Mixed-race student brings lawsuit against charter school for mandatory CRT content.

[Politesse]

If your thesis is that racism is a communal product of an unequal society, people can be victimized by others without those others consciously intending to harm anyone per se, and if they do intend harm that isn't ncessarily the only or even most important factor producing inequality. From a CRT perspective, the question to determine is whether a structural inequality exists, not whether individual actors within the system feel personally guilty/aggrieved/sad/angry about it except insofar as those feelings play a role in reproducing and reinforcing racist institutions (which they do). You do have the power to create consicous changes to the patterns of social interaction if you and others apply yourselves to the project, but it's not as simple as "feeling like" you are doing so or wanting to do so; the fundamental ideas of your culture must be critically considered and rejected, and the material circumstances that drive inequalities forcibly reversed. This is not impossible, but is much harder and therefore less likely, for the recipient of social privilege to do as it is against human nature to strive consistently against one's own wellbeing, or even to risk it. It is easier to cultivate a feeling of anti-racism than to truly challenge empirically observeable material bases of inequalities.

I note that "Critical Theory" in the social sciences has always meant the same fundamental thing: the holistic study of the power structures constructed within social institutions, inclusive of but not defined by the actions and thoughts of individual actors. Critical Race Theory is an application of this general methodology, not, as some here would seem to have it, a challenge to its most basic tenet.

Fair enough. But the largely missing ingredient in CRT and the like, as far as I can see, is criticism (or critical analysis) of non-whites.

I earlier asked if something like John McWhorter's critiques, for example, had been integrated into CRT yet. I was only half-joking.

That still assumes that blame-seeking is the point to begin with. If that is what you mean by criticism. Non-whites obviously are and must be a part of the critique of the whole social system; their perspective on their own situation is in fact the focus of most CRT-based activism, hence the whole discursive conversation about becoming empowered and recovering means of agency, or in modern slang "woke" to one's own situation. Liberal whites may co-opt this phrase to mean more or less whatever they want it to apparently, but it was originally cribbed from a poem about the author's growing awareness of the context of her life, and that accepting dominant cultural narratives is ultimately optional. The perception that CRT exists to find fault with whites on a racial basis is projection; CRT fundamentally treats racism as a production of a whole society together.

 

[ruby sparks]

That still assumes that blame-seeking is the point to begin with.

Imo, blame-seeking (and indeed blame-effacing) IS, often or usually, at least implicitly, part of the point. I think it's silly to pretend otherwise.

If that is what you mean by criticism. Non-whites obviously are and must be a part of the critique of the whole social system; their perspective on their own situation is in fact the focus of most CRT-based activism, hence the whole discursive conversation about becoming empowered and recovering means of agency, or in modern slang "woke" to one's own situation. Whites may co-opt this phrase, but it was originally cribbed from a poem about the author's growing awareness of the context of her life, and that accepting dominant cultural narratives is ultimately optional.

Personally, I have not yet seen much of what I might call the criticism of 'not being woke enough' in CRT (and the like) though I would not be surprised if you could fine me some.

No, I was more thinking of the sort of stuff John McWhorter speaks of, for example:

What’s Holding Blacks Back?
https://www.city-journal.org/html/what’s-holding-blacks-back-12025.html

And there are other things that could be mentioned. Dare I mention CPT (coloured people time)?

My point is not to have a fight about who is to blame or who is more to blame, and I'm not endorsing McWorter's thesis as a whole. My point is that stuff is always complicated. CRT, it seems to me, has an angle, one which is slightly restrictive, one might even say a tad myopic (Feminism has a similar problem, imo, but I digress). Imo, the best analyses are those which can take everything in, as objectively as possible.

 

[Politesse]

That still assumes that blame-seeking is the point to begin with.

Imo, blame-seeking IS, often or usually, at least implicitly, part of the point. I think it's silly to pretend otherwise.

Well, if anyone is primarily motivated by a search for individual culpability, they are not engaging in Critical Theory, almost by definition. It's basic definition is the critique of communal institutional structures, and this has always been paired with skepticism toward the agency of any one individual.

 

[ruby sparks]

That still assumes that blame-seeking is the point to begin with.

Imo, blame-seeking IS, often or usually, at least implicitly, part of the point. I think it's silly to pretend otherwise.

