CRT: Critical Race Theory as Bogeyman

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Tiassa, Jun 13, 2021.

  1. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

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    2,046
    Where was that history not being taught prior to CRT?
    Or is CRT needed to make up for the monuments reminding us of that history that the same people demanded we remove?

    Who's been ignoring history?
    Or do you believe someone not agreeing with you about current racism has to mean they don't know the history?

    Cultural Marxists↑, leftists, Democrats, but I repeat myself.

    In the past? No one. Today? That depends.
    If children are being taught that leftist opinion and propaganda are fact, that's called brainwashing or indoctrination.
    If white children are taught they are bad, simply from being born white, that is called racism. Like any racism, just swap the race to tell if it's racist.
    If black children are taught they are bad, simply from being born black, that is called racism.

    Teaching a legal theory to college students (adults) is very different from teaching it to children as if it were fact.
    The question we should be asking is why now. It's been around since the 70s, so why the sudden push to teach it to children?
    Of course, if we're going to go there, why the sudden push to teach children about masturbating, transgenders, gender identities, etc.?

    Perhaps this is all a desperate, last gasp of radical leftism.

    No one's worried about legit history being taught, except maybe those demanding we remove every reminder of that history from public view. All the easier to substitute their own Critical Theory version of history, like The 1619 Project.
     
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  3. Bells Staff Member

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    A fairly disingenuous question, given CRT is mostly taught or discussed in higher education.

    But to answer your question in regards to history being taught in the US, it barely is. And at times, it has been altered. This is a fairly good read: https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/8/26/20829771/slavery-textbooks-history

    Here's an example from the link:

    King explained, “It boils down to money and politics. One of the strategies of conservative politicians is taking over state school boards, where textbook policies are been adopted.” Seats on those boards are often appointed, and large states — those who can deliver big sales to publishing companies and may require school systems to buy particular textbooks — have a massive say in what content makes its way into student’s hands and minds.

    Texas, for example, earned a reputation for inserting dubious information and interpretations about the nation’s creation, evolution, and slavery into its school books. In one case, Moses — he of the Ten Commandments — was listed as a Founding Father, and enslaved people were referred to as immigrant workers in a textbook caption a student flagged in 2015.

    CRT has been around since the 1970's.

    The reason it has become such a bug up the butts of the conservative collective is because your precious statues venerating slavers are being pulled down.

    I mean, you get that distinction, yes?

    Or are you being dishonest just for the sake of being dishonest?

    That's a rhetorical question, by the way. We all know how you roll.

    I don't know. You tell me. Texas was teaching school kids that Moses was a founding father at one point.

    Kids weren't being taught about slavery and its effects on the founding of the US, or how the attitudes have persevered throughout generations.. And they still aren't. When a proposal was made to teach them, conservatives pitched fits.

    And here we are..

    You mean people who view black people as being equal and who wish to recognise what came before and how it affects today.

    You, clearly disagree with them, I take it?

    For example:

    The problem is that the current curriculum and previous curriculum's did teach children that black people were inferior. That slavery wasn't such a bad thing.

    Wouldn't you consider that brainwashing or indoctrination?

    Oh wait, I forget.. Of course you don't!

    The very notion that education should encompass all of American history, ranging from the experiences of Native Americans to the horror of slavery and how racism has been so pervasive in America, both historically and currently, and conservative attempts to completely erase that part of US history.. says a lot. That is racism. Re-writing history and doing so in a manner that erases the history of minorities and Native Americans, is racism.

    Recognising history, how the US came to be, and education based on fact, no matter how brutal and ugly it was, is not racism.

    Frankly, I don't know why I bother responding to you, because you've proven yourself to be a disingenuous troll in all of your posts here.

    CRT is not being taught to children and still remains a legal theory discussed and taught in college.

    And why now? Look in the mirror. Here's an example of why you and your ilk are worried about this:

    Pure stupidity and bigotry.

    That is "why now".
    Yeah. "Legit history"..

    That's why Moses was deemed a founding father and slaves were deemed "immigrant workers" and the wife of slave owners were really just mothers to them all:

    During this period, there were more conservative references to how Christianity got the enslaved through hard times, as well as traditional family rhetoric that said the wives of slave owners (which assumed women weren’t slaveowners themselves) took care of the enslaved in motherly ways.


    We are well past the point where surely you recognise that no one is actually buying your utter bullshit here, yes? You do get this, yeah?
     
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  5. candy Valued Senior Member

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    Revisionist history has been around for a couple of decades.
    One version holds that slaves were treated better than immigrant northern factory workers since their owners provided housing, food, and clothing ignoring the total degradation that slavery imposed. The Gone With the Wind version of history. It never addresses the denial of rights that was imposed on them after the end of slavery.
     
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  7. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    When I was growing up (in the South) slavery was underplayed regarding the Civil War. There were plenty of statues of generals, museums at battleground sites and it was all about "state's rights". Most people just thought of it as "heritage" or "history" and all the killing from the war was seen as a great tragedy.

    Slaves weren't featured highly in this scenario. The idea was that most people didn't own slaves and that in the North they had no use for slaves but didn't treat factory workers much better and that workers were cheaper than slaves. The focus was on industrial economies vs agrarian economies.

