Anti-CRT Hysteria

[Loren Pechtel]

Modern-day AA is about pretending that the obstacles are all due to racism and will magically go away if we manage to wipe out racism, while only bad actors bear the cost of doing this.

This accurately describes no program of affirmative action I have ever heard of, in any time period, let alone in the "modern day" ( I presume you mean the last few years, not the entire Modern period). Who exactly are you referring to here?

In what fashion is it inaccurate?

The concept of institutional racism takes as a given that all differences are due to racism,

That is a false premise.

It's always asserted that it's a false premise, but then it goes right back to presenting different outcomes as proof of discrimination. Actions speak louder than words.

 

[laughing dog]

Modern-day AA is about pretending that the obstacles are all due to racism and will magically go away if we manage to wipe out racism, while only bad actors bear the cost of doing this.

This accurately describes no program of affirmative action I have ever heard of, in any time period, let alone in the "modern day" ( I presume you mean the last few years, not the entire Modern period). Who exactly are you referring to here?

In what fashion is it inaccurate?

The concept of institutional racism takes as a given that all differences are due to racism,

That is a false premise.

It's always asserted that it's a false premise, but then it goes right back to presenting different outcomes as proof of discrimination.

Your response is illogical. Presenting different outcomes as evidence of discrimination does not mean something is the only influence.

Actions speak louder than words.

I agree. Your persistence in the ridiculous straw man of "proof of discrimination" is a perfect example that actions speak louder than words.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Written to Shadowy Man:

Are all you guys retired? Am I the only one here who still has non-IIDB demands on his time? Yes, that is much more responsive to my question, thank you.

Translation: "Get a job, hippies!!"

Spoiler

 

[Bomb#20]

Translation: "Get a job, hippies!!"

Spoiler

View attachment 41090

The translation is "Enough with people hassling me about being slow to answer." Your graphic supports my contention, not yours. Of course I've made more posts, I'm going against a pack. All the more reason for answering to take me longer than it takes you guys -- you're dividing the workload.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Translation: "Get a job, hippies!!"

Spoiler

View attachment 41090

The translation is "Enough with people hassling me about being slow to answer." Your graphic supports my contention, not yours. Of course I've made more posts, I'm going against a pack. All the more reason for answering to take me longer than it takes you guys -- you're dividing the workload.

I agree it’s not about the number of posts it was about the amount of time I took to respond. You had accused me of being non-responsive so I responded on November 3rd and then I pinged you about it on November 7th. So I waited four days (including two weekend days) to see if you had a comment and then you heckled me about not having a job. Four days seems a reasonable amount of time to expect a possible response from someone actively participating (here is where the number of posts plays in) in the thread.

 

[Bomb#20]

...
You keep talking about dealing with it on an individual basis. Who is it you think will do that?

The overall attitude of most posters in this thread, and school administrators, and legislators, and Supreme Court justices, and Americans in general, appears to be "Freedom for me, not for thee". To a typical American, the teachers' freedom to preach trumps the kids' freedom from being preached at, or vice versa, depending on whether it's the teacher or the kids who he thinks of as "us". Nobody seems to have a problem with a class getting preached opinions they agree with; everybody seems to have a problem with a class getting preached opinions they disagree with. And the schools are staffed by typical Americans. So if the school administrators agree with whichever opinions a teacher is teaching, what will motivate them to deal with it on an individual basis? They'll just ignore it, and they'll blow off parents who complain. The reason a statewide law (or the federal law we had until last June) is better than dealing with it on an individual basis is because it's better than nothing.
...

I guess you just aren’t understanding my position. I’m sorry for not articulating it better. What you describe (“freedoms for me, not for thee”) does not reflect my opinion at all.

It wasn't you I was accusing of having that attitude; I'm just pointing out a circumstance that makes it hard to address the problem other than through legislation.

My primary comment was that conservatives are usually against laws that have broad scope being used to address actions being performed by a very few. They usually whinge about it being an attack on freedom and that it’s a few “bad apples” spoiling it for the whole bunch.

So I was just surprised when these conservatives would back a law when there doesn’t appear to be a widespread problem that isn’t being solved in other ways.

