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Earlier this month, British media once again platformed a talking point pushed by anti-trans activists. The Sunday Times, among other outlets, "reported" on a backlash to a hypothetical scenario in which a sex offender might choose to identify as a woman. That an imaginary notion was elevated into a news item speaks to the entrenched anti-transness of British media.

But then Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling tweeted the article, further elevating the narrative; she became a trending topic on Twitter, promoting a link between transness and sexual violence. US media covered her tweet as a controversy that implied there might be a real threat posed by trans self-determination. It might be too obvious to state, but there isnt. In fact, there is actually an ongoing epidemic of violence against trans women, and no such pattern of trans women committing violence against cis women or anyone else.

This was, however, the latest point of panic in a wave reacting to the so-called transgender tipping point of visibility. And Rowling in particular has chosen to make herself the face of this backlash.

Just last year, she publicly targeted clinics where trans youth receive lifesaving gender-affirming treatment, turning trans bodily self-determination into a story about the supposedly threatened safety of cis children. She has also mocked evolving public health language that includes trans men and nonbinary people, hijacking that recognition to create a story about the supposed erasure of cis women.

Like fellow billionaire Peter Thiel, she has even reportedly deployed her money and power to try to silence criticism. And yet all the while her anti-trans campaigning is generally characterized by the media as controversial views: not part of an explicit agenda, but an ongoing human interest mystery chronicled as a perplexing personal evolution.

Rowlings status as a celebrity billionaire affords her extra protection and the benefit of the doubt while also helping to amplify her talking points. But its specifically because she speaks as a white woman with concerns about the safety of women and children that her anti-trans framing is accepted on Twitter and treated by the media at large as worthy of debate.

Never explicitly framed as a misinformation agent who might merit deplatforming, Rowling is a symptom of the current media ecosystem, in which disinformation about minority identities is accepted as legitimate controversy.

This scenario comes into play whenever powerful people, institutions, or political organizations raise public concerns about the protection of majority groups, especially white women and children.

In fact, two of the biggest, seemingly unrelated, culture war stories this year were propelled by a similar reframing of misinformation as legitimate debate. These so-called controversies were supposedly about trans people, especially trans girls and women, and teaching history, known as the critical race theory debate.

Both were part of political backlashes that came in response to increased visibility for minority groups: increased representation of trans people in media and public debate about gender and the Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.

Framed largely by right-wing activists and think tanks as human interest issues about fairness in sports and classrooms, they circulated into national legacy media including publications like USA Today, CBS, The Atlantic, and the New York Times through first-person opinion pieces by mothers of cis athletes raising fears about trans inclusion or human interest reports featuring on-the-ground stories of white moms airing complaints about supposed radical ideas being introduced in schools.

Whatever the content of the reporting or articles, in platforming these issues through the concerns of cis and white people, mainstream media helped distort what constitutes legitimate perspectives for coverage, and in doing so sidelined the actual difficulties experienced by marginalized communities, including Black and trans youth.

Ultimately, this kind of coverage raises deeper questions about news organizations and who decides the perspective of culture war journalism.

Theres a long history in the US of setting the terms of debate by centering media narratives around the well-being of white women and children. Its usually associated with anti-Black and anti-gay right-wing activism and can be traced back to antischool integration campaigns in the 60s, through save the children anti-gay campaigns in the 70s, and even the coverage questioning how children would fare under marriages between same-sex couples in the aughts.

Right-wing activists used similar framing to introduce the so-called controversy over critical race theory. Attempts to eradicate histories of race in the US are nothing new. As recently as 2011, activists attempted to ban ethnic studies and Mexican American studies curricula in Arizona. But ethnic studies simply doesnt have the polarizing or concerning ring necessary to stoke a national panic about existing curricular offerings like studying civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

The term critical race theory was perfect for right-wing campaigns, though, because, as one activist told the New Yorker this summer, to most Americans it connotes hostile, academic, divisive, race-obsessed, poisonous, elitist, anti-American. So a long-term campaign to dismantle any talk of race and history in schools was rebranded as a crusade against critical race theory, even though that term actually refers to a graduate-level theory about the intersections of law, culture, and structural racism that has nothing to do with elementary history in classrooms.

Theres a long history in the US of setting the terms of debate by centering media narratives around the well-being of white women and children.

The idea of the country as race-obsessed and race discourse as destructively divisive was already percolating in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests, especially after George Floyds murder.

