What is the Critical Race Theory?

[Dill]

(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.

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?

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.