What, exactly, is CRT?

[Emily Lake]

I see positives and negatives with it. I haven't seen much discussion in this thread about that?

How can we have a serious critical discussion about the pros and cons of a theory whose fundamental content is in dispute? If I were to have a critical discussion of CRT, I'd want to make reference to the actual theory set, it's principal authors and source texts, etc, not the Vaudevillian creation the conservatives have invented around the term.

I linked to the Wikipedia article on CRT earlier in this thread, and that did not lead to any discussion. It's a good article.

Based on that, this is my theory, I don't think defenders of CRT on this forum gives a damn whether or not CRT has anything meaningful to say about racism. Instead it's reduced to whether someone is for or against racism. If this is a forum for free thinking skeptics, then Where's the free thought?

I don't care that a bunch of racist fundie conservatives are against CRT for racist reasons. That doesn't prove that CRT is beneficial in the fight against racism.

@Politesse - you also failed to engage with DrZ when he brought up actual for-real CRT content.

 

[Politesse]

I linked to the Wikipedia article on CRT earlier in this thread, and that did not lead to any discussion. It's a good article.

Based on that, this is my theory, I don't think defenders of CRT on this forum gives a damn whether or not CRT has anything meaningful to say about racism. Instead it's reduced to whether someone is for or against racism. If this is a forum for free thinking skeptics, then Where's the free thought?

I don't care that a bunch of racist fundie conservatives are against CRT for racist reasons. That doesn't prove that CRT is beneficial in the fight against racism.

@Politesse - you also failed to engage with DrZ when he brought up actual for-real CRT content.

A Wikipedia article?

 

[Jarhyn]

I linked to the Wikipedia article on CRT earlier in this thread, and that did not lead to any discussion. It's a good article.

Based on that, this is my theory, I don't think defenders of CRT on this forum gives a damn whether or not CRT has anything meaningful to say about racism. Instead it's reduced to whether someone is for or against racism. If this is a forum for free thinking skeptics, then Where's the free thought?

I don't care that a bunch of racist fundie conservatives are against CRT for racist reasons. That doesn't prove that CRT is beneficial in the fight against racism.

@Politesse - you also failed to engage with DrZ when he brought up actual for-real CRT content.

A Wikipedia article?

Not to mention one about a "divisive" political topic which is likely to see fierce politicized edits frequently.

 

[Politesse]

A Wikipedia article?

Not to mention one about a "divisive" political topic which is likely to see fierce politicized edits frequently.

Well, I don't have any huge problems with the wikipedia article aside the "both sides" ethos that characterizes that platform, but I don't see what there is to discuss about it exactly. It does not endorse the conservative conspiracy theory about what CRT is.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I linked to the Wikipedia article on CRT earlier in this thread, and that did not lead to any discussion. It's a good article.

Based on that, this is my theory, I don't think defenders of CRT on this forum gives a damn whether or not CRT has anything meaningful to say about racism. Instead it's reduced to whether someone is for or against racism. If this is a forum for free thinking skeptics, then Where's the free thought?

I don't care that a bunch of racist fundie conservatives are against CRT for racist reasons. That doesn't prove that CRT is beneficial in the fight against racism.

CRT isn't about being "beneficial" it is about being aware of inertia and implicit bias that can exist without much in the way of intent.

You are being silly now. Step one in fixing a problem is to identify it. If the goal wasn't to mitigate or stop racism they wouldn't bother with it.

My comments still stands. By using postmodern methods of analysis they will see racism everywhere.

 

[DrZoidberg]

A Wikipedia article?

Not to mention one about a "divisive" political topic which is likely to see fierce politicized edits frequently.

Well, I don't have any huge problems with the wikipedia article aside the "both sides" ethos that characterizes that platform, but I don't see what there is to discuss about it exactly. It does not endorse the conservative conspiracy theory about what CRT is.

I also think the Conservative conspiracy theory is idiotic.

When it comes to that, we're on the same side.