Not sure which conservatives you have in mind. If you mean the politicians pushing this, statements of principle from politicians are almost always window-dressing. It's like all the "states-rights" Republicans who demanded that the abortion issue be turned over to the voters of the respective states, right up until they had an anti-abortion SCOTUS, but are now jonesing for a federal ban. Hardly anyone in a position of power really wants principles to limit his power. If your intent is to debate not the merits of having laws against teachers pushing ideology but the merits of DeSantis and the other politicians passing these laws, knock yourself out -- that's good clean fun -- but I'll pass. I have no stake in defending DeSantis' character. DeSantis is a jackass.

If you mean conservatives in general, there's no conservatism pope defining standard conservative views. If lots of conservatives say there shouldn't be laws that have broad scope being used to address actions being performed by a very few, but other conservatives are in favor of such laws, that's not conservatism contradicting itself; that's just people making up their own minds.

If you mean some particular conservatives you know of who hypocritically reversed themselves on this point, hey, lots of conservatives are hypocrites. Lots of everybody are hypocrites.

If you mean me, I'm not a conservative. A plague on the right's house and on the left's.

 

[Bomb#20]

I agree it’s not about the number of posts it was about the amount of time I took to respond. You had accused me of being non-responsive so I responded on November 3rd and then I pinged you about it on November 7th. So I waited four days (including two weekend days) to see if you had a comment and then you heckled me about not having a job. Four days seems a reasonable amount of time to expect a possible response from someone actively participating (here is where the number of posts plays in) in the thread.

Ah, it seems we've been talking at cross-purposes -- the amount of time you took to respond was never an issue. I didn't accuse you of being non-responsive for taking too long to answer, but for answering dismissively in post #213. I heckled you about not having a job because you heckled me about taking too long. Sorry about the four days -- somebody was waiting for me to get some software working so he could get on with his job, and I kept finding more bugs in my code.

 

[Shadowy Man]

I agree it’s not about the number of posts it was about the amount of time I took to respond. You had accused me of being non-responsive so I responded on November 3rd and then I pinged you about it on November 7th. So I waited four days (including two weekend days) to see if you had a comment and then you heckled me about not having a job. Four days seems a reasonable amount of time to expect a possible response from someone actively participating (here is where the number of posts plays in) in the thread.

Ah, it seems we've been talking at cross-purposes -- the amount of time you took to respond was never an issue. I didn't accuse you of being non-responsive for taking too long to answer, but for answering dismissively in post #213. I heckled you about not having a job because you heckled me about taking too long. Sorry about the four days -- somebody was waiting for me to get some software working so he could get on with his job, and I kept finding more bugs in my code.

No worries. I’ve moved on. This board is just escapist recreation for me so I tend to be flighty and mostly just post flippant or sarcastic posts.

 

[Bomb#20]

If you don’t like the idea that it has to be a widespread problem to justify a state level law then please just give a specific example of an instance of a teacher teaching something in the classroom that would now be banned by this law

Okay. This thing was used in a Seattle-area junior high school science class. The teacher told the children to circle their identities on it that made them oppressed or that gave them power and privilege.

that couldn’t be stopped by any action other than this law?

Why do you keep saying that? What the bleeding hell relevance does it have whether it "couldn't be" stopped? Of course it could be stopped. So what? What matters is whether it will be stopped, not whether it could be stopped.

Is there any? Do schools or school boards have no power over the curricula their teachers present?

Of course they have power over it! But what the heck good does that do when they don't use that power? The mother who recorded the above so-called "science" class complained about it to the school, and the principal told her the teachers were authorized to incorporate social justice lessons into any subjects they wanted to.

Maybe teacher unions are so strong that rogue teachers can’t be fired or otherwise forced to stay on an approved curriculum.

She wasn't a rogue teacher. It is an approved curriculum!

Do you not feel that a state law could be used too broadly if wielded by ideological officials?

State law is already being wielded by ideological officials and used too broadly. Could a law to rein that in also be misused ideologically? Undoubtedly. A law against stealing could be used too broadly if wielded by ideological officials.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Thanks for giving an example. That’s all what I was asking for days ago. Even better would be to provide a link so I can read up the story on my own. But you have likely provided enough information for me to hunt it down.

Though, I think I had jumped in the conversation when it was about the Florida law.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Translation: "Get a job, hippies!!"

Spoiler

View attachment 41090

The translation is "Enough with people hassling me about being slow to answer."