Well, if anyone is primarily motivated by a search for individual culpability, they are not engaging in Critical Theory, almost by definition. It's basic definition is the critique of communal institutional structures, and this has always been paired with skepticism toward the agency of any one individual.

First, and very importantly, I did not say primarily.

And as we have both agreed, CRT is by now somewhat amorphous. So....I'm wary of no true scotsmen.

And it was the other things I mentioned (now three times) that I was more interested in exploring.

 

[Politesse]

Sometimes there really is such a thing as a Scotsman. At least where Academic schools are concerned. If I describe myself as a Marxist but do not have a focus on class struggle through the iterations of successive societies, I'm confused, not just inventive.

What is it you're actually trying to say? I might be better able to satisfyingly respond if I better understood your argument.

 

[ruby sparks]

Sometimes there really is such a thing as a Scotsman. At least where Academic schools are concerned. If I describe myself as a Marxist but do not have a focus on class struggle through the iterations of successive societies, I'm confused, not just inventive.

What is it you're actually trying to say? I might be better able to satisfyingly respond if I better understood your argument.

Ok. These ideas live and breathe (and breed) outside the relative purity of academia, but point taken.

My main point is about the breadth of many (social) critiques generally (here, CRT, elsewhere it could be something else). Many critiques are, imo, flawed, because they only span a limited scope. It's a bugbear of mine. In this case, I am saying that I think a full, 'grown up' analysis of the issues we are discussing should include what I might loosely call issues with black culture. That doesn't fully define what I mean, but it's part of it. I mean things which the black demographic should arguably take more responsibility for, and/or acknowledge (and which perhaps CRT etc should include in their critiques).

In my defence, I did specifically cite some things, more than once. I linked to a John McWhorter article, and I mentioned CPT (which I'm not saying is a major component, by the way, just one worthy of some interesting discussion perhaps).

Or to put it another way, as much as I regularly think Trausti is a complete arse, easily recognised by the religious traits he accuses others of, like a broken clock he sometimes tells the right time. The assumption behind CRT is, I think, that inequalities for blacks are due to anti-black racism. And not much else. Which is why I started this line of exchange by saying I thought there were missing (or understated) components of the CRT analysis, and of its close relatives.

 

[Bomb#20]

If you truly thought personal culpability was irrelevant, you wouldn't have made a point of claiming the people aggrieved about being accused are in fact personally culpable.

What's diaengineous is the way you twist words to mean what you want them to mean without regard for the author's clear intention and explanation.

I did nothing of the sort. I carefully regarded the author's clear explanation and his clear intention. And I took note of the fact that the intention did not match the explanation.

But imo the cat did nonetheless come out of the bag regarding blame.

I didn't think it was any kind of 'catch' at all.

Politesse does an excellent job of describing and elucidating the points in his posts throughout. See especially #71.

Indeed. When you were reading his excellent elucidation in post #71, did you overlook that it was a confession?

"...people can be victimized by others without those others consciously intending to harm anyone per se, ... You do have the power to create conscious changes to the patterns of social interaction if you and others apply yourselves to the project, ... the fundamental ideas of your culture must be critically considered and rejected, and the material circumstances that drive inequalities forcibly reversed.​

If a person's approach is "The whole point of shifting the direction of study away from individual culpability is to understand how racist institutions function as whole structures. ... this obsession with guilt and personal culpability is distracting from the actual problems, preventing true inequalities from being addressed", then, when he encounters somebody who's been aggrieved by a trumped-up racism accusation, who says she hasn't been discriminating against or otherwise hurting black people, he'll say this sort of thing:

"I'm not saying you're hurting black people -- this isn't about you hurting them. Let's talk about how the government/corporate-America/academia/whatever-institutions are hurting black people."​

He will not say this sort of thing:

"Just because you don't intend to hurt black people doesn't mean you aren't hurting them; besides which, it's your moral duty to actively apply yourself to my inequality reversal project.",​

as if just minding your own business counted as hurting black people. The latter sort of reply is what we can expect from a person with a blame-seeking approach.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If your thesis is that racism is a communal product of an unequal society, people can be victimized by others without those others consciously intending to harm anyone per se, and if they do intend harm that isn't ncessarily the only or even most important factor producing inequality. From a CRT perspective, the question to determine is whether a structural inequality exists

CRT assumes racism is the cause of all inequality and cannot be falsified. Thus, it’s not science.

