05-17-2021, 11:47 AM
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What is the Critical Race Theory?
What is the Critical Race Theory?
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What is the Critical Race Theory?
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05-17-2021, 12:25 PM
I really haven't gotten any examples or an answer about what this actually entails. All I've gathered so far is that Robin Diangelo's program is not representative of CRT.
I'll just lay out some questions, hopefully someone here will be kind of enough to answer them. (Note: All of these questions are specifically related to how it's used in the lower levels of the education system.) 1.) Is CRT a stand-alone class? 2.) If it is a stand-alone class, what other classes are you removing or shortening to make room for it? (Ex: Gym) 3.) If it is a stand-alone class, is it to be taught every year, or is it taught periodically or as a one-off? (Ex. 7th, 8th, 9th, etc. vs once in Jr. High and/ once in high school vs only once overall.) 4.) At what age is it most commonly accepted that people think this curriculum should start? 5.) If it's not a stand-alone class is it something that will somehow be woven into their entire curriculum? 6.) Is it something that would just be taught in US History? (Ex: Spending more time exploring the after-effects of slavery and Jim Crow) 7.) Does it include terms like White Privilege or Institutional Racism? 8.) Would there be a state or federally approved lesson plan that must be followed or would individual teachers develp their own? (I don't trust every teacher in America to tackle such a sensitive subject on their own. Every profession has hacks, and agendas can be found anywhere. Teachers are not immune to this) I'll kinda wait to see the replies before I explain why I think #7 is particully harmful to children. In fact, I think it's harmful to everyone but like I said I'll wait to better explain myself. PS For those of you who are actually teaching it or have studied it, I honestly would like to see some of the lesson plans and materials you spoke of earlier. When I hear that the examples in the media are not reflective of the actual material it seems to me this is an opportunity to correct it. 
05-17-2021, 01:03 PM
(05-17-2021, 11:47 AM)Mickeypoo Wrote: To each their own. If you cannot see how FOX and CNN and MSNBC are agenda/narrative driven I don't know what to say. 24 hour news cycles, in general, are bad. CNN and MSNBC participate in them just like Fox does. All three generate "clickbait" article titles, topics and opinion pieces for the sole intention of driving traffic to their website and channel. The pursuit of the almighty dollar rules all, regardless of political belief, in America. However, I'd be remiss if I didn't clarify the difference between Fox and CNN/MSNBC. While they all participate in click baity and agenda driven behavior, Fox News stands out in that they lie more than CNN and MSNBC. https://www.politifact.com/article/2015/jan/27/msnbc-fox-cnn-move-needle-our-truth-o-meter-scorec/ That's an article from 2015 regarding the "Score cards" of the three channels, with Fox News lying/not being correct 60% of the time, MSNBC/NBC lying/not being correct 44% of the time, and CNN at 20%. Unfotunately, Politifact stopped categorizing their fact checks by station and started doing more individual fact checks in 2016. But, for an example, Politifact has done 16 fact checks on Tucker Carlson on their website. Of those 16, 14 of them were rated as mostly false, with 10 of those 14 being either completely false or "pants on fire" false. A percentage of 87.5%. Rachel Maddow, on the other hand, was fact checked 29 times in a similar time frame and was rated as mostly false 14 times as well. A percentage of 48%. Ultimately, we won't get away from lying/sensationalizing news media until we get away from the 24 hour news cycle and the pressure to create clicks rather than news, but while we're here, Fox News are objectively the worst offenders and that is worth noting and acknowledging. 
05-17-2021, 01:14 PM
I think “white fragility” is ridiculously demeaning, and nobody would dare use it against any other race which somewhat explains “white fragility”. The resistance to discussing race is also quite understandable as it’s not a discussion as much as a lecture. God forbid we didn’t memorize the 5000 words and phrases that are now deemed to be offensive across 20 different races and ethnicities. No thanks.
