Did Victoria Sullivan Write Race Baiting Article in Republican Voter Guide?
GOP Played Race Card in Public School Spending Article — OPINION
MANCHESTER, NH — Ward 9 Alderman candidate Victoria Wojdylak Sullivan needs to give a public accounting of remarks on the promotion of racial equality in public schools, published in a Republican Party voters guide sent out before the November 2021 municipal election.
The anonymously authored article “Anti-School Choice Joyce is the Wrong for Mayor,” claimed that “…schools are more interested in racial equality than teaching students to read.”
The big question is: Who wrote this article? Did Victoria Sullivan write this article? School choice has been her signature issue.
Disclaimer
The “Election Guide” claims it was financed and put out by the New Hampshire State Republican Committee. It carries the disclaimer that it “has not been authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee” despite being festooned with a picture of Victoria Sullivan under the dubious headline, “Mayor’s Race Too Close to Call.”
For a political publication that allegedly had no connection to the Victoria Sullivan Mayor of Manchester campaign, it used her campaign slogan “Make Manchester Shine Again” on the front page.
Victoria Sullivan’s campaign finance records on file with the Manchester City Clerk also show a disbursement of $5,000 to the State Republican Party, at the address that is on the “Official Guide to Lower Taxes & A Safer City.”
Was the $5,000 sent to the State GOP to finance this campaign propaganda piece that alleges it has no official link to any candidate? A reasonable person might think that it was financed in whole or part by the Victoria Sullivan Mayor of Manchester campaign, which means that Victoria Sullivan is responsible, morally, for what is published in it.
Manchester’s Official Guide to Lower Taxes & A Safer City is a typical Republican election propaganda broadside, playing on the fears of groups like the elderly, while stoking bias against People of Color (POC), a time-honored Republican practice called “Race-Baiting” of which the late Lee Atwater was a master.
Naturally, the Grand Old Party of New Hampshire claims it is the only legitimate voice of the people. The NH GOP POV (point of view) is in lock goose-step with Donald Trump’s POV that Democrats are not real Americans, and elected Democrats do not constitute a lawful, official government.
The claim that it is the “Official Guide” of Manchester likely breaks some campaign finance law, if someone bothered to look. It is a lie if taken literally, which I’m sure it is not what the GOP meant. The statement smacks of satire.
Lee Atwater and other Republican operatives attempted to mobilize white working-class and middle-class voters by playing the race card. Donald Trump’s appeal to working whites, like that of Ronald Reagan, was rooted in appealing to racist sentiment.
Victoria Sullivan would like to portray herself as an opponent of racism, recently posting an attack on State Rep. Nicole Klein Knight on Facebook. Klein Knight was removed from the New Hampshire House Justice Committee for allegedly using the most offensive slur in the English language multiple times in the presence of an African American activist.
However, when it comes to Sullivan’s stand against racial invective, the former assistant House Majority Leader was noticeably absent when people in Manchester were criticizing her ally, Alderman at Large Joseph Kelly Levasseur, a Republican, for calling a young Black Lives Matter activist a “zipperhead” and telling him to get a job.
In June 2020, Mayor Joyce Craig and a group of aldermen called on Joe Kelly Levasseur to resign for making what they considered inflammatory remarks that could have led to violence, as Black Lives Matter was organizing marches and vigils.
Racist Rhetoric
“Zipperhead” is considered a racist term when used when speaking of or to people of East Asian origin. The word originated among American military personnel during the Korean War, and was used in that conflict and in the Vietnam War as a derogatory, racist put-down of Koreans, Vietnamese and other East Asians.
As regards its use towards an African American, “Zipperhead” was a part of drug slang during the crack cocaine epidemic, which was marked by high levels of violence.
Someone slain dealing or buying crack — or fighting over territory — was called a zipperhead as their corpse was put in a body bag by police, that was zipped up and over their head (the zipper starting at the feet and terminating over the head).
This was the racist idea that Joe Kelly Levasseur was playing on when he told a young black man he has insulted as a zipperhead to “get a job.”
And Victoria Wojdylak Sullivan was silent then.
