Ammo Grrrll peers into our near future and sees: IT WAS THE STATUES!!! I think I should add TRIGGER WARNING!!! just so you can’t say you weren’t warned. She writes:
Dateline…sometime in the not-so-distant future
Who knew? For many many decades the Educational Establishment had been absolutely consumed with the “gap” in educational achievement between students “of color” and students of extreme Nazi whiteness. And, of course, Asians, who are counted as “even worse than white” when it comes to curve-wrecking academics.
Some right-wing racists believed the gap had had something to do with studying more, fewer hours spent watching television, turning in homework, that sort of thing. But they were sent to reeducation camps and eventually were rehabilitated. The North Korean Get-Your-Mind-Right Diet Plan of 700 calories a day probably helped in focusing their attentions away from Wrong-Think.
Other outlawed Christian lunatics had noticed that there was a strong correlation between having a father in the home and the academic achievement and discipline of his children. The rations of such lunatics were reduced to 500 calories a day (2 yogurts, arugula, and a Fig Newton) until they came around.
So you can imagine their shock and dismay when these backward elements learned the truth: it was the presence of statues that had prevented black children from learning! The minute the offending statues came down, their SAT scores rocketed up, and the offending gap was erased. Or scores definitely WOULD have rocketed up if both letter grades and the racist, sexist, tests had still been allowed. Everyone who was not Irredeemable was certain that the gap was gone for good.
Nobody wondered aloud why The Lightbringer had had eight endless years to get rid of the statues and had not.
And nobody mentioned either that not one in ten students of any color knew who most of the offensive historical figures even were. At the time that the statues started coming down, 74% of all high school students identified “Andrew Jackson” as the 7th Jackson brother, the one that came between Jackie and Tito, and, sadly, the only one who couldn’t sing.
“Thomas Jefferson” was described as “that President before Obama who slept with a slave or something” by 58% of students and “The guy who invented the telephone?” by another 25%. “Jefferson Davis” was believed by 48% of high school graduates to be “the real name of Snoop Dogg” and nobody even hazarded a guess about Nathan Bedford Forrest, except “a white guy who was bad?” (which turned out to be right, actually, proving once again that even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then).
When Mount Rushmore was dynamited and work begun on replacing the pale white dead men there with members of The View, albeit on a much larger mountain, little girls everywhere were so inspired by the sight that they flocked to science, math and engineering in record numbers. All the right people said so. (Fat Studies counted as a science major by then, even though “fat” itself had been entirely eradicated by changing the racist BMI charts.)
The sculpture of Crazy Horse, 17 miles from Mount Rushmore, a work in progress since 1948, was also dynamited. A few Native Americans complained, but they were overruled due to strong lobbies of crazy people who objected to being called crazy, and others objecting to the cultural appropriation of our equine companions.
The Museum of Science and Industry in Jackson Park in Chicago was offensive on so many levels that it was almost razed except for a last-minute reprieve by Mayor Lena Dunham, who had won re-election of the city of 2.7 million souls by over 5 million votes. She had lurked in airports reporting conversations she had heard and turning over her vast notes to the Perpetual Mueller Commission until she was elected to her first term just to get her out of airports.
Mayor Dunham – who often pranced about naked at her press conferences, reliving her Glory Days on Girls – convinced the public that Jackson Park was named for Jesse Jackson, Jr. who had set a national record for collecting disability. The Science Museum would be repurposed as a place to study Global Warming and other science-y things as soon as the Blizzards of ’25, ’26, and ’27 could be cleared enough to get to it. Nobody liked “Industry” either on a personal or corporate level and so that stupid, racist word was dropped.
The oceans commenced to lowering and the unicorns scampered among the rainbows and all was right with the world after the great Statue Eradication Project of 2017.
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