Lawsuit against NC school is another tall tale about white victimhood | Opinion



Issac Bailey
Sat, January 14, 2023 

The claims in a lawsuit by a former English instructor against North Carolina’s Governor’s School don’t sound credible. It seems like yet another attempt to ensure today’s students won’t be prepared for the ever-diversifying United States of America. What’s more, David Phillips wrapped himself in the cloak of victimhood he and others of like mind have been busy accusing others of clinging to.

The stereotypical words and descriptions more frequently being used by opponents of diversity efforts are all there. The lawsuit says the school has a “radical ideology.” It laments “anti-conservative bias,” mischaracterizes “critical race theory,” claims those who don’t think like he does are indoctrinating students. Phillips cites findings from a task force formed by Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson – the very same Robinson who referred to gay people as “filth” and said parents had “mentally raped” their transgender children – which would call into question the lawsuit’s credibility even if it didn’t also paint those associated with the governor’s school as caricatures rather than living-breathing human beings with souls.

The topper, though, is Phillips’s claim that the true victims of race discrimination are white conservative Christians because some teachers at the school talk about “privilege.” It’s a well-worn story whose roots reach back to this nation’s founding. White enslavers claimed they were the real victims because they didn’t have a real say over the laws they were governed by. White Southerners claimed they were the real victims because a war they began to preserve slavery ended with the near destruction of this region and most of their wealth. White business owners were upset they could no longer freely discriminate against black customers, and white parents howled when the Supreme Court put the final nail in the coffin of officially-sanctioned Jim Crow.

Now, a growing number of white conservatives and others have been making the case that being called racist or the removal or rethinking of traditional standards that had long favored them is the real discrimination.

A lawsuit like this would deserve to be ignored if it wasn’t part of a larger trend. It’s happening in Florida where Gov. Ron DeSantis, who might be the GOP’s next presidential nominee if Donald Trump stumbles before the finish line, has begun decimating higher education in that state with censorship laws that threaten professors who dare teach the truth about this country’s racial history and present. It’s happening in South Carolina where similar laws have been passed and bandied about. This has been happening even as courts have had to push back against racist voting laws in both Carolinas in recent years while racial disparities remain a reality.

This is happening as our nation grows more diverse by the year. The youngest generation is already where the U.S. as a whole is projected to be in a few decades, with no clearly-defined racial majority. This isn’t your grandfather’s country and won’t ever be again. It’s a mix of individuals and cultures maybe no other democracy has ever experienced. It means we must grapple with problems caused by institutional and systemic biases, the kind of honest grappling lawsuits like that against the governor’s school and a growing number of censorship laws and book bans make less likely.

If we aren’t careful, though, we can allow runaway fear of such a profound change to undermine this two and a half century long experiment. That fear will also leave today’s student ill-equipped to deal with the complex realities of tomorrow.

Conservatives shouldn’t be singled out as bad people any more than liberals should. And stress and fear are natural reactions to transformations as large as the one the U.S. is undergoing. We should be humble enough to admit that none of us has perfect clarity about what’s best for a country that has yet to fully reveal itself. That doesn’t mean we should stand by silently while that fear is weaponized in laws and lawsuits designed to turn back the clock.

Issac Bailey is McClatchy Opinion writer based in Myrtle Beach.