Outlets like the New York Times and the Atlantic dedicated valuable resources to reporting on the supposed excesses of anti-racism. These nuance stories by white journalists included one about a Black fathers school board campaign against anti-racism. In the Times, there was a story about a Black student who made a supposedly false accusation of racial profiling at Smith College. Even attempts at self-reflection centered whiteness and painted anti-racism as an elitist concern; a story about the Times own newsroom racism was used to highlight how privileged white high schoolers now felt entitled to call out racism.

Right-wing think tanks, like the Manhattan Institute, promoted that precise notion online and in legacy media to activate parents into believing anti-racism was out of control. Quotes from concerned moms further stoked these fears: They are making my son feel like a racist because of the pigmentation of his skin.

The idea of talking about race wasnt necessarily new to many Black and brown parents for whom discussing the realities of inequality and existing in a white world isnt an option in the same way. Yet outlets including CBS and the Atlantic picked up that framing too, feeding into the sense that radically new ideas were suddenly being introduced with headlines like, When the culture war comes for the kids, and How young is too young to teach kids about race? (The latter headline was changed after a backlash.)

As the November elections neared, news stories about suburban or small-town parents battling over school curricula started popping up as well. The framing of these battles through reported human interest stories, rather than, say, misinformation explainers, suggested that these were newsworthy grassroots issues that spoke to broad parental fears rather than a vocal minority stoking social media disinformation.

To some degree, the stories discredited the panic about race education in schools by pointing out the organizations and dark money groups (like the Judicial Crisis Network) who helped fund these campaigns and including voices of supporters of existing curriculums. But they still promoted the idea that these battles represented two equal sides of inflamed national feelings, rather than a strategically invented controversy and well-funded top-down disinformation campaigns.

Ultimately, the timing and framing of these stories about race and education highlight that they were not deemed newsworthy because of concerns of the community members at the center, Black parents and youth, or the massive ongoing inequality around race and class that still permeates public schools. Instead, they helped reframe debate to center white parental anxieties.

In many ways, this same scenario misinformation platformed as debate has been playing out in the coverage of trans people, long before J.K. Rowling seized the moment as a major anti-trans voice. Newsrooms lacking in trans journalists had been framing trans existence through concerns that trans people were incapable of deciding their bodily self-determination on their own.

This type of clueless question about how young is too young for children to know their gender, coming from outside the trans community, was epitomized by a now-infamous 2018 Atlantic cover story. It explicitly addressed imagined anxious white parents with the (misgendering) headline, Your child says shes trans...shes 13.

The story and its cis panic about trans identity as some kind of trend among teens was later completely debunked by other news outlets. Since then, gender historians have shown the long history of trans children, studies have confirmed that trans children are just as certain about their gender as cis teens. The Atlantic never officially apologized for the storys framing, including misgendering and outing the cover model. (The writer, however, has since been placed on watch lists for anti-LGBTQ journalism).

This year, right-wing activists expanded their concern to sports. And it wasnt an accident they set that arena as a location to invent debate.

In the real world, all trans people are not white and not middle class and have little access to healthcare even if they can find an affirming clinic, especially when most insurance companies refuse to cover such care. Trans people struggle not with identity itself, but with an anti-trans world that restricts access to resources for transition and features gatekeepers who set rules and timelines on cis terms. And unsurprisingly, Novembers elections saw right-wing activists promoting a new wave of bills blocking access to healthcare for trans people. As GLAAD pointed out, that Atlantic cover story was used in a legal brief filed by seven state attorneys general in a federal lawsuit seeking to roll back existing healthcare access for trans people.

This year, right-wing activists expanded their concern to sports. And it wasnt an accident they set that arena as a location to invent debate. Like classrooms, sports are imagined by white Americans as a neutral space of meritocracy, and right-wing think tanks purposely promoted that setting for human interest stories about fairness.

Publications including USA Today and the Economist took the bait, uncritically platforming first-person pieces by white mothers and white athletes airing out concerns about maybe having to compete against trans girls. The misinformation spread by cis athletes about hormonal or strength differences was ultimately debunked.

But real questions about meritocracy, including around race and class inequality, did not even get folded into these chronicles, revealing that narratives were about the protection of supposedly endangered young white women. This becomes clearer when considering that the surveillance regarding testosterone levels has primarily targeted cis Black women athletes.

