Tuesday, October 26, 2021
Bedtime goes woke as books like 'Antiracist Baby', 'Daddy & Dada' and 'A is for Activist' are dominating the shelves with transgender tales and scary stories of police brutality meant to 'indoctrinate' toddlers
Once upon a time it was simple. Children went to sleep on a diet of bedtime stories that grew out of folklore, depended on magic or were just enchantingly simple: Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella and Goodnight Moon.
Not anymore, because these days bedtime is all about getting woke. Take a glance at the shelves of the children's department of any major bookstore.
Teach Your Dragon About Diversity, sits next to 'Daddy & Dada'. Glance a few books along and you'll find, Joey, not a heartwarming tale about a baby kangaroo, but an illustrated hagiography of Joe Biden written by, 'best-selling author,' Jill Biden.
And let's not forget, 'Kamala Harris: Rooted in Justice,' because what four -year-old doesn't want to hear about the Vice President's political rise?
There are books about transgender infants, queer families and dreamers, but the subject that dominates all others, bound up in the pages of child-friendly picture books, is race – that and a dollop of police brutality and activism.
The sales of books about race exploded across all age groups last summer as protests over the death of George Floyd tore across the world.
At the peak of the summer's disturbances seven out of Amazon's top ten titles and nine out of Barnes & Noble's took on the subject of race.
On June 1, Libro.fm, a company that partners with 1,200 bookstores in the US and Canada to sell audiobooks, reported that every book on its top ten sellers list was about race and that the titles had sold 500 per cent more than on May 1.
Sales of 'White Fragility' by Robin Diangelo jumped by 2000 per cent. Against this sales frenzy, Penguin Young Readers tripled their print-run of Ibram X Kendi's 'Antiracist Baby.' The book's initial print run was 50,000. Seeing the swell in demand and pre-orders the company ordered an additional 100,000.
Kendi's confrontationally titled book starts with the assertion, 'Antiracist baby is bred, not born' and proceeds to set down nine steps for parents eager to rear 'accountable' children.
Though his book is supposedly aimed at children aged 0-3, Kendi is not primarily a children's author. He is the controversial poster boy for critical race theory and author of 'Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You,' listed by the American Libraries Association as one of the most banned and challenged books of 2020.
Parents' challenges to school boards in districts whose reading lists featured the book included the argument that Kendi practiced, 'selective storytelling' and, 'does not encompass racism against all people.'
For his part Kendi – born Ibram Henry Rogers in Queens, the son of Methodist ministers Carol and Larry Rogers – makes no apology for preaching a discriminatory creed.
He has stated, 'The only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.'
This, according to John Butcher, Will Skillman Education Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, is the worldview that informs all Kendi's work and has no place in the pages of children's books.
Speaking to DailyMail.com, Butcher, whose book 'Splintered: Critical Race Theory and The Progressive War on the Truth,' is out in February, explained, 'All of these books are meant to drive home the message to these young children that life is about struggle. But one of the main problems of critical race theory is what's the ultimate objective? What are we trying to do that makes the world a better place than when we started?
'With Kendi's work you never get to that place where there's some sort of policy, prescription or cultural healing. And what's significant about Kendi's stance is that he's saying discrimination is appropriate, right? We shouldn't be teaching our children that discrimination has any place ever.'
What's more, according to Butcher the notion of 'anti-racism,' promoted by Kendi is 'the perfect trap.' He said 'Everyone's a racist unless they're an anti-racist, it's not enough to say you think racism is evil, you're a racist unless you're an anti-racist. There's no way out. It's an infinite loop.'
In 'Woke Baby!' Mahogany L. Browne writes of a race struggle that starts in the crib. 'Woke Babies raise their fists in the air. Woke babies cry out for justice.'
The illustrations show a black baby wearing a onesie with a panther emblem on his chest.
The text alongside them reads, 'Look at your fists. Fingers curled into a panther's paw pointing up up up, reaching out for justice.'
