US pol: Is there any kernel for this lie?
"They're going into schools. They're beating the hell out of our other pupils. We're giving them chairs and we're telling families that have had their children in that school you can't go to that school anymore."
He's brought this up three times and people laugh and clap. The idea is that immigrants are taking all of the "seats" in schools & nice white American children aren't able to go. I think. I don't really know.
Did he make this up himself?
mentions racist rhetoric, re: US pol: Is there any kernel for this lie?
@futurebird Not sure whether this rhetoric also exists in the US, but it reminds me of the common racist rhetoric in the Netherlands of "immigrants taking all the houses, leaving none for Dutch people". Which is derived from a (deliberate) misinterpretation of refugee housing policies in the context of social housing waitlists. Something like that perhaps?
mentions racist rhetoric, re: US pol: Is there any kernel for this lie?
Perhaps the issue is that to discuss this he'd need to mention class sizes. And Republicans do not care about class sizes. If there are more kids than expected we just teach more kids. All of them get to have seats.
But, teaching 15 is better than 25. Everyone knows that the quality of the education is better when class are capped at 20 and average about 14.
mentions racist rhetoric, re: US pol: Is there any kernel for this lie?
@futurebird Right. So then perhaps the underlying, implicit claim is "immigrants are making our schools worse by increasing class sizes" or something like that? Since that would be more politically palatable, if I understand you correctly.
mentions racist rhetoric, re: US pol: Is there any kernel for this lie?
@joepie91 @futurebird to these people, much like the recent destruction of DEI and diversity in higher education, a single nonwhite person in a school is "a seat taken from a white person" and no higher logic is required. They fundamentally believe that the entire country belongs to them and them alone and want to deport or kill all liberals and nonwhites but will settle for a permanent slave labor underclass and punching bag
mentions racist rhetoric, re: US pol: Is there any kernel for this lie?
@futurebird @joepie91 I'm not psychic but yeah just look at how normalized it is for any American to say "that's a good/bad school" and what they mean is "it receives a poor grade likely because it's underfunded or its students are underprivileged, but we won't talk about how school funding is tied to property taxes and thus literal rich vs poor neighborhoods, or how we could uplift our underprivileged neighbors"
mentions racist rhetoric, re: US pol: Is there any kernel for this lie?
@futurebird @joepie91 like that's the *sensible moderate mainstream position* -- angling for a spot at "the best school" even if it's illegal to go anywhere but the one assigned to your neighborhood, people have and will move houses for this -- let alone the "compassionate conservatism" position and god forbid the MAGA position. You have to be a radical progressive to say "I want my kid to go to a diverse neighborhood school"
mentions racist rhetoric, re: US pol: Is there any kernel for this lie?
@joepie91 @futurebird part of the history of Republican grassroots organizing is, like, Orange County and San Diego PTA moms trying to figure out how to segregate their schools and keep Mexican kids out or at least away and less funded. They've been at this for half a century alongside abortion as key issues, always with veneers of "concern" and "respectability" and "parents'/students' choice" etc