Given the minority status of trans people in society at large, its unsurprising that trans athletes never even materialized in most states where the bills were being pushed. Yet even positive human interest pieces about trans athletes were reactive ones in which trans humanity was rendered visible only in terms of the wave of cis fears.

As with the CRT coverage, the focus on questions about youth transition or sports isnt actually about the struggles of trans people at all, which include disproportionately high rates of housing insecurity and under or unemployment.

The sidelining of actual trans issues in order to debate imaginary fears does, however, speak to broader systemic problems with media and the way that trans people circulate as objects of coverage for cis people rather than subjects of their own reality. Even media attempts to cover anti-trans activism have turned into debates between cis women about transness through controversies about trans exclusionary radical feminists (TERFS).

That moniker itself, recently used to describe Rowling, platforms anti-trans activists within the context of feminism and has lent legitimacy to their efforts, portraying bigotry as some kind of newfangled intellectual exercise over the meaning of feminism or queer community. In fact, anti-transness is part of a long history of class and racial exclusions in feminism, both in media and, most importantly, in the real world, where trans identity has been made into a scapegoat for anger about inequality more broadly.

Its unquestionable that the CRT and trans debates have been pushed into the media by right-wing activism and conservative politicians through strategic waves of anti-CRT and anti-trans bills. Theyre even timed to purposely inflame conservatives and rally the base for elections.

But at this point, its too easy to see anti-trans and anti-Black concern-mongering as just an issue of right-wing misinformation. After all, these framings are accepted for coverage via the editorial judgments of majority white and cis newsrooms.

So-called culture war issues are where the media allows itself maximal editorializing on behalf of cis white anxieties and fears about a changing world. But the terms for what becomes a culture war story are not decided by the public. Instead, they are decided in newsrooms that dont mirror reality but certainly help shape it.

American newsrooms are even whiter than the country as a whole, and its in that context of media echo chambers that critical race theory is repackaged as controversial. Most Americans believe the history of slavery should be taught, for instance. And after the 2021 November election, polls showed that even the idea that critical race theory drove elections was overstated.

Similarly, trans rights are actually not controversial in the US population at large. But trans journalists are woefully underrepresented in newsrooms. Its predictable that cis journalists talking to each other about transness results in stories that home in on and magnify cis debates about trans identity. This dynamic sidelines the potential richness of good faith exchanges within the trans community about the complexity of existing in a cis world.

Current thinking about misinformation is focused on anti-science or partisan campaigns that exist in the social media ether. But there are other important questions, like the way the media feeds into misinformation by platforming sources that reframe debate outside the terms of the communities these debates actually affect.

Trans people struggle not with identity itself, but with an anti-trans world.

Partisanship is still the favored term in journalism for talking about media balance. But considering editorial judgment through partisanship simply recreates existing power imbalances by focusing on issues about race, class, and gender only if theyre legible through the lens of Republican vs. Democrat. It would mean something quite different if corporate media held itself accountable to the communities it covers rather than political parties.

Categorizing questions about ethical coverage through partisanship issues also helps ignore uncomfortable realities about news capitalism, like the fact that newsrooms need to make a profit and stories are often packaged for advertisers and imagined white readers.

Financial incentives are a major reason why its hard to wean media off engaging with misinformative framings to capture cis and white readers, which still constitute a majority of the public. After all, these panicked stories feed engagement for Twitter, Facebook, legacy media, and new venture capitalist corporate platforms like Substack.

Its not an accident that in all the race and trans backlash stories, class is invoked not to call out how white middle- and upper-class perspectives shape newsrooms (including through media CEOs). Instead, it is invoked to imply that anti-racism or trans rights are somehow an elitist concern. This framing takes pressure off the publications themselves to engage with these issues as a labor concern in their own newsrooms. But divorcing stories about class and identity from the real world and existing power structures is a distortion. Framing and context shouldnt only be dictated by cis white fears and concerns.

Still, there have been some changes by newsrooms around the framing of stories to acknowledge power imbalances in the real world. The Verge has updated its policies for giving big tech companies anonymity as background sources for articles. Some news organizations are questioning the uncritical use of police sources when ascertaining the truth of events. Cis and white concerned parents might be less obviously identifiable as problematic sources, but its a powerful category of people due for a similar reckoning.