Sullivan and accused racist Joe Kelly Levasseur are so close, he has handed over his public access TV show to Sullivan every other week.
Victoria Sullivan cannot remain silent about the race baiting via insinuation that was part of the school choice article in the GOP voters guide. If she is such a champion of civil rights and equality for all, why didn’t she purge the publication of the race-card play?
Race Baiting
The statement that public schools “are more interested in racial equality than teaching students to read” is intellectually vacant. There is no proof offered, just the assumption that the Manchester School District values promoting racial equality — an outcome primarily benefiting POC students — more than it values educating ALL students. This is freighted with the inference that white students are suffering as a result of the school district’s focus on POC students.
In this context, the Republican calculus could be understood by reasonable people as being inherently racist, as it privileges “teaching kids how to read” over promoting racial equality.
The rhetorical construction of the sentence puts public schools and public school teachers down for being “more interested in racial equality.”
Why, I ask, are the two goals incompatible? Why can’t the School District and school personnel value both missions, promoting the educational outcomes of both POC students and all students, i.e, promoting racial equality and a sound education?
What does an interest in racial equality do with low reading scores, one asks?
In my interpretation, the Republican Party is stating that the Manchester School District’s primary interests is promoting racial equality. How in the hell does this create lower reading scores? How does this create lower scores overall?
“Racial Equality” = “Equity”
What Victoria Sullivan Republicans might be said to be inferring is, that in their push for racial equality, the Manchester public schools have dropped the ball on teaching reading skills.
I ask you, would it be appropriate to read in a more sinister insinuation? For there is no reason that equality can’t be improved along as reading skills. How are they incompatible as the Sullivan Republicans seem to be claiming?
Maybe the anonymous hack who wrote this is just a poor writer, which was my first take on this article when I read it months ago. A sloppy silly writer, using a half-assed rhetorical strategy driven by a reactionary political ideology.
LISTEN: The Sullivan Republicans’ use of the term “racial equality” must be understood in the context of policy changes made by the Board of the School Committee to promote “equity” and in the context of the public debates over those changes and issues of racism and white privilege.
Those debates were savage.
In my opinion, it is indisputable that the use of the term “racial equality” references People of Color. It is not the Manchester School District policy that is being spoken to, but POC students who are the real subject of this jejune jeremiad by this anonymous Republican Jeremiah, oratorically clad in sack cloth and ashes, hinting at the approach of a racial Armageddon coming down in the Queen City’s public schools.
It seems to me that Victoria Sullivan’s apparent messianic complex is as infective as COVID-19 in GOP circles.
Could we infer, from what the anonymous Sullivan Republican seems to be insinuating, that the Manchester School District and school personnel are more interested in serving POC students than in serving all the student body?
Could we infer that the Sullivan Republican seems to be insinuating that the Manchester School District is not interested in serving white students?
Racism or Demagoguery?
I don’t honestly know if this is the author’s conscious intent. The Sullivan Republican Party hack could be innocent even of unconscious racism with their sloppy and — in my opinion — dishonest writing.
It simply could be a case of bad writing, unthought out writing. The sin of bullshitting voters with alarmist demagoguery.
But how can we isolate his words from the overall Republican attack on public schools, which includes mayoral candidate Victoria Sullivan’s assertion that Critical Race Theory is being taught in Manchester’s schools?
The Sullivan Republican who wrote this piece seems to be inferring that Manchester’s public school teachers have no real interest in doing what their jobs are — teaching.
With the attack on teachers unions preceding and setting up this dubious claim, the Sullivan Republican hack seems to be claiming that unionized public school teachers’ real educational interest is in cultivating a radical political agenda among their students, rather than training them in the traditional three R’s of “Reading, wRiting’ & aRthimetic.”
Speaking of The Three R’s: The rhetorical strategy of painting public school teachers as radicals that are a threat to white students, is something I find inferred by the author’s words when I read it and when I attempt to work out the calculus of their rhetorical strategy. The author may very well have consciously meant no such thing, and would be shocked by such an accusation. I hope so.
One thing the debate on white privilege has tried to teach white folk is that unconscious racism is inherent in white consciousness. This article in the GOP propaganda sheet is evidence in favor of the theory holding that white people unconsciously are racist, in my opinion.
