Critical Race Theory

Why has critical race theory become the latest manufactured boogeyman that the GOP is worried about. It doesn’t seem like any of these states that are passing laws banning CRT have the first idea of what CRT even is.

I must be missing something.

The one and only question you need to answer to understand a right wing position is: Will it make those on the left mad?

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How is that enough to continue to propel a political party? It seems like they’ve reached the point of intellectual bankruptcy.

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It’s really easily made into a strawman. Not as bad as “defund the police” but that kind of thing.

Well to be fair “Defund The Police” is a moronic slogan. I don’t know how any Democrats allowed the lunatic fringe of the left frame the debate on that topic enough to make that slogan a thing.

It’s also not a strawman, because completely defunding the police is a horrific idea. Critical Race Theory is perfectly reasonable.

You’re gonna piss some AOers off here.

There are democrats that absolutely want to defund the police, and I would say it’s not a fringe margin either.

Pretty much. They have basically 3 fronts: Abortion, racism (this one mostly has to be hidden - although less so recently), and fear of socialism. That coalition is still a significant part of the country, so they stick around.

I’m pretty sure its a fringe margin that actually want to completely defund the police.

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I know amongst my fb friends (which is in the thousands, most of which are gay, and also I live in a very liberal city), I saw lot of posts during the prime Floyd period that there’s no way around it. Have to defund and rebuild.
it’s not a majority, but they’re not trolls or extremists either.

Yeah - it is terrible. You don’t make your slogan the exact thing that your opponents are going to exagerate your position into.

Yes, there are those who really want to defund the police (I am not sure any of them are here, but one of the ex-AOers with that position is on Lucy’s Discord server), but they are a small minority (at the moment).

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It sounds like those people just hopped on the hype bandwagon but ultimately don’t want to defund the police if they later want to rebuild the police (which would involve funding).

I’ve read it polls well with college graduates, which don’t tend to be as supportive of trump.

I see it as partially just the latest round of anti-politically correct.

That said I listened to a NY times podcast on this the other day, some by people who did not sound hysteric. There was the claim that (real) crt has gained a lot of popularity in academia recently, and that there were reasonably objections to be made to parts of it, while acknowledging it has important insights.

In terms of my personal experience with popular culture, i appreciate the greater focus on systemic racism. We must all recognize that we participate in these unfair systems. But I also think while the relationship of this participation to personal guilt is complicated, it is often treated in a facile way. I think this republican position is exploiting that.

So you are a supporter of CRT?

l think that organizations within society can function in ways that are unfair to people of color even if no individuals have feelings of racial animosity, or believe in concepts of racial superiority/inferiority. And we need to recognize that as we try to build a more fair society.

As I understand it, that is the central insight of crt.

I am not familiar enough with it to comment beyond that.

Critical race theory - Wikipedia.

Critical race theory (CRT) is an academic movement of civil rights scholars and activists in the United States who seek to critically examine the law as it intersects with issues of race and to challenge mainstream liberal approaches to racial justice. Critical race theory examines social, cultural and legal issues as they relate to race and racism.

Both critical race theory and critical legal studies are rooted in critical theory, which argues that social problems are influenced and created more by societal structures and cultural assumptions than by individual and psychological factors.

Happens all the time even in dating.
Nobody would admit it, but a lot of people wouldn’t date people of color.

I’m never sure how to interpret those wikipedia entries. In particular the term “critical theory” seems to have a specific meaning that refers to the work of the frankfurt school, but also a much broader meaning that includes a lot of post modern thought.

I think post modernism has the good insight that we should think very hard about the stories we want to tell about ourselves. But I believe that is a way to better examine our own biases when finding a truth that is universal (at least provisionally, and for all people.)

Not to be a broken nrecord, but Tangle is always a good resource

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The problem with CRT is that it it divides people strictly by racial/ethnic lines. Proponents seek to remedy past anti-bipoc racism by forcing whites (an in reality asians) to pay for their fathers sins. Trainings to “help” white employees overcome “whiteness” are becoming mandatory in several government areas. This kind of thing increases resentment and prevents people from talking honestly with one another.

A quote from Ibrahim X. Kendi, “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.”

The more you educate yourself on not just the tenants, but also the way CRT is implemented the worse it looks. It seeks to resolve real issues, but the methodology is horrid.

A better way is to help people break the poverty cycle regardless of racial/ethnic background. Do that, and the rest takes care of itself over time.

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Looking him up on wikipedia, he was born in 1982. But crt dates back to the 1970s. Is he really “crt”? To some degree it’s just semantics, but i think there is a real tendency for these labels to cover the nuances of different positions, or to even caricature them.

The language used by kendi in that quote doesn’t particularly appeal to me.

On the other hand, it makes sense to me that you cannot ignore race when trying to achieve justice. For example, the just outcome may be for everybody to have access to vaccines. But do we need to specially consider the challenges faced by black communities when trying achieve this, or can we simply focus on lower income people? This seems to me to be a practical question, and it seems plausible to me (i have no real expertise in this of course) that the answer would be: yes, we need to treat them differently. Is this “anti racist discrimination”. I don’t know. This probably depends on who you ask.