Fragile white guy. This is my truth so it is unassailable. Edit: Meant to quote Pat. (Not saying Pat endorses it)
“History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure.”-Thurgood Marshall
![[Image: 4CV0TeR.png]](https://i.imgur.com/4CV0TeR.png)
05-17-2021, 01:20 PM
(05-17-2021, 12:25 PM)Wes Mantooth Wrote: I really haven't gotten any examples or an answer about what this actually entails. All I've gathered so far is that Robin Diangelo's program is not representative of CRT. I don't have an answer for every question you have, but an answer to a fair number of your questions would be the following: CRT is less a "topic" that could be covered in a specific class or specific grade. It's more of a lens through which we can view history and/or current political topics. The classic way to explain CRT is by discussing how black people are still affected by slavery and Jim Crow today. You could say "there are currently no laws on the books that are objectively racist" and you'd technically be correct. What CRT would say is the way in which we treat black people in this country is reflected in how the laws of this country are administered. For example, during the war on drugs, crack and cocaine were both illegal and both carried prison sentences for possession. But, for some reason, crack was a much higher penalty than cocaine. a Critical Race Theorist would relate this to the fact that crack was used far more by black people than other races and cocaine was used far more by white people than black people. Could this have been a coincidence? Perhaps...But a Critical Race Theorist would argue that it is a continuation of the demonization and persecution of black people in this country. The same could be said of marijuana crimes, as more black people are arrested for smoking weed than white people, despite the races doing it at an equivalent proportional rate. Then there is the question of generational wealth. Why is it that black people are, as a race, vastly more poor than white people in this country? A Critical Race Theorist would argue that, for generations, black people were stripped of the ability to own land and, during slavery, were actually controlled and had their labor converted into wealth for their masters rather than themselves. Even after slavery was banned and black people's civil rights were given back, there was still redlining, a practice that prevented black people from getting loans in more affluent areas even when they were qualified for such a loan. This sectioned off the more affluent areas from black people and, some would argue, created "ghettos" as we know them in this country. All of these policies, and their after effects, prevented black people from benefitting from their parents' and grandparents' wealth, thus letting them fall behind more and more as the generations went on. Imagine you and your friends were playing Monopoly, but for 200 consecutive turns, you were not allowed to buy any property you landed on and, when you crossed go, your money was sent to the community bank rather than your own bank account. Then, at the end of the 200 turns, those rules were reversed and you were allowed to buy property and get your pass go money, but by that time, your opponent had already bought up the majority of the properties and had been collecting their go money this entire time. That's basically the position we've put black people in in this country, as taught by CRT. That isn't to say an individual black person can't succeed in America, as they obviously can. But the game is stacked against them. A reading of the laws would suggest systemic racism ended in the 60s, but a CRT perspective of the laws would suggest that systemic racism is still alive in well, even if it isn't technically written down. Now, I'm not a scholar on CRT. I don't have a perfect or even fair understanding of it, but those are likely the types of things that would be discussed in a classroom setting. So it wouldn't be a class. You wouldn't have Critical Race Theory during 3rd bell as a sophomore. It's just that your history classes would actually teach history as it happened rather than sugar coating it and looking back on it with rose tinted glasses. Or that's the way a critical race theorist would put it. As a side note, Robin DiAngelo is an idiot who is actively making race relations worse with her idiotic nonsense that misrepresents CRT and any thoughtful discussion on the impacts of racism in today's America. She is a hack who is getting rich off of preying on companies' desire to appear "woke" and is actively hurting the movement. She does not represent what I believe to be CRT or the beliefs it stands for. I will never apologize for being white and you shouldn't either. White privilege is real, but it is not a white person's fault that they have it. The goal of CRT is not to shame white people, but rather to educate them (and everyone else) on the impacts of racism so that they can fight for racial equality and make this world a better place.
05-17-2021, 02:02 PM
(05-17-2021, 01:03 PM)Crazyjdawg Wrote: 24 hour news cycles, in general, are bad. CNN and MSNBC participate in them just like Fox does. All three generate "clickbait" article titles, topics and opinion pieces for the sole intention of driving traffic to their website and channel. I agree with some of what you said, but then we get into the subject of the Fact Checkers and their bias. I have watched all 3. They seem the same to me. Lot's of lies, misinformation and agendas. 
05-17-2021, 02:29 PM
(05-17-2021, 02:02 PM)Mickeypoo Wrote: I agree with some of what you said, but then we get into the subject of the Fact Checkers and their bias. Yes, but only one of them has had their employer say (paraphrasing) that they are full of shit in court.
