Written to Bomb#20:
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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.