Tellingly, after a backlash to the white framing of its how young is too young CRT story, CBS changed the headline not to, say, White Parents Are Finally Having to Grapple with Questions Others Routinely Do. Instead, it was replaced with a nonclickbait-y mouthful: Documentary explores debate over how and when race should be taught in schools.

That shift of the framing to debate is the customary way mainstream media dodges any pressure about taking sides. But platforming both sides implies we live in an already equal world. We dont. And thats a fact.

Link:
The Culture Wars Arent Real. The People They Hurt Are. - BuzzFeed News

It has been another huge year for podcasts, with a rise in both fictional and celebrity-hosted podcasts, along with the perennial true crime ones. Themes of diversity, social justice, environmental issues and cancel culture were also prominent this year.

Here, then, are five of the best podcasts of 2021 and some suggestions for companion listening.

From Serial to Ear Hustle (produced inside San Quentin prison) to Darwins Birds Eye View, the podcast medium has allowed us to fully hear prisoners stories, without any prior judgement based on their appearance. Suave extends the tradition with a deep dive into the story of a Latino-American man called David Luis Suave Gonzalez, sentenced to life imprisonment at Graterford State Correctional Institution, Pennsylvania, aged just 17.

It turns out that like other juveniles in that state, he pleaded guilty rather than be subject to a potential death penalty. Journalist Maria Hinojosa tracks Suaves story over decades, until a new ruling means he may find freedom, at almost 50. A penetrating exploration of prison psychology, this podcast is anchored in a complex relationship between a journalist and her source.

Companion listening: In the Dark, Series 2, Episode: Curtis Flowers.Years of investigation by this podcast team helped obtain the release of a Mississippi man, Curtis Flowers, who was wrongfully imprisoned for 23 years partly due to a racist district attorney. This long-awaited interview with a freed Curtis reveals a man who is sad, charming, clear-eyed and remarkably free of bitterness.

Read more: Michelle Obama, podcast host: how podcasting became a multi-billion dollar industry

Jon Ronson, the Louis Theroux of podcasting, provides a historical take on the culture wars in this carefully crafted BBC podcast (dropping Feb 9 in Australia). In the first five episodes (all Ive heard), Ronson deploys his trademark ability to scratch a big theme and find the quirky human stories that flip common perceptions.

A televangelist espouses gay rights at the height of AIDS; the censoring of progressive school literature in America in the 60s gives way to a woke backlash decades on against a seminal black memoir; a reformed anti-abortion crusader rues his propaganda; and a 1980s proto-Q-anon-style conspiracy that sent an innocent childcare worker to jail for years shows that framing a victim does not need online hysteria. The series provides sobering context for the conflicts that have been so amplified by social media anarchy, delivered with a kind of wry wonder at our inhumanity.

Companion listening: The Eleventh from Pineapple Studios documents horrifying tales of contemporary cancel culture in its first series, The Inbox, while Limited Capacity from CBC is a more playful take on internet predations.

The title derives from then President Donald Trumps vicious description of Haiti, El Salvador and some African countries in 2018. This spurred young Ghanaian-American Afia Kaakyire to delve into family history and self-discovery, telling true tales dipped in entrepreneurial dreams, green card anxieties, complicated love.

Though her name is made-up (for obvious reasons), Afias voice is utterly authentic. She chronicles with honesty and irony her ambivalent, evolving relationship with Ghana and her extended family, in a wide-ranging essay-memoir produced to the excellent standards we associate with the Radiotopia network of independent artists. Episode 3, in which she interviews her remarkable mother, Agnes, about her long journey to becoming a property-owner in New York, is a standout. And unlike many narrative podcasts, the ending doesnt disappoint: the final two episodes positively sizzle.

Companion listening: Crackdown shares themes of being Other and wishing to be truly seen. This activist Canadian podcast is hosted by Garth Mullins, a drug user who is also a professional radio reporter. In collaboration with a community of drug users in Vancouver, the podcast robustly advocates for opioids and other drugs to be made legal, styling itself as the drug war, covered by drug users as war correspondents.

This epic podcast traverses the Okavango River from its source in Angola to its discharge into the Botswana Delta 1500 kilometres later, through the eyes of local keepers and scientists dedicated to its conservation. Funded by the National Geographic Society and others, its a sound-rich portrait of the river as a vital, living artefact, narrated by two engaging African scientists who are emotionally and environmentally connected to it.

