Well, this was bound to happen
You can't be racist if you just ban people from ever thinking about it
You can't be racist if you just ban people from ever thinking about it
Idaho and Critical Race Theory
- Thread starter Trunkage
- Start date
I don't know much about critical race theory but I know the Idaho Legislature has no idea
Eh, what are they going to say? "We are doing this because we are racist" doesn't sound as good as "We are doing this because we aren't racist".
I'm sure all the usual Escapist free speech ultras will be along in just a moment to condemn this.
The standard response to the Escapist free speech ultras is generally along the lines of "you're free to talk about whatever you want, but you're not entitled to a platform or audience."
Seems to apply here.
...right up until you get the government involved, yeah. We got an amendment specifically pertaining to that. If Saint Whiteschad Private School banned any mention of institutional racism in its curriculum, that's a different matter entirely.
This is just Cultural Marxism fear-mongering
Put bluntly, the idea that critical race theory is even in any way "controversial" is laughable unless you literally only talk to white people (and yet somehow never stop to ask why that is).
Like, if you've ever had the experience of realising you are being treated differently from someone because of their race, or if like me you grew up in an environment where a certain amount of racism was tolerated as somehow politically neutral and then later had to realise it wasn't, then the vast majority of critical race theory is just going to be blindingly obvious for you. If anything, the point of critical race theory is to try and explain those experiences to people who will never have to encounter them because they have only hung out with white people.
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You think all non-white people are critical theory experts?
You don't know what critical race theory is. It's a lot dumber than you think. You ever heard things like "you can't be racist against white people" or "black people can't be racist"? That's critical race theory. People who define racism as "power + prejudice", rather than just the racial prejudice alone, are using critical race theory.
Critical theory is the field of study where societal concepts are analyzed specifically for how they are made to benefit those with power. Critical race theory in the context of modern America is thus analyzing any facet of society from the perspective of how it makes white people more powerful, and then frequently going so far as to declare that the purpose of that facet. This is, at best, an interesting thought experiment, and maybe students might benefit from briefly considering things that way. The issue is that critical race theory isn't treated as an interesting thought experiment, it is treated as a comprehensive world view, and that leads to patently idiotic conclusions. I don't know if you saw this controversy at the time, but those are the sorts of things critical race theory dead-ends into. Things like hard work, rational thinking, being on time, and planning for the future are societally valued traits, and society is controlled by white people, so by critical race theory, those things are aspects of whiteness. Hopefully you see the issue here, and can imagine how the legislators might see this as contrary to their existing anti-discrimination policies in education. You can't be teaching kids that their capacity for bigotry is dependent on their skin color or that hard work is just there to make white people more powerful.
I'm sorry, what?
People who have problems with CRT include John McWhorter, Coleman Hughs, Melissa Chen, and Glenn Loury (in the US), Kemi Badenock, Katherine Branislaigh (in the UK), Ayan Hirsi Ali (the Netherlands), and Waleed Aly and Rita Panhani in Aus (also, while not necessarily opposed to it, Tim Soutphommasane and Stan Grant have been on the fence about the idea of CRT and identity politics). None of these people would count as "white" by any definition.
Also, if white people were the only ones objecting to CRT, considering that CRT puts all white people in the "oppressor" category,* of course people are going to object to that. Same way if I said "all men are sexists" or "all Muslims are terrorists" or "all Catholics are pedophiles," people from those groups would object, and they'd have every right to do so.
*There's a "technically" there, in that even by some CRT proponents, the framework can be used for other countries (so for instance, all Han Chinese would be racist), but it's a technicality in that I'm not aware of CRT ever actually being used outside the US, UK, and recently, Aus (latest scandal is where an assembly was held, all male students were required to stand up, and were given a lecture as to how they were oppressors by virtue of their inherent traits).
That isn't the basis of CRT. If CRT was simply "people may be treated differently based on skin colour," then few people would find that controversial. CRT is much, MUCH wider than that, as TsStorm has laid out.
That said, in case anyone's wondering, I don't believe CRT should be banned, because I'd rather it be debated via the marketplace of ideas - intelligent design for example, where Nye made the correct choice IMO in debating Ham.
Prejudice plus power
"Prejudice plus power" is a redefinition of words like "racism"[1][2] and "sexism",[3] taking on the following form:
R=P+P is a well-established concept. It may not have come from CRT, but it's certainly under the same paradigm.
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I think critical race theory is mostly wrong and full of bad ideas and assumptions.
That does not make the complaints that spawned it wrong. But, well, there are reason why it never got much traction outside of the US
and to some extend the UK. Even after more than 40 years it is hardly mainstream in social science.
That does not make the complaints that spawned it wrong. But, well, there are reason why it never got much traction outside of the US
and to some extend the UK. Even after more than 40 years it is hardly mainstream in social science.