Well, first of all 1 person is not a sufficient number to justify such a statement about everyone else in the thread. And second of all, if it were true that everyone else had way more time due to less demands of a job, then the most reasonable expectation is that each individual would have more posts. No one claimed you explicitly proposed something about number of posts, but rather it is a logical consequence of the implications you made when you lashed out at everyone in the thread.

 

[Bomb#20]

The translation is "Enough with people hassling me about being slow to answer."

Well, first of all 1 person is not a sufficient number to justify such a statement about everyone else in the thread.

There were two.

And second of all, if it were true that everyone else had way more time due to less demands of a job, then the most reasonable expectation is that each individual would have more posts.

Your misperceptions of what's reasonable could account for the general level of your posts. The participants here are not selecting whom to argue with from a uniform random distribution.

No one claimed you explicitly proposed something about number of posts, but rather it is a logical consequence of the implications you made when you lashed out at everyone in the thread.

So now "Are all you guys retired? Am I the only one here who still has non-IIDB demands on his time?" qualifies as "lashed out"? Sorry I wasn't being more careful about your hexagonally crystalline fragility.

 

[Bomb#20]

Hi kids. Today we go over argumentative nonsense. Can you look atop to see some examples of this? I'll give you a minute.

• "overall attitude of most posters in this thread, and school administrators, and legislators, and Supreme Court justices, and Americans in general"
  • Yeah, this is a doozy. Good ole fashioned broad brush / false equivalence / strawman all in one. Notice the attempt to draw everybody into it. This is a rhetorical device used in order to help produce a false sense of standing outside the issue and appearing to not judge people by any partisan basis. Of course, it is complete nonsense though. Whenever someone wants to equate a flaw they aren't guilty of ... on almost the entire country... you can put out the palm.

I.e., my literary style isn't your cup of tea. To each his own. If you could come up with an example, either of a significant segment of the U.S. political landscape who don't have the attitude I observed, or of me arguing that teachers should preach my opinions, I expect you'd have produced it. Be that as it may, on this point the right wing and the left wing are both guilty as sin. If that observation is too nonpartisan for your tastes, the problem might be with you.

• "the teachers' freedom to preach"
  • Yup, this is argumentative nonsense. Using the word preach implies emotion, irrational thought, and lack of any bias control. The word is used here to immediately vilify the target, in this case "teachers", regardless what they are doing. Teaching math = preaching. Teaching history = preaching. Checking Attendence = preaching.

Teacher: White children, come to the front of the class. Black children, go the back. ... That's 80% oppressors and 20% oppressed.
Parent: Stop telling my kid he's an oppressor.
Activist: That guy doesn't want math teachers to teach fractions!

• "Nobody seems to have a problem with a class getting preached opinions they agree with; everybody seems to have a problem with a class getting preached opinions they disagree with"
  • This ignores the fact that most school isn't opinions. Math isn't opinion, grammar isn't opinion, science isn't opinion. gym isn't opinion, literature has some opinion but the teachers usually are caring more about following themes and events. So much talking about preaching and opinions, when grade school and high school doesn't contain a lot of opinion. Forget about "preaching" it.

When I went to public school we were all instructed to stand quietly each morning while the principal recited The Lord's Prayer over the PA system. Do you regard the fact that this took about two minutes, and then the school spent five hours teaching grammar and science and so forth, as a substantive reason not to criticize the school for "preaching" at us?

• "And the schools are staffed by typical Americans."
  • Yes, check out this classic bull... The term nonsense just didn't seem to be appropriate for how awful it is. The "typical American" isn't a 4 yr college graduate who got a masters into order to become a teacher. The average American didn't train in the profession while in school. The typical American didn't become extraordinarily familiar with literature, chemistry, biology, history. The "typical American" isn't a teacher. A teacher isn't perfect, but they've trained and studied hard to get to this position of being relentlessly criticized for how they teach by people who don't know them or what they teach or what values they hold.

By that standard, no profession is made up of typical Americans. "Typical" here does not mean "statistically indistinguishable from the average in all conceivable respects"; it means "not systematically different from average in the respect under discussion". If student teachers spent those 4+ years being taught how to distinguish fact from opinion and being taught how to be impartial and being taught to value being impartial then your objection to what I wrote would be substantive; but they were taught literature, chemistry, biology, history; and they were taught theories of pedagogy, and child psychology, and so forth. To propose that college graduates should be presumed less susceptible to cognitive biases than the great unwashed is unadulterated elitism.

