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| Silverfiddle Rant! |
“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.” - Dr. Kendi
We discussed CRT last week, and I am learning along with all of you. I now think that what is being taught in schools, corporations and government bureaucracies is not textbook CRT, but rather CRT's pop psychology crack baby. Whatever you call it, an increasing number of Americans don't like it. Having said that, I still think CRT is a good handle.
We discussed CRT last week, and I am learning along with all of you. I now think that what is being taught in schools, corporations and government bureaucracies is not textbook CRT, but rather CRT's pop psychology crack baby. Whatever you call it, an increasing number of Americans don't like it. Having said that, I still think CRT is a good handle.
"Critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law." (Critical Race Theory - An Introduction)Followed up by their nods to Gramsci and Derrida, it is clear the Critical Race theorists are all about tearing down a system where in the span of 160 years, black people have gone from the chains of slavery to university graduates, professors, doctors, decorated soldiers, generals, CEOs of major corporations, etc.
In this society they want to tear down, POC students sit equally beside "white" students, POC enjoy equal status, and supervision over, "white" people in workplaces all over America, and POC are fully embedded in our military, and most importantly in our de-segregated neighborhoods. "White" people and people of color enjoy parties in each others homes, school functions, BBQs and sporting events together.
This is the system the carnival barkers, grifters, charlatans, latte leftists and Che Guevara wannabes want to tear down. Fie on them all.
CRT Critic and hate totem of the left, Chris Rufo sums it up best:
This is the system the carnival barkers, grifters, charlatans, latte leftists and Che Guevara wannabes want to tear down. Fie on them all.
CRT Critic and hate totem of the left, Chris Rufo sums it up best:
"The game is that they want to create an essentialized racial category ("whiteness"), load it with negative connotations, then impose it on individuals through guilt, shame, and school indoctrination. This approach is reductive, manipulative, and malicious. Don't fall for it."
Chris Rufo has a website that features his Critical Race Theory Briefing Book. Here are a few quotations:
“All whites are racist … because we benefit from systemic white privilege. -- Wildman and Davis, Readings for Diversity and Social Justice“All white people are racist or complicit by virtue of benefiting from privileges that are not something they can voluntarily renounce.” -- Barbara Applebaum, Being White, Being Good
“Whiteness by its very definition and operation as a key element of white supremacy kills; it is mental and physical terrorism. To end the white terrorism that is directed at racially oppressed people here and in other nations, it is essential that self-identified whites and their whiteness collaborators among the racially oppressed confront their white problem head-on, unencumbered by racial comfort.” -- Johnny Williams in the Hartford Courant
“White people raised in Western society are conditioned into a white supremacist worldview because it is the bedrock of our society and its institutions … Entering the conversation with this understanding is freeing because it allows us to focus on how—rather than if—our racism is manifest.” -- Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility
I do not want anyone to silence, ban, censor, cancel or deny tenure to Robin DiAngelo, Ibram Kendi, Nikole Hannah Jones or the rest of their fellow travelers. I want those people to come down from their gilded pulpits and debate: State their thesis and submit their ideas to academic examination and debate with those who oppose their half-baked hokum.
Good debate can be found, but one has to actively ignore a great deal of hot noise.
ReplyDeleteYour rosy description of the place of POC in America is accurate, but of course selective. Markedly different points of view are defensible.
...but regardless, the truths derived through "historicity" do not justify current day or future immoralities and grant one a current day "right" to oppress others who are innocent of the charges and only indirectly culpable.
