Did you take a class in critical race theory?

[Politesse]

Confronting and critiquing "Whiteness" is not the same thing as anti-White racism. At least, not within a CRT framework. It looks like this individual let their politics get in the way of their common sense, and failed to understand the lessons these trainings were attempting to communicate. It is one of the fundamental cores of the framework that Whiteness as a scoial category was an invention, not a discovery. Whites have to deal with this legacy because of the privileges that were applied to them as a result of it, not because it is some internal fact of their being. Whites do not exist as natural realities, but rather as the social product of a certain cultural way of organizing and labeling the world which served the interests of the ruling class under settler colonialism. If you understand that basic tenet, you'll understand most of the quoted statements in that document much more clearly.

I'm curious what you even think, for instance, 11C is supposed to mean, if you think CRT as a whole is indulging in race essentialism?

How the fuck is this not a secular religion? I have no sin that needs repenting. I have no interest in your Maoist struggle session. Self-flagellants please fuck off. Treat people as individuals and not as members of groups. Do not divide by race. Thank you.

Yes, "dividing by race" is a huge problem. The very problem that CRT is trying to address. Equity cannot flourish until concepts of "Whiteness", "Blackness" and so forth are critically exmained and their effects on society systematically unraveled and countered.

 

[Trausti]

Confronting and critiquing "Whiteness" is not the same thing as anti-White racism. At least, not within a CRT framework. It looks like this individual let their politics get in the way of their common sense, and failed to understand the lessons these trainings were attempting to communicate. It is one of the fundamental cores of the framework that Whiteness as a scoial category was an invention, not a discovery. Whites have to deal with this legacy because of the privileges that were applied to them as a result of it, not because it is some internal fact of their being. Whites do not exist as natural realities, but rather as the social product of a certain cultural way of organizing and labeling the world which served the interests of the ruling class under settler colonialism. If you understand that basic tenet, you'll understand most of the quoted statements in that document much more clearly.

I'm curious what you even think, for instance, 11C is supposed to mean, if you think CRT as a whole is indulging in race essentialism?

How the fuck is this not a secular religion? I have no sin that needs repenting. I have no interest in your Maoist struggle session. Self-flagellants please fuck off. Treat people as individuals and not as members of groups. Do not divide by race. Thank you.

Yes, "dividing by race" is a huge problem. The very problem that CRT is trying to address. Equity cannot flourish until concepts of "Whiteness", "Blackness" and so forth are critically exmained and their effects on society systematically unraveled and countered.

If you want to see race in everything, you will see race in everything. No different than the religious fundamentalist who sees God/Spirits/Devil everywhere, too. Why do you think forcing children to judge one another on racial identity is a good idea? That's Nazi shit.

 

[bilby]

"Treat people as individuals and not as members of groups" is childish libertarianism that denies vast swathes of reality.

It's childishness is exposed when the context is shifted. Forget race, and consider the ramifications of eliminating categorisation of people into groups such as age; nationality; creditworthiness; gender; or sexuality.

Do we (as a society) want to completely disregard such groupings, and consider only individuals? If so, then we've already fucked it up, because "we (as a society)" is meaningless in this paradigm. And if you as an individual want to disregard any or all of those categorisations, why should I or anyone else give a shit?

Libertarianism and individualism always boil down to "I don't wanna be told what to do", which is pathetic when you're an infant, and doesn't get better with age.

Humans are social animals, and structure their societies around categorisations of one another. This has good and bad consequences, and it's important to discuss these consequences and to work to maximise the good and minimise the bad. It's difficult, and often frustrating. But it's not helped by idiots whose approach to the problem is to pretend that it doesn't exist.

 

[laughing dog]

Yes, "dividing by race" is a huge problem. The very problem that CRT is trying to address. Equity cannot flourish until concepts of "Whiteness", "Blackness" and so forth are critically exmained and their effects on society systematically unraveled and countered.

