Editor’s Notes: Legislating ego protection
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We elect lawmakers in West Virginia to be good stewards of OUR money and ensure the government is efficiently and transparently serving the needs we cannot meet for ourselves. We need their help with good roads, good schools, job growth … that kind of thing.
What are some working on this session? Nonsensical (and sometimes hateful) pieces of legislation designed to convince people they should be angry and afraid. It would be laughable were it not such a danger.
One example placed on the agenda for the House Committee on Workforce Development last week is House Bill 2595. Look it up and read it.
It is a bill, introduced by Del. Riley Keaton, R-Roane; and sponsored by Dels. Josh Holstein, R-Boone, Trenton Barnhart, R-Pleasants, and Johnnie Wamsley, R-Mason, "to prohibit discriminatory 'divisive acts' in the workplace, to prohibit the teaching of 'divisive acts' in West Virginia schools, and to prohibit state funding to agencies who promote 'divisive acts.'"
Before you ask what is wrong with prohibiting discriminatory divisive acts, take a careful look at the intent of this piece of legislation -- and at whom it seems to be aimed. While you're at it, think about the First Amendment implications of the government prohibiting certain "concepts," "stereotyping," "scapegoating."
Aimed at the Human Rights Commission, the State Board of Education and of course the State Budget Office, the bill seeks the prohibition of "divisive concepts" such as "the United States is fundamentally racist or sexist," and "Race or sex scapegoating" that assigns "fault, blame, or bias to a race or sex, or to members of a race or sex because of their race or sex. It similarly encompasses any claim that, consciously or unconsciously, and by virtue of his or her race or sex, members of any race are inherently racist or are inherently inclined to oppress others, or that members of a sex are inherently sexist or inclined to oppress others."
As one reader pointed out, it certainly seems as though this bill is meant to protect the egos of one race and sex in particular.
Teachers who tried to follow this law would therefore find it almost impossible to talk to students about the toll taken on the native population when Europeans first visited this part of the continent, slavery, the unfinished battle for women's rights, migrant and immigration issues, the internment of Americans of Japanese descent during World War II … the list is massive.
This bill is the very definition of "cancel culture," and it is nauseating.
The bill would prohibit grant funding to any organization that could be accused of breaking the rules. It would prohibit schools from properly teaching and allowing students to discuss history, social studies, civics and political science, literature, biology … heck math might not even be safe if a teacher was asked to discuss the work of NASA's "hidden figures" and accidentally strayed into the reasons they were hidden.
The bill would "prohibit state funding for state agencies who promote race or sex stereotyping or scapegoating, and it shall be prohibited for any state funding to go towards West Virginia agencies who promote 'divisive acts.'"
You have to wonder what these folks are trying to accomplish. What are they hoping won't be discussed? What are they hoping our kids won't learn?
But forget all that. Let's ask another question: How are you going to explain HB 2595 and the several bills like it to those 400,000 people lawmakers pretended just a few short weeks ago they wanted to attract to the Mountain State?
Enough with the political theater, ladies and gentlemen. You have a job to do, and bills like HB 2595 won't get it done.
Christina Myer is executive editor of The Parkersburg News and Sentinel. She can be reached via e-mail at cmyer@newsandsentinel.com