Listen When They Talk

Oregon has decided that graduation should not be tied to competency, for reasons that will surprise precisely no one.

High schoolers in Oregon won’t need to demonstrate basic competency in reading, writing or math in order to graduate for at least five more years because, according to education officials, such requirements are unnecessary and disproportionately harm students of color.

In case you were wondering if they really are motivated by race, the answer is yes.

Board members said the standards were unnecessary and harmed marginalized students since higher rates of students of color, students with disabilities and students learning English as a second language ended up having to take the extra step to prove they deserved a diploma, The Oregonian reported.

If you recall what we learned from Chris Rufo's excellent book, the fate of the actual students of color who are not expected to learn to read, write or do math, matters not at all.

For all of their faults, Davis, Cleaver, and black revolutionaries at least grappled with and appealed to the black lumpenproletariat. The critical race theorists, on the other hand, treat them like lepers—the lumpen class is nowhere to be found in their work, except as symbolic justification for their abstractions. 

This is where the critical race theorists reach the final impasse. Their program has become a form of empty professional-class aestheticism, designed for manipulating social status within elite institutions, not for alleviating real miseries or governing a nation.

On Twitter today, Daily Wire god king Jeremy Boreing asserted that the progressives want blacks to be illiterate and unskilled so they can be manipulated. I usually agree with Jeremy, but this time he's wrong. All you have to do is listen to the left and you'll hear why they do what they do.

The world is unfair because straight, white men made it unfair to maintain their power and oppress everyone else. The inescapable first step in making the world just and fair is the destruction of all the structures created by straight, white men. That includes standardized testing. Students of color do poorly because straight, white men designed the tests to make sure they did poorly.

The best solution, therefore, is to do away with competency requirements while the progressives finish destroying all the structures of society.

That they don't show up for school hardly matters.

Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin on Tuesday threatened to report parents of students habitually skipping school without an excuse to the Jefferson County District Attorney for prosecution for truancy, and even possibly to the Housing Authority of the Birmingham District, which could endanger their subsidized public housing.

Speaking to the Birmingham City Council meeting, Woodfin said the truancy situation in Birmingham City Schools has become unacceptable...

“I want to narrow this down and talk to you all about what’s happening in third grade,” Woodfin said. “A student is truant if they have seven or more unexcused absences. Out of 17 Birmingham schools, that’s elementary, K through 8th combined, well over 50 percent of third grade students are currently truant.

You wouldn't think Mayor Woodfin was a tool of white supremacy, but apparently he is.