If you want to see race in everything, you will see race in everything. No different than the religious fundamentalist who sees God/Spirits/Devil everywhere, too. Why do you think forcing children to judge one another on racial identity is a good idea? That's Nazi shit.

Coming from someone who has posted about how blacks are genetically less intelligent, that is ironic.

 

[ZiprHead]

CRT is just another dog whistle for the conservatives and right wing to rile up some of their base. Nothing like making people fear for the future to get them stoked up.

They know nothing drives their base better than fear.

 

[Trausti]

This is indoctrination. A racial caste system. How do people excuse this?

[TWEET]https://twitter.com/MythinformedMKE/status/1411135825262284800[/TWEET]

 

[lpetrich]

Creator Of Term ‘Critical Race Theory’ Kimberlé Crenshaw Explains What It Really Is - YouTube - interviewed by Joy Reid

KC explained that CRT is in the tradition of civil-rights activists like Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. She explained that it emerged after the partial success of the civil-rights movement of the late 1950's and early 1960's. It succeeded in ending a lot of discriminatory laws, but many black people still were not very well-off socially.

There are very few books on it, and it's only taught in law schools. KC called right-wingers attacks' on CRT a backlash effort, one with a villain that only exists in their imaginations. She says that Reconstruction was ended by a similar effort.

JR then showed a screencap of this tweet:
Christopher F. Rufo on Twitter: "@ConceptualJames We have successfully frozen their brand—"critical race theory"—into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category." / Twitter

From MediaMatters by Lis Powell:

Fox has mentioned "critical race theory" nearly 1,300 times in the past 3.5 months

With mentions doubling month over month, the *critical race theory" boogeyman is exploding on Fox News

Fox's anti-CRT parents are often Republican Party activists.

KC stated that this was typical of right-wingers' framing anti-racist efforts as racist against white people. Like ending Reconstruction, implementing racial segregation, and opposing the civil-rights movement ("reverse discrimination").

 

[lpetrich]

Joy Reid then interviewed Christopher Rufo himself.
Joy Reid Schools Critical Race Theory Critic On Legal Scholarship - YouTube

JR started with CR's claim that Ibram X. Kendi is the guru of CRT. JR then showed his response. "I admire critical race theory, but I don't identify as a critical race theorist. I'm not a legal scholar, so I wasn't trained on critical race theory. I'm a historian. And Chris would know this if he's actually read my work or understood that critical race theory is taught in law schools. I didn't attend law school."

CR claimed that IXK was claiming that white people were inherently racist. Then JR showed another bit by IXK.

We've been taught that racist is essential to who a person is. It's a fixed category. It's in someone's heart. That's one of the reasons why people are unwilling or unable to admit the times in which they're being racist, because it's not just admitting, "I was being racist in that moment." Basically we're tattooing racist on our forehead for the rest of our lives.

Meaning that it's something that one can unlearn, it seems.

Then a lot of haggling, like CR trying to bring up some things that he claimed to be outraged about. JR called one of them "intersectionality". She also said that conservatives were stuffing many things that they dislike into the label of CRT. She said that CRT could be called Christopher Rufo Theory, because he invented it. She then credited him with the great success of manufacturing a label for what he dislikes and convincing people that they ought to get outraged about it.

 

[lpetrich]

Book Review: Caste at Daylight Atheism

Isabel Wilkerson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist best known for her book The Warmth of Other Suns. In her new book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, she argues that racism in America is best understood as a caste system similar to that of India. Caste is "the infrastructure of our divisions" [p.17], she says, unseen but inescapable - like an old house whose architecture constrains the lives of the people who inhabit it long after its construction.

The function of a caste system is to control the distribution of power in society. It slots people into predestined and immutable roles based on their birth, defining what jobs they're allowed to do, who they're permitted to marry and socialize with, how they're supposed to act in public, and which other castes they're expected to be dominant or subordinate to. Wilkerson writes that, in the U.S., race is "the visible agent of the unseen force of caste" [p.19].