My critique of CRT, fourth wave feminism and postmodernism comes from reading a lot of philosophy. When I first came to this forum, in 2004, I was a pomo fanboy. But discussing it here with people schooled in philosophy, and reading more philosophy, I got a more nuanced picture of what postmodernism is for.

I'm still a CRT fanboy. I think postmodern critical reading has its place, and can be useful. But only in the right context.

Philosophical methods are like any tool. Use the right one for right problem, or you will do more damage than good

 

[DrZoidberg]

A Wikipedia article?

Not to mention one about a "divisive" political topic which is likely to see fierce politicized edits frequently.

LOL. When you don't like what people are saying = it's a conspiracy.

The way CRT is pushed as something useful to a general population is problematic.

Its like teaching complex theological arguments to children. They're not going to understand the words they then repeat. That takes a lot of time and interest. Like CRT it's an academic speciality subject

 

[Derec]

We still have a lot of direct racism today in terms of suspicions,

What do you mean by "suspicions"?

white flight,

Not necessarily racist. Most of "white flight" of the 60s/70s was due to very violent race riots common in those days. Since the 90s white people have been moving back into cities proper, but of course that has been criticized as "gentrification". That trend will probably reverse now, not mainly because of the pandemic but because of new civil unrest. Since 2014 we have been seeing a resumption of violent race riots, this time under the banners of #BLM and Antifa. Moving to the suburbs because you see parts of your city set on fire or the stores you go to looted is not "racist". Neither is moving away after you see an extremist mob occupy parts of your city for weeks with city leadership doing nothing (see Mayor Durkin's inaction in light of "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone" insurrection).

within-race relations.

Again, what exactly do you mean by this?

I suppose it is possible on many small scales across the country in local regions and in small institutions for it to be systemic within those entities.

I think you misunderstand. It's not that "systemic racism" requires legit evidence of any actual racism inherent in a system. No. It is much simpler than that.
Basically:
1. There are differences in average outcomes between racial groups
2. All such differences in outcome must be due to racism <--- fundamental axiom, aka article of faith, of CRT
3. We can't usually find any specific racism to blame it on
4. So it must be insidious "systemic racism", aka "racism without racists".

Basically "systemic racism" is when your belief system tells you there must be racism afoot but you can't find any specific racism.

 

[Derec]

It's more pernicious than limiting online debates. This has ballooned into Fox Nation viewers believing that all public schools are immersed in this demon ideology, and that school boards need to ban it or be voted out.

It's not that farfetched, especially on the Left Coast.


This teacher, Gabriel Gripe, is working to turn students into left-wing revolutionaries.

 

[Derec]

My favorite part of the act is how they open with 'Intelligent Design is science, not faith!'

Neither ID nor CRT have any place in schools.

 

[Derec]

I don't think it is bizarre. Or no more bizarre than any other philosophical school.

It posits that there is no such thing as an objective reality and that all "meta-narratives" as they call it are equally valid.
So they see science as no more valid than creation myths or anything somebody just makes up.

So yes, PoMo is nonsense. High-falutin, pseudointellectual nonsense, but nonsense nevertheless. It gives rise to positively idiotic statements like that Newton's Principia is a rape manual (Harding 1986) or that E=mc² is a "sexed equation because it privileges the speed of light" (Irigaray 1987).

Philosophy is a tool to understanding the world by simplifying, grouping and removing noise. Historically philosophy have always been a tool those in power have used to better be able to wield power. Postmodernism turns all that on it's head.

And that's the original sin of it. The whole motivation of PoMo is not to better understand the world, but rather to have a tool for "turning all that on it's[sic] head" in service of radical leftist ideologies such as radical feminism and Marxism.

Today within the field, philosophers have accepted that all schools of philosophy has it's problems and we're best served by not being overly attached to any single one.

Also known as Bueller's Razor.

But this hasn't quite filtered through to the departments of gender studies and critical race theory. This is because of politics.

That's what I am saying. Radical leftist politics of the 60s is why we have PoMo in the first place.

 

[fromderinside]

I'm in favor of the future voters and social players in the US getting 'sides' of an issue. That one side lands on a term rather than on the content to which the term refers is biased as much as is the term used to refer to the material presented under that banner. Concentrate on the material not the political headline.