    In college slavery was acknowledged as wrong of course but still too much attention was paid to the nuances of the "states rights" issues and less about slavery. More than anything else I don't think enough thought was given as to how black people would view the same scenario. It was enough, it seemed, that if we went to a Civil War museum and mainly thought about the soldiers families then it couldn't be so much about race and slavery.

    Of course, historically speaking much of that was due to a PR campaign by the Daughter's of the American Revolution and groups like that which "white washed" history to sound a little better. I recall reading that they were also the main ones behind the push to have all those statues erected in the first place.

    In college I don't recall slavery ever being made to look like not such a bad thing (being provided food/housing/good vs bad owners, etc) but the Civil War was just presented as being a lot more complex than slavery vs no slaves and that complexity was focused on much more than it should have been and slavery much less than it should have been.
     
  8. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    They still are not. That's a strawman.

    CRT is not much different than CLS, and in fact comes from the same roots. They don't teach either in grade school. In fact, you have to go looking for a college course in CRT.

    (Well, it may become more popular now, with so many conservatives bringing it to the forefront of discussions on race. If so - good luck making it more popular!)
     
  9. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,884
    In 1995, James Loewen published, Lies My Teacher Told Me°. If we count back the twenty-six years to publication, and consider that he was looking at textbooks already in circulation, well, we're looking at least at thirty to forty years. Moreover, also on record at Sciforums°° is a 2006 interview in which Loewen discussed his time teaching at Tougaloo College; checking that credential, we find he was at the school from 1968-75, and if we tack on at least four years for his students' time in high school, were looking at about 1964, some fifty-seven years ago. We can reach into the fifties, because it really does seem that as schools were educating the future Tougaloo students wrongly, nobody around them seemed to know, either, which suggests they were not the first class to suffer such misinformation, so we can reach back a little farther, at least.

    We can reasonably guess the problem did not suddenly begin in the late 1950s, after decades of teaching history properly, and you're welcome to go start digging for the historical sources that say otherwise.

    Deliberately posturing yourself as ignorant is not an effective persuasive technique, to say the least, but—

    —we also understand there isn't really any good argument to support your position. I think the question isn't about any "sudden push to teach it to children"; rather, the question is, why these critics, if it's such an important issue, refuse to deal in reality.

    There's an old Doonesbury, from the Zippergate era, when Mike stutters and stumbles his way through trying to talk to Alex about the insanity she might be hearing in the news, and in the fourth panel she takes mercy on him, telling him she already knows what that stuff is. In the moment, Mike's relieved, but there always remains the question of how old our kids are when they learn that stuff. One point of the cartoon was to remind that for all the moralists scream about what the children see and hear, they were also the ones making sure the children asked questions about certain things. The Voter's Guide for the Oregon 1992 general election was absurd, laden with arguments about homosexuals and homosexuality specifically because the Christians demanded; and the page describing various paraphilia of gay men—though heterosexual couples were not disqualified from the behaviors on the list—was a Christianist, anti-gay entry. This keeps happening, over and over again. To a certain degree, the traditionalists keep doing it to themselves.

    Even still, your description of a sudden push is unreliable, and the nearest phenomenon I can hang that description on would be discussing comparatively sparse data in particular societal settings because circumstance actually requires it. Remember, while politicians misbehaving is not a rare phenomenon, and wasn't new at the time, and sex scandals were a dime a dozen, it was for parents—(¿Won't someone please think of the children?)—a bit easier to explain to young children why that man, Mr. Hart, was in trouble because of that photograph, than explain about cigars, blow jobs, and stains on a dress. Mike Doonesbury only had to make those decisions at that moment because of conservative political maneuvering, so the one group who should not have been wailing about what to tell the children, at that time, was conservatives.

    This is how much conservatives bring it on themselves: There is an old practice among families in American Christendom, and I know it persisted into my time; mention of it feels rare, but I have heard of it diversely enough to understand it was, to some degree, real. Apparently, some Christian parents would teach their children to sleep with their hands outside the blankets, so as to discourage masturbation.

    Fast-forward not really so long to the Duggar family, and their practice of teaching the children code words that actually alert them to the presence of sexual temptation—(more particularly, what their parents found sexually tempting)—just doesn't seem so unbelievable. And along the way conservative Christians started holding purity balls, when fathers take their daughters on an extraordinary date, sometimes across state lines to publicly pledge paternal authority over her sex life; the custom describes extraordinary object-relational value°°°. The basic question ought to be clear: If the point is to protect the innocence of children, why demand they so frequently think about sexual behavior?

    There is actually a point at which this question ought to be obvious, and it is also true that the American right wing has long since exceeded that marker in order to tromp the wilds of conscience and expression and empowerment.