White supremacist Madison Grant and civil-rights activist Martin Luther King Jr both agreed on that comparison.

There's one other caste system that Wilkerson surveys: the anti-Semitic regime of Nazi Germany, which was codified through measures like the Nuremberg Laws that prohibited relationships between Jews and non-Jews. What you may not know is that the Nazis took lessons in how to do this from America. This isn't hyperbole: in June 1934, a committee of Nazi bureaucrats met to pore over America's Jim Crow laws, which they thoroughly approved of and wanted to use as a template.

IW claims that caste systems have several principles in common. The first of them is that the caste system is the will of the Ruler of the Universe: the Christian God, Brahma, whatever.

Once a group of human beings have been defined as subordinate, they can be coerced into doing the menial but necessary work that the rest of society depends upon. To keep them in their place, they can be dehumanized, terrorized and tortured in any way the dominant castes see fit.

linking to  Mudsill theory, the theory that there must be some degraded class of people for doing the menial labor of society. It was invented by Southern plantation owner and slavery apologist James Henry Hammond.

Caste systems also involve strict boundaries between groups, so they do not socially mix or interbreed.

In every caste system, the greatest hate is provoked not by the subordinate caste's failure, but by its success: by people who refuse to stay in their assigned places, but break through the boundaries of caste and excel in life. People who are lower class, but upper caste, feel a profound sense of threat when they see that someone they perceive as beneath them is outdoing them. It threatens to upend all their assumptions about how the world works, and this can lead to a violent backlash.

Wilkerson argues that Donald Trump's election was just such a backlash. It was spurred by conservative white rage at the successful presidency of Barack Obama, as well as racist anxiety and fear over a census report which predicted that by 2042, whites will be a minority for the first time in American history. The right's cultlike loyalty to Trump and his promise to bring back a mythical vanished era of greatness, as well as the outbursts of hate crimes during his presidency, are like an earthquake: the sudden eruption of long-simmering tensions.

But it's possible to change, as postwar Germany has demonstrated.

 

[blastula]

So a course in Black Studies US History includes in a very major way the concept of Critical Race Theory. As an aside, that can be included in the op poll as a "Yes," if anyone here took or is taking this class.

Does that make any difference in whether it's right for the right to complain about it now?

There's also this one from the same page:
LGBTQIA+ World History 3

I wouldn't think that a regular person like yourself would start screaming that this other voluntary course is part of the Liberal Gay Agenda.
I mean, I hope you wouldn't. So, for the same reasons, I hope you wouldn't claim that a Black Studies course--a very rare type of Studies at the high school level--is indicative of a greater conspiracy to brainwash American youth in conservative towns across America.

I haven't claimed any conspiracy.

Do you think they should get rid of these voluntary courses or keep them?

Whether voluntary or not, garbage propaganda courses should be ditched. Do you think pro-creationism courses are okay if voluntary?

 

[blastula]

So if is CRT, why is Kendi's quote not?

“The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

Is this not CRT?

It is not.

Where in what I posted does it posit that the only remedy to racist/past/present discrimination is antiracist/present/future discrimination?

I think a better question is why do you think Kendi's quote is CRT?

From your quote,

CRT does not define racism in the traditional manner as solely the consequence of discrete irrational bad acts perpetrated by individuals but is usually the unintended (but often foreseeable) consequence of choices. It exposes the ways that racism is often cloaked in terminology regarding “mainstream,” “normal,” or “traditional” values or “neutral” policies, principles, or practices. And, as scholar Tara Yosso asserts, CRT can be an approach used to theorize, examine, and challenge the ways which race and racism implicitly and explicitly impact social structures, practices, and discourses.

That's exactly what Kendi is doing. He's examining and challenging concepts of racism.

I see conservatives examining and challenging concepts of racism all the time. Obviously they are not doing Critical Race Theory. So, there should be better criteria. Maybe it's just the way you worded it?

