Writing in the Nation, Joan Walsh zings Meg Bryce — a candidate for the school board in Albemarle County, Va. — as an “extremist.” The evidence: She favors school vouchers, she thinks schools should inform parents if their children are changing their names or pronouns at school, she denies the existence of “systemic racism” (see update below) and she went to a candidate-training session run by an organization founded by a “stop-the-steal” activist. Oh, and she is the daughter of Antonin Scalia.
With the caveat that I’m as far to the right of the median voter as Walsh is to the left, I don’t see how any of this is extreme.
The results of polling on school vouchers depend a lot on question wording: The most negatively worded questions have about a third of the public supportive, the most positively worded have two-thirds supportive.
Earlier this month, a Washington Post-Schar School poll found that 63 percent of Virginians favored requiring schools to notify parents if their child wants to go by a different name or gender. (Asking the same basic question a different way generated a 72 percent majority for the same basic position.) It’s a very mainstream position — much more so than the opposite opinion.
I don’t think “systemic racism” is a useful phrase, as people mean different things by it and so clashes over the concept may mask agreement on underlying concepts. It is certainly not extreme to reject the phrase. A Harris poll last year found that 42 percent of the public either rejected it or were unsure. That’s not far off from the 44 percent of the public that believed, in another Harris poll from earlier this year, that the criminal-justice system is “mostly fair” rather than beset by “systemic racism.”
Walsh’s implication about the training that Bryce attended seems like a classic case of guilt by association, as of course do the references to her father — although those of us who prefer NR to the Nation may consider it a case of greatness by association instead.
Update: A commenter notes that Bryce does not deny the existence of systemic racism so much as say that people who deny it should not be treated as racists. Which is of course an even more moderate view than the one that has been attributed to her.