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| Silverfiddle Rant! |
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?
This summer, in at least one of the Fairfax County Public High Schools, Ibram X. Kendi’s book Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You is required detailed study for a weeks-long seminar for 2021-2022 teachers and school administrators.
ReplyDeleteAnd HERE is the "educator guide."
Also see Parents fuming over controversial commencement speech. Excerpt:
...Switching between Arabic, Spanish and English languages, [School Board member] Omeish warned the graduates about the world. “Our world is overwhelmed with need,” she said. “We struggle with human greed, racism extreme versions of individualism and capitalism, white supremacy, growing wealth gaps, disease, climate crimes, extreme poverty amidst luxury and waste right next door. And the list goes on.”
According to The Daily Mail, Omeish told the graduates in English, “The world sees the accolade, the diploma, the fruit of all your years yet to be reminded of the detail of your struggle. When she switched to Arabic, she told the students to remember their ‘jihad’ – a word meaning both ‘struggle’ and, specifically, holy war waged on behalf of Islam.”...
Much more at the above link.
Do you have specific problems with the linked guide? (I haven't read Kendi's book.)
DeleteJez,
DeleteThe guide assumes that whites are, no matter what, racist toward brown skins and must, therefore, atone for their bias.
Just one thing about the guide. Read some of it, and you'll see what I mean.
I haven't read it carefully, but I didn't see that. Can you extract a quote, or us that just the vibe you get from it?
DeleteSilver, You have summed it up well.
ReplyDeleteWorking people know bullshit when they smell it and are protective of their children being fed it when made aware that it is happening.
Ed,
DeleteWith all the remote learning resulting from the pandemic, many parents got to see with their own eyes and hear with their own ears what was being taught to the children. One of the benefits of the pandemic!
"In order to freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it, you first have to name it."
ReplyDeleteYou're right, but I am by disposition opposed to this approach. Instead of going full culture warrior straight off the bat, I would gently encourage us all to withold judgement on unfamiliar ideas while we get to grips with them, at least vaguely. After all, isn't this (the ability to playfully engage with an idea without being distracted by how much we think we agree with it) one of the superpowers Ivy League universities smugly congratulate themselves for fostering?
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.
ReplyDeleteThat's a fair observation, but I'm sure you can also see the merit in asserting that most people in fact, don't actually know it.....as evidenced by both ends of the spectrum irresponsibly levying labels as politically correct pejoratives buzzwords for emotional appeal.
People are using CRT as a convenient handle to succinctly state what they are against. As I said in my post, this is technically not correct, but I understand why people do it. When you listen to the criticisms, they are very coherent. People are vociferously attacking racial determinism that says black equals oppressed and white equals oppressor.
DeleteSure, I don't necessarily disagree.....but nobody should have been surprised at the pendulum swing towards something like CRT - once information was able to proliferate among the general populace at how this nation [and let's be honest, led by White Americans until only recently] has used instruments of national policy against other ethnic groups at home and abroad, and the history of policing in this nation.
Delete"CRT" writ large [using it as a blanket label] isn't a solution to race relations by any means....but it should have absolutely been foreshadowed, at least among objective thinkers.
"People are vociferously attacking racial determinism that says black equals oppressed and white equals oppressor."
DeleteI've been looking for examples of that in the educator's guide Always linked above. Can you find any?
I wasn't referring to the guide. I'm talking about crap like this
Deletehttps://nypost.com/2021/02/16/nyc-public-school-asks-parents-to-reflect-on-their-whiteness/
and this: https://reverseracism.tumblr.com/post/57939811587/the-8-white-identities-by-barnor-hesse-breaking-down
I'm surprised they didn't label those whities in #8 as octaroons.
Bottom line: the public school system [K-12] is not the place for sociological theories [outside perhaps of AP electives]. We teach little enough actual civics and life skills as it is.
ReplyDeleteCI... so maybe we stay out of "sociological theories"...
