Critical Race Theory

Debate and discussion on racism and related issues

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historia
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Critical Race Theory

Post #1

Post by historia »

From a recent issue of Education Week:

Is "critical race theory" a [useful] way of understanding how American racism has shaped public policy, or a divisive discourse that pits people of color against white people?

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Re: Critical Race Theory

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Post by bluegreenearth »

historia wrote: Fri Jun 18, 2021 10:27 am From a recent issue of Education Week:

Is "critical race theory" a [useful] way of understanding how American racism has shaped public policy, or a divisive discourse that pits people of color against white people?
According the research I've reviewed, Critical Race Theory is both of those things. Apparently, it points to some very real problems with racism in society and public policy but offers very misguided, unscientific, and ironically racist responses to those problems.

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Re: Critical Race Theory

Post #3

Post by historia »

bluegreenearth wrote: Fri Jun 18, 2021 12:35 pm
historia wrote: Fri Jun 18, 2021 10:27 am From a recent issue of Education Week:

Is "critical race theory" a [useful] way of understanding how American racism has shaped public policy, or a divisive discourse that pits people of color against white people?
According the research I've reviewed, Critical Race Theory is both of those things. Apparently, it points to some very real problems with racism in society and public policy but offers very misguided, unscientific, and ironically racist responses to those problems.
Of the research you've reviewed, is there any particular author or work you've found most insightful?

Can you give an example of a problem that you think CRT most helpfully illuminates?

And, if you don't mind, also an example where you think its response is problematic?

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Re: Critical Race Theory

Post #4

Post by bluegreenearth »

historia wrote: Sat Jun 19, 2021 12:48 pm Of the research you've reviewed, is there any particular author or work you've found most insightful?

Can you give an example of a problem that you think CRT most helpfully illuminates?

And, if you don't mind, also an example where you think its response is problematic?
The following article, though it contains some hyperbolic language, is fairly insightful in my opinion and includes the examples you've requested:

https://newdiscourses.com/2020/06/do-be ... ce-theory/

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Re: Critical Race Theory

Post #5

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historia wrote: Fri Jun 18, 2021 10:27 am From a recent issue of Education Week:

Is "critical race theory" a [useful] way of understanding how American racism has shaped public policy, or a divisive discourse that pits people of color against white people?
Both. And it ought to be divisive and pit people against those who are oppressing them. Critical Race Theory is mean, it's nasty, and it does very well state what a person must be, because of (essentially) the colour of their skin. It's mean, it's nasty, it's horrible, it holds people accountable for what they can't help, and it's true. The truth isn't always beautiful or peaceful.

It's not fundamentally logically impossible for one race to always be something, it's just not true in the case of racist lies whites tried to tell about others, and it does happen to be true in the case of whites being privileged racists and oppressors.

The main moral question is whether people who don't intend, and in many cases are trying their hardest to act against their own racism are liable for it. I say yes. I say that what you intend doesn't matter and you're liable for what you do. "I didn't mean to" doesn't diminish the result so it oughtn't diminish the punishment.

There is only one thing a white person can do in order to stop being an oppressor in a racist system that perpetuates it and offers privilege-based boosts at every turn, independently of the person wanting them or even knowing they're receiving them.

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Re: Critical Race Theory

Post #6

Post by Purple Knight »

bluegreenearth wrote: Sat Jun 19, 2021 1:36 pm
historia wrote: Sat Jun 19, 2021 12:48 pm Of the research you've reviewed, is there any particular author or work you've found most insightful?

Can you give an example of a problem that you think CRT most helpfully illuminates?

And, if you don't mind, also an example where you think its response is problematic?
The following article, though it contains some hyperbolic language, is fairly insightful in my opinion and includes the examples you've requested:

https://newdiscourses.com/2020/06/do-be ... ce-theory/
It's a good article. I agree with most of it, but I disagree that any of CRT is "poisonous" to anything but evil. Excerpt:

Critical Race Theory accepts a thesis known as “interest convergence.” This idea comes from the forefather of Critical Race Theory, the late Derrick Bell of Harvard Law. Bell, for all his insights and contributions, was remarkably pessimistic and cynical, if not downright paranoid. His interest convergence thesis insists that white people only care about and help other races out of their own self-interest. If you’re white and feel moved by the appeals of Critical Race Theory or the real (and/or narrativized) circumstances we face and want to be an ally, then, you’re only doing it because it makes you a better white person, a “good white” who is ultimately the biggest part of the problem of systemic racism. How are we supposed to build a better world when people aren’t allowed to help?

I can answer that concisely and easily, but nobody is going to like the answer.