"A great democracy has got to be progressive, or it will soon cease to be either great or a democracy..." - TR
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." - FDR 
05-17-2021, 09:07 PM
(05-15-2021, 10:27 AM)Wes Mantooth Wrote: I'm legitmately interested to read some examples. I understand many of the larger talking points that surround the subject (don't necessarily agree with all of them) but I'd like to see them in practice. It's present throughout my course (since it's a perspective), but in one series of lessons, I apply the concept in a very practical exercise by looking at the history of housing policy in Baltimore city over the last 100 years. I mostly use local articles, researchers, and primary documents. The perspective of Critical Race Theory is based on the notion that inequity is built into our social institutions and is less an act of some nefarious individual but rather something that is part of how the machine operates and how we are socialized to perceive the proper function of the machine. We hammer in the history of slavery, reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights movement, so I start with just discussing contemporary policy. Every discussion starts with redlining (there's a great video from the root that covers it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o-yD0wGxAc) because it's critical in understand the struggle of wealth attainment for Black Americans over the last 100 years. Two decades later as our economy is booming, we focus on the migration patterns of the White middle class, specifically looking at Baltimore and using some great maps created by National Geographic that show housing development in Maryland and housing abandonment. Frame this in the conversation of White Flight and examine language from housing covenants for neighborhoods like Rodgers Forge that barred selling homes to Black people. Jump to the practice of blockbusting (White realtors selling homes in all White neighborhoods to Black families at above market price then going to White families and warning them to quickly sell before their value dropped too much and then repeating the process) using Edmondson Village as an example. Compare statistics between housing prices and school rankings today in Edmondson Village to Rodgers Forge (communities built by the same developer at the same time). Ed Orser's book Blockbusting in Baltimore is a great resource for this. Look at how retail and professional services (like doctors) left when the neighborhood went from 99% White to 97% Black in 10 years. Tie it into Urban Renewal using some great resources from the Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/29/the-long-painful-and-repetitive-history-of-how-baltimore-became-baltimore/) and compare redlining maps to urban renewal maps. Consider the percentage of Black people among those who lost their homes to urban renewal (nationally about 70% but as high as 80-90% in Baltimore) and how redlining prevented investments in those areas for decades. This leads to a discussion on the fact that it turned homeowners into renters, further diminishing generational wealth. This ties into a conversation on gentrification, again comparing those maps to redlining maps and again having the conversation on why those areas were cheap and who was more likely to move into newly gentrified areas. D Watkins has a great narrative about this (which I heavily edit ) https://www.salon.com/2015/03/23/black_history_bulldozed_for_another_starbucks_against_the_new_baltimore/ This is just one way you can apply the perspective. A lot of sociology is engaging topics from various perspectives within the discipline. (05-17-2021, 12:25 PM)Wes Mantooth Wrote: I really haven't gotten any examples or an answer about what this actually entails. All I've gathered so far is that Robin Diangelo's program is not representative of CRT. 1. While it may or may not be at the post secondary level, it's a perspective that you would apply in any social studies class 2. If it were, we only require 3 years of social studies, so make it one 4th year social studies class (but again, a perspective so as a sociology teacher, I'd just advocate for sociology). 3. Applied in all secondary level social studies classes 4. 7-9th grade is likely best. The adolescent brain becomes more suited for analytical and abstract discussions. 5. Yes, easily. 6. Reframing US history by looking at how social understanding of race and views prompted policy decisions 7. Yes. 8. State controls curriculum, so state. Teachers need flexibility to make their own lessons, though, and a properly constructed curriculum is accessible to all teachers and students. With regards to #7, here's some of what I say about privilege : Quote:"a set of unearned benefits given to people who fit into a specific social group.” -Sian Ferguson, South African writer I discuss which privileges I may have and encourage students to do the same. Talk about how our lived experiences shape our world view Quote: emphasis on respecting the validity of everyone's perspective while also stating that no one's perspective should challenge anyone else's humanity or dignity. Quote:Cannot truly understand what someone else experiences. Talk about how we can work to dismantle systemic inequity by listening to those affected by things we do not personally experience ![[Image: ulVdgX6.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/ulVdgX6.jpg) 
05-19-2021, 09:00 AM