    The history of the Gay Fray reminds how it comes to be that we discuss certain things with children: Reagan's homophobic sentiment cannot be overstated in understanding the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the gay community, because lying to the nation about a viral disease in hopes that it killed his political and religious enemies as a matter of God's just wrath really did inflict a toll. Between arresting people for being gay, or publicly destroying their careers, or fearmongering an epidemic so that kids ask what it means to be gay, or teach the kids that calling each other gay—or faggot—is an insult, they are eventually going to ask. So one important point is that when traditionalism learned that gay people failed to lose in a small number of family-court and labor-board considerations, circa 1989, their response was to put homosexuality on the ballot. This brought us to 1990 local ballots that resulted in a nationwide discussion of banning books for being gay. And then 1992, when two states sought to amend their constitutions to essentially disenfranchise homosexuals. Traditionalists lost in one state, but won in the other; that state constitutional amendment faltered in federal court and never recovered, dying in 1996, when the Supreme Court decided Romer v. Evans. It is worth noting this period produced an anti-government sentiment that hit voting age just in time for the 2010 midterm that brought "Tea Party" populism to power in Congress. It is also a reason why conservatives have spent so much time preparing for court appointments that came during Trump's term. Meanwhile, it is right wing alarmism bringing the transgender historical transition to prominence. Here's a good example: Maybe the Duggar-funded, Tea Party city councilman shouldn't harass women in public, going off about whipping out his own dick, in order to make some point about transgender. Maybe Republican presidential candidates and state legislatures shouldn't go out of their way with spectacular fearmongering. Seriously, who wants to explain to the kids why the councilman is hollering about dropping trou in order to prove he's a man? Who wants to explain to the kids why people are chasing women into the restroom in order to inspect their genitals? Who wants to explain to the kids that adverisement about men hiding in the restroom to listen to girls go to the bathroom?

    What was that, Vociferous? Why are people talking with kids about sex, gender, and sexual behavior?

    Human rights could be a lot easier a societal transition, except Americans keep rehashing the primacy of a supremacist's delicate feelings over everything else. Given that the whole wreck is about aesthetics, the ugliness makes its own point.

    Like so much of the American culture wars, the problem isn't necessarily that we are having a particular discussion; the problem, as I understand it, is that some people with more traditionalistic aesthetics are upset because certain discussions aren't going the way they want.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    ° See, #2500209↗ (2010) for discussion of "Lone Star" textbooks "tailoring the facts of history", as Loewen put it.

    °° See, #2292336↗ (2009), and #3641906↗ (2020).

    °°° More directly: 「Getting a hotel room together, two states away, in order to publicly share an intentionally affecting experience occuring at the intersection of both, father's and daughter's, sex lives. And, yes, that means it's shared with all those other men and their daughters in the room that night.」 Sure, none of the rest of us really know what to do about it, but that is some three-alarm, flaming, 「¡Holy shit!」 right there.​

    Jetty, Mike. "History Through Red Eyes: A Conversation With James Loewen". Phi Delta Kappan, v. 88, n. 3. November, 2006. Web.Archive.org. 9 August 2021. https://bit.ly/2BNCfYP

    Loewen, James. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbooks Got Wrong. New York: The New Press, 1995.
     
  10. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

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    The theory as an activist movement theory, sure, but we're talking about the assumptions of that theory now filtering down into primary education. Try to keep up.

    I certainly can't speak for everywhere, but I was taught plenty about slavery, growing up in a solidly red state.

    Yes, I said myself.

    We're well aware of your inability to understand anyone having pride in their regional, local, or family heritage. Negativity bias does predispose the unaware to focus more exclusively on the bad things that have happened, especially when that coincides with a desire to castigate people who disagree with you politically. We get that you cannot fathom that we also need reminders of our unpleasant history, lest we're doomed to repeat it.

    You're either lying or ignorantly parroting some leftist drivel.
    Consider one high school government textbook. It lists four thinkers who influenced the Founding Fathers.
    ...
    She says that these three thinkers are all quoted in America's founding documents. But, for Graber, the fourth person on the list raised a red flag: Moses.

    "I think for many of us who are academic historians, it's a very ahistorical connection to make. Moses is not someone who is quoted in the founding documents," Graber says.
    ...
    The standards are called the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills and were created in 2010. They state that high school students in U.S. government are expected to "identify the individuals, whose principles of laws and government institutions informed the American founding documents, including those of Moses, William Blackstone, John Locke, and Charles de Montesquieu."
    https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2014/11/21/365686593/texas-hits-the-books

    Notice how they try to trick you by going from "thinkers who influenced the Founding Fathers" to "thinkers are all quoted in America's founding documents," which is just a lie. Apparently that kind of non sequitur fools you. They even quote the Texas standards that explicitly only say "informed" the founding documents. So not only were they not teaching "Moses was a founding father" (your baseless claim), they weren't even teaching that Moses was "quoted in the founding documents."
    It's obviously true that the Founding Fathers were all influenced by the Bible, to varying degrees, and the Laws of Moses would be a part that would most inform the creation of a government.

    Thank you for parroting CRT and demonstrating that you believe it should be taught to children.
    I was taught about slavery, and that the ratification of the Constitution (which was the mechanism for ending slavery) initially required compromise to exist at all. The only preservation of slavery throughout generations has been solely at the hands of Democrats, who not only fought to keep slavery but also founded the KKK, instituted Jim Crow, filibustered two civil rights acts, had opening racist Presidents, started welfare that has perpetuated generational poverty, and still to this day demand that Blacks are somehow fundamentally incapable of doing even simple things that white people can, like get an ID.

    No, as I just said, the people who "not only fought to keep slavery but also founded the KKK, instituted Jim Crow, filibustered two civil rights acts, had opening racist Presidents, started welfare that has perpetuated generational poverty, and still to this day demand that Blacks are somehow fundamentally incapable of doing even simple things that white people can, like get an ID." It does affect today, because it's still the Democrat party platform.
    You can put all the lipstick you like on that racist pig, but that doesn't change that fact that demanding that Blacks need white people to help them because they are somehow incapable of doing things for themselves is racist. Excuses about "systemic racism" boogeymen is just what the real racists hide behind. Just like slave owners claiming it was "for their own good" or openly racist LBJ pushing civil rights just to farm black votes.
    Apparently that's the history not being taught, as you seem completely unaware of it.