No shit, but crt is about examining race from a certain leftist point of view, and one that Kendi fits very well with.

 

[blastula]

It makes my head hurt, the "logic" being here employed. I guess since the theory of universal gravitation concerns mass and proportion, I'm pushing a UG agenda everytime I bring up either mass or proportion in the classroom?

Crt is an academic movement not a scientific theory, as if. Who mentioned an agenda? That your head hurts is not surprising.

 

[Politesse]

It makes my head hurt, the "logic" being here employed. I guess since the theory of universal gravitation concerns mass and proportion, I'm pushing a UG agenda everytime I bring up either mass or proportion in the classroom?

Crt is an academic movement not a scientific theory, as if. CRT practitioners can disagree, duh. That your head hurts is not surprising.

I would call it a paradigm, based on already established theories of sociology and inheritance studies. I think you misunderstood my post, though; the problem is not whether CRT "practitioners" can disagree, but whether social conservatives care or have any fucking idea what CRT is. A comprehension very much not in evidence.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

I haven't claimed any conspiracy.

Do you think they should get rid of these voluntary courses or keep them?

Whether voluntary or not, garbage propaganda courses should be ditched.

You said you are not claiming a conspiracy but then you call it propaganda. Doesn't propaganda require people who are creating the propagandizing or at least normally?

Do you think pro-creationism courses are okay if voluntary?

My opinion fluctuates and is also dependent upon context. Are we talking seminary, public school, private school is a factor in how frequently I may be against something like a voluntary pro-religion course. Honestly, to be open, sometimes I feel pretty hardcore about stamping out religion and sometimes I don't.

BUT I don't think you've demonstrated that Black Studies US History and LGBTQIA+ World History 3 are "garbage propaganda" either which calls into question whether this is a valid analogy.

 

[blastula]

“The 1619 Project” Enters American Classrooms - Education Next

I read a significant part of that, then I realized that the criticisms were very meager and nit-picky. The place where I got stuck was in the alleged debunking of Crispus Attucks's race. Most Black Americans are multi-racial...I mean almost all. The multiple contintental origins of their recent ancestry is extremely common. Some Blacks may even be less than 50% sub-Saharan African according to dna testing while others might be as much as close to 100%. The average number is around 74% sub-Saharan African but it has this wide distribution. We even recently had a President who was 50% African, but called Black.

So I took a step back and thought about this more. Here is my counter to you and this isn't meant to be argumentative. Alright,

...so if someone does a huge historical project and you expect a lot of people to be against it because they weren't included and because of their ideologies, then wouldn't you expect them to be able to make some very minor points and frame things in their favor? I mean, a bunch of individuals. I would. It's just the nature of having a large body of text to deal with where people have reasons to try to attack it.

...next if a propagandist comes along, such as, say someone who works for the Heritage Foundation, or in this case the American Enterprise Institute and consolidates all those individuals' complaints into a singular narrative of "errors" and goes in for the kill with some argumentum ad hominem...really irrelevant stuff about the author going to Cuba or whatever...wouldn't you think that critique would be very effective to the average American?

...suppose you are such an average American. How can you ensure you are getting both sides of the story? Where can you get an author's response to criticism if no big institution is pushing it out there? Also in this hypothetical how can you ensure that you are qualified enough to discern which side's points are superior, if you are even presented with both sides?

I posted that link to show that crt is in schools, I don't really care about the critiques there. But I do believe there are scholarship and journalistic problems with the project. I do expect better from the NYT.

 

[blastula]

Unless you can show evidence of an 8th grade history book being used anywhere that teaches CRT, then you don't even have that as a choice. Your choice, especially if you live in Louisiana, may only be the one that notes how tough the poor slave owners had it.

“The 1619 Project” Enters American Classrooms - Education Next

That article does not mention Critical Race Theory.