Companion listening: The Repair Season 5 of the always-on-the-Zeitgeist Scene On Radio tackles the climate emergency, starting at the Book of Genesis, which exhorted man to subdue nature.

Sometimes the Big Topics get a bit overwhelming and its nice to be reminded of what podcasting means to many: a chumcast/chatcast, where a couple of pals shoot the breeze on whatever takes their fancy. Countless chatcasts dabble in sport, pop culture and TV recaps.

With corporate heavies like Spotify, Audible and lately Facebook, muscling in on the medium, its refreshing to hear two homegrown Aussies randomly ruminating on a very pertinent theme surviving the share house and riding out the rental crisis. Hosts Marty Smiley and Nat Demena have lots of fun with Karen bin nazis,(entitled white women who police bins on streets), food-tamperers and housemates that never flush.

Companion listening: Helen Garner reading Monkey Grip, her own tale of toxic share houses, set in Melbourne in the 70s. Deliciously observed, this gritty urban anthropology (disguised as a novel) makes you realise not much has changed, despite the internet. Free on ABC Listen app, or on Audible.

Siobhan McHughs book The Power of Podcasting will be released in February.

Continued here:
River stories, culture wars, share house sagas: 5 of the best podcasts of 2021 - The Conversation AU

If you've spent any time online over the past year or so, you've probably been unable to escape the hype around cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and so-called Web3 in general. Celebs like Reese Witherspoon and Gwyneth Paltrow have gotten on the bandwagon, and El Salvador recently became the first country to make bitcoin legal tender.

Equally unavoidable is the backlash. NFT projects from the likes of Lindsay Lohan and the estate of Stan Lee have been met with ridicule and vitriol. Word that Kickstarter planned to pivot its crowdfunding platform to be backed by the blockchain was received by many on social media with disappointment or even disgust.

Web3 fans believe that cryptocurrencies and NFTs are the harbingers of a movement in tech that can decentralize finance and commerce, putting more power into the hands of users and disrupting the likes of Google and Facebook. Skeptics believe the benefits of Web3 are unproven or unrealistic, as cryptocurrency scams run rampant and blockchains damage the environment through their power consumption.

Now tech-industry insiders say the debate over cryptocurrencies is coming home, as developers increasingly take sides on Web3. Twitter is full of anecdotal evidence of developers quitting when their employers embrace crypto, even as execs at companies like Amazon and Facebook take new jobs in the industry. Even leaders like Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey vocal fans of bitcoin and crypto got pushback after suggesting Web3 is overhyped.

Importantly, insiders say, this growing rift has as much to do with politics as it does with technology, with interest in or skepticism of cryptocurrency taken as a statement of values that can pit a developer against their peers.

That's a real bigger-picture risk, some insiders say.

The more polarized the discussion becomes, and the more people who identify strongly with the pro- or anti-crypto camps, the harder it is to have an honest dialogue in the industry about the promise of the technology and to reckon with the harms of the rising tide of crypto scams and other bad behavior on the blockchain.

Some worry that this divide could be disastrous for tech in the long haul. If the Web3 movement shuns even mild or well-reasoned skepticism, insiders say, the dangers will only get bigger, scaling with its growth. And they say that, conversely, if Web3 skeptics aren't willing to assess the technology on its own merits in good faith, the industry could risk throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater.

"If it's going to be bad, then we need to know what it is so we can play defense," said Kelsey Hightower, a principal engineer at Google. "If it's going to be good, then we need to know how it works so we can actually get in on the action or play off it. But we can't have either of those options from a place of ignorance."

Fierce debates are common in the tech industry, where developers will endlessly argue the merits of Mac versus PC, or Android versus iPhone, or even whether to put a tab or a space after each new line of code.

The thing that sets the crypto debate apart is that cryptocurrency itself is an increasingly political issue in ways that don't break cleanly along party lines. Hillary Clinton, the former Democratic presidential nominee and secretary of state, has described what she sees as the dangers of bitcoin, while Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis crossed the aisle to work with Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden to propose new tax rules around cryptocurrency.

Some in tech worry that this is bringing the intense polarization that saturates American politics into the heart of the software industry, making it difficult to hold any sort of good-faith discussion on the matter.