    That wild claim is going to need a citation. Minimizing how bad slavery was does not equate to teaching that black people were inferior.

    Until you can support your claim that someone taught "children that black people were inferior," I can only assume you experienced the brainwashing firsthand.

    I notice you couldn't manage to even address my central claim.
    Again, I don't know where or when you're talking about. I learned all about the horrors of slavery, the Trail of Tears, etc. in a red, southern state.
    Again, the only current widespread racism is that perpetuated by Democrat policies.

    Yeah, get your excuse for bailing on your own claims ready. We all know you're going to need it.

    Ahem:
    And if it's not being taught to children, why can't you simply agree with this? ↓

    Only bigots speak in terms of "your ilk."

    So you're fine with teaching elementary school children about masturbation and gender dsyphoria?
    That has nothing to do with race, racism, or CRT.

    Ignorantly repeating that Moses lie just undermines your other arguments.
    Citing an openly leftist rag like Vox ain't help you either.

    I have no doubt your repeatedly admitted lacking education has not equipped you with an understanding of history beyond leftist rhetoric. Since it's pretty clear you've been indoctrinated into parroting obvious lies (e.g. Moses deemed a founding father), I agree that you would likely need some serious deprogramming to avoid that knee jerk defensiveness.
     
  11. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

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    Not as such, but all the underlying assumptions of CRT are being taught as fact. You can deny that all you like, but it doesn't change the fact.
     
  12. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

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    2,046
    Sorry, I mistakenly thought most people would readily realize that by "prior to CRT" I meant more immediately prior, not any distance removed.

    Well, no accounting for your stubborn bias.

     
  13. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Please do start making sense. Remember, Vociferous, nobody else has any idea what you mean by your make-believe.

    Here's what happens when you leave people to do your thinking for you: Did you think the teaching of inaccurate history I noted, reaching back decades, implying has long if not always been part of our American heritage, stopped in recent years? To me, it sounds like a stupid question. For instance, I did link out to a thread from 2010↗, about Texas, conservatives, and the curriculum. Is that too removed? Did you think the problem somehow magically stopped in the last ten years?

    "Where was that history not being taught prior to CRT?" you asked. What history? The ignored history and erasure of minorities is a perpetual feature of American historical education. And when you go on to ask, "Or is CRT needed to make up for the monuments reminding us of that history that the same people demanded we remove?" you remind everyone you are either clueless or utterly dishonest: It's actually something of a feature about politically conservative discourse at Sciforums that. It's one thing to disagree with some narrative out in the world, and even more so some discussion here at Sciforums, but at some point we must acknowledge that some arguments don't make sense specifically because there isn't any coherent argument to be found. As such, it's one thing if you disagree with the history and discussion of CRT from experts, but you're running away from it instead of addressing it. Simply ignoring what is on the record in order to insist on your own fallacy is annoying and disruptive, to be certain, but it's also really, really stupid. Is CRT needed to make up for the monuments? The CRT that you refer to in that question is a figment of your own make-believe. If one addresses the question according to what Critical Race Theory actually is, the question doesn't make much sense.

    You actually provide another example, as well:

    We've been through this fallacy before°. And, sure, you're not expected to just roll over and slurp it up, but if I describe a blind rightist trope, and the complaint comes back that I'm being unfair to the people who carefully calculate their rightist tropes, yes, there are ways in which I'm actually okay with someone coming right out and saying that; coming right out and saying it can make its own point.

    We might also note—

    —your present position intending "more immediately prior, not any distance removed" does not necessarily align with your question about who has been ignoring history.

    Also, speaking of rightist tropes, the point isn't simply about disagreement, which in turn has been a long feature of conservative dissimulation. When someone postures themselves as ignorant, people might come to accept that person really doesn't know the history. But the thing about disagreement, it's a longtime conservative bit that seems very nearly a parody of its own solipsism. If, in my youth, the proverbial grumpy old men complained about the kids today and moral relativism, it turns out they were right, as long as we remembered they were talking about the progeny of institutional-traditional chauvinism. It's kind of like the Christianist pop culture censors of the time; it turns out they were right inasmuch as many of their own kids apparently grew up to be so excrementally ignorant as the censors so frequently need the young generation to be. It's not that some mysterious everybody who disagrees with my outlook on censorship is necessarily ignorant, or supremacist, or whatever, but that does not preclude anyone from behaving in that range. Nor is it that everyone who disagrees about history is ignorant of history; specious and fallacious arguments about history are what they are, and those that range in or depend on ignorance might actually be recognized for their ignorance.

    In any case, such as it is, the answer to who has been ignoring history has been an ongoing discussion in society for a while. And it's one thing if you don't know, but it doesn't actually make for a useful argument. Consider—

    —that once upon a time, even if it wasn't the grumpy old men, we ought not find so unfamiliar a refrain about how the problem is that people have no critical thinking skills, and the schools aren't teaching proper critical thinking skills. And that's the thing: That lamentation attended an old prevailing narrative, not unlike an outlook I recently described↗ as missing a certain point "because it is black, red, and brown women telling us, and what they have to say does not fit his understanding of the prevailing narrative". When critical thinking tells us something that unsettles the delicate sensitivities of traditionalized or institutionalized supremacism, distresses the aesthetics and emotions of the prevailing narrative, it is denounced as "cultural marxism"°° and "leftism". It's not a new phenomenon.