• "The reason a statewide law (or the federal law we had until last June) is better than dealing with it on an individual basis is because it's better than nothing."
  • Yup, the grand conclusion. This is utter nonsense, because it concludes a paragraph of text that allegedly supports this pre-ordained conclusion. When it doesn't. It just unfairly treats teachers as a common denominator who don't know nothin' and preach propaganda to their students. In math or something.

It does nothing of the sort. You made all that up. Nothing I wrote implies there's no difference between one teacher and another, or that they all preach propaganda, or that they aren't experts in the subjects they're supposed to be teaching. I'm simply pointing out that the same cultural factors that influence some teachers to mix propaganda into their lessons are a part of the environment influencing school administrators as well. If there were a solid track record of teachers who pushed Duckworth-style ideology getting firmly told by their supervisors to cut it out and just teach "math or something", then you'd have a case. Can you exhibit such a track record?

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Sorry, I didn't respond right away. I was busy being retired.

The translation is "Enough with people hassling me about being slow to answer."

Well, first of all 1 person is not a sufficient number to justify such a statement about everyone else in the thread.

There were two.

That isn't sufficient either, assuming it's even true.

And second of all, if it were true that everyone else had way more time due to less demands of a job, then the most reasonable expectation is that each individual would have more posts.

Your misperceptions of what's reasonable could account for the general level of your posts. The participants here are not selecting whom to argue with from a uniform random distribution.

No one claimed you explicitly proposed something about number of posts, but rather it is a logical consequence of the implications you made when you lashed out at everyone in the thread.

So now "Are all you guys retired? Am I the only one here who still has non-IIDB demands on his time?" qualifies as "lashed out"? Sorry I wasn't being more careful about your hexagonally crystalline fragility.

Riiiiggghhhht......

*backs slowly away*

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Written to Bomb#20:

Thanks for giving an example. That’s all what I was asking for days ago.

I think that wheel is interesting for a number of reasons:
(1) Why not include religiosity? The fact that it isn't there probably says something.
(2) I think the wheel has a big perception and presentation problem in that some people may present it in a way that lends to categories and characteristics that are too sticky while others may present it as statistical which seems valid. For example, I saw one youtube video where the speaker said that it's a difference in opportunity (which is an aggregate probability) and further they said that it changes according to the room you are in, i.e. the context. That seemed pretty valid:

(3) This is not critical race theory but conservatives would claim it is.
(4) One of the complaints is that people are claiming that wheels such as this are teaching that there are _INHERENT_ characteristics of each group. It's not about what is inherent, but rather it's extrinsic, actually statistically a thing that is there because of culture and society and groups.

 

[Politesse]

(4) One of the complaints is that people are claiming that wheels such as this are teaching that there are _INHERENT_ characteristics of each group. It's not about what is inherent, but rather it's extrinsic, actually statistically a thing that is there because of culture and society and groups.

Anyone who claims that racial chatacteristics are intrinsic rather than culturally constructed has left actual critical race theory entirely behind, and is simply regressing to the "standard thought" on race that was prevalent before the world wars and the advent of DNA studies.

 

[Bomb#20]

Written to Bomb#20:
...
I think that wheel is interesting for a number of reasons:
(1) Why not include religiosity? The fact that it isn't there probably says something.

Well, the obvious is if the teacher who drew it had claimed Christians are powerful and non-Christians are marginalized, now, in 21st-century Ontario, it might have come off as kind of dated. She no doubt would have included religion if she'd drawn it when I went through her school system, fifty years ago.

(2) I think the wheel has a big perception and presentation problem in that some people may present it in a way that lends to categories and characteristics that are too sticky while others may present it as statistical which seems valid. For example, I saw one youtube video where the speaker said that it's a difference in opportunity (which is an aggregate probability) and further they said that it changes according to the room you are in, i.e. the context. That seemed pretty valid:

Even I could draw a wheel more valid to teach to children than that, and I don't have Ms. Duckworth's artistic talent. Pardon my stretching the center out to form a rectangle.

Marginalized: White children, Black children, Asian children, straight children, gay children, cis children, trans children

Intermediate: White parents, Black parents, Asian parents, straight parents, gay parents, cis parents, trans parents

Power: White teachers, Black teachers, Asian teachers, straight teachers, gay teachers, cis teachers, trans teachers

School children are a captive audience, grade school is a prison, the teachers are the guards, and the adults who don't know this knew it when they were in school. The only school children who aren't powerless are the bullies. Anybody who tells a child to circle himself on a chart that says he has power because of his demographic is lying to that child.