And while un-woke babies presumably just learn to crawl, 'Woke Baby' takes a knee (or two) and rises, 'Up up up on each knee, bent like half-moons. Woke Baby, you are an awakened dream.'
Self-styled 'children's author' Browne is the Executive Director of JustMedia an organization that purports to push for 'Transformative Justice,' and leans heavily on the topic of police brutality.
The organization's website includes a 'learning companion' to Ava DuVernay's controversial Netflix drama about the Central Park Five, 'When They See Us.'
Former New York City prosecutor, Linda Fairstein, is currently suing over the depiction of her role in events surrounding the Central Park rape and subsequent prosecution of five young black men, and the drama has been branded willfully inaccurate and dangerous.
JustMedia's site also provides a link to, 'Incite! Women of Color Against Violence,' which offers an activists' 'resource and toolkit' for download. The 'kit' conflates 'police brutality and other forms of law enforcement violence,' with, 'policing and enforcing gender and sexual conformity along with power relations based on race, class, immigration status and ability.'
Dizzying concepts for many an adult never mind a child under the age of three.
According to Sharna Olfman, a psychology professor at Point Park University in Pittsburgh the truth is that most of the messages in this new wave of children's books will go over their target audience's heads.
Speaking in The Atlantic she explained that very young children can empathize with others' feelings, but it isn't until 'middle childhood' – ages 5 to 11 – that they can empathize with someone's circumstances, like coming from another country or not being able to speak a certain language fluently.
And only after the age of 11 can they grasp the finer points of a political philosophy. Until then, the chances are that any 'learning,' is simply, 'parroting the perspective of the author or the parent,' rather than understanding it.
This comes as no surprise to Christopher Rufo, Senior Fellow and Director of the Initiative on Critical Race Theory at the Manhattan Institute. Rufo points out that these are not children's books so much as missives aimed at their virtue-signaling parents.
He told DailyMail.com, 'Antiracist Baby and other books [like it] are not designed to teach basic literacy or character formation; they are designed to indoctrinate children into a specific ideology, using their parents as the mechanism of transmission.
'Kendi argues that babies exhibit racial bias by six months old and become fully fledged racists by three years old. This is patently ridiculous. It should go without saying: babies are not racist. They exhibit preferences for people who physically resemble their parents, but this isn't racism – it's a simple and effective survival mechanism.'
According to Rufo, Kendi and Browne are 'racial snake oil salesmen,' encouraging Americans to 'purge themselves of their 'internalized racism,' or 'implicit bias.'
But while Olfman suggests that the messages of racial injustice and struggle will simply be lost on their young audience, Walt Heyer is adamant that introducing the notion of transgender to young children is positively harmful.
Heyer, 80, author of Trans Life Survivors, spent 8 years as a woman before de-transitioning back to a man. He lost his job, his marriage and his children in the process and now devotes his life to supporting pre-transition young people struggling with their identity as well as those who, like him, suffer the bitter regret of a mistaken transition.
For Heyer books like, 'Call Me Max,' by Kyle Lukoff which tells the story of a child who identifies as a transgender boy or 'Julian is a Mermaid,' by Jessica Love, in which Julian identifies as queer and, with his abuela's encouragement, joins Coney Island's famous Mermaid parade, are not only misguided, but they are also dangerous.
Love's book is presented as a sweet tale of acceptance. But, according to Heyer, such books are not recognizing a child's 'truth' so much as foisting a damaging narrative upon them.
Speaking to DailyMail.com he explained, 'I am absolutely adamant about the fact that this is wrong. It's psychologically, emotionally and sexually very harmful. It's like showing a child pornography.
'If we're to be intellectually honest with ourselves, and there's an absence of that in all of this, then we have to accept that no-one ever transitions from one gender to another. The only thing you can do is change your persona and so many of the young people I work with never had gender dysmorphia – they're displaying something they've seen, or something their friends are doing, or they're suffering from body dysmorphia, or were sexually abused, or have mental health issues that a clinician has failed to realize.'