DeleteBut can we agree upon a set of facts to teach about slavery and teach how "White Americans until only recently used instruments of national policy against other ethnic groups at home and abroad, and the history of policing in this nation.?"
I ask because a lot of the "working people" I read on blogs, who admittedly lean conservative, don't want those negatives about America taught. They want schools and universities teaching all the good America has done without having much, if any focus on the bad stuff you've mentioned.
Dave - For many, it will never be enough, thus the introduction of notions of 'white fragility' and 'CRT'.
DeleteFor others...it will always be too much. Our public education institutions have historically done a piss-poor job at even scratching the surface of our historical misadventures. And those who only want to offer a [pardon the pun] whitewashed view of our history....do it in what name? Guilt? Notions of some 'American exceptionalism?
No, even when presented with evidence, our society will never be able to agree of a set facts with which to teach.
I wish an organization would posit exactly what we should be teaching children in school, history-wise. This phenomenon, CRT or whatever it is, is short on specifics. What are we not teaching about slavery? What are we not teaching about racism in this nation? I want to see specifics out there so we can debate them. I doubt more than a single digit percentage of people would be against teaching this objectively and in a fact-based manner. Racial determinism is wrong, no matter where it comes from
DeleteSilver... here's a set of facts I think most African Americans I know would love to see taught in school. And I've seen extensive blogging from people, primarily white, decrying the idea that we would teach about these subjects on the grounds that it will make people hate America.
Delete1. Slavery is/was evil. Period. The concept of owning another person, ever, under any circumstances is/was wrong.
2. The Tulsa Massacre.
3. The Ocoee Massacre.
4. The story of Emmett Till.
5. The Southern documents detailing their state governments statements in support of slavery as the reason for them desiring to secede from the Union, thus causing the Civil War.
6. The reality of southern racism in preventing people of color from using public restrooms, eating at public lunch counters, marriage between races and continued lynching into the mid 20th century.
7. The reality of federal and state sponsored Red Lining, barring people of color from buying or owning real estate in certain areas of town, primarily upper class areas, regardless of their ability to pay for the property or not.
8. The taking, by eminent domain, of hundreds of homes owned by black people, without proper compensation, on land in New York City that is now Central Park. The mayor who signed the order was a southern supporter who supported secession for the city and called the area that was then known as Seneca Village Nigger Village.
There has got to be a way to teach kids about these factual events, horrible as they are.
Dave,
DeleteReasonable people, which I still believe is the vast majority, should have no problem with that list. Indeed, most of us were taught 1, 5, and 6, and we were also taught about MLK and the civil rights movement.
The slavery/civil war question has many nuances that reasonable historians disagree on.
Has the environment improved for POC, or worsened? We have lost perspective.
Silver... it's interesting. As it regards number 1, I of course was taught that. But recently, in many churches I visit as part of what I do, I hear a revisionism happening on that front. People have told me biblical slavery could not be evil because God ordained it. I've heard that many slaves here were happy with their new life. That slaveholders were generous people who wanted to help slave.
DeleteI learned about the Civil Rights period, number 5, lunch counters, red lines, separare lunch counters in my 1960's multiethnic church, not school.
I learned that we had a Civil War in school and how it was related to slavery. But we never examined the documents from the Southern States that clearly state, that the secession was to preserve slavery. Even Jefferson Davis in his resignation to affirm a states right to own slaves as property, not give them rights and to preserve slavery.
As for the other examples, all of which the great majority of African Americans I talk with are aware of and know about, I heard nothing about these instances of government attacks on people until recently.
I think knowledge of those issues would help Americans of all stripes better understand each other. And I believe it should be earlier in our education, rather than later.
We do need to teach an unvarnished history, and we don't need obscure half-baked "theories" to do it.
DeleteNOBODY doesn't believe we should teach TRUTH; Our country STILL stacks up as probably the best and it's STILL something we should be proud of.