??? That's definitely not the case. That doesn't even make sense. How would racism create, for instance, gender inequalities?

Obviously he was talking about racial inequality.

 

[Politesse]

??? That's definitely not the case. That doesn't even make sense. How would racism create, for instance, gender inequalities?

Obviously he was talking about racial inequality.

Racism and racial inequality are essentially synonyms from a CRT perspective (or perhaps, one is the primary symptom and measure of the other), so in that case I suppose that is true.

 

[ruby sparks]

??? That's definitely not the case. That doesn't even make sense. How would racism create, for instance, gender inequalities?

Obviously he was talking about racial inequality.

Racism and racial inequality are essentially synonyms from a CRT perspective (or perhaps, one is the primary symptom and measure of the other), so in that case I suppose that is true.

Either of which, to me, is at least a bit skewed.

Which does not mean I think CRT is a load of rubbish by any means.

 

[Jokodo]

I did nothing of the sort. I carefully regarded the author's clear explanation and his clear intention. And I took note of the fact that the intention did not match the explanation.

By the same logic by which pointing out that a cargo truck, due to its sheer mass and size, has a bigger potential of harming and killing other traffic participants than a moped counts as holding truck drivers personally culpable for every accident ever that involved a truck, or by which suggesting legislation that demands trucks be retrofitted with turning assistant systems / blind spot monitors without demanding the same for mopeds counts as discrimination against truck drivers? I.e., not at all.

Recognising that acts have unintended consequences, that due to power imbalances, some agents' acts are prone to have more dire consequences than others', that some of these unintended and unwanted consequences can be mitigated by reducing the blind spots that make agents unable to see their acts' unintended consequences, and that not all agents' blind spots have an identical potential to produce harm and thus some agents' blind spots are more of a problem for society than others', isn't accusing anyone of being personally culpable for those consequences. In fact, it's almost the opposite.

 

[ruby sparks]

Definitely not what an expert in critical race theory would recommend. The whole point of shifting the direction of study away from individual culpability is to understand how racist institutions function as whole structures. "Fault" is irrelevant, the system needs to be documented and challenged as a communal social production in which all actors are relevant.

Again, this obsession with guilt and personal culpability is distracting from the actual problems, preventing true inequalities from being addressed by derailing the conversation into a discussion about the aggrieved feelings of the accused, in which it is assumed but never stated that the feelings of the accused should be considered more important or more justified than those of their original victim.

If anyone can read the part bolded in blue and the part in green and say that the latter is compatible with the former, I'd say they're doing mental gymnastics.

Human psychology being what it is (extending to being prone to giving agency even to bad weather in extreme cases, or shouting at their malfunctioning computer keyboard) I doubt that attributing personal fault, especially as here in matters of human affairs and interactions, can be entirely rinsed out of our thinking on such things. Better to acknowledge it as an (I'm tempted to say almost inevitably ever-present) ingredient, I think. Then one can make the case that it's deliberately intended not to be the main emphasis of a particular approach.

For example, how many people can read a critique negatively employing the term 'white supremacy' and mentally divorce it entirely from either the actions of currently-living white actors/agents, or indeed absolve them of all responsibility for those actions? Bear in mind that even passivity could be seen as blameworthy.

I'd say it was a very tall order, even for the well-intended writer.

The trick, as I see it, as a white person, is to try to take some of the implied criticism on the chin, because at least some of it is valid. Sure, sometimes claims go a bit ott (the ideas around claims that STEM is racist spring to mind) but that always happens with almost anything. I'd say it's also a good idea to try not to assume that there necessarily is any implied personal criticism, which there sometimes isn't. I'd say 'feeling blamed (or wronged)' might be as endemic to human thinking as 'blaming' is, and they might even be two sides of the same coin.

 

[repoman]

Another CRT fueled attack

 

[ruby sparks]

Another CRT fueled attack

Repo, given what I think is your tendency to routinely misattribute certain things, I'd like to ask you to substantiate your perception that that attack was in fact CRT-fuelled.

I read a report where one eye-witness said that just before the attack, two of the cyclists had grabbed onto the moving car to catch a ride, that the driver braked, and that one of the cyclists then crashed into something, resulting in a bloody lip.

That does not mean it wasn't CRT-fueled of course. But I still think you should back that up.

If not, your post might be more suitable to a new or different thread, where you might even discuss whether you think the attack was in any way racially-motivated in general terms, for example.