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Biden Stopped Border Wall Construction But Will Get a New 'Security Fence' Around Delaware Home
President Joe Biden's home in Delaware is getting an upgrade thanks to the Department of Homeland Security spending nearly half a million dollars on "security fencing" in the aftermath of his administration halting wall construction along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The New York Post reports DHS awarded the contract for the fencing in September to be built around Biden's "Summer White House":
"In September, the department awarded a contract of $456,548 to Turnstone Holdings LLC for “PURCHASE AND INSTALLATION OF SECURITY FENCING AT 32 FARVIEW, REHOBOTH DELAWARE,” according to USAspending.gov, an online database tracking federal government spending.
"The contract started Sept. 21 and is expected to end Dec. 31. Construction of the fence is expected to end by that date.
"The DHS is listed as the main awarding and funding office of the contract while the US Secret Service is listed as the subagency."
While the security of any president is important, it is hard to square Biden's rhetoric about the effectiveness of walls to now accepting a wall of sorts to his summer home. During the 2020 campaign, Biden promised to not build "another foot" of the border wall.
The stopping of the border wall construction along the southern border has led to gaps where illegal immigrants and drug smugglers have an easier time entering the United States. Due to Border Patrol agents being overwhelmed with people willingly turning themselves in, the gaps in the wall are often left unguarded.
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Can Poland Be Poland – and Stay in the EU?
"Let Poland be Poland!" That was the call of American conservatives, four decades ago, when the Solidarity movement of labor leader Lech Walesa arose in the port city of Gdansk to demand their freedom of the Communist system imposed upon Poland by the Soviet Union after World War II.
A decade later, Poland broke free of the Soviet Bloc and Warsaw Pact, and later joined the European Union and NATO.
The question that has arisen today also has to do with issues of Polish identity and independence.
Specifically, can Poland be Poland -- and still remain in the EU?
In recent years, the ruling Law and Justice Party has revised its governmental structures. The judiciary has been subordinated, brought under greater central supervision and control, and a disciplinary chamber has been established and empowered to remove judges.
Such action, says the EU Commission in Brussels, violates basic EU law, which applies to all member states and trumps national law.
Brussels wants the chamber abolished.
Moreover, on issues such as homosexuality, abortion and the media, the Polish government has taken stands more consistent with its Catholic traditions than with the social agenda of a secularized Europe.
The same holds true for the Hungary of Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Poland and Hungary are ostracized as "illiberal democracies."
At a rally of tens of thousands in Budapest Saturday, Orban told supporters that Washington, the EU in Brussels, and billionaire George Soros are using their money, media and networks to bring to power the Hungarian leftist opposition in next April's parliamentary elections.
"But what matters," said a defiant Orban, "is not what they in Brussels, in Washington and in the media, which is directed from abroad, want. It will be Hungarians deciding about their own fate.
"Our strength is in our unity ... We believe in the same values: family, nation and a strong and independent Hungary."
Let Hungary be Hungary.
In this social-cultural-moral clash inside the EU, outsider Vladimir Putin comes down on the side of the traditionalists and nationalists in countries where Christianity retains a hold against secularism.
This weekend, Moscow released excerpts of Putin's blistering attack on a woke West at last week's gathering of the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi:
"We're surprised to see things happening in countries that see themselves as flagships of progress," said Putin. "The struggle for equality and against discrimination turns into aggressive dogmatism verging on absurdity.
"Opposing racism is a necessary and noble thing, but the new 'culture of abolition' turns into 'reverse discrimination' ... Here in Russia the absolute majority of our citizens don't care what color a person's skin is.
"People who dare to say that men and women still exist as a biological fact are almost ostracized ... not to mention the simply monstrous fact that children today are taught from a young age that a boy can easily become a girl and vice versa.
"Let's call a spade a spade: This simply verges on crimes against humanity under the banner of progress."
In the clash between Poland and the EU, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has urged that a solution be found acceptable to both, rather than engaging in a long and bitter battle that leaves one side victorious and the other estranged.
