Alabama governor signs law banning diversity programs in schools

girlfreddy@lemmy.ca to News@lemmy.world – 294 points –
reuters.com

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed into law on Wednesday a ban on diversity, equity and inclusion programs in public schools, making the state one of a few to enact broad measures against what she and other Republicans call a leftward tilt in U.S. education.

The bill, which passed Alabama's Republican-led legislature on Tuesday, bans public schools from maintaining diversity, equity and inclusion offices or teaching what the bill calls "divisive concepts" about race and identity, such as that of holding people of one race responsible for actions committed by the same racial group in the past.

It also requires public institutions of higher education to designate bathrooms as only for males or females, a move that counters transgender rights advocates' push for gender-neutral bathrooms.

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Meanwhile Alabama makes 450 million a year off of "modern slavery" by punishing convicts if they don't work for, in some cases, 2 dollars a day. At least bathroom users can rejoice that the person they can't see in the stall next to them has state-approved genitalia. Also schools won't have to worry about planning curriculum with nuance or historical accuracy.

God forbid a business just has a single bathroom with one toilet, what would we do?!

Well, the racist transphobic governor gramma seems to believe we'd all have the vapors.

Every accusation is a confession. You know how the most homophobic people end up being gay?

"Being gay is a choice. I know because I choose to be straight, in spite of all the naughty dreams I have about Tom Cruise."

Are we now also blaming the gay for this?

Not sure how you came to that conclusion, my point was that some people are in denial about who they really are and use homophobia as a cover.

The whole 'homophobes are secretly gay' thing, while there are some examples where that is true, essentially blames gay people for their own oppression.

It also doesn't reflect any other type of bigotry I can think of.

If you said something like 'antisemites are secretly Jews,' everyone would think you were nuts. But somehow 'if you hate queer people, you're probably one of them' is widely accepted amongst progressive people.

Except for the fact that Jewish people sometimes are antisemitic . This does not mean all Jewish people are antisemitic nor does it suggest that Jewish people are the root of antisemitism as your logic would seem to suggest.

My logic suggests the exact opposite. That the root of bigotry is bigots, not the people they are bigoted against.

And I'm saying that gay people as well as Jewish people can also be bigoted towards each other, but I'm not suggesting that they are the root of why the bigotry existed in the first place.

Exactly my point but better worded than I could do mysel.

Like I have in my own home? Nah, that'd never work. I need businesses to designate a separate bathroom for every gender! /s

Shhh, don’t remind them or they’ll make you build extra bathrooms in your home

The bathroom separation originates from the Victorian era, and in richer households, they even had separate living rooms.

Buildings such as the pentagon ended up with an excess of bathrooms because they had white/coloured and men/women (plus presumably disabled?)

Imagining a public school or university with a single toilet for the whole campus is pretty funny.

On a side note, why is there always a highly upvoted comment on every thread like this that deliberately misinterprets the story? The headline isn't even ambiguous, this comment is pure misinformatiin. Are ~50 of you really that bad at reading?

It seems pretty convenient that every story about regressive right wing policy includes highly visible misinfo about it. It makes me wonder how organic the upvotes for this drivel really are.

What exactly is pure misinformation within the comment? It's ambiguously phrased I'll grant, but clearly they mean a "single bathroom" as in not designated for any specific gender.

That this applies to private businesses.

And where exactly does the word "private" appear in their comment?

Someone should probably tell Alabama that last place isn't the goal.

Their base is going to eat this shit up. Its a pure win for them in every possible way.

Why is there more concern about the bathrooms in schools than there is about people bringing in guns and killing the kids?

Ammunition sales go up after school shootings, so it’s a net positive from a conservative perspective

It also requires public institutions of higher education to designate bathrooms as only for males or females, a move that counters transgender rights advocates’ push for gender-neutral bathrooms.

They don't even bother pretending it's about something else anymore.

Don't worry guys, I heard both parties were the same. We are all being played.

Not the same, just bad in different ways

Republicans want to force everyone to live by christian rules and want to let capitalism run rampant. Democrats want to force everyone to give up individual freedoms and involve the government more in peoples’ lives.

Both parties claim it’s for the greater good.

Both parties suck. The lesser of two evils is still evil and if you vote you’re agreeing to the social contract and you legitimised the system.

Do you have an actual argument or just a set of claims? Because I can pull up every legislative proposal brought forward by Dems and compare because they are vastly different. One is taking away school lunches from kids while the other is fighting for people's rights to live. To sit here and claim that they are

both bad in different ways

Just tells me you know nothing about policies or legislation that is being passed. It is the most naive statement passed around or an actual attempt at sowing voter disenfranchisement. Based on your rhetoric I have to assume the latter.

I see little problem with not funding school lunches because we shouldn’t have public schools at all. Parents should have to pay for their kids education and food and they should owe more in taxes because they chose to have a kid. That, any gun control, emissions on vehicles, helmet or seatbelt laws, property taxes, sending aid to Ukraine, laws that criminalise victimless crimes are a few of the reasons I won’t vote for a democrat. And I won’t vote for a republican anyway.

Oh no. You're a libertarian emo kid. Go to somalia and enjoy your libertarian paradise then. And don't you fucking dare use any of the million services made available to you through public funding on a daily basis. Like the internet.

Ah, finally, some good news! It's about time that straight white men win for once!

/s