What is the Critical Race Theory?

[BmorePat87]

(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?

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.
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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.

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.