactments or judicial decisions which can lead to social change toward equality—leaving racists feeling insecure. Attacks on CRT are racist attacks on historical truth which can lead to change achieving, or ever more closely approximating, equality. LaFont and Stroup want public education, under the guise of teaching American history, to teach only the racist fable of white superiority reflecting achievement, not advantages significantly based on racist suppression or discrimination.
LaFont’s and Stroup’s views reflect this fear of truth-in-teaching. At best, Ms. LaFont is conflicted. On the one hand, she likes “‘more emphasis on cultures and … causes and effects for all groups’”; on the other hand, she thinks that “‘It’s better to address what’s similar with all Americans. It’s not good to differentiate’.” Presumably, she favors homogenizing 330 million Americans by erasing factors differentiating not only blacks and whites, but also men and women; Christians, Jews, and Muslims; and people of different ethnicities and national ancestries. Although she cannot hide her gender or race, logic would compel her to forsake her Christian identity. Or, possibly, she would accept ethnic cleansing and other drastic steps to “make American great again” as a country of—oops—white Christians only by eradicating people with differentiating factors. Of course, the truth about race and racism in American would support a significantly different view: it’s not good to discriminate.
Ms. Stroup says, “Our country is not a racist country. We have to teach to respect each other. We have civil rights laws that protect everyone from discrimination. We need to teach civics, love and respect. We need to teach how to be color blind.” She wants to deny racism altogether and thereby eliminate the need for change. Her view: no racism; ergo, no problem. Her statements are contradictory or contentious. "We have civil rights laws that protect everyone from discrimination”—is both nonsensical and delusional. If racial discrimination did not exist, laws against it would be unnecessary; and laws are not self-enforcing. Of course, it is also nonsense to speak of respecting others by deprecating or denying traits of individuality important to them.
La Font’s and Stroup’s efforts to sanitize or eliminate in public education historical information about race and racism in America are camouflaged racist efforts to perpetuate bigotry, not only in their children, but in everyone else’s.
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The myth about small-town folksiness is challenged by the authoritarian impulses of Luna, owner of a newspaper and a woman’s gun shop. Angered by a large number of petitioners objecting to a city commission penalty, she smears them by name-calling and motive-mongering, and urges harassment. I quote the city commission article:
Luna…called upon the community to ‘stand up to these malicious individuals’—a ‘small, vocal minority’ who ‘have trust issues with the commission.’ Luna—looked up to by many as a pillar of the community—sought to deny local-government critics their First Amendment rights to comment at city commission meetings by asking her readers to aggressively help her silence all such naysayers.
[Luna’s 19 November column] descended into an unhinged and anti-democratic rant against her constituents who dare to question city government. Even more disturbingly, Luna called for her readers to take it upon themselves to publicly castigate and shame the civic activists for their ‘constant bickering and negativity’ whenever and wherever the good citizens of T or C encountered these malcontents….
[Luna urged] ‘that it’s time those of us who know that the right thing is being done to stand up to these malicious individuals. Stand up to them on Facebook, at the grocery store, and even as they are walking down the street. Let them know their behavior is unacceptable—undesirable and unwelcome. I’m not threatening them with bodily violence, but I will no longer tolerate their falsities, their hypocrisy and their belittling of the people who work for our government entities, who have lived here and given of their lives to make our community a better place to live. Seriously, what have they done but try to destroy us and waste our valuable tax dollars?’
Perish the thought that Luna wants her violent verbal attacks on citizens exercising their First Amendment rights to lead to violent physical attacks on them, much less to increased sales at her gun store. She would deny the truth of such consequences. But her lunatic advocacy of up-front-and-personal incivility not only tarnishes the myth of small-town friendliness, respect, and decency, but also encourages government repression of Constitutional rights and regressives’ thuggery against citizens exercising them.
Recent polls show that Americans are losing faith in democracy. Some TorC leaders on its school board and city commission are a good example why, one replicated in thousands of small towns across the country. Regressives are more racist than most Americans, more likely to resist the truth about racism, and more likely to resort to violent verbal or physical attacks on those with different views. They are betraying democracy because America’s demographics are transitioning from a majority white to a majority rainbow populace. Prompted by the racist fear that “they” are coming, they want no democracy when “they” arrive. Regressives are disregarding or fighting truth and its consequences to get and keep political power and dominance, not as American patriots, but as guerrilla parasites infecting and destroying the body politic.
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