SigmatheZeta
Senior Member
- Joined
- Nov 5, 2021
- Messages
- 615
- Gender
- she/her
- Basic Beliefs
- Generally, I am rooted in both ancient Epicurean and ancient Pyrrhonist sentiments, although I am somewhat sympathetic toward the intentions behind ancient Cynicism.
I have actually been at the center of a couple of different minority movements...three, actually. LGBTQIAA, the neurodiversity movement, and the zoo pride movement, to name a few.I've tried about a dozen different searches. Very few school boards in very few very liberal areas have introduced Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a factor in social science education in k-12 district curricula. This seems a fair way for proceeding in development of a robust educational system in the US.
District deserve to tailor their education programs to the populations they serve for the most part. There is some evidence that aspects of CRT are taught at upper division some universities and laws schools are teaching CRT courses and programs.
Communities need to explain as best they can to their students why some people are killed, poor, without wealth are often due to the nature of local state, and national our laws.
However some report Republicans have brought this up as a wedge issue as being taught taught in most or all public schools. Such seems to be a cover for reintroducing racism into public education.
False issues such as these should be ferreted out and exposed as racist meat, inappropriate for educational curricula discussions. Using falsehoods to influence voters should be outlawed and strong sanctions should be imposed.
The most complicated part is actually getting your own group to organize effectively. I have a personal adage: "War is 90% house-keeping, and most of what's left is logistics."
Curating the right leaders for your groups is very hard. The kinds of gifts that make somebody an effective leader are hard to find even in the general population. Once you do find them, you have to be able to win their trust and their confidence, and these people are substantially smarter than you are, even if they are younger than you. You spend a very annoying amount of time breaking up fights. You end up with so many different small projects going at once, it's hard to keep up with them all, and it's hard to be sure which ones are really the most effective.
My pal Lykon discovered that it is imperative to never ever ever engage with hateful people. The more you engage with them, the more they multiply, and eventually, they amass large enough numbers of fanatical followers to overwhelm you just by numerical superiority. The more you engage with them, the more the conflict escalates, and the more the conflict escalates, the more extreme and dangerous their behavior gets.
Remember:
-George Perry GrahamIf in this present age we were to go back to the old time of ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ there would be very few hon. gentlemen in this House who would not, metaphorically speaking, be blind and toothless.
it is useful to seek out mixed communities where you can network with allies. It is actually a lie that most of the world is out to get you, in particular, even if most people believe in misguided myths about your group. Once they have met you and your immediate friends, they realize that what everybody else thinks is bullshit. Quickly get established in any community setting where you are pretty sure that you have allies. Remember the advice of the General:
Ground which forms the key to three contiguous states, so that he who occupies it first has most of the Empire at his command, is a ground of intersecting highways.
When there are means of communication on all four sides, the ground is one of intersecting highways.
-Sun TzuOn ground of intersecting highways, I would consolidate my alliances.
Relations with allies is deadly important. If anybody in your group threatens these alliances for any reason, then try to divert them with more positive strategies.
Get good at resolving conflicts within your group, especially if your particular minority group is just starting to become organized. You are going to have to deal with people from all political backgrounds. You are going to have to learn how to get a socialist and a libertarian to work together on specific projects for long periods of time without causing disruptions. This is taxing on your nerves, but I do not care. Get good at it if you want to make any progress at all. Fights over dumb ideologies can slow everything down and disrupt important dynamics.
When new leaders emerge on the scene, you have to strike a balance between suppressing their enthusiasm and making them aware of important realities about the current situation.
I can see some amount of merit in critical theory, but it has serious flaws and needs more development, in my opinion, before it is really ready for practical use. I have noticed that some adherents of critical theory tend to use it as a sort of golden hammer. You should not assume that everything in the world is a nail just because the only tool you have in hand is a nail.
For example, let me talk about ongoing de facto racial segregation. It is an unfortunate reality, and it is a serious problem in American cities. If you are a leader in the African-American community, though, how do you talk the people that happen to look like you into moving into white or mixed neighborhoods, knowing that it costs them more money? When white people move into black or mixed neighborhoods, what types of measures can you realistically take in order to make those people feel safe and welcome? It sounds good to say, "segregation bad, integration good," but you have to exert a tremendous amount of energy and organization and problem-solving ability in order to facilitate that. It is not the easiest process to bring your people together to bring about outcomes that you know will help them, in the long-run, and unfortunately, you are likely to meet a surprising amount of resistance from people that happen to look like you. The kinds of people that are willing to take these kinds of goals on are some of the bravest people alive, but they have to be.
These are not statements that I am making merely on the African-American community, though. These are issues that any minority group anywhere in society has to deal with. The gay community, the transgender community, the neurodiverse community, and the zoo community are ones that I really know the most about, at this point in my life. I am really ill-equipped to speak fluently on the unique issues of racial minorities. Nevertheless, certain dynamics can be universal.
I am neither opposed to critical theory nor entirely confident that it constitutes a finished product. There is more left to be done, in my opinion, to make it a practically applicable theory. What people are trying to do with it is something that I think is genuinely needed, though.