(05-17-2021, 01:20 PM)Crazyjdawg Wrote: The classic way to explain CRT is by discussing how black people are still affected by slavery and Jim Crow today. You could say "there are currently no laws on the books that are objectively racist" and you'd technically be correct. What CRT would say is the way in which we treat black people in this country is reflected in how the laws of this country are administered. An excellent and trustworthy post. An additional point to the bolded--since the 14th Amendment, laws cannot be written to explicitly power one race over another. But that did not prevent the "separate but equal" principle from informing law for 70 years. While there may be no "objectively racist" laws, in the sense they name a race for harm, segregationists and their descendants have worked very hard to frame laws which do such harm without mention of race. The current push to "secure the vote" would be one example. One can reduce the number of polling places in an "urban" district, for example, without mentioning race at all. And people who object to this can be called "real" racists, because they are making a neutral law into a race issue and thereby "creating divisions." (05-17-2021, 01:20 PM)Crazyjdawg Wrote: Then there is the question of generational wealth. Why is it that black people are, as a race, vastly more poor than white people in this country? A Critical Race Theorist would argue that, for generations, black people were stripped of the ability to own land and, during slavery, were actually controlled and had their labor converted into wealth for their masters rather than themselves. Even after slavery was banned and black people's civil rights were given back, there was still redlining, a practice that prevented black people from getting loans in more affluent areas even when they were qualified for such a loan. This sectioned off the more affluent areas from black people and, some would argue, created "ghettos" as we know them in this country. All of these policies, and their after effects, prevented black people from benefitting from their parents' and grandparents' wealth, thus letting them fall behind more and more as the generations went on. Love the Monopoly example. I would also add that poor schooling and lack of access to higher ed for a long time played a role in reducing/checking Black human capital. Final note: CRT isn't limited to addressing systemic racism in the U.S. The global colonization controlled by Europeans for five centuries was also predicated upon evolving, multiple versions of white supremacy. Understanding this a key to understanding international conflict and power imbalances in the post-colonial era as well as the colonial. U.S immigration policy, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the aftermath of Apartheid in South Africa--all lend themselves to illumination via the concept of "settler colonialism" predicated upon the natural right of White Europeans to indigenous people's lands. (This doesn't mean that only white ever aggressors engage in settler colonialism, though.)
05-19-2021, 09:05 AM
(05-17-2021, 09:07 PM)BmorePat87 Wrote: It's present throughout my course (since it's a perspective), but in one series of lessons, I apply the concept in a very practical exercise by looking at the history of housing policy in Baltimore city over the last 100 years. I mostly use local articles, researchers, and primary documents. Well done. I am curious as to whether parents ever query you as to what you are teaching. Also, do you ever get students who are primed to spot "leftist propaganda"? Seems to me the current battle over CRT in the curriculum is reminiscent of the battle in the '60s and '70s to include black history in high school history texts, which met with considerable resistance, especially in the South. LOL Since Thomas Paine, "the Left" has always tried to make America look bad.
05-19-2021, 11:17 AM
I guess what I find so dangerous about tackling these subjects in the lower levels of the education system is that I see so many adults struggle to properly understand them, or apply them to anything that resembles a healthy dialogue. Many of these adults I'm speaking of are actually collge students or recent grads, who have taken some form of these courses at the highest levels of education. Seeing and knowing this makes me question how we can expect children to somehow fare better.
I'd also so like to know, since we're really getting into a detailed history of this country, if any time is spent on exploring what "white" actually means. Because I think that's incredibly important if you're exploring many of these subjects. I don't think you can use an all-encompassing term based soley on skin color for each and every one of these issues. Their role in in slavery being the biggest example. And I think when discussing "priivilege" it would be benefinicial to examine the differing degrees depending on the example. Here's just a few things I would hope he get discussed: 1.) Some white people owned slaves. This is very important. I see so many people get this wrong (see the first paragraph and me talking about college students/grads). I often hear "Your ancestors..." (black perspectice) or "Our ancestors..." (white perspective) Saying white people owned slaves is akin to saying Asians bombed Pearl Harbor. While factually true, not at all detailed and lacking context. Are students aware when discussing slavery that only a small percentage of white people owned slaves, that some white people fought to free the slaves, and the overwhelming majority of white people immigrated here afterwards? Do they understand the differences in Italian immigrants, Irish, German, Jewish, Russian, ect? Are students made aware that white people have been enslaved? Are they aware that Africans owned slaves? Are they aware that the African Slave Trade made it's way to a number of different places and America was only a small portion of a much larger scale? *Note: None of this is meant to deflect from that the idea that slavery was wrong, or that we shouldn't examine it's stain on this country. But too many people (white and black) somehow manage to screw so much of this up. Again, if adults can't properly understand and digest everything that surrounds this issue then how can we expect children to? 2.) There are differing degrees of "white privilege" or "generational wealth" or things of the sort. The path to success and the ease of it is entirely different depending on when your family immigrated here. This point is very much similar to point #1. You can't just use "white" and stick it in front of something and pretend it's universal for each everything that falls under the topic. Ex: A Russian immigrant, whose family arrived in the US in the 1970's or the 1980's has enitirely different degree of generational wealth than a "white person" whose family came here on the Mayflower. 