Maud Maron committed one of the worst sins against the progressive movement. The irony is that Ms. Maron is a Bernie Sanders-supporting, hard-core liberal from Manhattan. She’s been branded a racist. She’s been smeared as a segregationist. What did she do? She did what you simply cannot do as a progressive. She criticized critical race theory. She said the obsession over race is a bad way to guide the education of our children. Besides work at Legal Aid Society, she’s also a public-school council member. She wrote about in an op-ed for The New York Post in July
I am a mom, a public defender, an elected public-school council member and a City Council candidate. But at a city Department of Education anti-bias training, I was instructed to refer to myself as a “white woman” — as if my whole life reduces to my race.
Those who oppose this ideology are shunned and humiliated, even as it does nothing to actually improve our broken schools.
Though facing severe budget cuts, the DOE has spent more than $6 million for the training, which defines qualities such as “worship of the written word,” “individualism” and “objectivity” as “white-supremacy culture.”
[…]
I was personally exposed to the pitfalls of this ideology after New York Times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones asked to interview me. She had heard me testify at a City Council hearing, where I said, “Parents who disagree with [Chancellor Richard Carranza] should not have to be called racist all the time.”
Our interview lasted 90 minutes and covered a range of topics, but she and others in the toxic Twittersphere took offense at my suggestion to listen to other parents’ viewpoints, “even if you think it’s racist.” That bit was snipped out of a much longer answer about the importance of integration efforts and the role of school choice.
Naturally, the Twitter mobs descended on me.
That’s putting it lightly. Jonathan Turley, who is a lawyer and professor at George Washington University Law School, wrote on his blog that Maron’s colleagues ostracized her. Merely criticizing the race-obsessed antics of the Left can get you thrown into the KKK camp with these people:
That [her NY Post op-ed] led to a furious response from fellow lawyers who denounced her as a vehement racist. The Black Attorneys of Legal Aid Caucus issued a lengthy statement that declared “Maud is racist, and openly so.” They said Maron “is one of many charlatans who took this job not out of a desire to make a difference, but for purposes of self-imaging.”
[…]
Of course, the impact of such letters is to intimidate anyone else from uttering dissenting views. Few young lawyers would risk being tagged as a racist — a career ending event. We have seen the same campaign of intimidation on college campuses. Even objecting the 1619 project being taught in public schools can lead to calls for termination. This growing intolerance for free speech has even reached law schools, as discussed in a column this week.
Indeed, as we previously discussed, Bari Weiss herself was the victim of such a campaign at the New York Times and now writes on Substack.
It did not stop there.
Four lawyers wrote a piece calling Maron an “anti-integration activist.”
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The letter could also be the subject of a defamation action. They outright call her a racist and a segregationist. The writing is again close to the line of fact and opinion for defamation purposes.
Turley added that she recently filed a lawsuit alleging her criticism led to her being forced out of her job at Legal Aid after relentless attacks from colleagues and its union:
Plaintiff, Maud Maron (“Plaintiff” or “Ms. Maron”), was discriminated against on the basis of race, including hostile work environment and constructive termination, by Defendants The Legal Aid Society (“LAS”) and the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys (“ALAA” and, collectively, “Defendants”), her employer and union, who published knowingly false statements in furtherance of ideological and political motives divorced from the core functions of Ms. Maron’s employment.
They will make you care. They will make you kowtow. There is no room for debate or nuance. You must obey, and all deviations will be taken as insubordination grounded in white supremacy. The weird part is that despite a few loudmouth nonwhite activists, this race obsession is mostly exhibited by white educated liberals. They’re the ones who are the most ideological about these issues, not nonwhites as a whole. In fact, this ideological rigidity has caused many nonwhite voters to vote Republican. The ‘defund the police’ antics that bubbled up in 2020 caused an exodus. The exit polls show that, even liberal data scientist David Shor has written and warned Democrats about this trend, especially when it comes to messaging.
A Bernie Sanders donor got reamed out for being a segregationist for opposing a trash academic theory. The Left is insane, but you already knew that.
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