DeleteHere is something nobody discusses in regard to TEACHING: Teach it age-appropriately. Children have every right to grow up believing their country is the great one it is, teach it all..Why we fought the Civil War, how Lincoln acted, how we were overcoming racism until only recently (Oops, that's in the textbook I'D write and it'd be truth).....THEN, after the age of 12?, teach the horrors the leftwing is ginning up in order to destroy trust and love of country.
Z... Lincoln is an interesting figure. He acted, and we have his writings to prove this, to "free the slaves." But he did not believe they should get a vote, or were equal to whites. Like others in his day, he wanted to free the slaves and then essentially send them somewhere else so America would be free from slavery and free of black people. He even proposed, again, we have his writings to prove this, that we send them all to Panama.
DeleteSo regarding Lincoln, what should we teach to people and when?
One tenant of biblical studies is the negative stuff about the Hebrew people in the Bible argues for the veracity of the claims and stories we have in the old Testament. The argument is that a people willing to put all the unvarnished truth out there for everyone to read, the good and the bad, must be telling the truth.
Because most people want to shade the truth so they look better. I think America would be better with more people knowing our faults as opposed to folks walking around thinking no one is aware of them.
THEN, after the age of 12?, teach the horrors the leftwing is ginning up in order to destroy trust and love of country.
DeleteWow. You really believe that the factual history of how this country has acted, is something the 'leftwing' has 'ginned up'?
You've refuted your own opening sentence.
CI and Z: I agree with you both. Our government has done some horrible stuff, and we should teach it all to make us all better citizens more willing to tell our government NO, when we see history repeating itself.
DeleteI also get what Z is saying. Too often, lefties will air out this dirty laundry, not to learn from it or make a constructive point, but to simply make the argument that this is a horrible country and we should be more like Denmark, Cuba has free health care, etc.
I say this because I am closing comments on this thread.
Democrats constantly use words without knowing what they mean and/or making up new meanings for them which bear no relation to reality. Even after making up new meanings they often do not know what the new meaning consists of.
ReplyDeleteMy niece once wrote about something which she said was "not a radical idea." I cited for her the definition of "radical" in my response that it was a radical idea, and a good one, because we need radical thinking to solve today's issues, that new problems cannot be solved with old solutions.
She responded that the definition was not what she meant by the word "radical," and so I asked her what she did mean when she used the word. She finally admitted that she didn't know what she meant, but that it wasn't what the definition said, and that still didn't think that her idea was radical.
You cannot hold discussions with people who don't speak the same language you do and, in fact, don't understand the language that they do speak, using words when they don't know what those words mean.
Words denote more than just their literal surface meanings. Maybe your neice would have preferred a synonym which carried different connotations.
DeleteShe's the one who used the word, jez, not me, and she declined to change to a different word, which she understood.
DeleteLet me put that more specifically, jez. She used the word "radical." I invited her to use a different word which might better express what she meant, as you suggest she wanted to do, and she declined, reiterating that she meant to say "radical" while not knowing what she meant by the word.
DeleteWhich is precisely what I said in my original comment, making your reply utterly inane.
DeleteWhat happened to good old fashioned Civics course concluding with the senior class trip to D.C. Visiting Congress, meeting our Reps who gave us a special tour, and we got a special tour of the WH...Arlington, NASA, and so on...
ReplyDeleteJust call me so yesterday, but it did the trick on appreciating our government. I still remember meeting Barry Goldwater..frail but still very much with it.
Stay tuned everybody! We'll have more CRT fun on Wednesday.
ReplyDeleteThe howl from the right on CRT is no more than the “decoding” or “becoming more abstract” that Lee Atwater confessed to on his death bed about utilizing the Southern Strategy.
ReplyDeleteIt’s simply the latest Willy Horton or birther movement.
You need to read the news a little closer. It ain't just rightwing Republicans "howling."
DeleteDemocrat POCs are railing against school boards and rich Democrats in New York are pulling their children out of expensive and exclusive private schools over this crap.
Yes, the Southern Strategy is very effective on white Democrats as well.
DeleteIt must also be working on the people of color (POC) who don't want schools cramming their kids' heads with crap about how their color makes them victims.
Delete