True, it doesn't use that term, but so what?

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

“The 1619 Project” Enters American Classrooms - Education Next

I read a significant part of that, then I realized that the criticisms were very meager and nit-picky. The place where I got stuck was in the alleged debunking of Crispus Attucks's race. Most Black Americans are multi-racial...I mean almost all. The multiple contintental origins of their recent ancestry is extremely common. Some Blacks may even be less than 50% sub-Saharan African according to dna testing while others might be as much as close to 100%. The average number is around 74% sub-Saharan African but it has this wide distribution. We even recently had a President who was 50% African, but called Black.

So I took a step back and thought about this more. Here is my counter to you and this isn't meant to be argumentative. Alright,

...so if someone does a huge historical project and you expect a lot of people to be against it because they weren't included and because of their ideologies, then wouldn't you expect them to be able to make some very minor points and frame things in their favor? I mean, a bunch of individuals. I would. It's just the nature of having a large body of text to deal with where people have reasons to try to attack it.

...next if a propagandist comes along, such as, say someone who works for the Heritage Foundation, or in this case the American Enterprise Institute and consolidates all those individuals' complaints into a singular narrative of "errors" and goes in for the kill with some argumentum ad hominem...really irrelevant stuff about the author going to Cuba or whatever...wouldn't you think that critique would be very effective to the average American?

...suppose you are such an average American. How can you ensure you are getting both sides of the story? Where can you get an author's response to criticism if no big institution is pushing it out there? Also in this hypothetical how can you ensure that you are qualified enough to discern which side's points are superior, if you are even presented with both sides?

I posted that link to show that crt is in schools, I don't really care about the critiques there. But I do believe there are scholarship and journalistic problems with the project. I do expect better from the NYT.

Is the 1619 Project equivalent to CRT?

 

[blastula]

So if is CRT, why is Kendi's quote not?

“The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

Is this not CRT?

It is not.

Where in what I posted does it posit that the only remedy to racist/past/present discrimination is antiracist/present/future discrimination?

I think a better question is why do you think Kendi's quote is CRT?

From your quote,

CRT does not define racism in the traditional manner as solely the consequence of discrete irrational bad acts perpetrated by individuals but is usually the unintended (but often foreseeable) consequence of choices. It exposes the ways that racism is often cloaked in terminology regarding “mainstream,” “normal,” or “traditional” values or “neutral” policies, principles, or practices. And, as scholar Tara Yosso asserts, CRT can be an approach used to theorize, examine, and challenge the ways which race and racism implicitly and explicitly impact social structures, practices, and discourses.

That's exactly what Kendi is doing. He's examining and challenging concepts of racism.

You asked why this quote

“The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

is not CRT. Please show how this is examining or challenging the concept of racism because it is giving a monosolution to the issue of racist discrimination.

Why would it matter if it's a monosolution? Is "no monosolutions" an inviolable tenet of crt? Whether you disagree with it as a solution isn't a test for whether it's crt.

From Kendi's own words.

Critical race theory is a convenient target for conservatives.

Would you consider yourself to be a critical race theorist? Who are critical race theorists out there that people should be aware of?

I’ve certainly been inspired by critical race theory and critical race theorists. The ways in which I’ve formulated definitions of racism and racist and anti-racism and anti-racist have not only been based on historical evidence, but also Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectional theory. She’s one of the founding and pioneering critical race theorists who in the late 1980s and early 1990s said, “You know what? Black women aren’t just facing racism, they’re not just facing sexism, they’re facing the intersection of racism and sexism.” It’s important for us to understand that and that’s foundational to my work.

 

[laughing dog]

So if is CRT, why is Kendi's quote not?

“The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

Is this not CRT?

It is not.

Where in what I posted does it posit that the only remedy to racist/past/present discrimination is antiracist/present/future discrimination?

I think a better question is why do you think Kendi's quote is CRT?