 

[ruby sparks]

The other thing about CRT which I don't buy is that racism = the racist system, and not the unbenign actions of its members (which are merely prejudice or bigotry).

Unless I'm mistaken, I'm pretty sure I read that claim somewhere, perhaps even in this thread? Someone can correct me if I am wrong. Granted, it may not have been a CRT-related claim specifically.

The distinction between individual racism and systemic racism seems much better to me.

 

[Jokodo]

Definitely not what an expert in critical race theory would recommend. The whole point of shifting the direction of study away from individual culpability is to understand how racist institutions function as whole structures. "Fault" is irrelevant, the system needs to be documented and challenged as a communal social production in which all actors are relevant.

Again, this obsession with guilt and personal culpability is distracting from the actual problems, preventing true inequalities from being addressed by derailing the conversation into a discussion about the aggrieved feelings of the accused, in which it is assumed but never stated that the feelings of the accused should be considered more important or more justified than those of their original victim.

If anyone can read the part bolded in blue and the part in green and say that the latter is compatible with the former, I'd say they're doing mental gymnastics.

WUT? Seriously, what the heck?

You need to be a lot more explicit as I don't see anything that even suggests the two remarks are contradictory. My best guess is that you're not making explicit five steps in the derivation of the alleged contradiction, at least two of which steps are more "kind of feels like" than any kind of logical necessity.

My best guess is that your objection hinges on the word "victim", but that's not really informative. To stay with my earlier analogy, if a moped is shoved off the road by a 40-tonner, we tend to call the guy who visits the graveyard for an extended stay a traffic victim, and not the guy who visits a repair shop for a minor paint job - and we do so without first determining which of them, if either, is at fault for the accident, or which action by either of them or by a third party may have prevented it. Calling the moped rider a traffic victim in no way implies criminal fault on the side of the truck driver.

 

[J842P]

Important to note, repo is an actual white nationalist.

 

[ruby sparks]

If anyone can read the part bolded in blue and the part in green and say that the latter is compatible with the former, I'd say they're doing mental gymnastics.

WUT? Seriously, what the heck?

You need to be a lot more explicit as I don't see anything that even suggests the two remarks are contradictory. My best guess is that you're not making explicit five steps in the derivation of the alleged contradiction, at least two of which steps are more "kind of feels like" than any kind of logical necessity.

My best guess is that your objection hinges on the word "victim", but that's not really informative. To stay with my earlier analogy, if a moped is shoved off the road by a 40-tonner, we tend to call the guy who visits the graveyard for an extended stay a traffic victim, and not the guy who visits a repair shop for a minor paint job - and we do so without first determining which of them, if either, is at fault for the accident, or which action by either of them or by a third party may have prevented it. Calling the moped rider a traffic victim in no way implies criminal fault on the side of the truck driver.

Like Bomb, I picked up on 'their victim'.

Who is the 'they' in 'their'? It is the previously-referred to 'accused', is it not?

As such, I don't think your non-agental analogy covers it in this case.

 

[Jokodo]

If anyone can read the part bolded in blue and the part in green and say that the latter is compatible with the former, I'd say they're doing mental gymnastics.

WUT? Seriously, what the heck?

You need to be a lot more explicit as I don't see anything that even suggests the two remarks are contradictory. My best guess is that you're not making explicit five steps in the derivation of the alleged contradiction, at least two of which steps are more "kind of feels like" than any kind of logical necessity.

My best guess is that your objection hinges on the word "victim", but that's not really informative. To stay with my earlier analogy, if a moped is shoved off the road by a 40-tonner, we tend to call the guy who visits the graveyard for an extended stay a traffic victim, and not the guy who visits a repair shop for a minor paint job - and we do so without first determining which of them, if either, is at fault for the accident, or which action by either of them or by a third party may have prevented it. Calling the moped rider a traffic victim in no way implies criminal fault on the side of the truck driver.

Like Bomb, I picked up on the (conjoined) terms 'their', and 'victim', and I would also include the word 'accused'.

I think you're doing mental gymnastics. You obviously disagree.

And I think you're doing mental gymnastics, but feel free to prove me wrong by making the missing steps in your derivation explicit.

Ps contradictory is your word, not mine.

You said "incompatible " - if anything a stronger claim.

 

[ruby sparks]

Important to note, repo is an actual white nationalist.

A valid position, of course.