Creating “balance”

Look, I’m really getting tired of all this “balance” boloney. And, no, I’m not just picking on Paul B here folks, I’m dragging the EB Times and League of Women Voters into this mess as well.

Since I mentioned the League of Women Voters yesterday I’ll point out that they have been trying to maintain the appearance of “balance” and “neutrality” but, at this point, the issues that they’re bringing to the forefront are anything but that. They’re taking out huge full newspaper spread ads to show their comparisons of what money candidates are raising but, as this Alamedan pointed out decided to not publish what PACs have raised, particularly because one of the people closely associated with the PAC is now involved with LWV as well:

Based on my quick check of #alamtg campaign finance records, this PAC had about $19k in the bank during the same timeframe — more than all the individual council candidates raised https://t.co/ksTj0GFshS

— Drew Dara-Abrams (@drewdaraabrams) October 15, 2022

And while the LWV is now saying that “it’s expensive to run” but then puts out a highly disingenuous and poorly researched statement about Measure E which would probably entice more people to run for office then Ranked Choice Voting or talking about how expensive it is to run for office and then trying to shame candidates for raising money so they don’t have to go into debt to run for office. By the way, the initial analysis by LWV of Measure E had to be walked back by the president of the LWV.

Then there was the EB Times analysis of the School Board candidates and I had already flagged a problem with the way that a certain topic was structured:

I found the attempt to balance this topic by using very select instances of “the left” asking for the removal of books to be a rather stretched given that “the right” has been waging an all out war on books these days. Neither Huck Finn nor Mockingbird were on the top banned titles by district, the majority of the titles banned had LGBTQ+ content

I was even more disappointed when the full question was revealed:

School boards, districts, teachers and librarians are under what might be called a “curriculum suppression or re-focusing siege” around the nation.

From the political right, calls to censor or suppress content abound. They include prohibitions or restrictions on curriculum based on the 1619 project, that which “promotes a negative account or representation of the founding and history of The United States,” (a bill being considered in New Hampshire) or teaching or implementing programs related to gender identity orientation, resurrecting prayer in schools and so on.

From the political left, come calls to cover up or do away with school murals of George Washington, the branding of Abraham Lincoln as a racist , the removal of certain Dr. Seuss books, and the shelving of renowned American works of literature as “Huckleberry Finn,” “Of Mice And Men,” and “To Kill A Mockingbird,” — just to name a few– on the grounds that racist epithets or scenarios contained in them are too offensive or shocking for students to read.

Social Studies teachers are also faced with the dilemma of what to steer clear of for fear of offending students, parents or administrators if and when they teach content involving lynching, race riots, segregationist speeches or screeds , police brutality, and so on.

And

Follow—up: But how, given the often vocal and sometimes presumptuous, agenda driven forces on left and right of the socio-political spectrum, do we do that without minimizing, sugar coating or neglecting content that others find “offensive, shocking, racist, unpatriotic, propagandistic” and so on from the left? To wit: on the one hand districts have “shelved” To Kill A Mockingbird, Huckleberry Finn because they contain an offensive epithet, and others have forbidden discussion or teaching about gender orientation. On the other hand, from the right: restrictions or prohibitions on teaching the values of “diversity and Inequality”, presenting materials that show racist tenets in US History and society , past and present, or engage in learning about gender identity, different sexual orientations or that espousing standards as “racial colorblindness is racist.” Put differently, how to you propose teachers (& boards, district and site admin) handle such subjects of controversy and debate without fear of targeting, reprisal and being labeled themselves as “racist” , “sexist”, “un-American” “amoral radical leftist” etc.?

Sigh, where to begin. First it’s a tell from the reporter that he believes that that prohibitions on teaching the real history of the US is some how the same as people suggesting that maybe saying that “you don’t see color” is problematic because it erases the experiences of people who can’t scrub away the their race. These are not the same things, the stretch to put them as some how equal in problematicness is problematic in itself. By the way the example of the “covering up” of the school mural of George Washington is much more nuanced than what was thrown out there. The tension around the murals was not a new phenomenon but one that had been around since the 1960s. Concerns about racist caricatures is very different than not allowing a full accounting of history to be told. And if that history shows out founding fathers to be problematic or, yes, even racist, we should be able to acknowledge and confront that history. But struggling to find equal weight between what the “left” and the “right” is doing is minimizing and standing behind false balance. Because finding “balance” when non white people have been marginalized for centuries is still propping up those that have always had an outsized voice in our discourse.

And finally, our friend Paul B who has centered balance in his campaign and made it his raison d’etre. From his answers to the Alameda Post (he told us all he would have more answers to the Housing Element question when these answers dropped but, spoiler alert: there are no detailed answers) he doubled down on the false balance stuff which is so popular these days:

First of all, I sort of feel like he’s setting up a dichotomy that doesn’t exist. Not only that, I don’t think anyone has said we need to choose between any of the two option he has listed in each of his bullet points. Has anyone suggested we have to be “extreme” NIMBYs or YIMBYs?

Has anyone said we need to center only cyclists or only drivers?

Has anyone suggested that we can’t hold police accountable and yet still have a fully staffed police force?

That he’s suggesting that there are wide swaths of people out there screaming: “choose!!!” to these options is problematic in itself. Most people are nuanced and not extreme. Balance is not just doing everything “in the middle” and thinking you’ve solved the world’s problems. True balance is understanding where we’ve been (and that includes acknowledging the real and lasting damage that has happened to people along the way) and where we need to go and governing accordingly to create the best outcomes for as many people as possible.