(3) This is not critical race theory but conservatives would claim it is.

Can't imagine why they'd suppose something like that.

(4) One of the complaints is that people are claiming that wheels such as this are teaching that there are _INHERENT_ characteristics of each group. It's not about what is inherent, but rather it's extrinsic, actually statistically a thing that is there because of culture and society and groups.

You may be taking "inherent" to mean something more technical than what the complainers have in mind. I think they're complaining about the implication that people who are white or male or cis or whatever are all prejudiced oppressors who can't help prejudging and oppressing others, and people who are black or female or trans or whatever are automatically oppressed regardless of their individual situations. Getting hung up on whether that's alleged to be due to genetics or environment is probably the furthest thing from their minds.

 

[Politesse]

Written to Bomb#20:
...
I think that wheel is interesting for a number of reasons:
(1) Why not include religiosity? The fact that it isn't there probably says something.

Well, the obvious is if the teacher who drew it had claimed Christians are powerful and non-Christians are marginalized, now, in 21st-century Ontario, it might have come off as kind of dated. She no doubt would have included religion if she'd drawn it when I went through her school system, fifty years ago.

(2) I think the wheel has a big perception and presentation problem in that some people may present it in a way that lends to categories and characteristics that are too sticky while others may present it as statistical which seems valid. For example, I saw one youtube video where the speaker said that it's a difference in opportunity (which is an aggregate probability) and further they said that it changes according to the room you are in, i.e. the context. That seemed pretty valid:

Even I could draw a wheel more valid to teach to children than that, and I don't have Ms. Duckworth's artistic talent. Pardon my stretching the center out to form a rectangle.

Marginalized: White children, Black children, Asian children, straight children, gay children, cis children, trans children

Intermediate: White parents, Black parents, Asian parents, straight parents, gay parents, cis parents, trans parents

Power: White teachers, Black teachers, Asian teachers, straight teachers, gay teachers, cis teachers, trans teachers

School children are a captive audience, grade school is a prison, the teachers are the guards, and the adults who don't know this knew it when they were in school. The only school children who aren't powerless are the bullies. Anybody who tells a child to circle himself on a chart that says he has power because of his demographic is lying to that child.

(3) This is not critical race theory but conservatives would claim it is.

Can't imagine why they'd suppose something like that.

(4) One of the complaints is that people are claiming that wheels such as this are teaching that there are _INHERENT_ characteristics of each group. It's not about what is inherent, but rather it's extrinsic, actually statistically a thing that is there because of culture and society and groups.

You may be taking "inherent" to mean something more technical than what the complainers have in mind. I think they're complaining about the implication that people who are white or male or cis or whatever are all prejudiced oppressors who can't help prejudging and oppressing others, and people who are black or female or trans or whatever are automatically oppressed regardless of their individual situations. Getting hung up on whether that's alleged to be due to genetics or environment is probably the furthest thing from their minds.

I'm a bit confused as to why you included an image in your post that contradicts what you are saying. Are you alleging that Duckworth is lying when she argues that racism must be tackled as an institutionalized social reality?

 

[Bomb#20]

I'm a bit confused as to why you included an image in your post that contradicts what you are saying. Are you alleging that Duckworth is lying when she argues that racism must be tackled as an institutionalized social reality?

I'm a bit confused as to why you think either image in my post contradicts what I'm saying. The images are there as evidence that the people pushing the power/oppression worldview on school children are sometimes the same people advocating bringing CRT into grade school, which might account for Don's observation of conservatives conflating the two.

The lying I'm alleging is in reference to any teachers who use the chart I reproduced in post #389 that Duckworth drew to imply to children that they can tell whether they have power or are oppressed by locating their demographics on her artwork. I don't know how Duckworth teaches her own pupils, so whether Duckworth herself is one of the liars, or that's only her more koolaid-infused followers, I couldn't say.

 

[ZiprHead]

I'm a bit confused as to why you think either image in my post contradicts what I'm saying. The images are there as evidence that the people pushing the power/oppression worldview on school children are sometimes the same people advocating bringing CRT into grade school, which might account for Don's observation of conservatives conflating the two.

I'm a bit confused as to why you think those images are people advocating teaching CRT to children. Nothing in either of those mentions anything about teaching the tenets to children.