"They Introduced This Critical Program And Now He's Having Racial Issues"
You might consider suing puberty, ma'am
This is probably just another instance of White Victim Theory, which I find increasingly tiresome, but this case is at least taking a unique approach. A White Virginia woman is suing her local school district and claiming that Critical Race Theory is ruining her son.
It’s an interesting take, especially when you consider that Critical Race Theory is only taught in graduate-level studies and not at the junior-high level. I’m also surprised that any self-respecting lawyer would take on this case, because I suspect there’s a very good chance it will be laughed out of whatever courtroom it ends up in.
Then again, poor Ms. Riley doesn’t appear to be the sharpest tool in the box:
Here’s the latest pathetic entry in the critical race theory panic: Virginia mother Melissa Riley, currently in the running for the whitest woman alive, is suing her 13-year-old Black son’s school district because its antiracism program has given him a case of the "uppities."
During her Fox News interview (of course), Riley insisted her son was nice and docile before the Albemarle School District exposed him to voodoo “critical race theory,” and now he’s sullen and difficult. Perhaps she’s never met a teenager before, but it’s possible that puberty’s the true culprit here. Before she blamed the school, she could’ve at least checked if her son had started wearing a mood-altering red kryptonite ring.
Riley told host Jesse Watters, an empathetic ear for America’s Black youth, that her son now sees himself “just as a Black man. He’s seeing things that don’t go his way as racism. And he is finding safety in numbers now."
She said, “He wasn’t like this before…he’s in the eighth grade.” Well, there you go, ma’am; what eighth-grader isn’t a complete asshole on any given day? It’s kinda how things go when you’re dealing with a teenager, knowhutimean? As a parent, you exist to be a pincushion for whatever happens to piss them off on a particular day. It could be anything and everything, and it may or may not have anything to do with you. It’s what teenagers do with all those hormones running through their system.
The father of Ms. Riley’s son is Black, so in addition to the normal angst of being a teenage boy, he has the issue of being a mixed race child in the South to cope with. And it appears that Ms. Riley is dealing with that aspect of her son’s identity by glossing over it altogether.
She suggested that Henley Middle School’s antiracist training has rendered her son shiftless. He tries to get out of chores and other household responsibilities. This is all very shocking and unusual behavior for a 13-year-old kid. When she asked him to clean up his room, (she says) he called her a racist. We know how much children of all creeds and colors enjoy tidying their living space.
Riley claims her son is using racism "as an excuse because they have told him that that's how people see him, as a Black man, that the world is against and [he] sees it as a negative now.” Putting aside the racial aspect, this is all normal adolescent behavior. Teens get angsty. Nirvana’s Nevermind wasn’t critical race theory.
Ms. Riley’s problem isn’t Critical Race Theory or anything that the school district is or isn’t doing. It’s that she’s a lazy (and not terribly bright) mother who isn’t sensitive to the issues her son is dealing with. She also doesn’t seem to be able to cope with the fact that he’s a normal teenager and is going to be an asshole from time to time. It’s what teenagers do and it’s a perfectly normal part of the developmental process.
She also doesn’t seem to understand that she need not react to every instance of asshole behind displayed by her son. Sometimes it’s going to be best if she turns on her heels and walks away. There will be times when her son will feed off her reactions. If she denies him that it will frustrate him and perhaps makes him think about his behavior.
Instead of doing what most mothers would do, Ms. Riley decided to take the easy way out and blame everyone but herself. Either she’s too dense, too lazy, and/or too inexperienced to be able to handle an angsty teenage boy, but her problem isn’t Critical Race Theory. And it’s certainly not the school district’s responsibility to “fix” her son. Perhaps she needs to get her son into counseling. Or perhaps she needs to be more understanding and responsive to her son’s feelings.
Yes, he’s a teenage boy. He’s not going to think or behave as he once did. That’s no one’s “fault.” He’s growing up and he’s changing as he learns to think for himself.
And then there are the hormones. OMG, the hormones….
Eventually her son will outgrow puberty. With any luck, he’ll grow into a decent, rational human being. Or not. Ms. Riley certainly isn’t helping that process.
It’s too bad Ms. Riley seems to be incapable of thinking for herself and taking responsibility for raising her child.