DeleteAs Slavoj Zizek said, "Instead of the industrial-military complex, we in post-Yugoslavia had the poetic-military complex, personified in the twin figures of Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić. Karadžić was not only a ruthless political and military leader, but also a poet. His poetry should not be dismissed as ridiculous — it deserves a close reading, since it provides a key to how ethnic cleansing functions. Here are the first lines of the untitled poem identified by a dedication “.....For Izlet Sarajlić”:
Convert to my new faith crowd
I offer you what no one has had before
I offer you inclemency and wine
The one who won’t have bread will be fed by the light of my sun
People nothing is forbidden in my faith
There is loving and drinking
And looking at the Sun for as long as you want
And this godhead forbids you nothing
Oh obey my call brethren people crowd
The superego suspension of moral prohibitions is the crucial feature of today’s “postmodern” nationalism. Here, the cliche according to which passionate ethnic identification restores a firm set of values and beliefs in the confusing insecurity of a modern secular global society is to be turned around: nationalist “fundamentalism” rather serves as the operator of a secret, barely concealed You may! Without the full recognition of this perverse pseudo-liberating effect of today’s nationalism, of how the obscenely permissive superego supplements the explicit texture of the social symbolic law, we condemn ourselves to the failure of grasping its true dynamics."
Plato wanted to ban the poets. I say we ban the anti-racist rappers.
Delete..and their "academic" historicist enablers. ;)
DeleteSocial justice isn't justice. It's an expedient that couples the expediency of a "judicial process" to the further expediency of "grouping" crimes and apportioning equal criminal responsibilities for them (instead of justice) amongst group members.
Delete“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.” - Dr. Kendi
Deletere poetry, I think both you and plato are mistaken (as are, frequently, the poets).
DeleteMore broadly this entire argument is over whether inertia exists. If it doesn't, then you're right and mere non-racism is sufficient to bring about an egalitarian society. But if inertia does exist, then the anti-racists are right, and it requires the application of deliberate effort to correct for the inequalities that were baked into our institutions at their inception.
The anti-racists are the ones generating the vast majority of the inertia that's keeping racism going. This is because of the "poetry"....The superego suspension of moral prohibitions... advocating and more importantly "justifying" the reverse racism of anti-racism.
DeleteProof? Did BLM increase or decrease the number of "mobs" (mass events with suspended moral prohibitions against violence) in the street?
Delete...and was this "mass action" the result of an increase in the number of actual racists oppressing blacks, or "reports and rumours" of racists oppressing an ever diminishing number of blacks?
DeleteNo activist wants to continue their manner of protest into their everyday life. The American revolutionaries did not rebel against the Brits because they sought to live in perpetual warfare.
Deletewell, you can't recite their names. You can't even name all the people police have killed or brutalised, still less all the people the police have harrassed or underserved.
DeleteI contend it was the latter.
Delete...and I would simply point to Charles Murray's latest book, "Facing Reality" for evidence.
Delete...for now you are simply citing a "mythos" that the "poets" with their "grand narratives" have spun.
DeleteThe number of police incidents was very much declining UNTIL BLM accelerated it's street campaigns.
DeleteI think that the two charts above pretty much prove that this all just a "narrative driven" phenomena.
DeleteIn the protest graph, note the number of North American protest in July of 2013 (near 0). Now consider...
DeleteIn July 2013, the (BLM) movement began with the use of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social mediaafter the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of African-American teen Trayvon Martin 17 months earlier in February 2012. The movement became nationally recognized for street demonstrations following the 2014 deaths of two African Americans, that of Michael Brown—resulting in protests and unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, a city near St. Louis—and Eric Garner in New York City.[8][9] Since the Ferguson protests, participants in the movement have demonstrated against the deaths of numerous other African Americans by police actions or while in police custody. In the summer of 2015, Black Lives Matter activists became involved in the 2016 United States presidential election.[10] The originators of the hashtag and call to action, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, expanded their project into a national network of over 30 local chapters between 2014 and 2016.[11] The overall Black Lives Matter movement is a decentralized network of activists with no formal hierarchy.[12]
The "hyper-reality" of Social Media and its' ability to drive civil unrest is increasing.
DeleteWhich explains why our government will continue to collude with private corporations to censor and restrict the flow of potentially inflammatory rhetoric globally.
Delete"I think that the two charts above pretty much prove that this all just..."
DeleteI think it's hilarious how much your standard of proof varies according to whether you are advancing or opposing the hypothesis.