    But we should also probably take a moment for this:

    What is your example of this?°°°
    ____________________

    Notes:

    ° See "On Cancel Culture" #18↗, 32↗, 42↗; psychological literature noted in #82↗ includes the idea of "leftists" being a pejorative description; #87↗ reviews your behavior, including this fallacy as a component of your condescension:

    「The fallacious setup for a cheap, clumsy punch line; this is followed by reminding what most of us already know, but this, in turn is its own bizarre setup requiring that Democrats are synonymous with leftists in order to tell us 'something about the media bias', that he might in turn look down his nose at you: 'But I don't really expect you to see that.'」

    A more succinct summary explains that your behavior was all about setting up an insult that in itself requires fallacious labeling of Democrats as leftists; #88↗ reminds that considerations of Democrats as leftists is a blind, rightist trope dating at least to Reagan; and, as it happens, #110↗ recalls a history of posturing against oppositionally-defined pretenses of "the Left" reaching back to the Reagan years. Also, remember, those are just my posts; other people were taking part, and you were responding to people, so the bottom line is that you've already been called out on this fallacy, but insist just because; that is to say, we've been through this fallacy before.

    °° See Southern Poverty Law Center↱ (2003):

    「Right-wing ideologues, racists and other extremists have jazzed up political correctness and repackaged it — in its most virulent form, as an anti-Semitic theory that identifies Jews in general and several Jewish intellectuals in particular as nefarious, communistic destroyers. These supposed originators of "cultural Marxism" are seen as conspiratorial plotters intent on making Americans feel guilty and thus subverting their Christian culture.

    In a nutshell, the theory posits that a tiny group of Jewish philosophers who fled Germany in the 1930s and set up shop at Columbia University in New York City devised an unorthodox form of "Marxism" that took aim at American society's culture, rather than its economic system.

    The theory holds that these self-interested Jews — the so-called "Frankfurt School" of philosophers — planned to try to convince mainstream Americans that white ethnic pride is bad, that sexual liberation is good, and that supposedly traditional American values — Christianity, "family values," and so on — are reactionary and bigoted. With their core values thus subverted, the theory goes, Americans would be quick to sign on to the ideas of the far left.」

    °°° See #9↑ above:

    「Is it true that a man's salary offer is, by habit, higher than the woman who would be doing his job? In these United States, it is likely true. If it is true, does that make him feel bad? And to what degree is that bad feeling his own infliction upon himself? And does he teach it to his son? Does the history of wage discrimination make his son feel badly about being a boy?

    And have you heard the one about chasing out the black people and putting a lake where they used to live? What if the history of Lake Lanier, or Central Park makes some white person feel badly about being white?」

    Southern Poverty Law Center. "'Cutural Marxism' Catching On". Intelligence Report. 15 August 2003. SPLCenter.org. 15 August 2021. https://bit.ly/3xJbGes
     
  14. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

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    Your confirmation bias won't allow you to see or comprehend anything but what you've already decided. That explains all your blog posts and little to no actual engagement. Just try to baffle 'em with copious and vacuous puffery.

    You linked a lot of vague opinion and zero facts, or even just specific examples. I'm not going to buy the book and do your homework for you. That 2010 post doesn't actually manage to say anything substantial at all. Just a lot of characterization of something that's merely alluded to but never detailed. But hey, if you need that sort of defensive slipperiness.

    Again, I was taught plenty about the horrors of slavery, the Trail of Tears, etc., in a red, southern state. So if you can't manage to refute my own experience with historical education, that's on you. That you can't seem to fathom a better education would seem to speak far more about where you were raised than my ignorance of your education ever could. That alone may explain why so many things "don't make sense" to you. I can't help it if you are unable to comprehend any views but your own. Must be a rather insular life. Again, I've already said that CRT, as such (a legal theory), is not being taught to children, but the assumptions underlying CRT certainly are. If you refuse to acknowledge that, it's on you. It's actually the paranoid conspiracy of "systemic racism" that is the boogeyman here...being taught as fact, under the thin guise of teaching children to question things (but conveniently only things leftists dislike).

    So you're denying that Marxists, leftists, and Democrats are a spectrum of the left? Good luck with that. Man, someone really needs to get you a plunger, because you really love bringing up old shit. Sorry to break it to you, but the facts show that Obama was closer to the right when first elected than the majority of the Democrat party is to his same positions today. Like over twice as far. That's a headlong rush to the left, by the vast majority of that party, while contrary to left fantasy, the right has held a pretty stable position for decades, hence "conservatives."

    I certainly didn't ask "who has ever been ignoring history." Sorry if you don't get out enough to talk to people, conversationally IRL. Not my problem, but you can keep going on about it all you like. Not that anyone could hope to stop you.

    Pure vacuous blather.

    I'm not sure how else you'd expect a child to take "whiteness" being taught only in terms of oppression, privilege, etc.. Racism is not the sole domain of white people, nor does it especially adhere to white skin. Such notions are, themselves, overtly racist. Yes, no matter how much verbiage you will spew to deny it.