Equating Racial Equality With Poor Educational Outcomes
I believe that Victoria Sullivan must address the statement on racial equality made in the Republican voters guide.
Why? Because it was made in an official Republican Party publication touting her. In an official GOP broadside, a Victoria Sullivan supporter linked the promotion of racial equality with the erosion of educational outcomes.
That is the Manchester City Republican calculus, apparently. Promoting racial equality = poor educational outcomes.
And what is the sense of this?
If one digs deeper, if one deconstructs his sloppy if not downright dumb rhetoric, is the Republican author seemingly (and this is deep deep down there, where the images conjured up in the brain by the words talk to and trigger the subconscious) — that in order to improve the outcomes of POC students, the Manchester public schools have deemphasized the teaching of reading skills?
The Republican voters guide statement, “…[S]chools are more interested in racial equality than teaching students to read,” can be inferred as implying that the Manchester public schools have dumbed down the curricula to serve a radical agenda of racial equity, with the result that students themselves have been dumbed down.
This is a process that, apparently, only the Republican school voucher program touted by Landslide Vicky can save Queen City students from. Victoria Wojdylak Sullivan is offering redemption from the wickedness inspired by unionized public school teachers and Democrats.
But just why would the public schools deemphasize reading to promote racial equality? Is it the assumption that POC students can’t read as well as white students, so to boost equality of outcomes, standards ensuring quality instruction must be unceremoniously shitcanned?
I find the inferences and insinuations that are part of the freight of the Republican rhetoric to be similar to the cant used to oppose the promotion of racial equality in public schools.
This mindset is based on the assumption that POC students cannot now or in the future be taught to read with a proficiency equivalent to white students — in taxpayer financed public schools.
Obviously, to Victoria Wojdylak Sullivan & Co., “failing” public school students can be taught to read in taxpayer financed private “Charter Schools” even if these charter schools lack any type of educational standards or oversight.
Sullivan touts “faith-based” organizations as the solution to everything, as long as they are provided with your tax dollars. Thinking that these disorganized charter schools can provide a proper education certainly takes a lot of faith!
Promoting Reading and Racial Equality
The reverse of the inferred argument by the right-wing charter school proponents is that the Manchester public schools want to boost the reading (and other) skills of POC students by improving instruction.
Crafting a curriculum that takes into consideration their reality — as all reality is socially defined, and defined by socio-economic factors — in order to address educational shortcomings and boost outcomes, is something that the School Board and members of the School District have committed to.
As I have pointed out, the assumption inherent in the Republican voters guide’s rhetorical strategy is that boosting equality and teaching reading skills are incompatible. Many reasonable people would assume this is a racist assumption.
As I have said previously, I would prefer to think that it was unconscious on the Republican author’s part, which validates arguments about white privilege and the necessity of what Republicans like to call “whiteness” training.)
The Race Card Redux
I am not saying that Victoria Sullivan or the author are, themselves, racist. This is a political propaganda piece pitched towards the socially defined “reality” of the white working class people that Sullivan claims she is the tribune of, and he wrote it to get people to vote Republican.
What is indisputable, in my opinion, is that he played the race card in his article published in the official New Hampshire Republican State Committee voters guide. And Victoria Sullivan was not just the intended beneficiary of such dubious tactics, she was silent about them.
In that, Victoria Sullivan is a simulacrum of Donald Trump. But this is an article about one of her allies playing the race card in an official piece of Republican Party propaganda.
Of course, Victoria Wojdylak Sullivan likely would claim she had no idea what was going into the New Hampshire Republican State Committee’s municipal voters guide, as it had no connection to her or her committee — so the broadside’s disclaimer says.
In her defense, Sullivan the Silent — if she chose to break her silence — probably would say no one had actually told her about this article that cynically played the race card in a publication that has no link to her whatsoever, despite parottng her platform and using her campaign slogan.
And I guess, as a final kicker to exonerate her, Landslide Vicky could say that she was too busy to actually read the voters guide.
Then again, she could repeat what she said on Tammy Simmons’ public access TV show that she was not “the brightest person” in a room.