Yet, today, Poland is being threatened with economic sanctions, including a possible withholding of annual EU stipends and money set aside for EU nations to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
Responding to these threats, Prime Minster Mateusz Morawiecki is accusing the EU of "blackmailing" Poland and holding a "gun to our head."
"If you want to make Europe into a nation-less superstate," says Morawiecki, "first gain the consent of all European countries and societies for this."
Membership in the EU is popular in Poland, and the government has not threatened a walkout, a "Polexit," like the "Brexit" that British Tories voted for in 2016 and carried out.
Still, Brussels fears that successful Polish defiance of its demands could lead other EU nations to make demands, and the grand project of creating a European superstate, a One Europe whose member nations are accorded limited rights similar to those of the 50 states of the American Union, could collapse and fall apart.
National governments receive from membership in the EU not only the benefits of open markets, free trade and travel from one nation to another, but also, for nations like Poland and others in eastern and southern Europe, annual transfer of wealth from the EU.
The chokehold the EU has on its members is money. Brussels can cut off the funds transferred annually to Poland, as well as funds voted to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, together a goodly slice of Poland's GDP.
The questions raised by the rebellious Poles are fundamental: Which takes precedence, when they come into conflict, Poland's constitution and Poland's laws, or the laws of the European Union?
Conflict appears inevitable, and the Poles will ultimately have to decide whether their country and constitution transcend EU law, or the reverse is now true.
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Minneapolis Warns Rideshare Drivers After 12 Carjackings in 7 Days as City Considers Abolishing Police
In Minneapolis, Minnesota, the race riots and looting have largely subsided, but in the wake of the widely covered crime sprees as city blocks worth of small businesses burned, crime has not gone down. Like many other major cities, crime is spiking — especially carjackings.
Last week, after more than four dozen instances of rideshare drivers being held up since the end of the summer, Minneapolis decided to issue a "citywide crime alert" for Uber and Lyft drivers within Minneapolis: beware carjackers.
Local crime watchers say the citywide alert is too little, too late, amid an already reduced police department with fewer capabilities to advise the public — those responsibilities were seized by the anti-cop city council — and adequately patrol the city's streets.
The citywide crime alert warns rideshare drivers to stay alert and wary of delays, but doesn't say anything about what the city's leaders are doing to address the rising crime that continues to ravage Minneapolis streets.
The alert comes after a spate of attacks on rideshare drivers. According to the Twin Cities' CBS affiliate, "Police say since mid-August, more than 40 Uber and Lyft drive[r]s have been robbed or carjacked," with 12 happening in a recent seven-day span. In at least one incident, a Lyft driver took matters into her own hands to escape carjackers:
Lyft driver Tanika Tatum explained a scary situation she encountered Thursday night while dropping off a passenger in Minneapolis. Tatum said her car was pinned in by several vehicles, when a man abruptly approached her.
“A young Black man jumped out, opened my door, put a gun in my face and told me ‘get out of the car,'” Tatum said.
Tatum did not get out and instead drove through the cars. She and the passenger eventually got to a safe place.
“How do you protect yourself in that situation?” Tatum asked. “I hit the button on my Lyft app to say ‘hey send us help.’ It was slow getting help in that area. We sat and waited 20-30 minutes for police to come.”
A 20-30 minute police response time does not inspire confidence when there are bands of marauding carjackers active on the streets of Minneapolis. And the problem of inadequate policing is set to get much worse if radical leftists in Minneapolis get their way on a ballot question this November.
As Townhall covered previously, Minneapolis residents will vote on a ballot question asking whether the city should amend its charter to abolish the current police department and replace it with a nebulous "'Department of Public Safety' that 'employs a comprehensive public health approach.'
Scant details have so far been provided as to how a "reimagined" law enforcement agency would address rising crime, but an already gutted police department offers plenty of evidence — such as the growing number of carjackings — of what may lie ahead.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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