"It's so polarizing," said Tracy King, a software engineer at the startup Xplor. King said that adding ".eth" to her Twitter display name, signifying her support of the ethereum blockchain, solicited a surprising amount of blowback. "I've experienced people who I thought were friends start name-calling and block me for being a 'Web3 shill,'" she said.

Kelly Vaughn, a prominent software developer and cofounder of the gift-card startup Govalo, experienced a similar fallout after tweeting about an interest in learning more about Web3. "I know I have a large audience and with that always brings individuals with strong opinions on either side of the fence, but I definitely wasn't expecting the backlash right out the gate," Vaughn said.

"I feel like everything gets so politicized here," Anne Griffin, a product manager at the travel-booking website Priceline, told Insider. "It's putting people at a disadvantage to get in a technology that is going to change the world, like very early on."

On the other side, even optimistic skeptics of cryptocurrency are hesitant to voice anything like dissent, some insiders say. Liz Fong-Jones, a developer well known for her employee activism at Google, said she worried about losing potential clients or future investors by being critical of crypto.

"The instant you mention anything that is negative about cryptocurrency, there are going to immediately be people who nitpick what you have to say," Fong-Jones told Insider. "I wouldn't necessarily characterize the behavior as overtly harassing so much as it's sucking up the oxygen in the room."

Anil Dash, the CEO of the collaborative coding platform Glitch, said that if the pro-crypto camp doesn't take seriously the concerns about environmental damage, scams, hoaxes, and other dangers and risks that have come alongside the Web3 boom, it'll be that much harder to bridge the divide.

"The Web3 community has not had that moment of realizing they had empowered not just scammers and grifters but people that were going to twist this technology for really evil use," Dash said. "For all the good that it's done, there's been so much harm. And so I think there's anxiety and grief and residual culpability about that."

See more here:
Web3 Boom Is Bringing American Culture Wars to the Tech Industry - Business Insider

Campt, a dialogue specialist, and Mahaley, an anti-racism organizer, are principals at The Dialogue Company.

America is immersed in a culture war that is a new manifestation of its age-old problem with race. School board meetings across America have devolved into ugly protests about critical race theory. The strategy to rebrand CRT was created, organized and executed intentionally as a political wedge issue. Right-wing operative Christopher Rufo publicly admitted: We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.

CRT, like all wedge issues, is forcing the public into binary thinking, further polarizing the right against the left. Anti-racism allies on the left have made things worse by belittling the arguments, defending CRT and ultimately adding to the already dangerous polarization of our country. Instead of this divisive debate, what is needed is a nuanced dialogue grounded in compassion, one that can surface legitimate concerns on both sides.

One key claim of the anti-CRT operatives is that some K-12 educators are required to teach children that all white people and America itself are irredeemably racist. Most people, unless they are among the most hyper-woke activists, bristle at this assertion. Why? Because America learned during the civil rights movement that being racist was wrong so wrong that, today, even the Ku Klux Klan denies that it is a racist organization; now, its members describe themselves as simply pro-white. Even those on the left who agree that racism in America was and is an acute problem feel uneasy about burdening their children with debilitating white privilege guilt.

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Amidst the maylay, this anxiety is being funneled into local and state elections. Activists on the right hope to build more momentum toward the U.S. House and Senate elections in 2022. As we saw in Virginias gubernatorial race, using CRT as a weaponized wedge issue works. So instead of fighting harder, adding to the dangerous polarization, we suggest people who consider themselves anti-racist shift the focus and instead ask: What should we teach our children about race and racism?

This question is actually a very useful conversation for Americans to have. This will require some very different behaviors, particularly by people on the left who claim to deplore all matters of violence. In fact, people on the left (and anyone who is tired of endless divisive culture wars) need to embody non-violence in their communication style and end these bitter and divisive debates.

How do they do that?

In addition to diffusing the CRT argument, engaging in ways that allow opposing sides to talk openly and candidly (ideally in small groups) about their fears, hopes and values will lead to better curriculum choices. School boards and superintendents need to create settings where people can actually talk to each other instead of just managing the circus of public comments at meetings. Public officials and non-educational civic organizations need to plan public engagement events for dialogue. We need many groups including churches inviting people to dialogues not about CRT but to answer the question What should we teach children about race?

We can expect to see political operatives on the right continuing to focus on critical race theory as a wedge issue in a culture war. Anyone who considers themselves opposed to racism can use compassion to transform this culture war and create a long-overdue dialogue about how people on all sides collaborate toward America's promise of equality.