You have a better one?
Deletebtw - Are you familiar with the two premises defined in Murray's "Facing Reality"? Here's a hostile review.
Delete...Keep listening to the poets...
Delete...and keep believing in the myths of the black martyr cultural industrial complex, turning criminals into saints since 1968.
DeleteDerrick Chauvin is currently paying the ultimate price for creative poetry...
DeletePoets bent on turning the once profane into the new "secular sacred".
DeleteMax Weber "secularization of religious myths" has now come full circle. It's no longer a myth. It has become "externalized" and the hero's internal journey and become externalized and allegorical. All it needs is new characters for poets to attribute "identity martyrdom."
Jez, you wouldn't happen to be in any way related to the pied piper of Hamlin, would you?
DeleteAnd the Piper advanced and the children followed,
DeleteAnd when all were in to the very last,
The door in the mountain-side shut fast.
Did I say all? No! One was lame,
And could not dance the whole of the way;
And in after years, if you would blame
His sadness, he was used to say,--
"It's dull in our town since my playmates left!
I can't forget that I'm bereft
Of all the pleasant sights they see,
Which the Piper also promised me.
For he led us, he said, to a joyous land,
Joining the town and just at hand,
Where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew,
And flowers put forth a fairer hue,
And everything was strange and new;
The sparrows were brighter than peacocks here,
And their dogs outran our fallow deer,
And honey-bees had lost their stings,
And horses were born with eagles' wings:
And just as I became assured
My lame foot would be speedily cured,
The music stopped and I stood still,
And found myself outside the hill,
Left alone against my will,
To go now limping as before,
And never hear of that country more!
...because I really wanted to journey into the mountain... but I was lame and lacked the courage required.
DeleteNo martyr is among ye now
DeleteWhom you can call your own
So go on your way accordingly
But know you’re not alone.
-Bob Dylan, "The Lyrics: Since 1962"
Considering I wasn't taught CRT in elementary or high school (nor were my kids, my grandkids or for that matter, any children in any of the 50 states today) along with the fact I was raised in Mayberry, it's reasonable that I might not have 1st hand knowledge of the full scope of systemic or institutional racism. Does it actually exist?
ReplyDeleteI wasn't taught in school (nor were you) that the Tulsa, Rosewood, and other massacres were about successful and profiting black communities being crushed by white mobs. Were they crushed because they were succeeding? Are the studies that an applicant with a name of Bob or Mary is more likely to get the job over Jamal or Aaliyah? Does the value of a home go down when a black family buys it? Do black people actually spend more time in prison for smoking a joint that white folks? Are they in more danger when pulled over for a broken tail light?
Have you ever given thought to the notion that when the President of the USA stands up repeatedly and chastises a prominent black athlete for calling attention to the issues of racial inequality and police brutality, it might be to crush the voice of someone who has become successful and has a louder voice? That maybe like Tulsa and Rosewood, this rising above we're seeing just can't happen?
I realize the likes of a liberal site such as the now shut down Thinkprogress would be hard on the eyes but this article seems to be acurate. https://archive.thinkprogress.org/its-racist-as-hell-inside-st-louis-county-s-predatory-night-courts-21be3d5bf723/
Can systemic racism exist?
DeleteMadison, "Memorial & Remonstrance"
We maintain therefore that in matters of Religion, no mans right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society and that Religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance. True it is, that no other rule exists, by which any question which may divide a Society, can be ultimately determined, but the will of the majority; but it is also true that the majority may trespass on the rights of the minority.
Yes, it's possible.
Could the legislators of St. Louis Country have deliberately and with racist intent imposed laws it knew would disproportionately impact minorities and cause them pain?
Yes it could.
Was there any remedy available to the residents of St. Louis County to overturn these laws?
Yes there was.
Is the "system" systemically racist? Only when the legislators are. The system itself is racially "neutral".
Which is why we object to the racist anti-racist agenda from gaining a toehold in our educational and governmental "systems"
...again, from Madison...
