An America I Recognize

What was I — a lifelong Democrat — doing at an election watch party in rural Virginia, surrounded by Republicans? As Ron DeSantis, 800 miles away, filled a huge TV screen with a post-landslide victory speech, he provided part of the answer: “We chose education over indoctrination!” He got a raucous round of applause from the crowd at the Marriott Ranch, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Even I joined in.

I have come to realise that party affiliation is far less important to me than fealty to the values that made it possible for me, a Muslim immigrant from India, to prosper in America. In the summer of 1969, I arrived at JFK International Airport as a four-year-old with no English, destined for a new home in New Jersey and then Morgantown, West Virginia. My parents had made a keen study of US history. They knew it was a nation that had its flaws, but they were encouraged by some pivotal developments, particularly the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which banned racial segregation in public schools and declared unequivocally that race cannot play a role in school admissions. This, they thought, was a fair place to raise their kids.

When I came to learn my adopted nation’s history myself, at Martin Luther King Elementary School, I understood that the painful legacy of slavery was part of it. But I also knew that good and thoughtful people in the present had made honest attempts to address these issues — by passing laws banning racial discrimination, for instance. I hardly thought the US perfect but, as a native of India, I understood that societies that dwell forever on historical grievances tend not to be happy, free or prosperous places. America was fundamentally — and wonderfully — different.

But, in recent years, something very disturbing has happened. That is why, on the night of the midterm elections, I drove west after sundown on Route 66 with my friend Harry Jackson, the first black PTSA president at my son’s alma mater. We were driving to a party of kindred spirits, most of whom didn’t look anything like us.

Why? Because the Democratic Party, which once valued fairness and justice, has, alas, been torching the American Dream. Democratic politicians, school boards, governors and even US Supreme Court justices are pushing “equity” over equality, “anti-racist” bigotry over colour-blindness, and mediocrity over merit. Literacy and maths scores are plummeting nationwide, while black and Hispanic kids are falling further and further behind — and yet progressive Democrats are far more interested in bringing crackpot racialist theories into our classrooms. In other words: they choose indoctrination over education.

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