I've read much of it and it represents a good foil against the notions that American law and it's execution are 'fair' or practical.

Warts are important things that need remedy by those who follow after those who made them. The place for fuel needed to ignite fires of change is in, should be in, education. Rear guard actions hinder, even prohibit necessary change. Education should be fairly presented. and should be based on validated research.

Don't use histrionics to stifle inclusion of such validated history in that presentation. Johnny's head will not explode, nor will the heads of their parents, if his belief stories are different from theirs.

 

[DrZoidberg]

It posits that there is no such thing as an objective reality and that all "meta-narratives" as they call it are equally valid.
So they see science as no more valid than creation myths or anything somebody just makes up.

No it doesn't. That's exactly wrong. It posits that objective reality cannot be known. There are only interpretations. It posits that our subjective experience is always filtered through layers of biases and power dynamics. This is pretty uncontroversial.

This is the underpinning realization of science and the scientific method. The whole point of the scientific method is to minimize the influence of power politics upon the research.

The way postmodernist critical analysis works is that we reverse the narrative. Instead of seeing the world from the perspective of the powerful, we see it from another perspective. It's only pseudo intellectual in the hands of somebody who doesn't realize what they're doing. If the normal narrative is biased towards the view of the powerful, the critical analysis view will be similarly biased towards whatever group we are focusing. If we're studying victims of racism we will necessarily see more racism than what's really there. It's just how the method works. It's a method to find racism, so that we then can use other tools to explore that in a more objective and sensible way. What we shouldn't do is take the results and run with it, as if we now know the truth. And what we absolutely should NOT do is take the results from CRT as objective truth. Which is something done very often on forums like this

So yes, PoMo is nonsense. High-falutin, pseudointellectual nonsense, but nonsense nevertheless. It gives rise to positively idiotic statements like that Newton's Principia is a rape manual (Harding 1986) or that E=mc² is a "sexed equation because it privileges the speed of light" (Irigaray 1987).

Yes, I agree there is a lot of PoMo pseudointellectual nonsense out there. You won't get any argument from me. But that's not how we read philosophy. In philosophy we ignore the dumb shit. We only focus on the greatest hits. The fact that any of it is useful at all is a point in it's favour.

And that's the original sin of it. The whole motivation of PoMo is not to better understand the world, but rather to have a tool for "turning all that on it's[sic] head" in service of radical leftist ideologies such as radical feminism and Marxism.

I don't think that's an original sin. I think that's it's virtue. If we don't we risk only seeing things from the perspective of the powerful or educated. Ie, the way history has been written since the dawn of writing. Historically we have a huge blind spot when it comes to the life of normal people. You know... the ones that really matter in society. The people who actually make the world work and who give the powerful the power with which they have been able to do all their cool things. The point of Marxist analysis is to fix this. It's easy to forget just how warped and fucked the way we used to read history was. Today we're so schooled in Marxist analysis of history that we take it for granted as true and aren't even aware of that it is Marxist analysis that we're doing. He introduced the mind blowing newfangled idea that we are more likely to believe things if there's monetary gain from believing it. Today it's blindingly obvious to anyone who has ever seen advertising.

But this hasn't quite filtered through to the departments of gender studies and critical race theory. This is because of politics.

That's what I am saying. Radical leftist politics of the 60s is why we have PoMo in the first place.

I think it's a cultural historical artifact. A trend. Patriarchal oppression and racism was a serious problem for women and blacks half a century ago and we lacked philosophical tools with which to see things from their perspective. Enter PoMo. And the world changed. That's undeniable. So postmodern critical analysis hasn't been worthless.

The problem now is that the success of Marxist analysis has gone overboard. The success of the feminist and civil rights movements have now gone to the heads of some of its defenders and it's too often become stupid. But that's not the problem of the foundational theory. That's a problem of the people using it.