    There is no wage discrimination. There is unequal merit and hours worked. Intellectual honesty does wonders.
     
  15. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Yet another clueless right winger who doesn't understand CRT. Color me not surprised.

    Up next - right wingers learn that black body radiation is taught as fact in physics, and lobby to ban it since they think it means that black bodies are better than white ones.
     
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  16. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

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    It's funny how defenders of CRT patently will not define it in detail, only a vague description about it being a legal theory since the 70s, while lambasting others for not understanding. This very thread cites plenty of leftist defenses of CRT, without any solid definitions of its assertions. How's this for a fairly unbiased definition of CRT?:

    https://www.britannica.com/topic/critical-race-theory
    • the law and legal institutions in the United States are inherently racist
    • they function to create and maintain social, economic, and political inequalities between whites and nonwhites, especially African Americans
    • Its immediate precursor was the critical legal studies (CLS) movement, ...an offshoot of Marxist-oriented critical theory
    • Racism in the United States is normal, not aberrational
    These assertions translate to primary education by means of:
    • casting the US as a bad country
    • characterizing white children as the beneficiaries of these unsupported assertions
    • doing so by teaching Marxist principles
    • ignoring most, if not all, progress made in addressing race-based injustice
    But go ahead, deny that by parroting more leftists drivel that intentionally or obtusely fails to address any of the actual details.

    Or how about this:
    https://educationpost.org/explained...and-how-it-shows-up-in-your-childs-classroom/
    • The predominant curriculum centers the white narrative and tends to exclude the histories and lived experiences of people of color.
    • Instruction often takes a deficits-based approach, characterizing students of color as being in need of remediation rather than appreciating their talents and giftedness.
    • School discipline policies disproportionately impact students of color, often compromising their educational outcomes.
    • School funding inequities persist; predominantly white districts receive $23 billion more in funding than districts serving students of color.
    "Lived experience" means teaching subjective opinion. Assuming students of color are incapable of keeping up is inherently racist. Presuming racism in disparate discipline ignores the fact of more behavior issues, later reflected in higher rates of crime. School funding inequalities largely exist in Democrat controlled areas, that patently refuse to entertain the notion of school vouchers/choice.
     
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2021
  17. billvon Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    21,635
    That's your interpretation, and is not what the article describes. (For example, your addition of Marxist.) Here's the actual list from the article, with my commentary in italics.

    (1) Race is socially constructed, not biologically natural. (This is a given; experiments with children show that when a child is presented with someone of a different appearance, their initial reaction is suprise, but their reaction after that depends on how other people react to the same person.)

    (2) Racism in the United States is normal, not aberrational: it is the common, ordinary experience of most people of color. (Also a given. Ask any black person in the US, for example.)

    (3) Owing to what critical race theorists call “interest convergence” or “material determinism,” legal advances (or setbacks) for people of color tend to serve the interests of dominant white groups.

    (4) Members of minority groups periodically undergo “differential racialization,” or the attribution to them of varying sets of negative stereotypes, again depending on the needs or interests of whites. (Examples here - the fairly recent "black men tend to abandon their families, and that's why black kids have trouble" meme.)

    (5) According to the thesis of “intersectionality” or “antiessentialism,” no individual can be adequately identified by membership in a single group. (Also a given. Black women are both black and women, for example.)

    (6) the “voice of colour” thesis holds that people of colour are uniquely qualified to speak on behalf of other members of their group (or groups) regarding the forms and effects of racism. (Again, this seems pretty clear. The victims of an oppressive government are more qualified to speak on the effects of that oppression than someone who has never experienced it.)

    Which do you disagree with?
     
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2021
  18. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,046
    CRT traces its linage directly through CLS, critical theory, and Marxism. That's it's objective history.

    You'll notice this one was left off my list, because it's obviously true.

    Not "any black person." That would be a hasty generalization. And the subjective experience of a thing, "lived experience," is not a fact. Most blacks have been sold a bill of goods, whereby they've internalized racism in the form of victimhood that demonstrably does not exist comparing those from the same circumstances or backgrounds.

    More purely subjective twaddle to cast "white groups" as the oppressors.

    You mean factual statistics? The left has worked very hard and successfully to destroy the black family.

    No individual can be adequately defined by any number of identity groups. This is just pushing leftist identity politics.

    No, as per #1, race only being a social construct, no one of any such identity group has special privilege to speak on the behalf of the entire group. Assuming any group conforms to such a degree of group-think and lack of personal agency or diversity of opinion is itself racist. Again, "lived experience" is a bullshit excuse to substitute the purely subjective and biased for any inconvenient objective facts.

    Only #1. Now I expect you'll tell me how that makes me racist/privileged/oppressive, thereby affirming the underlying message of CRT.
     
  19. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    In the US the effects of racism are almost entirely consequences of white people's racism - including the invention and definition of the US races in the first place, their basis in skin color and related features of physical appearance, and the distribution of social, economic, and political benefits and costs by white-assigned membership in a given US race.
    Racism in the US does in fact "adhere especially" to white skin, for several reasons including the pattern of distribution of power and wealth to people with white skin. Cui bono.
    The primary destroyer of black families in the US has been the capitalist corporation, beginning with the slave plantations that dominated the US economy in the centuries before and after the Revolutionary and Civil Wars.
    (The fact that the capitalist corporation has also been the primary destroyer of white families in the US does not change its disproportionate damage to black families).
    That would of course be a thesis presented in the context and language of Critical Race Theory, and you are now posting as a CRT analyst who will be basing your argument (if you ever present one) in Critical Race Theory - naturally, as a CRT analyst who expects to be taken seriously, you are expected to present argument from evidence in support of your thesis.

