What is the Critical Race Theory?

[Dill]

(05-28-2021, 11:35 AM)Goalpost Wrote: This is kind of a controversial statement to me so I'll respond to this.  Many of the cities today have heritages that vary.  Cincinnati, for instance, is greatly German.  A lot of heritages bonded with their 'own', when they immigrated.  Along the way, these heritages even slurred each other.  You're a krout, you're a spic, you're a wop, some of the common slurs.  This doesn't suggest they were 'bonding' in whiteness together and learning a group white supremacy against black people.  There was slurring amid themselves.  These slurs were racism of white to white. It falls into a supremacy category but not necessarily a learned to be with way exclusively against black people only.  While I agree there was still racism against black people, I just wanted to point out that racism was active on many levels back then.  At least these terms suggest they were.

Thanks for responding. I'm not clear what is controversial about my points here, though. 

I'll agree that Germans bonding with Germans in Cincinnati were not bonding in "whiteness" and thereby learning white supremacy just on that score, although if they were using terms like "wops" and "spics" to refer to other ethnic groups, it is hard to separate that from "racial science" of the late 19th and early 20th century. And that WAS all about white supremacy, which they had already learned.

My point was rather different. My post refers to "positioning," not bonding. If you are a manufacturer in Cincinnati during the 30s and 40s, your hiring preferences are white if the choice is between white and black. If you need to fire some one, the reverse. So "krauts" may choose not to sit with "wops" in the company cantina, but everyone, management and workers alike, knows who is white and who is not. If you are a worker looking for a job, you learn these basics quickly.  That you are white, or not, matters first, not whether you are white German or white Italian or white Irish. That is how white supremacy presented itself in the workplace at that time, and very consistently in the assignment of tasks and opportunities for training. 

Many white Anglos did indeed think Greeks were racially inferior, but there is no evidence it affected hiring/firing practice across the labor force by the 1930s. And if Romanians and Lithuanians Anglicized their names, would any employer be the wiser? 

If you were a high school teacher in the Northeast or Midwest pre-WW2, one of your jobs was to sort students into tracks which made the most sense for their future jobs. There was some difference between students of Northern European descent, and those from Southern/Eastern Europe, with some of the former having the greater likelihood of going to college. But it wasn't clear to many educators that Black students needed much beyond the 6th grade or junior high. You wouldn't want to waste resources like books and class space on students not expected to succeed. Even if you had an exceptionally bright Black student, you'd be doing him a disservice (so they reasoned) if you elevated his hopes for a kind of work he would never have. If you were a teacher applying for a teaching job, you'd understand that your race mattered much more than whether your ancestry was French or Hungarian. 

Had you had immigrated to the U.S. in 1936 and joined the U.S. military during this period, you'd have quickly found that it didn't matter much if you were Polish or Serbian. But it did matter that you were white. If you were not, you were going to be peeling potatoes and mopping floors your entire military career.  You were not going to be an officer leading White soldiers. 

Even if the North did not have official segregation, you might find your krauts and wops easily seated at restaurants which did not seat Blacks.
We can agree these are the facts, right? And we can agree that I am referring to basic policies and social practices which elevated every white person, "kraut" or "wop," over every black person in virtually all institutions? EVERY white person had an advantage that NO Black did, even if SOME Whites were poor and had bad jobs etc.

Also, all interethnic animosity/conflict is not "racism." if Swedes hate Norwegians, that is not "racism of white to white," as it has nothing to do with "race." These interethnic  conflicts between played only the most minor role in US racial politics. Off hand, I cannot think of any example of state or federal policy barring Swedes from housing or jobs, whereas that's rather easy to do when it comes to race. Have you ever heard Swedes characterized as "last hired, first fired"? 

Going back a couple of generations, when waves of immigrants from southern and Eastern Europe came to the US after the Civil War, there was considerable hostility towards them on the part of the dominant Anglos. The newcomers competed with Blacks for the lowest jobs, and quickly learned to distinguish themselves from Blacks by not living where they lived and not associating with them. They learned to use their "whiteness" to compete in the job market. Some even anglicized their names. That's what I mean by "learning" white supremacy. The children and grandchildren of those "white" immigrants knew the lay of the land--the racial terrain--even better than their parents. 

Nota Bene: The point of the above is to suggest how white supremacy is learned, not at a workshop or in some credal form transmitted in schools or churches or civic organizations, but rather in ordinary social practices, starting young, when white parents taught their pre-school children not to play with black children. Because of its omnipresence and wide diffusion, white supremacy has rarely been "seen" in any other form but its most manifest, like a Klan rally. One goal of CRT is to make it visible in other venues, where it remains effective but unnoticed, like a part of nature. 

[Dill]

(05-28-2021, 12:10 PM)Wes Mantooth Wrote: 1.) My concerns and my opinion mainly revolve around what's being learned rather than what's being taught.  What are students taking away from these classes? 

Is it helping them?  Is it helping race relations?  Is it helping people come together more?  Is helping to empower students?

Or is hurting students?  Is it hurting race relations?  Is it causing more division?  Does it lead to resentment, or shame?  Does it cause Black Americans to feel futher removed from the "system" and to feel like they don't have the same chances of success in life?

I haven't taken these classes, and there's so many different examples of CRT that have been presented that's almost impossible to critique the subject as a whole.  I just don't understand what the end-game is here.  I also don't understand why we're introducing sociology into the lower levels of education.

