I did debate whether or not to add this to an existing thread but couldn't find one where it really belonged

Daring to Speak Up About Race in a Divided School District
What happened when a superintendent in northern Michigan raised the issue of systemic racism?
Daniel Bergner

The Leelanau Peninsula looks, on a map of Michigan, like a thick pinky with a gnarled tip. In the northern reaches of the state, it lies between Lake Michigan and Grand Traverse Bay. It’s a place of cherry and plum orchards, long stretches of road bordered by forests and fields and monumental, surreal sand dunes.

Demographically, the peninsula and adjacent mainland could hardly be more homogeneous; the population is over 90 percent white. But politically, the area is starkly divided. Conservatives worry that their territory is turning “as blue as Ann Arbor,” as one centrist Republican put it, and liberals see Trump 2024 banners draped over the fronts of neighbors’ houses and, on a few houses and trucks, Confederate flags. The peninsula — whose economy spans agriculture, tourism and, lately, an influx of people with the luxury of remote work, and where houses range from grand domains by the water to mobile homes just inland — voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and, by a slight margin, for Joe Biden in 2020, while the surrounding counties went overwhelmingly to Trump in 2016 and a bit less so in the last election. Some members of the Wolverine Watchmen militia will soon stand trial in Traverse City, at the peninsula’s base, on state charges of plotting to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor from her summer cottage close by.

A little past halfway up the peninsula is the tiny Leland Public School District, which serves ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/06/maga ... chool.html