Critical Race Theory

There is a way, but the moment you start going down that route you end up with people losing their shit and denying history like we have seen in this thread.

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I haven’t followed this thread. But, I think the history of racism is related to, but not the same as, the history of people being nutso.

People are prejudiced all the time in different ways about race, gender, religion, age, sexuality, politics, nationality, class, culture, etc., but the specific decision that you have to commit genocide against one is… well… peculiar.

You should follow the thread and understand why people have been fighting against learning the history of racism and racist actions.

Ignoring and sanitizing history will lead to history repeating, which is what we are seeing.

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I don’t know what you mean by “history repeating” exactly. Could use more words. What part of history?

I think this thread is confusing, since CRT is not really about teaching history so much as interpreting it. And the anti-CRT movement is not really about CRT, so much as about hating progressives.

Lol

I think this definitely needs some explaining.
Please tell me how you teach history without “interpreting it.”

My understanding is CRT isn’t about teaching, period. It is a framework that was created for understanding how public policy and the current legal structure developed to better understand how and why certain laws may have disparate impact on minorities. To do that, it is important to understand the racial dynamics at play at the time polices were developed and laws were enacted.

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Simple dates and places.
“American Civil War took place between 1861 and 1865.”

Fix SV, for, I hope, accuracy.

I mean if you want some wild-ass interpretations, CRT is not the place.

This is to teaching history as counting is to teaching maths.

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Sure. I could not comprehend 90% of the meta-narratives, research paradigms, and ultra intellectual critiques of history that I consumed in college. That’s sort of a low bar.

I agree that history needs some level of interpretation, even in high school. But I think we should talk about what should be taught in high school without getting into CRT.

If there’s an idea that you (or others) think should be pulled from CRT and then taught in high school history, I’d be interested in that.

Dude just wanted to know how to teach history without interpretation. I provided the syllabus.
I do not advocate it.

We can go crazy and have “A People’s History of the United States” as the textbook. From wiki:

Zinn portrays a side of American history that can largely be seen as the exploitation and manipulation of the majority by rigged systems that hugely favor a small aggregate of elite rulers from across the orthodox political parties.

Is it the American Civil War? The War Between the States? Or the War of Northern Aggression.

I believe the War Between the States was in mainstream use in the South and other places. And some have called it the “War of Northern Aggression” without irony.

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Sounds pretty accurate. I quite enjoyed reading “A People’s History of the United States” and would highly recommend it as a history book.

There is a lot of truth in Zinn’s book and it wouldn’t hurt for students to hear the history of the US from the perspective of lower-paid workers and other groups who have been historically taken advantage of. I know some historians quibble over Zinn’s emphases but many of his critics are driven by political ideology as much as Zinn.

My comments on teaching about exploited groups applies to teaching Canadian or British history as well. I am embarrassed when I think about the history I was taught when I was in school.

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I think this article does a good job of arguing that simply pointing out (correctly) that CRT is a graduate level study that is never taught in schools doesn’t really address some of the changes in education:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/opinion/critical-race-theory.html?referringSource=articleShare

It quote another article’s summary of CRT (which I’m not qualified to critique):

Summary of CRT

C.R.T. is not just talking about historical and contemporary racism with a view to overcoming it — something that all approaches to addressing racism do — but a set of core beliefs that racism is ordinary and/or permanent; that white supremacy is everywhere; that white people don’t oppose racism unless it suits them; that there is a unique voice of color that just so happens to be the one that agrees with C.R.T.; that lived experience and story-telling are primary ways of revealing racism; that liberalism and the civil rights movement approach are bad; and that working for social justice means using the critical theories of race set out above.

It then goes on:

Summary of ‘CRT Light’ in Schools

However, this “critical” approach has trickled down, in broad outline, into the philosophy of education-school pedagogy and administration … [W]hat alarms many parents and other observers is that kids will absorb the idea that it is enlightened to see white people as potential oppressors and Black people as perpetual victims of an inherently oppressive system. That it is therefore appropriate to ascribe certain traits to races, rather than individuals, and that education must “center” the battle against power differentials between groups and the subtle perceptions that they condition. … Hence an idea that it is white to be on time, arrive at precise answers and reason from A to B, rather than holistically, etc. Again, this is not what decades-old critical race theory scholarship proposed, but yes, the idea is descended from original C.R.T.’s fundamental propositions about white supremacy.

I have seen some documents about removing white supremacy from mathematics education that I have difficult understanding, so much so that I almost cannot even agree or disagree with them. This article helps me imagine a little better where those are coming from.

I’m not sure it helps me better understand the concern over CRT in schools, or even why its being called CRT. Maybe.

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I’m guessing the same folks who are against CRT are the same people who feel the Great Replacement Theory is correct.

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There’s nothing to understand. It’s a deliberately fabricated narrative designed to rile up the conservative snowflakes.

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I think a lot of people are just confused.

There’s a few specific ideas that seem to be more common now than 20 years ago.

  • implicit bias training. That is, I think using quick pictures to test how you feel about race? Maybe more training in general?

  • The concept that different outcomes is proof by itself of racism. That racism drove the outcomes is taken for granted. And then we need to find the invisible racism, without evidence, and ignoring contrary evidence. Not everyone thinks this way, but it seems more common now?

  • White privilege, which obviously exists, tends to piss off people who have or lack other forms of privilege.

  • Anti-racism has some surprising takes I think? Anecdotally, my brother is a middle school teacher, and was giving some teacher trainings and asked me if I thought meritocracy was an aspect of white supremacy. And I was like wtf??? …It was particularly surprising because my brother has always held the same ideas as me about everything.

Obviously things aren’t really CRT, and they definitely aren’t in Florida’s math books.

CRT vs GRT

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Not that crazy! I don’t think you should just teach one side of US history, but that is the most important side.

It doesn’t take a PhD to understand that if the tests or metrics that you use to measure “merit” are designed with an explicit or implicit bias, then yes, this is the case.

Shit, I learned about how intentionally racially bias the SAT was when I was in 6th grade(1989-1990) in rural Washington state. This has been. Known for years.

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:roll_eyes: