Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

Warning: possible flame bait, though I do not intend it this way. I am serious.

I've had this thought for quite a while: the (social) left could pivot and win by being more woke.

WTF? What I mean by this is: expand diversity and inclusion to include rural American white culture, Christian conservative culture, and all the rest of what the American academic (mostly urban, mostly middle class to wealthy, mostly coastal) left culture considers out-groups.

DEI should include the "deplorables." (I knew Hillary Clinton was going to lose when she said that. What cringe.)

An American woke social liberal would not go to India and immediately start trashing rural conservative Hindu culture. They would not travel to Saudi Arabia and start trashing poor rural Muslims for having views they disagree with. They're even willing to stick up for Palestinian Muslims in spite of their social views. Why can't they extend this to their own country?

What would sticking up for the "deplorables" look like? First, it would be to stop trashing them. Then it would be to stick up for their rights and defend their needs and go to bat for them against the very real social and economic adversaries that they face. Talk about the opioid epidemic. Talk about the hollowing out of the rural economy. Propose solutions.

You don't win friends or change peoples' minds by mocking and bashing people. That just makes them double down out of spite. There's a very large -- probably double digit -- percentage of die-hard MAGA Trump supporters whose real reason for supporting him is because comparatively-rich white coastal educated liberals hate him. It's a big "fuck you." These people have been the butt of jokes for decades, and they notice. They know they are mocked as dumb, in-bred, ignorant, bigoted, small minded, etc.

https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/guides/scores_achv.asp...

I’d be more worried if the author stepped beyond their scope, and went from observing results to speculating without evidence about what drove the changes.

It seems like enough to say “here’s a big signal that goes counter to the stories we’ve been telling ourselves, it’s worth doing some work to figure out what’s going on.”