The Assembly is scheduled to vote tomorrow on a Republican bill a sponsor says would prohibit public schools from teaching race and sex stereotypes.
“Stereotyping people is wrong,” said co-sponsor Rep. Scott Allen, R-Waukesha, in an interview aired Sunday on “UpFront,” produced in partnership with WisPolitics.com.
A Dem opponent called it a “bandwagon bill” inspired by legislation in other states.
“This is, No. 1, a bandwagon bill that started in Texas and that is part of the GOP greatest hits 2021, an attempt to deny that systemic racism exists,” said Rep. LaKeshia Myers, D-Milwaukee, in the same interview.
Allen predicted AB411 would pass on the floor of the Assembly tomorrow.
“I have yet to hear Rep. Myers give me one thing in the bill, a specific provision in the bill, to which she objects,” Allen said. “The bill is what the bill is. Not what you would pretend it to be.”
Myers, who predicted that Dem Gov. Tony Evers would veto the bill, called it an assault on teaching.
“This is not about critical race theory,” Myers countered. “This is about sensibilities and white fragility, and how we can couch what our country has gone through. This is what we are doing. This is an assault on teaching, and something that we’re trying to assault our children from learning historical truths.”
Also on the program, a public health officer said vaccinating children will be important to controlling COVID-19 long term.
Darren Rausch, health officer and director of the Greenfield Health Department, said hospitalizations of children are increasing because of COVID.
“While severe complications of COVID in kids may be small, there is a great potential for that kid to develop a mild case of COVID, or even a moderate case of COVID, and infect a parent, a teacher, someone who might have an immune compromising condition, or maybe a grandparent,” Rausch said.
In another segment, “UpFront” host Adrienne Pedersen talked to Hamid Samar, an Afghan refugee living at Fort McCoy with his wife and children.
Pedersen asked Samar what life is like at the military installation.
“We are learning the military life,” Samar said. “We are staying in each floor in one building, sleeping or living, like 60 to 55 people altogether. Each floor we are living five, six or 10 families together, they are Afghan families.”
Samar said he is grateful to be in the United States and that his life, and those of his wife and children, were saved as his home country fell to the Taliban during the U.S. withdrawal.
See more from the program here.