The preservation of a free Government requires not merely, that the metes and bounds which separate each department of power be invariably maintained; but more especially that neither of them be suffered to overleap the great Barrier which defends the rights of the people.4 The Rulers who are guilty of such an encroachment, exceed the commission from which they derive their authority, and are Tyrants. The People who submit to it are governed by laws made neither by themselves nor by an authority derived from them, and are slaves.
3. Because it is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of Citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The free men of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much soon to forget it.
I guess -FJ, it depends on what your meaning of systemic is.
DeleteMany religiously leaning people believe as you do, preferring to see neutrality in systems and the sins of racism ascribed to individuals. It certainly makes it easier to look the other way, excuse our own inaction and call on God to change someone's heart.
But a neutral system in the hands of individuals who are racist leaves us with a distinction without a difference. The result of those individuals working together to deny people their rights is itself, a system, and one founded in racism.
Your view of the neutrality of systems leaves us no way to remedy for example, legal redlining that existed in the US for years. Because the problem in your reading is people.
That's not true. The example I cited, St Louis, put the issue before the US Commission on Civil Rights. Nothing is preventing this remedy from being applied to "redlining" issues, as it ALREADY has been applied to them in the recent past.
DeleteAnd today it is the "secular" who tend to impose "blasphemy" laws and define new sins to prevent words like "coon" or "nigger" from being spoken. So don't pass the buck on to the "religious" for defining and outlawing "sins" since every black man in America can voice the SoJus "sacred" terms with impunity in white neo-liberal attempts to instill "black fragility" upon their newly holy annointed followers..
If the "problem" in my reading is "people" then so is the "solution". Laws cannot change themselves.
Delete“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.” - Dr. Kendi
DeleteIf this isn't neo-racism, I don't know what is.
Through this form of racial legal positivism that disdains racial "neutrality", the wheel of racial injustices spin eternally.
DeleteIt's anything that keeps (dis-)advantages entrenched along ethnic lines. Dunno if that's dumber than whatever it was before that.
DeleteYou can't legislate innate IQ and AQ....although genetic enhancement scientists and trans-gender surgeons and hormonal therapists will certainly try... but that's a matter for next century. Thank G_d I won't be part of it.
DeleteToday we ban performance enhancing drugs because we believe it gives athletes an "unfair" advantage. What colour skin will the geneticists give us in the future? And will it matter if its' black or white?
Deletelegislate? you can't even measure it.
DeleteNot only can and is it measured, the results are both repeatable and scientifically consistent.
DeleteIf you say so, but it doesn't matter because the thing that the tests measure is much less exciting than the thing it is claimed that the tests measure.
Delete...regardless, blacks, on average, don't have it in one case, and have it in "spades" in the other.
DeleteSome 20+ years ago I was the plant manager for a metals processing company in an Atlanta suburb. My workforce was about 40% Black (please notice that I capitalized that).
ReplyDeleteThe General Manager brought a group from the NCAAP came into my plant office one day, and the GM (my boss) was kind of smiling a little bit. Turned ou they were there to discuss with me that they were planning to file a suit against my company for not including Blacks in the leadership of the organization. My boss had not primed me because he knew I would know how to deal smoothly with that issue.
I did. I picked up my paging microphone and paged for all foremen to report to my office forthwith. In they came, in their white shirts and white hard hats, seven of them, three of whom were Black. I introduced them to the NAACP committee and asked them who had promoted them.
The committee did not even give the courtesy of a reply, just closed their briefcases, said goodby, and left.
Sounds like the myth met the real world... and lost.
Delete@FJ Indeed.
DeleteAnd, for the record, I did not promote them because they were Black. I promoted all seven of those guys because they were the best candidates for the job. Sorry, women did not work in steel plants in those days.
And yes, I did get some objections of "I won't work for no..." My reply was always the same. "That is your privelege. You can pick up your final paycheck on Friday."
++
Delete"The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
ReplyDeleteKendi of course is a useful idiot. But he should be careful what he wishes for!