Is there some foul play going on with CRT?
"something rotten in Denmark"? etc.
So, I see threads asking why there is CRT hysteria, and see threads mocking people for opposing CRT.
What I don't see is a hard concrete steel-manned definition of CRT.
For me to know if it is as good or as bad as people say, I think I need to know more about what it is.
So, what exactly is it?
You should read a primer on Critical Race Theory written by a scholar if you want an accurate exposition you can rely on.
There probably is no such "primer" other than something from a CRT-debunker. No one so far has given any. And everything claiming to tell us what CRT is (other than CRT-refuter-debunkings) contains mostly gibberish and lists of names of CRT "scholars" but not saying what their conclusions are; or if they do pretend to say the conclusions, it's in language which seems intended to confuse anyone trying to figure it out, or language intended to discourage any clarification.
The main problem with CRT is the CRT "scholars" themselves, or their sympathizers, unable to speak clearly, or those who cite them or offer a website which is supposed to explain it, but not actually quoting from the source and explaining what it says, or what it means, and just pretending that the words are saying something coherent.
This is a political debate forum, and nobody here is likely to be a scholar of Critical Race Theory, so it's not a great place to ask.
Yes this is a good place to ask. You don't have to be a scholar or a member of the school to read what these say and then quote this to someone else and give reasons to agree or disagree with it.
Instead of giving excuses why we can't know what it is, why not just recognize that CRT is something intentionally vague and obscure, and this is why no one can pin it down, or give a succinct summary of it. What we've been given so far is mostly gibberish. Someone is deliberately being elusive, pretending to be scholarly and informative, but really is engaging in sophistry, perhaps even pseudoscience.
Even if everything an internet rando tells you about CRT is completely accurate, you do not actually know that.
Right, there's no way to know, because the genuine CRT scholarly source itself (if it exists) is mostly gibberish, and there's no way to know if it's accurate, or even what it means.
What about the following scholarly source:
Critical race theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. The core idea is that race is a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.
The basic tenets of critical race theory, or CRT, emerged out of a framework for legal analysis . . .
. . .
https://www.edweek.org/leadership/what-is-critical-race-theory-and-why-is-it-under-attack/2021/05
So far this is all gibberish. It could mean something, but without further explanation it is only gibberish. And there's never any explanation beyond this "embedded in legal systems and policies" verbiage which by itself is just gibberish.
. . . a framework for legal analysis in the late 1970s and early 1980s created by legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado, among others.
This is the list-of-eminent-scholars verbiage. Giving us this list of scholars does not tell us what the theory is, nor telling us that it's from the 1970s or 80s (though there's no harm in some historical background, but limiting it to names of the theorists and the dates when they theorized does not tell us what the theory is).
All the presentations of CRT spend more space giving us these lists of names and names of institutions etc. than the "basic tenets of critical race theory" that "emerged out" of the scholarly and legal frameworks and so on.
And the above citation, when all is said and done, turns out to really be just another debunking of CRT like that of right-wing alarmists, rather than a real CRT source. E.g., it says:
All these different ideas grow out of longstanding, tenacious intellectual debates. Critical race theory emerged out of postmodernist thought, which tends to be skeptical of the idea of universal values, objective knowledge, individual merit, Enlightenment rationalism, and liberalism—tenets that conservatives tend to hold dear.
This statement is a
PUT-DOWN of CRT, from a negative critic. No CRT promoter or scholar would give the above description of CRT. Postmodernism is never cited by anyone as the basis for their theory. No one ever cites postmodernism except postmodernism-bashers and -debunkers.
Why is CRT impossible to define?
In fact, maybe CRT is problematic precisely because it's like postmodernism, and also like "Trickle-Down Economics" and other schools which are known to us only from their detractors, or from enemies of the school, who publish and lecture and propagandize against the controversial school, while at the same time there is no one willing to step forth and say "I'm a postmodernist (or trickle-down economist or critical race theorist) and here is what our school teaches . . ."
The proponents of the school are AWOL while their negative critics are everywhere preaching against the hated school which is denounced as something destroying our society.
Everyone speaks as though the CRT proponents do exist, but in reality those proponents seem to be hiding somewhere, maybe ashamed to step forth and present their ideas to us. Where is there a website from them? It's absent, just like there's nothing from the postmodernists and the trickle-down economists.
Like this "You should read a primer on Critical Race Theory written by a scholar" when there is no such thing. Or
There is one thing we know for certain. These frothing conning Republicans claiming to be upset by it don't have the slightest idea what it is.
Maybe they don't, but why? Who
does have an idea what it is? If the CRTers won't tell us, then how are the paranoids supposed to be corrected?
CRT is a rather old academic theory from the 70s, regarding systemic racism in the US. From my understanding, it was initially used to instruct law students so, I assume, when they were representing Black clients they would understand the racist elements in the system.
So CRT really does exist -- it's not a paranoid delusion -- but maybe it's so obscure that we can't find the CRTers themselves to tell us what it is, because they're a tiny clique of specialist academics not publishing anything for the general public. But even so the above says that CRT is used to decide real legal cases, so why shouldn't a CRTer somewhere step forth and defend the theory against this assault from so many critics? Why don't we hear from them? All we're getting is someone telling us to go get a primer or other official CRT source, and yet there is doesn't seem to be any, because the experts are AWOL.
So, maybe what we're hearing about this is paranoia, from the CRT-bashers, but how can they be blamed for their paranoia, if the ones they're bashing are all in hiding instead of stepping forth to present their great new insights to the general public? If they act sinister, how can we blame those who are saying "
Something stinks here!"???