2.) I've seen countless examples of college aged students, college grads and adults in general stuggle with so much of what surrounds these issues.  And when I say countless, I mean hundreds of hundreds of times over.  I've seen this in comments sections, on Twitter, on Reddit, watching debates on college campuses, seeing footage of protests, seeing interactions on sites like youtube, etc.

Now, granted, these may not all be the result of CRT specifically.  Some of these opinions may be parroted from all over.  Some may be learned in Sociology courses in college that differ from CRT but they share similar talking points.  But I still think when you introduce some of these shared talking points it's not at all given that students will come away with what was intended by exploring them.

There's an incredible amount of nuance to these subjects and much of it seems lost on those who in engage in speaking about it or debating it.  If I had more time I had go down the rabbit hole that is yoube tube and provide with examples but it would take forever.  I'm hoping you know the type of rheotic I'm speaking of.

I think it's too early to answer your questions.

Also, it is important to note that questions about CRT in the curriculum, and its effects, are difficult to separate from the other confusions and mass disinformation which dog public discussion of U.S. race relations. 

First off, it is not clear whether and to what degree CRT informs much of the US HS curriculum. CA is supposedly adopting a CRT informed curriculum. Chicago schools decided to use the NYT 1619 Project as a supplement. That means they are adding some news paper articles to class discussion. I'm guessing there are huge swaths of school districts across the nation who may not be doing anything like this, especially in mostly white districts. But it may be popular where there are more diverse populations. (Bpat would have a WAY better sense than I what is the case.) 

However, we are seeing a huge political reaction against this supposedly "racist" curriculum, and most in places where it's not clear that it CRT, as theory or perspective, is actually being taught.  Just as "voter integrity" legislation swept Republican legislatures across the country last month--and in states with no record of voter fraud--now we have a similar push to ban courses which teach that your race makes you responsible for what your ancestors did. I don't see how this can be driven by anything actually going on in the classroom.  I do see how it can be driven by Fox News segments linking CRT to "cultural Marxism," which teaches us to hate America and blame Whitey for all our problems. 

Division? People involved in the aforementioned conflict have different ideas about what constitutes and creates "division." CNN is airing a documentary on the Tulsa riots this weekend. Will that cause "shame" and create "division"? If that is our worry, then the solution is simple for some--don't teach history that shames whites. Teach patriotic history.  Many people, white and black, have never heard of the Tulsa riots (or similar ones during the period), because heretofore whites have largely been protected from the shame and division lying beyond patriotic history. From this perspective, "helping race relations" means keeping us all in the dark about the past to protect white sensitivities. And it harbors a resolve NOT to look into how the racial architecture of many institutions, inherited from that past-beyond-patriotism, may continue to function, noticed only in effects for which other explanations (e.g., individual failure) may be readily provided. 

I have no doubt you have seen "countless examples" of people arguing about race relations in the U.S. Without examples, 2-3 links at least, I just can't be sure how any of what you are seeing really arises from public school curricula. I have seen college students misuse (in my view) definitions of "systemic racism" by, for example, telling me they can't be racist but I can.  That suggests exposure to, but not mastery of, CRT. Perhaps the kind of exposure one gets on Youtube. 

But that seems to me a very small problem next to the bigger one of how CRT becomes the bogey man responsible for "cultural Marxist" division in the US and begins driving legislation to squelch "truth matters" history in favor of the "non-divisive" patriotic type.

LOL Remember when the Oklahoma legislature voted to ban all Sharia law from state courts? Similar "threat" here. 

[bengaloo]

I dont know what they are teaching in CRT. Probably to hate each other as usual. But I feel like they owe every white person in America a tanning bed at this point. Its literally the only way to be less white. I feel bad for the honkey's up north. They will always be the whitest mofo's in the world. Lock them effers up and throw away the key, for they may disagree, with critical race theory... and if you can't rhyme you are even whiter than thee. Brb I have to pee....

[Dill]

(05-28-2021, 06:12 PM)bengaloo Wrote: I dont know what they are teaching in CRT. Probably to hate each other as usual. But I feel like they owe every white person in America a tanning bed at this point. Its literally the only way to be less white. I feel bad for the honkey's up north. They will always be the whitest mofo's in the world. Lock them effers up and throw away the key, for they may disagree, with critical race theory... and if you can't rhyme you are even whiter than thee. Brb I have to pee....

Ha ha, sounds like a lot of this CRT stuff went right past you, bengaloo. 

But I see some Fox News prompts there in the bolded. 

[bengaloo]

(05-29-2021, 09:01 AM)Dill Wrote: Ha ha, sounds like a lot of this CRT stuff went right past you, bengaloo. 

But I see some Fox News prompts there in the bolded. 

Very cool! 

[NATI BENGALS]

If everybody would just admit that everybody is racist maybe we would be cool.

I'm sorry. But it is in our DNA. It's natural instincts. How far would we have made it as a species if when we saw things that didn't look like us out in the wild we didn't have a fight or flight response?

[Dill]

(05-30-2021, 12:47 AM)NATI BENGALS Wrote: If everybody would just admit that everybody is racist maybe we would be cool.

I'm sorry. But it is in our DNA. It's natural instincts. How far would we have made it as a species if when we saw things that didn't look like us out in the wild we didn't have a fight or flight response?

Even if that's so, there appear to be degrees between Hitler and MLK.

Anyway, if we are talking about CRT, the goal is not to force individuals to "admit" they are racist (though it is sometimes characterized as that), 
but to recognize how the legacy of past racism continues in today's institutions, generally unseen without help, like patterns of data.