3.) Do you examine how Asians are able to flourish in a society that is systemically racist, and/or without having white privilege? This seems like it could be important, no? Many first generation Asians (Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Indian) have managed to thrive in a society that has been built with institutional bias. Why is that? Is it "white privilege" or is it "black disfranchisment or exclusion" This portion may be the most controversial, but I think it's important if we're really looking to solve this problems. I also think it's disingenous to pretend to delve into race issues in this country without accounting for each and every race. I struggle with the constant Black-White narrative that dominates much of these conversations. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- As I'm writing this I'm not realizing I'm rambling (I often do that). Hopefully I've made some sense here. I just think hyperfocusing on "black" or "white" can lead to some serious problems. Of course one my read that and come to conclusion that it's just me not wanting to address or account for our past, my "fragility" if you will. But I don't think I'm necessarily wrong either. We're seeing this play out a much larger scale. IMHO race relations have never been worse in my lifetime. It seems as our society has focused more and more on these things the worse things have gotten. I could better support this if I saw a means to an end or improvement. But are things getting better? Are these conversations helping or hurting? PS Please don't think I'm ignoring things like being followed in the store or being pulled over, or things of the sort or that because of this I have no understanding of the concept of priviege. We can talk about those things too if you like, I didn't want to write a thesis and only brought up the examples I did to question how much are we discussing everything that surround these issues.
05-19-2021, 12:10 PM
Children should be taught that racial superiority is wrong. Schools definitely need to teach about the evils of Jim Crow laws and how they can be harmful to society. We can celebrate progress and know it still needs to get better at the same time.
05-19-2021, 01:57 PM
(05-19-2021, 11:17 AM)Wes Mantooth Wrote: I guess what I find so dangerous about tackling these subjects in the lower levels of the education system is that I see so many adults struggle to properly understand them, or apply them to anything that resembles a healthy dialogue. Many of these adults I'm speaking of are actually collge students or recent grads, who have taken some form of these courses at the highest levels of education. Seeing and knowing this makes me question how we can expect children to somehow fare better. A super post with good, serious questions. I only have time for a couple answers at the moment. Regarding "whiteness"--yes, there is a considerable literature on that subject. One cannot discuss "blackness" without it. In terms of racial history, you cannot alter one concept without altering the other. I am too lazy to get into this in detail at the moment, but Wikipedia has a good overview of "whiteness studies," which is an aspect of CRT. I don't want to leave it all up to them though, so I have a reading recommendation: Noel Ignatiev's How the Irish Became White (1995). It was a PhD dissertation on the assimilation of the Irish to Anglo society in Ante-bellum U.S. Good because it makes clear how "white" isn't just a skin color, but an evolving/changing social definition linked to structures of domination. https://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics-dp-1138127779/dp/1138127779/ref=mt_other?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid= ("Mantooth" is an Irish name, isn't it? lol) Might toss Carol Anderson's White Rage in there as well: https://www.amazon.com/White-Rage-Unspoken-Racial-Divide/dp/1632864134/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=white+rage&qid=1621443150&s=books&sr=1-1 You mentioned that "some" white people owned slaves. So did "some" black people in the U.S. One of the first recorded slave owners in VA was a black man. As far as Africans owning slaves, sure. I have foregrounded some differences between "African" and American slave owning practices here, post # 55, http://thebengalsboard.com/Thread-Black-National-Anthem?pid=881446&highlight=olaudah#pid881446. I also discuss how some Africans deal with their own heritage of slave owning. Whites don't have a monopoly on slave owning, in terms of world history. They did have a monopoly on it in the U.S. for a long time though, and that history continues to shape our legal institutions. So that is why we study "white supremacy" not "Blacks did it too!" You have astutely recognized what is likely to happen if a group of 19 year olds take a college course on this subject. Some of them are certainly going to start throwing terms like "white privilege" and "white fragility" in people's faces--people who haven't had a course in CRT and suppose all that means is that whites who had nothing to do with slavery and don't have any animus against blacks are still somehow "racist" in the raw Klan form. Tucker and Hannity will be on hand to help them explain why all white people are being blamed by "the left." I myself have had some conversations along this line with young folks. If they can engage civilly, I tend to move the terrain of discussion into international territory, where we, as Americans, all benefit from a global north/south inequality--including U.S. blacks. First World privilege. We need to describe structures of domination to dismantle them. That requires analysis, not blaming individuals who were born into conditions and "privileges" they did not choose and mostly don't "see." As far as the danger of "tackling" these subjects. Yes, there is some. It has appeared in U.S. schools before though, when US history text verged from the southern perspective on the Civil War and began taking Black History seriously, post 1965. How it is managed depends upon well trained teachers (see Bpat above, #28). I'm guessing.