 

[Swammerdami]

What is "CRT"? It's just a bugaboo seized upon by hypocrites like Tucker Carlson to confuse Americans and lead the way to fascist take-over of America. "Hey, Resist teh Covid fraud! Soros and the other Jews are putting CRT microchips in your vaccines!" The whole controversy is conjured up by the Kremlin-QOPAnon Bullshit Machine. And mainstream media — eager to pretend that controversies have sincerity on both sides — plays along.

(A few years ago I'd treat the paragraph above as written by a conspiracy nut, but truth has suddenly surpassed any believable fiction.)

What would be amusing, if it didn't portend America's likely fall into a fascist shit-hole country, is that those whingeing about "Cancel Culture" are themselves doing much or most of the actual Cancelling!

Latest Cancelling is of award-winning cartoonist Jerry Craft. Here's an example of his work. If the QOPAnon whingers and the "not-a-rightwingers" of Texas have their way, Texans may not be allowed to view such cartoons much longer.



Here's another Craft cartoon. Obviously he's joined the un-American campaign against Christmas:



He celebrates hair-styles unrelated to America's beacon of freedom for White Christians:



It may seem I'm emulating the "not a right-winger" who needed to post photos of a Nazi-flag prank from seven different angles! But I did want to keep looking, hoping to find evidence of the Negroid terrorism that has the drunk tanks of Texas in such an uproar.



"Yusuf"?? Craft might as well come out and admit he's an Islamic jihadist.

OK; here we are. Craft is on a campaign to make Americans hate America:

 

[Swammerdami]

From my recent posts, it may almost seem that I've turned into the whingers I despise! But no exaggeration can do justice to the insanity that's taking over the GOP. Listen to what top leaders of QOPAnon say.

If you're sitting down, flabbergast yourself by listening to what one QOPAnon preacher tells his disciples.

 

[Metaphor]

No it doesn't. That's exactly wrong. It posits that objective reality cannot be known. There are only interpretations. It posits that our subjective experience is always filtered through layers of biases and power dynamics. This is pretty uncontroversial.

The claim that we cannot know objective reality is a claim about objective reality. To make the claim while simultaneously making the claim that everything is subjective is incoherent.

 

[Trausti]

No it doesn't. That's exactly wrong. It posits that objective reality cannot be known. There are only interpretations. It posits that our subjective experience is always filtered through layers of biases and power dynamics. This is pretty uncontroversial.

The claim that we cannot know objective reality is a claim about objective reality. To make the claim while simultaneously making the claim that everything is subjective is incoherent.

 

[TSwizzle]

No it doesn't. That's exactly wrong. It posits that objective reality cannot be known. There are only interpretations. It posits that our subjective experience is always filtered through layers of biases and power dynamics. This is pretty uncontroversial.

And as incoherent as the holy trinity.

 

[Trausti]

 

[DrZoidberg]

No it doesn't. That's exactly wrong. It posits that objective reality cannot be known. There are only interpretations. It posits that our subjective experience is always filtered through layers of biases and power dynamics. This is pretty uncontroversial.

The claim that we cannot know objective reality is a claim about objective reality. To make the claim while simultaneously making the claim that everything is subjective is incoherent.

I don't think you are correct. I think we can infer it. If loads of people go and see the same movie and we ask them what they thought about it and why. We will get a large variety of answers. We can use that as evidence that truth is subjective, without making an objectively true statement about it. Because we are also admitting that me asking the question is also subjective.

I think you're trying too hard to be clever. I don't think your logic works.

I should say that these are philosophical tools. Philosophical schools are models of thinking about reality. Different tools are good for different things. They all have iffy axioms we need to just accept to be able to use them. This is the iffy axiom of postmodernism. But they all have problems.

While I think there is a place for postmodern philosophy and it has a use in some domains I don't think it's a good school of thought for life in general. Just because it's so relativizing and subjective. It doesn't matter if it's true or not, it's passivizing. Whatever philosophical school you follow pick one that activates you, makes you work on yourself, not blame your problems on others and makes you give a shit about the people around you. And that will be different depending on what stage of life you're in.

The philosopher I keep coming back to is Nietzsche. If you have a go at him I'm in a much better place to defend myself, than if you have a go at postmodernism.