What is Critical Race Theory?

Silverfiddle Rant!

I have a very-limited understanding based on cursory perusal of some CRT articles and one book. This post won't explain it to you.  I will provide here a few links to things written by CRT partisans and some quotations from those sources. 

First up, a 'Splainer from the splainiest splainers of the progressive left, Vox.  They lament the fact that CRT has morphed into a catchall category, one used by Republicans who want to ban anti-racist teachings and trainings in classrooms and workplaces across the country.

Critical race theory emerged in law schools in the 1970s and ’80s as an alternative to the mainstream discourse and classes on civil rights law, many of which held that the best way to fight racial discrimination was to enact legal reforms.

Critical race theorists...posited that racism is endemic and institutionalized in the United States.

The group was skeptical of legal theories that supported colorblindness, objectivity, and neutrality

Every analysis of the law should be grounded in historical context, arguing that “racism has contributed to all contemporary manifestations of group advantage and disadvantage along racial lines, including differences in income, imprisonment, health, housing, education, political representation, and military service.”

Critical race theory acknowledges, values, and centers the knowledge of people of color who experience racism daily.

Critical race theory is “interdisciplinary and eclectic,” meaning it borrowed from a number of traditions like feminism, Marxism, and critical legal theory.

“The interests of all people of color necessarily require not just adjustments within the established hierarchies, but a challenge to hierarchy itself.”

The Vox article tracks with the book, Critical Race Theory, An Introduction, by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic.  From the book:

The critical race theory (CRT) movement is a collection of activists and scholars interested in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power.

Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.

It also draws from certain European philosophers and theorists, such as Antonio Gramsci and Jacques Derrida, as well as from the American radical tradition exemplified by such figures as Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Black Power and Chicano movements of the sixties and early seventies.

The book's introduction lists several CRT propositions:

Racism is ordinary, not aberrational—“normal science,” the usual way society does business, the common, everyday experience of most people of color in this country.

Most would agree that our system of white-over-color ascendancy serves important purposes, both psychic and material.

Race and races are products of social thought and relations. Not objective, inherent, or fixed, they correspond to no biological or genetic reality; rather, races are categories that society invents, manipulates, or retires when convenient.

Intersectionality

The voice-of-color thesis holds that because of their different histories and experiences with oppression, black, Indian, Asian, and Latino/a writers and thinkers may be able to communicate to their white counterparts matters that the whites are unlikely to know. Minority status, in other words, brings with it a presumed competence to speak about race and racism.

You can search and read the entire book on-line here.

What say you?

CRT Sematical Jiggery Pokery

Silverfiddle Rant!

Critical Race Theory is under sustained attack by grass roots Americans all across the ideological spectrum.  

The CRT grifters are fighting back with one of the pseudo-intellectual left's favorite tactics:  Semantical Jiggery Pokery.  Like when a good American scorns a progressive policy by calling it socialist, and a thousand sneering pedants emerge to tie you up in dorm room sophistries involving the differences between communism, marxism, socialism, etc and mock you as ignorant for not knowing all the terms.  

Common sense people lose patience with this.  It's like pornography.  I don't need to be steeped in the theories and history of porn to know it when I see it.  

Leftists are shouting down the burgeoning CRT rebellion by saying the WrongThinkers don't even know what Critical Race Theory is, or they misunderstand its terms, they are applying it to phenomena that are not CRT.  My favorite:  Imperiously stating one cannot argue against CRT until one has slogged through thousands of pages of turgid CRT "theory," which is at best a hodge-podge of writings with no foundation of facts, data or quantitative analysis one can use to judge the validity of its many claims.

One of the tenured high lords of Anti-Racism compares his science-free area of study to astrophysics. He has built his career on either-or fallacies like this...

The cause of racial inequity is either racist policy or racial hierarchy. The racial problem is the result of bad policies or bad people.

Either Black and Latino people are the least likely to be vaccinated against COVID-19 because there’s something wrong with them—or the inequity stems from racist policy. Either Black girls are six times as likely to be expelled from school as white girls because they misbehave more—or the inequity is caused by racist policy. To believe in racial hierarchy, to say that something is wrong with a racial group, is to express racist ideas.

Leftwing partisans like Joy Reid (why are the two crabbiest, most joyless women on TV ironically both named Joy?) respond by using their control of the medium and microphone to shout down anyone making sense.  See:  RCP - Joy Reid v Chris Rufo

So is it really CRT that has parents all across the US in revolt?  

Technically, probably not, based on my limited study, but that is irrelevant. In order to freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it, you first have to name it.