05-19-2021, 02:13 PM
(05-19-2021, 09:05 AM)Dill Wrote: Well done. I am curious as to whether parents ever query you as to what you are teaching. I haven't heard anything. We're a fairly liberal school within a fairly liberal county within a fairly liberal state, though there are some conservative pockets. I've taught government for a decade now, so I know how to present issues in a way that does not come off as stating something as a truth but rather presenting dueling arguments and offering evidence to empower students to make their own decision. For environmental policy, I presented an article discussing a Trump plan to reduce coal ash liner regulations and it mentioned the impact on businesses versus the environment. I provided a pro EPA cartoon and an anti EPA cartoon. Students were challenged to either defend the Trump administration's move or defend the protests from environmental groups, using evidence from the article and one of the cartoons. They also had to emphasize the cost-benefit of whichever option they defended. I'm open about political ideology in my electives (psych and sociology) in that I share more personal beliefs with regards to the discipline though I'm not partisan in doing so. It's also important to stress that opposing views on politics shouldn't be treated with intolerance unless that opposing view point is one that believes a class of people should be treated as less than human. I had a student this year in sociology who I had taught before. She told me that she may leave class if we talk about the police because her parents are police and she got into a lot of arguments with classmates over the summer. I reassured her that nothing in my curriculum was negative towards the police and that I understand if she needed to. Early on I had students add images to a collage that discussed US culture and one added "ACAB". I made sure to address this and I pointed to the fact that the acronym was originally a skinhead mantra. I used it as a lesson on why you should be more educated on things you repeat and the way it demonizes a whole class of people. The student I mentioned earlier ended up leaving class anything anything involving race was mentioned, but she never complained about the content.
05-19-2021, 03:11 PM
(05-19-2021, 11:17 AM)Wes Mantooth Wrote: I guess what I find so dangerous about tackling these subjects in the lower levels of the education system is that I see so many adults struggle to properly understand them, or apply them to anything that resembles a healthy dialogue. Many of these adults I'm speaking of are actually collge students or recent grads, who have taken some form of these courses at the highest levels of education. Seeing and knowing this makes me question how we can expect children to somehow fare better. With regards to #1, just focusing on slavery, any half decent curriculum would note that not every single white person in the colonies or US was a slaveholder and that Africans participated in the process. It may go into what percent of the transatlantic slave trade made its way to the US. But why these facts? Should we also examine the concept of slavery in Africa and the Middle East to the race-based chattel slavery of the US? Should be note the way that race, a social concept, was employed to provide pseudoscientific reasoning to legally treat Black slaves as less than people? We could confront the myth of Irish slaves and examine the difference in indentured servitude and chattel slavery. If we want to point things out to detract from the impact of slavery in the US, we're looking at those things for the wrong reason and without relevant context. For #2, I am going to include the point you made about whiteness in #1. I absolutely mention the evolving concept of "White" because it's a critical component in understanding how race was employed to reinforce social and political power for the ruling class. It's important to note how fluid the concept of race is and why the concept had to evolve. I also note that privilege isn't just "White privilege" (as I mentioned above). At the same time, having a conversation on the weight of each privilege and intersectionality becomes important too. For #3, There's a lot to unpack there. Particularly over the last year, I think many Asians would take issue with a rosy picture of the state of Asians in US society, given the wave of violence. There's also the issue with generalizing how institutionalized racism can manifest or who it impacts. Going back to the concept of race, 200+ years of justifying chattel slavery on the basis of race established a value and belief in our culture that Black people are less than human, and that was reinforced even after slavery ended. Asian Americans face their own forms of racism, but US culture lacked 200+ years of treating Asians as property and not people by the time the first Asian immigrants came in large numbers. When we first starting tracking the population of Asians living in the US, they comprised of 0.1% of the population of the states. That proportion would remain roughly the same for decades as we enacted immigration laws that stopped Asian immigration and established pro European quotas that would remain in effect until after WWII. Even in 1960 when we saw a change in immigration law and people began to use the "model minority" argument about Asian Americans to pushback against the Civil Rights movement, Asian Americans were still just half a percent of the population. I think there's merit to the conversation and I think unpacking it provides a lot of practice in utilizing the perspective of critical race theory. I just have to ask, to what end are we trying to have the conversation? I would also add that issues regarding race are not worse. We live in a time with the most protections against race based discrimination. We're also just having conversations that we've never had before and I think that worries some people.
