This week, CBS's sitcom The Neighborhood joined a growing list of network shows attacking parents for fighting Marxist curricula in their schools.
The episode, 'Welcome to Mama Drama,' relies on the usual leftist lies surrounding recent controversial history curricula in K-12 schools.
Those lies include 1) new U.S. history programs are just teaching about slavery and other historical wrongs, 2) previous generations were only taught a whitewashed version of American history, and 3) opposition to new curricula is led by parents scared of the truth.
'Welcome to Mama Drama' engages in all these propagandistic tricks. When a dad opposes new history books that are part of a "diverse studies program" at a local private school, the father is portrayed as a clueless elitist afraid of "the truth."
In the episode, Gemma (Beth Behrs), who is the principal at a local private school, has introduced a new "diversity" curriculum for students. Gemma's lefty husband, Dave (Max Greenfield), is supportive. When he walks in as his son Grover (Hank Greenspan) is making a history collage with his friend Isaiah (Shaun Dixon), he announces he wants to "get woke."
Isaiah: We're learning about the Elaine Massacre in Arkansas.
Dave: Hmm, I never learned about that in school.
Isaiah: Hundreds of black people were killed in a riot in 1919. The book says that state officials tried to cover it up.
Dave: Oh, this is a part of the new diverse studies program that your mom started, huh?
Grover: Yeah, Mom doesn't want us growing up as clueless as you guys did.
Dave: (Chuckles) Well...I don't want to be clueless, so I'm gonna learn with you guys.
Isaiah: My dad says there's lots of people who'd rather act like those things never happened.
Dave: Well, unfortunately, he's not wrong. Boys, set your alarm. It's time for me to get woke.
The scene sets up certain straw men critical to the current neo-Marxist cultural project. While Americans of Dave's generation may not have been aware of the details of that particular massacre, we were acutely aware that post-Civil War America had a dark history of lynching and race-based attacks in the Jim Crow south and elsewhere. But the scene implies that a middle-aged white American like Dave is "clueless" about America's past and needs to get "woke."
The scene also focuses on a historical massacre most Americans would accept being taught to children Grover's age. Therefore, it sets up the idea that opposition to "diversity studies" is really just opposition to learning about sins of the past against black Americans. There is no mention of the disturbing neo-Marxist "anti-whiteness" deeply embedded in the new "diversity" curricula parents are fighting.
While Dave is trying to get more "woke," another father from the school, Stan Simmons (Jordan Belfi), expresses concerns to Gemma about the program and possible effects on his daughter.
Simmons: I just want to say I'm, uh, really struggling with this new diversity curriculum. I mean, there's educating, and then there's burdening our children with guilt, which can lead to depression and God knows what else.
Gemma: Well, we certainly don't want any of that. Mm-hmm. But the goal is to tell the truth about our country's history.
Simmons: But by being exposed to this curriculum, she's feeling responsible for things she had nothing to do with. Like race riots and slavery.
Gemma: Well, our children didn't fight the British, but we teach them about the American Revolution.
Actually, new woke history curriculums inspired by the 1619 Project teach a false history of the American Revolution. The discredited 1619 Project currently spreading in K-12 schools throughout the country falsely teaches kids that the founders fought the American Revolution to preserve slavery.
After establishing Simmons as the bad guy, the episode then uses children as activists in a later scene at the school.
Grover: Can we say something?
Gemma: Grover? What are you kids doing here?
Grover: We came to say we don't want the old book. We like the new one. We want to learn the truth about our history.
Isaiah: Yeah, we're not scared. We can handle anything. We eat the lunch here. We are the youth...
Kids: And we want the truth!
Eden: Sorry, Dad, I'm not uncomfortable. You are. These things happened. I need to know about it.
Simmons: (Stammers) You kids are too young for all of this.
Father: I disagree. If my son's old enough to experience racism, then your daughter is old enough to learn about it. (Cheering, applause)
There's so much emotional manipulation in this one scene, children activated to speak truth to an "oppressive" parental power and an elitist white male brought down by righteous youth!
For Hollywood, the parents who are protesting at schools are just afraid of ever hearing about racism. In reality, far-left radical activist educators are trying to use race-based collective guilt to indoctrinate an entire generation into hatred of their own nation. That's the sort of truth no Hollywood writer will dare admit in a television show.
