The Department of Labor's Poster Boy

Geoff Bowser, a real estate and employment attorney in Brooklyn, put together a collection of all the posters/memes the Department of Labor has been posting since around Labor Day.

Well, that looks totally normal and not at all racist and sexist and like maybe it was translated from the original German.

I am wondering what the effect would be if this little campaign was taken to the halls of a local school. How could we expect students to react to this? Especially the students who are not white christian males?

I mean, what is the message for educators and education? Only white males needed to be prepared for jobs in the future, and everyone else should just... disappear? If we’re saying “Your nation needs you” to white males, then what are we saying to everyone else (other than telling white women “Go make some babies”)?

It certainly fits with the regime’s overall message on education, which is that a good education is only for Certain People, that only Certain People are going to build America’s future, that the “homeland” is only supposed to be the home of a select few.

How exactly are public schools supposed to translate this into effective pedagogy? Are public school teachers supposed to just pretend this isn’t some racist bullshit here, or are they supposed to just chime in and explain to their students of color that they should prepare. in fact, for life as second class citizens? Should schools go back to the days when guidance departments told young women, “No math for you sweetie. You just need a full courseload of home ec.”

This is the visual equivalent of the quiet part out loud. Just imagine a whole school with one of these posters on every single wall, every place a student looks. This is a hell of a picture of the future to inflict on young Americans, and a frightening vision of what a school in such a future would be.