The National Review editors provide the best defense for calling this crap CRT, even if that doesn't technically fit what is going on in classrooms, government employee seminars and corporate training sessions:

The intellectual roots of CRT can be found in Marxist-influenced critical theory, which began in the academia of Weimar Germany. It developed into an “intersectional” ideology at Harvard Law School in the late 1980s, through Kimberlé Crenshaw and other supporters of Professor Derrick Bell. In recent years, however, it has metastasized into the pop psychology of bestsellers such as Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist and Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility as well as pseudohistory such as the New York Times’ 1619 Project.

What say you?

Music & Solzhenitsyn

Silverfiddle Rant!

“Rub your eyes and purify your heart — and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well.” — Aleksander Solzhenitsyn

Winston Marshall is leaving Mumford & Sons.  He made the mistake of praising Andy Ngo's new book, and the torrent of sewage spewing at him from the rabid left is affecting the band.

He explains it all here.  I neither praise nor condemn him.  He's been walking a thin line, and it appears he now sees what a futile effort that is.  Ideologues want all of you: Heart and soul, body and mind, and you must recite all the right words. No nuance.

He includes this quote from Aleksander Solzhenitsyn:

“And he who is not sufficiently courageous to defend his soul — don’t let him be proud of his ‘progressive’ views, and don’t let him boast that he is an academician or a people’s artist, a distinguished figure or a general. Let him say to himself: I am a part of the herd and a coward. It’s all the same to me as long as I’m fed and kept warm.”

I leave you with an appropriate Mumford & Sons song:  Hopeless Wanderer.  Apologies for not picking a classical selection for this weekend, but I am fairly ignorant of that genre...

Biden's Border Crisis

Silverfiddle Rant!

The Biden-created humanitarian crisis at the border continues.  Expanded asylum rules will keep them coming and continue this billion dollar bonanza for human traffickers and criminal gangs.

VP Harris made buffoonishly false statement about enforcing the law, don't come here, etc, when she was bumbling around in Central America, but The Spectator states the new Biden policy plainly:

"If his party believes that mere poverty creates a valid asylum claim, that real borders are morally illegitimate, that minors must be admitted immediately, that families must never be separated and that ICE must be defanged or abolished, what can Biden do besides let everybody in?"

What say you?

For Father's Day 2021

My father (June 19, 1911-January 30, 1998).  Today is your 110th birthday!

Dad in his twenties

Dad, in his sixties, is on the left.

I miss you, Dad — even though these words so apply to our relationship: 

"Men like my father cannot die. They are with me still -- real in memory as they were in flesh, loving and beloved forever" (from How Green Was My Valley).

 I don't know what Dad's favorite song was, but I do know that the award-winning 1941 movie How Green Was My Valley was his favorite film. When Dad and Mom were dating, this film was the one movie which he took her to see at the cinema when the film was re-released to theaters in 1950.

 

The Insatiable Beast

Silverfiddle Rant!

Lin-Manuel Miranda is a talented La Tinks actor/writer/director of color with iron-clad progressive credentials. Now, the Neo-Maoists come for him. It appears he will survive the Struggle Session, learn from his shameful and humiliating mistakes, and go on to produce many intersectionally-correct productions that celebrate the Glorious People's Eternal Struggle.

From People Magazine:

Lin-Manuel Miranda Apologizes for Colorism in In The Heights: 'I Promise to Do Better'

"I'm seeing the discussion around Afro-Latino representation in our film this weekend and it is clear that many in our dark-skinned Afro-Latino community don't feel sufficiently represented within it, particularly among the leading roles."

Miranda continued, "I can hear the hurt and frustration over colorism, of feeling unseen in the feedback. I hear that without sufficient dark-skinned Afro-Latino representation, the work feels extractive of the community we wanted so much to represent with pride and joy."

Miranda's fellow running dog, Jon Chu, also quickly admitted fault and accepted his need for further education:

"Yeah, I mean I think that that was something we talked about and I needed to be educated about, of course," Chu, 41, responded.

"But I hear you on trying to fill those cast members with darker-skinned [actors]. I think that's a really good conversation to have, something that we should all be talking about," he added.

The actress who starred in this shameful colorist nightmare also issued profound apologies, but it gets tedious, so you can go read it all for yourself.

The Horrors of "White-Passing"

A "Black woman of Cuban descent" who writes for a progressive propaganda sheet interrogated the filmmakers about the troubling "lack of Black Latinx people represented" in the film considering the movie's main cast "were light-skinned or white-passing Latinx people."

Never worry, Miranda is "Listening," "holding space," "learning, " and promising to "do better." No doubt he will:

"I'm truly sorry," he wrote. "I'm learning from the feedback, I thank you for raising it, and I'm listening. I'm trying to hold space for both the incredible pride in the movie we made and be accountable for our shortcomings. Thanks for your honest feedback. I promise to do better in my future projects, and I'm dedicated to the learning and evolving we all have to do to make sure we are honoring our diverse and vibrant community. Siempre, LMM."

