Why Is Inclusion Political

One more anti-banner ideological censorship law is under legal attack, this time in Idaho. And there is something we can learn about the defense.

This is fallout from the case of Sarah Inama, the Idaho teacher who got in trouble for a classroom poster that showed "Everyone is Welcome Here" with cartoon hands of different skin tones. Her administrators were sure this would violate the state's anti-ideology poster ban. Here it is--

If you are an ordinary human, you may wonder how the heck this poster is ideological or political. Lucky for you, you ordinary human, the attorney general of Idaho, Raul Labrador, wrote a whole op-ed (One state’s bold fight against classroom indoctrination targets woke ‘welcome’ signs) to explain why, and it's illuminating.

On its face, the message appears neutral — simple, positive words that seem apolitical. But the design reveals its true purpose: colorful letters above imagery designed to signal adherence to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. The rainbow colors and progressive symbols accompanying these messages make their political purpose unmistakable.

Do they? What political purpose is that? This, I think, is leads to an important idea that isn't always mentioned--

These classroom displays reflect a broader ecosystem of political resistance groups launched in protest of the political rise of President Donald Trump.

There's aplenty to unpack there.

For one, if you've been looking for a working definition of "woke" or "ideological," here's one for you-- anything opposing Donald Trump. This, really, makes a certain kind of sense. If the regime is going to value first and foremost loyalty to Dear Leader over all else (competence, ethics, adherence to the rule of law, religious principles), then anything that is disloyal to Dear Leader would be Very Bad. When your primary ideology is Loyalty to Dear Leader, then anything that is not loyalty is by definition a bad ideology. Woke. 

For another, there is the underlying notion that people like Sarah Inama do not put up "Everyone is Welcome Here" signs or otherwise promote diversity, equity, or inclusion because they have some sort of ethical or moral beliefs about the value of human beings and diversity in a pluralistic society. No, the assumption is that people are only pretending to care about those things in order to oppose Dear Leader. The assumption is that these folks are not operating out of principled ethical values, but out of their desire to oppose those in power. 

This is not a new Trumpian thing; scratch opposition to movements like Black Lives Matter and you get some version of "Race problems were totally solved around 1964, and everything Black folks have done since then is simply political posturing in order to get some sort of unearned advantage." But now we have upped the ante by viewing even this idea through the lens of loyalty to Dear Leader.

People keep tearing hair out over what appears to them to be hypocrisy. I will continue to argue that when you encounter what seems to be hypocrisy, you're just failing to see the true underlying value. Looking at the seeming contradictory positions of Trumpers through a lens in which the main, even only value, is loyalty to Dear Leader, and it doesn't seem so hypocritical at all. 

Everyone really is welcome here-- as long as they demonstrate their loyalty to Dear Leader.