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Through compassion we can transform the current culture war - The Fulcrum

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In 2021, the culture wars thoroughly colonised all of our favourite sports.

Nowhere was this clearer than in football. The peoples game was rife with woke politics this year, as it was last year. Players are still taking the knee before each game, more than 18 months after the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests, which first inspired all the knee-taking. The kneeling still frequently features as a highlight alongside shots and saves on Match of the Day, in case we hadnt got the message yet.

Not everyone buys into the idea that footballs primary purpose is to promote the Black Lives Matter movement not least those who watch football, many of whom have grown tired of all the virtue-signalling. This was made abundantly clear when England fans booed the taking of the knee in the run-up to Euro 2020. Some fans carried on the booing at the tournament itself.

The woke were not happy about this. For BBC football pundit Gary Lineker, the boo boys were part of the reason why players [were] taking the knee. And the Euros then provided a perfect opportunity for fans to be told, over and over again, that they were a bunch of awful racists.

At the Euros, the England team mounted their best run at a major tournament since 1966. But for many commentators, the culture war, not the pitch, was where the action was. After Englands devastating loss on penalties to Italy in the final, a handful of racist tweets were held up as proof that Englands oikish football fans were dyed-in-the-wool scum, in need of re-education.

The summer of sport that followed provided plenty more podiums for woke posturing. At the Tokyo Olympics in July and August, the trans issue muscled its way into view. New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, who was born male, was allowed to compete against biological women despite having some quite obvious advantages.

Predictably, much of the media championed Hubbard as a heroic trans trailblazer. When critics questioned whether it was really so progressive to allow a biological male to take the space of a qualified female athlete, much of the press leapt to Hubbards defence.

The BBC went as far as to publish a 3,000-word article about this reluctant history-maker, charting Hubbards road to Tokyo. Following a predictable backlash to the article, BBC Sports social-media team then threatened to report naysayers to the police for spreading hate. In the end, Hubbard performed poorly.

As some were celebrated with no regard for their talent, one incredibly talented sportswoman was celebrated for quitting the competition prematurely. US gymnast Simone Biles, the greatest gymnast of all time, pulled out of a number of Olympic events citing mental-health reasons. She suffered an unfortunate bout of the twisties that is, feeling a disconnect between her mind and her body.

Her temporary loss of nerve was tragic, for herself and the US gymnastics team. But for the media, quitting made Biles a hero. She was showered with praise for being open about her weaknesses and for putting her wellbeing above her sport. She was even named Time magazines athlete of the year. In 2021, it seems, you could win without even taking part.

A few unfortunate sportsmen found themselves on the wrong side of the culture wars this year, however. And for this, they were shown no mercy. That some of them were hauled over the coals for things they said while they were teenagers showed just how much the harsh world of cancel culture has been imported into the world of sport.

Just think of poor Ollie Robinson, the England cricketer who was suspended from the international game because of offensive tweets he wrote when he was a teenager. Or Marc Bola, the Middlesborough footballer charged by the FA for aggravated misconduct, over an allegedly bigoted tweet he sent when he was a wise, old 14.

That even the genteel sport of cricket was overcome by identity politics this year showed how deep the rot now goes. What began with former Yorkshire cricketer Azeem Rafiqs shocking allegations of racism at his old club soon descended into unseemly cancellation campaigns.

Cricketing legend Michael Vaughan was dropped as a commentator by the BBC and BT Sport because of an allegation, made by Rafiq, that he made a racist comment over 10 years ago an allegation he vehemently denies. Rafiq himself was then brought down when anti-Semitic comments he made years ago were unearthed.

There was just too much identity politicking in sport this year. Too much right-on crusading. Too much cancel culture. And it came at the cost of the sport itself, which at times felt almost secondary to the woke propaganda.

But sporting greatness is not dead yet. England has a competitive and driven national team heading into the World Cup next year. Then theres tennis prodigy Emma Raducanu, about to take her next steps. Despite a valiant attempt by woke commentators to claim the mixed-race players fairytale win at the US Open as one in the eye of racist Britain, her stunning achievement cancelled out the noise.

So lets kick the culture wars into touch in 2022, and get back to enjoying the sport.

Paddy Hannam is editorial assistant at spiked. Follow him on Twitter: @paddyhannam.

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The year the culture wars colonised sport - Spiked