Pardon the mixed metaphors, but the guillotine's thirst is never slaked.

Video: The Mass Psychosis And The Demons Of Dostoevsky

(hat tip to DEPLORABLE Bloggers Alliance)

Worth a few moments of your consideration:

 

The desire for power, often paired with self-deception, is eternal and very nearly ubiquitous across Time. 

Also of interest...The Manufacturing of a Mass Psychosis - Can Sanity Return to an Insane World?:

 

Musical Interlude

(For politics, please scroll down) 

For this weekend, a feast for the ears and suitable for quiet reflection. Enjoy Vaughan Williams: The best orchestral works (except symphonies):

About the above:

01.Five variants of Dives & Lazarus 00:00 02.English Folk Song Suite: 1.March 12:33 03.English Folk Song Suite: 2.Intermezzo 15:27 04.English Folk Song Suite: 3.March 18:20 05.Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis 21:23 06.Fantasia on Greensleeves 37:06 07.March of the kitchen utensils 41:45 08.Norfolk rhapsody no.1 44:55 09.The lark ascending 55:13 10.The Wasps overture 01:09:50

The Left is Crazy

Silverfiddle Rant!

Yes, people on the left really are crazy.  Many on the left "ignore the science" and continue to wear masks even after getting vaccinated, and they suffer more psychosis and authoritarian tendencies.  Privileged white racists aren't performing enough hate crimes, so leftwing activists have to make them up.  By the hundreds.

People like the poor cracked woman quoted below provide a window into the hysteria-fueled progressive psyche.  She is clearly driven by irrational fear and loathing.  She performs the all-too-human act of projecting her bugaboos onto those she doesn't like and she ascribes motives with zero evidence. I pity her. 

From Real Clear Politics:

New York Times editorial board Mara Gay told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that she was disturbed to see pickup trucks with "dozens of American flags" and Trump paraphernalia during a recent trip to Long Island.

"I was on Long Island this weekend," she said. "And I was really disturbed."

"I saw, you know, dozens and dozens of pickup trucks with expletives against Joe Biden on the back of them, Trump flags, and in some cases, just dozens of American flags, which is also just disturbing, which essentially the message was clear, this is my country. This is not your country. I own this."

Pushback

Scorched earth (hat tip to 100% Fed Up): 

The above confrontation is not unique the past several weeks. Similar scorched earth is happening all over the United States as school boards prepare to implement Critical Race Theory across the curricula and across all grade levels this coming school term.

Musical Interlude

(For politics, please scroll down)

Music and images that match the overwhelming grief in my soul:

About Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6: 

The Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74, also known as the Pathétique Symphony, is Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's final completed symphony, written between February and the end of August 1893. The composer entitled the work "The Passionate Symphony", employing a Russian word, Патетическая (Pateticheskaya), meaning "passionate" or "emotional", which was then (mis-)translated into French as pathétique, meaning "solemn" or "emotive". 

The composer led the first performance in Saint Petersburg on 28 October [O.S. 16 October] of that year, nine days before his death....

Interesting reading: the above piece's place in popular culture.  Worth your time.

Expertendammerung: "a Fireball of Public Anger"

Silverfiddle Rant!

"Should it turn out that scientists and experts and NGOs, etc. are villains rather than heroes of this story, we may very well see the expert-worshiping values of modern liberalism go up in a fireball of public anger."

(Thomas Frank, The Guardian)

"Lab leaks happen. They aren’t the result of conspiracies: “a lab accident is an accident,” as Nathan Robinson points out; they happen all the time, in this country and in others, and people die from them.

By the way, right-wingers didn’t dream up “gain of function”: all the cool virologists have been doing it (in this country and in others) even as the squares have been warning against it for years.

Think of all the disasters of recent years: 

economic neoliberalism, destructive trade policies, the Iraq War, the housing bubble, banks that are “too big to fail,” mortgage-backed securities, the Hillary Clinton campaign of 2016 — all of these disasters brought to you by the total, self-assured unanimity of the highly educated people who are supposed to know what they’re doing, plus the total complacency of the highly educated people who are supposed to be supervising them."

This is why normal people with common sense no longer lap up what the Inofotainment Media Complex pukes out.  As Farmer wisely reminds us, today's "experts" have no skin in the game, so we should never make the mistake of automatically trusting them.

Extra Credit:

Our Legacy Corporate Media Is Full of Liars and Propagandists

"Stealing is...reparations"

The title of this blog post is just one stupid utterance documented in the video below. Another stupid is utterance in that the pandemic has caused an outbreak of crime: 

 

Is America waking up to the insanities documented above and prepared to vote out certain feckless leaders and "cancel" their sycophantic mouthpieces in the media and in academia?