    Any time now. In particular, that string of ungrammatical word salad that included reference to "those from the same circumstances or backgrounds" needs recasting and clarification: who are those "those"?

    From a layman's pov, as a matter of observation, anyone who thinks "black" people in the US have not suffered and do not continue to suffer significant demonstrable injury from "white" racism is either a foreigner with little experience of US society or a blind fool.
    In the US it would be a well supported and largely accurate generalization. The occasional apparent exceptions are more often identification errors than examples, and almost never significant factors in an analysis of some feature of US civilization.
    Social constructs are often important in the construction of societies, and in any reasonable society those demonstrating deeper insight and better understanding of anything have earned special privileges of speaking about that thing.
     
  20. billvon Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    21,635
    Nope. You added "Marxism" to make it sound evil. Nice try!

    Here's an equally accurate statement:

    Trump supporters base their beliefs on the conservative values of smaller government, personal responsibility and fascism.
    Yes, any black person. They will have a better view of how they are treated than you do.

    As an example, consider Neil Degrasse Tyson, a black American man who is successful by almost anyone's standards. Never been beaten by cops, never been arrested for no reason. Ask him if he (and his fellow black astrophysicists) were judged solely by their achievements and character, rather than the color of their skin.

    Now, I know you think you are the smartest guy in the room. But he is going to have a better view of how black men are treated in the US than you do. He is not going to know everything, of course; no one does. But his view is going to be a lot more valid than yours - on that particular topic.
    I note the more vehement and denigrating you get the more you fear a topic.

    White groups are often the oppressors in terms of race relations in US society. (Not always, but often.) Not because they hate blacks, but because the structure of society in the US has long favored them - and they wish their success to continue.

    Examples of this abound. The overpass heights on the Robert Moses bridges, intended to keep buses off their freeways. The division of black neighborhoods by those highways, and the wide loops the highways make to avoid rich white areas. Redlining. None of these were done by people who hated blacks. They were done by people trying to "preserve property values" "make this a better place to live" "build a strong community." The study of how such non-racial goals result in racist implementations is (wait for it) one of the things that CLS studies.
    Sounds like you are agreeing with CLS, then. Bravo!
    So a white man is just as qualified to talk about their experiences growing up black as a black man? Do you believe this in other aspects of society? Is a Facebook expert just as qualified to speak on epidemiology as an epidemiologist? Is a kid who plays Flight Simulator's opinion on an A340 crash as valid as the opinion of an A340 pilot?

    That's so silly that it's not worth replying to. If that's your underlying belief, then you are so far right you are lost.
     
  21. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,046
    Educate yourself. Start with the immediate predecessor of CRT, Critical Legal Studies:
    CLS has been largely a U.S. movement, though it has borrowed heavily from European philosophers, including nineteenth-century German social theorists such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and max weber; Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse of the Frankfurt school of German social philosophy; the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci; and poststructuralist French thinkers such as Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, representing, respectively, the fields of history and literary theory.
    https://www.encyclopedia.com/law/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/critical-legal-studies

    Some critical scholars adapt ideas drawn from Marxist and socialist theories to demonstrate how economic power relationships influence legal practices and consciousness.
    https://cyber.harvard.edu/bridge/CriticalTheory/critical2.htm

    Although CLS has been largely contained within the United States, it was influenced to a great extent by European philosophers, such as Karl Marx, Max Weber, Max Horkheimer, Antonio Gramsci, and Michel Foucault.
    https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/critical_legal_theory
    Then move on to education on CRT:
    Critical race theory (CRT) was officially organized in 1989, at the first annual Workshop on Critical Race Theory, though its intellectual origins go back much farther, to the 1960s and ’70s. Its immediate precursor was the critical legal studies (CLS) movement, which dedicated itself to examining how the law and legal institutions serve the interests of the wealthy and powerful at the expense of the poor and marginalized. (CLS, an offshoot of Marxist-oriented critical theory, may also be viewed as a radicalization of early 20th-century legal realism...
    https://www.britannica.com/topic/critical-race-theory

    Anti-critical race theory activists point to what many scholars see as an important antecedent of critical race theory: critical legal studies, which in turn draws on the writings of Michel Foucault, Max Weber and—yes—Karl Marx.
    ...
    But does the fact that critical race theory draws on the writings of Karl Marx make it Marxism?
    Powell says no.
    “To say that it is totally Marxist is absolutist. I think any academic discipline draws on different theories,” he said.
    https://wfpl.org/fact-check-3-common-claims-about-critical-race-theory/
    Who said CRT was totally Marxist? That's a straw man meant to distract from the very obvious historical influence on CRT.
    That said, yes, there exists some friction between the CRT conception of "White Supremacy" and the Marxist concept of class warfare.

    Which explains why you're clueless about CRT as well.