This is the quote:
"You don't know what critical race theory is. It's a lot dumber than you think. You ever heard things like "you can't be racist against white people" or "black people can't be racist"? That's critical race theory. People who define racism as "power + prejudice", rather than just the racial prejudice alone, are using critical race theory."
You claimed that this was a lie. I responded by pointing out that it wasn't a lie - "R = P + P" is an established concept, even if it's a fringe one. I'm not sure how you can argue that it isn't. The only possible example I can see is you claiming that "R = P + P" developed separately from CRT. Which may be true, I don't know. But that aside, I don't know what that quote is saying that can be counted as wrong.
It's got traction in Aus as well. I can't comment too much on the UK, but CRT is certainly something that people are aware of, even if not in name.
To clarify, I certainly agree that the complaints CRT was formulated to address are valid, but CRT is heavilly flawed. Even if we agree with its core thesis, it offers no rebuttal to exceptions to the thesis. For instance, the UK. Compared to white British, Indians do better economically, Bangladeshis do worse (on average) economically. Do you know why? I mean, I know the answer (or at least Trevor Phillips gave the answer), but it's not an answer that CRT would ever come to, because both of these groups would be put in the "oppressed" camp.
I could get into more of CRT's falacious reasoning, but other people have done it for me, and more eloquently. So by all means, expose people to the topic, but at least allow it to be questioned. Back in high school, we had a brief element where we had to study both evolution and intelligent design (it wasn't called ID, but it WAS ID), and we all knew (I assume) it was bullshit, but it's a conclusion we were allowed to reach ourselves.
This is what makes it so difficult to explain the problems of CRT to people who have heard little more than the name of the theory. There are racial issues in the world. Criticisms of racial problems are usually valid. People see things like this and think "they're banning teaching kids about racism", and that's really not what's going on. There are other perspectives to discuss race and racism (that are infinitely more helpful and valid).
I think the majority (not all, it's never going to be all) non-white people have experiences for which critical race theory is the best explanation, and will have developed an understanding of how race works in the society they live in, because it affects them directly. After all, critical race theory is ultimately a bunch of non-white academics trying to make sense of those experiences.
People have this idea that critical theory is complex and abstract, which I'm saying is not really true. When critical theory is complicated and hard to read, that's because it's drawing on the western philosophical tradition of criticism which is often very specific about language. What is actually being said through critical theory, however, is generally quite mundane to anyone who has actually experienced society in a similar way to the author.
The queer kids who show up every time Judith Butler gives a public lecture generally can't read her books and understand every word, because her books assume that the reader is immersed in the same academic tradition that she is. However, they understand intimately what the point is and how it relates to their own lives, and it's intuitively and immediately accessible to them because they've had similar experiences.
Actually, this goes double for critical race theory, because critical race theorists often (again, not always) aren't very interested in the western philosophical tradition of critique, and often attempt to communicate in a way that is intentionally accessible to people who are not trained in that tradition.
Let me give you a very general warning here.
Normally, the stuff we talk about on this forum is just pop politics stuff, the kind of stuff which gets thrown back and forth by journalists and commentators.
This is not one of those times. You are walking into a world of experienced academics, people with a lifetime of reading and thinking and writing on a level that you have certainly never had the time to develop. Any thought that you think you have had, any tiny notion which has crossed your brain, has almost certainly been dissected to death by people far, far more knowledgeable than you. I can absolutely guarantee to you, for example, that noone working in critical race theory has ever claimed that racism should result in universal and equal educational disadvantage for all minorities, because that kind of statement gets shredded in academia.
Now, by all means, express and share your own opinion, but just be aware that you are firmly standing atop mount stupid, and anyone with even a tiny bit more knowledge than you can see that. It does no harm to tread with a little humility.
Holy shit, what?
WHO TAUGHT YOU THIS
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CRT is an offshot of critical theory and carries nearly all of its baggage. And its relation with critical legal studies certainly does not help either.
CRT has also this weird storytelling thing going on which is on a quite fundamental level anti-science.
CRT espouses separatism and cultural nationalism. As if that ever produces anything positive.
CRT uses standpoint epistemology. Which is stupid and dangerous. And also kind of contradictory to its own goal.
CRT is overly concerned with white vs non-white. Which is a really really bad fit for basically everywhere outside the US.
CRT has also this weird storytelling thing going on which is on a quite fundamental level anti-science.
CRT espouses separatism and cultural nationalism. As if that ever produces anything positive.
CRT uses standpoint epistemology. Which is stupid and dangerous. And also kind of contradictory to its own goal.
CRT is overly concerned with white vs non-white. Which is a really really bad fit for basically everywhere outside the US.