05-19-2021, 05:20 PM
(05-19-2021, 03:11 PM)BmorePat87 Wrote: With regards to #1, just focusing on slavery, any half decent curriculum would note that not every single white person in the colonies or US was a slaveholder and that Africans participated in the process. It may go into what percent of the transatlantic slave trade made its way to the US. I'm trying to wrap up for the day here at work, but real quickly I just wanted to address the above. 1.) The reason for those facts is because they seem to be lost in a lot of these conversations that we see play out. Regardless of the teaching, this speaks to the learning or understanding of it. I've seen, time and time again, people speak in a way that makes me question whether or not they're aware or are capable of understanding these things. I don't think these facts can or should be glossed over. There's nothing accurate or constructive about assuming a white person's ancestors enslaved anyone simple because of their skin tone. 2.) Not at all trying to detract from anything. I just want to make sure people understand the entire picture, and don't engage in bad faith arguments. i.e. If you're white you're ancestors owned slaves, it can be assumed all white people have benefited equally or evenly from their privilege, all white people are colonizers, etc. 3.) I would hope it would be that we're trying to understand all of the complexities that surround these discussions, and that there are credible distinctions among any large group of people, race and religion included. 4.) Let be more specific: Race relations. We've seen this play out for the last decade. To each their own, but I think there's plenty of evidence to support this. 5.) Completely agree. It would be nice if we could focus on this a bit more as a means to have people feel empowered and capable of success. If we really hammer this home then maybe equal opportunity becomes more equal outcome.
05-27-2021, 05:47 PM
(05-19-2021, 11:17 AM)Wes Mantooth Wrote: 1.) Some white people owned slaves. (05-19-2021, 05:20 PM)Wes Mantooth Wrote: I don't think these facts can or should be glossed over. There's nothing accurate or constructive about assuming a white person's ancestors enslaved anyone simple because of their skin tone. I've been thinking more about the centrality of slave OWNING in some of your questions and comments about CRT, Wes. They've got me wondering 1) have you somehow gotten the impression that teaching CRT is largely about reminding/teaching Americans that white people owned slaves in the US? 2) Have you encountered personally or seen on tv or read about exchanges in which some (Black) people referred so collectively to the ancestors of white people? Or have you seen reporting claiming that is what CRT is about? I ask because I don't see anything "critical" or "theoretical" in such back and forth exchanges. I don't see any CRT-informed pedagogy sanctioning such. A lot of regular-old garden-variety American history already taught about slavery before the advent of CRT. Even school kids. And without upsetting many people. So one must ask "what's new?" about this CRT perspective. If "slavery" were the primary focus/issue, then "the whole" would certainly mean teaching the history of slavery from ancient to modern times, a practice found on every continent, in every civilization. But from a CRT perspective, the focus is on how racial distinction is deployed to create and enforce power differentials. Not all slavery, everywhere, has been race-based. And whites are not situated atop every race-based power differential. (E.g. one thinks of Japanese imperialism up to 1945, and the Koreas today.) And all such power differentials don't simply present as "slavery." CRT focuses on the racial inflection of law and institutions, and the prevailing but unspoken norms that guide legislation and legal interpretation. So while only a few Whites may have owned slaves in the ante-bellum U.S., CRT interest goes beyond numbers to the legal infrastructure maintained by people who were largely not slave owners (think of the Dredd Scott ruling, which defined escaped slaves as "property" and bound ALL states to return them). And to the economic infrastructure as well--the Northern factories that purchased Southern cotton, the fact that the center of slave-trade shipping (before it was banned) was a Northern state: Rhode Island. It examines the cost of all this today for White as well as Black people. It examines how all those White immigrants to the U.S. after the Civil War learned to position themselves with the rest of the White majority in a political and economic system which advantaged White people on a number of levels, federal subsidy being not the least of these. If they didn't know about white supremacy before, they learned it when they got here. It examines how European powers imposed racial hierarchies everywhere in their subjugation of all the world's continents, during the 19th century, and how in the 20th, the U.S. went to war, with a segregated military, against world powers based upon ideologies of racial supremacy. It examines how, after that great war, efforts to use government to benefit all Americans were bent away from racial minorities, and eventually from whites too, as "big government" enforcement of civil rights threatened racial hierarchy. So CRT is really not about pointing to those white kids in the back of the classroom and letting everyone know "what their ancestors did to your ancestors." If understanding how race still operates through institutions as a discriminator is the point, then just reminding people only some whites actually owned slaves, or that some arrived on boats after the war and so couldn't have owned any, won't help us understand how, today, achievement/wealth gaps persist and millions of Americans want to wall out brown immigrants and some states are still much less economically developed than others. It won't help us understand how anxiety about race can take political form without mentioning "race."