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Re: Critical Race Theory

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Post by historia »

[Replying to Purple Knight in post #5]

If you don't mind, can you provide a brief summary of Critical Race Theory.

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Re: Critical Race Theory

Post #8

Post by Purple Knight »

historia wrote: Sun Jun 20, 2021 12:06 pm [Replying to Purple Knight in post #5]

If you don't mind, can you provide a brief summary of Critical Race Theory.
Critical Race Theory teaches, basically, that POCs (People of Colour) and sometimes people with differing sexualities, are oppressed, predominately by whites who discriminate and favour another white at every opportunity. This isn't simply a matter of one act of racism that can be isolated, but the effects of a system in which this sort of racism is ingrained. So you may ferret out an example of a white person discriminating, and give the POC the job (for example) or you may find every concrete example and rectify it, but you've still ignored the second tier effects of the first wave of injustice, which may include POCs siding with whites and saying there is no discrimination in order to advance in a crooked system. You've also ignored the third-tier, and fourth, and fifth, and all the ripple effects which make up a system so plagued with racism that it must be dismantled, not reformed. You couldn't get justice from that sort of system no matter what kind of changes you made to it.

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Re: Critical Race Theory

Post #9

Post by bluegreenearth »

Purple Knight wrote: Sun Jun 20, 2021 9:23 pm
historia wrote: Sun Jun 20, 2021 12:06 pm [Replying to Purple Knight in post #5]

If you don't mind, can you provide a brief summary of Critical Race Theory.
Critical Race Theory teaches, basically, that POCs (People of Colour) and sometimes people with differing sexualities, are oppressed, predominately by whites who discriminate and favour another white at every opportunity. This isn't simply a matter of one act of racism that can be isolated, but the effects of a system in which this sort of racism is ingrained. So you may ferret out an example of a white person discriminating, and give the POC the job (for example) or you may find every concrete example and rectify it, but you've still ignored the second tier effects of the first wave of injustice, which may include POCs siding with whites and saying there is no discrimination in order to advance in a crooked system. You've also ignored the third-tier, and fourth, and fifth, and all the ripple effects which make up a system so plagued with racism that it must be dismantled, not reformed. You couldn't get justice from that sort of system no matter what kind of changes you made to it.
The problem with Critical Race Theory (CRT) is that it doesn't just point to specific and demonstrable instances of systemic (i.e. structural) racism at particular businesses or institutions but makes unfalsifiable claims about racism existing everywhere and in every interaction. In other words, CRT will always find a way to perceive racism in any given scenario, even in places and in people where it might not actually exist. The CRT ideology has become so toxic that it has managed to reason itself into categorizing Martin Luther King Jr.'s (MLK's) concept of "colorblindness" as racist. Yes, according to CRT, anyone who claims to "not see color" in accordance with MLK's classically liberal vision of a society that judges people by the content of their characters rather than the color of their skin is a racist. This is because, in the twisted logic of CRT, a failure to see race is a failure to see racism when and where it occurs. Of course, anyone who cares to spend more than a few seconds on this hyper-cynical and paranoid idea will eventually realize the absurdity of it.

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Re: Critical Race Theory

Post #10

Post by Purple Knight »

bluegreenearth wrote: Sun Jun 20, 2021 9:50 pmOf course, anyone who cares to spend more than a few seconds on this hyper-cynical and paranoid idea will eventually realize the absurdity of it.
The unfalsifiable is not necessarily false. As I said in another post, the belief that swans exist is not falsifiable. You could never prove that swans don't exist. But they do exist.

It really depends on what universe you think you live in. Some whites, some racists, see injustice against themselves as well. And no, you can't actually refute their mirror universe idea that they are the victims of systemic political correctness. At least, no one has really succeeded in doing so. It's virtually the same idea in a perfect mirror universe in which they are the victims. It is also unfalsifiable but that doesn't prevent it from being true. In some universe it probably is true, and in that universe, people do nothing but jeer at the whites (the actual victims in that universe) for saying things that are unfalsifiable.

The colourblind person will see Jews being thrown into ovens and simply see mass murder without the racism, which is why colourblindness in a hyper-racist society is so dangerous, even though if everyone was truly colourblind (whites won't be) that would be the ideal diverse society. There's actually an episode of South Park that demonstrates this (the flag episode) and even has Chef become happy when he realises the children were colourblind. They were so not-racist, he says, that they didn't see it as white people killing a black person, but as people killing another person. You bloody have to realise the implication of that: The colourblind allow the racist side to win. They simply don't see racism when there is racism, and in a racist system, we need to see racism when there is racism. Whites are playing to win, and they only pass to their teammates. Others are in the game whether they like it or not.

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