    Unless you live under a rock, it should be obvious that not "any black person" agrees that racism is normal in the US (Candice Owens, Larry Elder, Allen West, Thomas Sowell, just to name a few prominent ones). Obviously not a given. Neil Degrasse Tyson is an open leftist. Of course he's going to toe the party line. If he's never experienced it himself, he can only rely on the anecdotal word of others. And if you appeal to him as an authority, what about the aforementioned Owens, Elder, West, Sowell, to which could be added Clarence Thomas, Alan Keyes, Condoleezza Rice, Ben Carson, etc, etc.? My view is informed by many black people. So what, are they not "black enough?"

    Wait, is "twaddle" especially denigrating to you?
    Structural/institutional racism is a boogeyman without evidence.
    Moses vocally opposed allowing black war veterans to move into Stuyvesant Town, a Manhattan residential development complex created to house World War II veterans.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses#Racism

    In 1933, faced with a housing shortage, the federal government began a program explicitly designed to increase — and segregate — America's housing stock. Author Richard Rothstein says the housing programs begun under the New Deal were tantamount to a "state-sponsored system of segregation."
    Historian Says Don't 'Sanitize' How Our Government Created Ghettos
    Race
    Historian Says Don't 'Sanitize' How Our Government Created Ghettos

    The government's efforts were "primarily designed to provide housing to white, middle-class, lower-middle-class families," he says. African-Americans and other people of color were left out of the new suburban communities — and pushed instead into urban housing projects.

    Rothstein's new book, The Color of Law, examines the local, state and federal housing policies that mandated segregation. He notes that the Federal Housing Administration, which was established in 1934, furthered the segregation efforts by refusing to insure mortgages in and near African-American neighborhoods — a policy known as "redlining."
    https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/5266...-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america
    I presume you do know that it was a Democrat who enacted the New Deal, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Franklin_D._Roosevelt#Accusations_of_racism You know, the same party that defended slavery, founded the KKK and Jim Crow, filibustered two civil rights acts, run the cities/states with the most racial segregated and highest income inequality, etc.. They were done by people who believe in keeping black people "in their place." Seems like a lot of racist goals to me.

    Proponents of CLS believe that the law supports the interests of those who create the law. As such, CLS states that the law supports a power dynamic which favors the historically privileged and disadvantages the historically underprivileged.
    https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/critical_legal_theory
    Sounds like CLS has no problem defining people by identity groups, in the same sort of language used in CRT.

    No, but neither is any single black person qualified to speak on behalf of a whole demographic, unless we make the racist presumption that all black people think alike. That's the only way they share the same outlook on their experience, which we know they don't.
    Yes, your argumentum ad absurdum are silly.
     
  22. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,046
    No, that's the CRT redefinition of racism as "prejudice plus power." https://medium.com/a-universalist-i...-only-white-people-can-be-racist-d5b1d9118421
    Assuming those without power cannot be racist is more an argument for class discrimination than racism. It also assumes that Appalachians cannot be racist, which is just ridiculous on its face. And if structural racism is meant to benefit whites, how can whites fail?
    Yet the black children living in single-parent homes was 22% in 1960 (before the Civil Rights Acts and LBJ's Great Society welfare programs) and 55% in 2013. Redistribution is not capitalism, it's Marxist, which is fitting of CRT.
    If you think that's CRT language, you shouldn't be opining on CRT. And where I've just given you some evidence above, CRT is not evidence-based. It's just a boogeyman meant to inspire activists.

    While no one disputes past suffering, the claim of current suffering requires evidence from you.

    Just because a large portion of a demographic have been convinced of a catch-all excuse for any personal failure does not mean that the actuality is anywhere near universal.

    No, "lived experience" is just a way to substitute subjective belief for objective evidence and use accusations of racism as a cudgel to demand its acceptance.
     
  23. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    No. It's the default assumption, given the obvious (centuries old now) situation of current and continuing suffering of damages.
    Or are you claiming not to be aware of the current and continuing suffering of damages by the targets of systemic white racism?
    So?
    The "actuality" is "universal", regardless of your opinions about black people's thinking.
    That's been one of the common and reasonable working definitions of racism for your entire life. It's not the only one.
    So?
    Irrelevant. Why are you changing the subject?
    Irrelevant. Why are you changing the subject?
    Your inability to argue from evidence and evasion of issues is noted.
    Meanwhile, CRT is of course theory. Its employers can use any language they find convenient. Yours is borderline gibberish, ungrammatical and in need of clarification or serious editing by somebody literate in English, but nevertheless the framework of Critical Race Theory is obvious in your posts:
    for example:
    and
    and
    all assume the criticality of identified and structural racial divisions within the US - racial divisions that were and still are imposed by self-identified "white" people. You cannot argue for them or against them outside of CRT, any more than you can argue about economic class vs race without employing central elements of Marxist theory.

    Which is one of the possible explanations for your evasion of argument - or even direct acknowledgement of content - in the posts you have been replying to.

    btw: Your claims and questions are no doubt intentionally rhetorical, intended to waste other people's time, but they do have answers. Take the last one, say: CRT based analysis does not assume that all whites benefit equally from racism, that poor Appalachian whites have and had no power over black people, that all whites or all races fail at equivalent rates and degrees outside of racism's influence, etc etc; and if it did there would still be the obvious explanations for some whites failing despite the obvious general advantages of white skin: that they are fuckups, for one; that luck plays a large role in all success, for another; that rich and powerful white people despise them and deny them opportunities and wreck their resource base, for a third. Many more. Are you truly unaware of these obvious responses to your questions?
     
    Last edited: Aug 24, 2021

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