05-27-2021, 06:20 PM
I considered posting this under my "Doublethink Doubledown" thread, since it appears to implicate another "Big Lie" of sorts. But maybe not. Perhaps there are people out their saying and pushing claims I am not aware of.
But if not, then this is just an attempt to use state power to block critical history--and critical thinking. Understanding the push to ban CRT might help us better understand what its object is, what viewpoint or practice it was designed to critique. Tennessee bans teaching critical race theory in schools https://apnews.com/article/tennessee-racial-injustice-race-and-ethnicity-religion-education-9366bceabf309557811eab645c8dad13 “Impartial discussion of controversial aspects of history” is still permitted under the law, and limits on teacher speech won’t apply when a teacher is responding to a student’s question or referring to a historic figure or group. However, the penalty for a transgression is steep: The state education commissioner could withhold funds from any school found to be in violation. While most of the majority-white GOP House and Senate caucuses supported the effort, Black Democratic lawmakers warned that it will make teachers fearful about telling students anything about how race and racism have shaped the nation’s history. House Republicans introduce bill to ban teaching of critical race theory in Ohio https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2021/05/25/ohio-republicans-introduce-bill-ban-teaching-critical-race-theory/7432289002/ Nearly a dozen states want to ban critical race theory in schools https://www.cbsnews.com/news/critical-race-theory-state-bans/ Earlier this month, Idaho Governor Brad Little became the first Republican governor to sign into law a bill that restricts educators from teaching a concept called critical race theory. And more could follow: Nearly a dozen states have introduced similar Republican-backed bills that would direct what students can and cannot be taught about the role of slavery in American history and the ongoing effects of racism in the U.S. today. But critics say the legislation isn't aimed at what children are learning in the classroom. Idaho's law prohibits educators from teaching "individuals, by virtue of sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin, are inherently responsible for actions committed in the past by other members of the same sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin." A proposal in Rhode Island would prevent schools from teaching that Rhode Island or the United States "is fundamentally racist or sexist." ........................................................................................................................................................................................... I believe I have heard public figures/celebrities claim the US is "fundamentally racist," but I cannot recall that they were critical race theorists. CRT folks have said things like "racism is embedded in our institutions," but this is not a claim that people are "inherently racist," or that they are "inherently responsible" for acts committed in the past. CRT is founded on the notion that race is a "construct," not something can be "inherently" in any "race." Surely anyone who has been reading posts in this thread can see that these laws are based on a false perception of the methods, objects and goals of CRT. CRT "divides" America in the sense that it examines already existing, data-supported divisions in public light. A "less-divisive" approach would leave those power relation issues--who benefits from them and who does not--in the dark. It sounds to me that a number of state legislators and their constituents have "heard about" CRT from sources which may not be trustworthy, but nevertheless retain great credibility. Ingraham: Schools want 'complete and total control' with American taxpayer-funded 'fiefdoms of radicalism' https://www.foxnews.com/media/ingraham-schools-want-complete-and-total-control-with-american-taxpayer-funded-fiefdoms-of-radicalism
05-28-2021, 11:35 AM
(05-27-2021, 05:47 PM)Dill Wrote: It examines how all those White immigrants to the U.S. after the Civil War learned to position themselves with the rest of the White majority in a political and economic system which advantaged White people on a number of levels, federal subsidy being not the least of these. If they didn't know about white supremacy before, they learned it when they got here. 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.
05-28-2021, 12:10 PM
(05-27-2021, 05:47 PM)Dill Wrote: I've been thinking more about the centrality of slave OWNING in some of your questions and comments about CRT, Wes. 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. |
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