From your quote,

CRT does not define racism in the traditional manner as solely the consequence of discrete irrational bad acts perpetrated by individuals but is usually the unintended (but often foreseeable) consequence of choices. It exposes the ways that racism is often cloaked in terminology regarding “mainstream,” “normal,” or “traditional” values or “neutral” policies, principles, or practices. And, as scholar Tara Yosso asserts, CRT can be an approach used to theorize, examine, and challenge the ways which race and racism implicitly and explicitly impact social structures, practices, and discourses.

That's exactly what Kendi is doing. He's examining and challenging concepts of racism.

You asked why this quote

“The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

is not CRT. Please show how this is examining or challenging the concept of racism because it is giving a monosolution to the issue of racist discrimination.

Why would it matter if it's a monosolution? Is "no monosolutions" an inviolable tenet of crt? Whether you disagree with it as a solution isn't a test for whether it's crt.

From your citation

And, as scholar Tara Yosso asserts, CRT can be an approach used to theorize, examine, and challenge the ways which race and racism implicitly and explicitly impact social structures, practices, and discourses.

Ways is not singular.

From Kendi's own words.

Critical race theory is a convenient target for conservatives.

Would you consider yourself to be a critical race theorist? Who are critical race theorists out there that people should be aware of?

I’ve certainly been inspired by critical race theory and critical race theorists. The ways in which I’ve formulated definitions of racism and racist and anti-racism and anti-racist have not only been based on historical evidence, but also Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectional theory. She’s one of the founding and pioneering critical race theorists who in the late 1980s and early 1990s said, “You know what? Black women aren’t just facing racism, they’re not just facing sexism, they’re facing the intersection of racism and sexism.” It’s important for us to understand that and that’s foundational to my work.

Kendi's own words suggest his views are not CRT.

 

[blastula]

It could be, but I also have a much larger feeling of the boy (the right-wing) who cried wolf. From PC to gay marriage -> marrying toasters to "woke" to CRT.

Of course, the right is overly hysterical about it, they are mainly using it as a political tactic. But that it is used for a tactic, doesn't mean there is nothing bad going on in schools related to crt. That the right hates something doesn't automatically make it good, even if mostly.

Why in the world does he think the concepts of "systemic racism, any mention of white privilege" are not a part of CRT?

When did White Privilege become part of CRT?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_privilege#Critical_race_theory

And I don't see what the point is of fixating on the CRT vs not CRT distinction at all, when the right could just as well just say they're against teaching concepts x, y and z without saying the term CRT. But how would that make anybody happier? How would anybody's position change on it?

Because one thing is talking about concepts that been getting developed in academia for a few decades and other stuff could be pet projects and individual goals. I see it a bit as Kent Hovind's evolution challenge where you need to satisfy the origin of the universe in defending evolution.

If you think there is a clear demarcation between "the one true crt" and most of the other things being complained about by the right, then go ahead distinguish them, but the other things are still happening whatever they're called. They would still have a point or not regardless what label is attached. If a crt proponent thinks a school is doing crt wrong by "white shaming," they should also be happy to critique it.

Here's the Seattle public school district page on new classes there. New High School Courses - Seattle Public Schools

Black Studies U.S. History 11A and 11B will be the first courses of this new Black Education Program and will focus on the Black and African American experience from a national and global perspective. This includes, but is not limited to African History, American History, Critical Race Theory, American Enslavement, Black/African American-led social movement, Black/African American social autonomy and economic development, Black/African American Innovation, and Black/African American leadership nationally and globally.

It includes the magic CRT words. Does that make any difference in whether it's right for the right to complain about it now?

If they claim the curriculum that involves CRT is about white shaming, I'd say yeah, that would matter if that isn't part of the curriculum.

Yes, it matters what the specifics are, but, for example, "whiteness studies" is a part of crt and can easily be taught in a white shaming way, as has been complained has been done. The term "whiteness" alone is problematic for implying a negative essentialism.