Critical Race Theory, Whiteness, and Liberalism
This post is about Critical Race Theory, some of its defining principles, and how it comes into conflict with liberalism, which entails a rights based approach to addressing inequality. I am of the opinion that both meritocracy and a strong sense of liberty, along with inalienable rights, are important, but I also think that liberalism has failed in some capacities; however, power must be kept in check, and liberalism is the only game in town; some liberties, especially freedom of speech, and freedom of the press, should not be relinquished, even if it is believed to be for the greater good.
For instance, I remember a (former) facebook friend of mine posted a meme claiming that BLM was sending people of color in buses to go riot in (Minneapolis?). The post was hidden behind a button with a disclaimer that it was fake news. This is an insidious trend. Do we really want to give the CEO’s and the boards of directors of corporations the okay to dictate what is fake news? Certainly not, and this is one of the few instances in which a slippery slope argument is actually warranted: not only are people on the fringe right being censored, but also many leftists: https://nypost.com/2021/01/22/twitter-suspends-antifa-accounts-with-over-71k-followers/
Furthermore, CRT asserts that race-conscious policies need to be pursued to both combat white supremacy and to create more equality of opportunity. This can take the form of discriminatory policies meant to correct inequalities atomized by systemic racism - or numerical racial quotas. That sounds pretty reasonable, and I think that those are the right tools to combat racial injustice at the moment, but I think CRT crosses the line in ascribing special value to the property of whiteness. This is both racist and idiotic, and flies in the face of liberalism and the property of merit. This doesn’t claim that many whites have erroneous and harmful beliefs about people of color that can be attacked effectively, but rather that whites are an inherently privileged class that needs to be torn down, as their is no other option when you define your oppressors as objects of your oppression. This move is an obvious miscalculation, and does no good for anyone; we should generally see each person for who they are, not what category they fall into.
For instance, I remember a (former) facebook friend of mine posted a meme claiming that BLM was sending people of color in buses to go riot in (Minneapolis?). The post was hidden behind a button with a disclaimer that it was fake news. This is an insidious trend. Do we really want to give the CEO’s and the boards of directors of corporations the okay to dictate what is fake news? Certainly not, and this is one of the few instances in which a slippery slope argument is actually warranted: not only are people on the fringe right being censored, but also many leftists: https://nypost.com/2021/01/22/twitter-suspends-antifa-accounts-with-over-71k-followers/
Furthermore, CRT asserts that race-conscious policies need to be pursued to both combat white supremacy and to create more equality of opportunity. This can take the form of discriminatory policies meant to correct inequalities atomized by systemic racism - or numerical racial quotas. That sounds pretty reasonable, and I think that those are the right tools to combat racial injustice at the moment, but I think CRT crosses the line in ascribing special value to the property of whiteness. This is both racist and idiotic, and flies in the face of liberalism and the property of merit. This doesn’t claim that many whites have erroneous and harmful beliefs about people of color that can be attacked effectively, but rather that whites are an inherently privileged class that needs to be torn down, as their is no other option when you define your oppressors as objects of your oppression. This move is an obvious miscalculation, and does no good for anyone; we should generally see each person for who they are, not what category they fall into.
Comments (171)
I agree, but we do not have maximum opportunity, and it doesn't look like equal rights is going to get us there any time soon.
CRT only atm. I'll have to do some more reading.
I’m with you, but I fear CRT is the direct descendant of the old racism rather than its opposition. The idea that wider American society constitutes “white supremacy”, as if no other hand but a white one could influence it, change it, or benefit from it, is not only manifestly false debilitating to those who believe it. And the notion of viewing the world through a “racial lens”, which is common to all racists, is frightening given that such a pseudoscientific framework has led to injustice and atrocity, as it must.
CRT is dangerous because it holds a special status as being academic, which gives it an air of credibility. After a few decades since its conception it now finds itself in the highest echelons of politics and business and entertainment.
The only way to effectively challenge CRT is to either show how it deviates from valuable
ideas in Critical theory, or critique the foundational
ideas of critical theory. The right wing lumps CRT together with Marxism , Critical theory and post-modernism. Their attempts to attack it in this sweeping way will fail , I believe, because we’re moving into a post-marxist era where the best concepts from Marx, Critical theory and post-modernism are usurping Enlightenment liberalism as the new ground of political
thought.
Thanks for the reply.
Quoting NOS4A2
I get that it might seem like CRT is repackaged racism, but many of the race-conscious policies that are being pushed for are being pushed to combat inequality, not increase it, and if we need to have, for example, quotas, to achieve maximum equality of opportunity, I'm fine with that; some inequality in the short term might lead to a more equitable outcome in the long. And I think that proponents of CRT don't think only white people have the power, but rather that they have a disproportionate share of it due to pervasive racism embedded in our institutions and such.
You have to admit though - the whole whiteness being a valuable property thing is very janky. And I think that enlightenment liberalism can coexist with the best concepts of the academic schools of thought you mention - although I am not that well read on them, I must admit.
You can not throw out the good because you want the perfect. Even with all the insanity going on economically in the country, 20% of the AA community is doing quite well and the Asians that have emigrated to the U.S. are doing incredibly well. Opportunity still exists. You have to work hard to take advantage of it.
Quoting synthesis
But taking strides toward eliminating racial inequality does not constitute throwing out the good; no one suffers unduly from activism, quotas, or racially conscious policies. The people of color who are doing well won't do worse because another black congresswoman is elected. And yes, opportunity exists, but obviously we do not have true equality of opportunity, and if CRT is the way to it, so be it - it just needs to be kept in check.
CRT is crazy. It is Maoist cultural revolution kind of stuff.
You have to have a system based on merit, otherwise, you will be killing your economy and your society. AAs need to get their communities together and do what the Asians did, work their asses off. That's what it takes to succeed. 20% of the AA community already has accomplished this!
You will never have perfect anything, but where is it better? The key is to keep moving forward. We need to root-out the corruption in the system, as that will make the greatest difference (by providing more opportunity).
Has it ever occurred to you that many people of color are hard-working yet are not doing well financially because of external disadvantages? Maybe from a long history of differential treatment?
Quoting synthesis
Sounds like you enjoy soundbites almost as much as belittling people of color whom you deem unsuccessful.
"Race-conscious policies", "white supremacy" and "equality" seem to be rather nebulous concepts that are used to promote dubious political agendas and create division in society. It looks like Marxist "class-wars" have progressed to "culture-wars" and "race-wars".
And as far as I am aware, these movements tend to be exploited by foreign powers like China to destabilize Western governments.
Aren’t race-conscious policies and quotas a form of exclusionary, institutional racism? It seems to me if we want to rid the system of embedded racism we should first start by refusing to institute it.
For instance, at the moment, white farmers are suing the federal government of the US because they are excluded from debt relief programs due to the fact of their skin color, and by no other measure. I think this is wrong for the same reason it is wrong to exclude any other race. How can it be said that this combats inequality?
I agree, it is a bit nebulous, and has the potential to be commandeered or misused, but I don't see liberalism solving the issues of racial inequality plaguing our society, although I understand, like I say in the OP, that certain rights cannot be relinquished, and that a respect for some enlightenment values is paramount. For example, to quote Chomsky: there are precisely two positions on free speech: you are either for it or against it. Any reasonable progressive is a proponent of free speech/free press while also recognizing that there is racial inequality and that fake news probably contributes to it. As to whether or not it is part of a Chinese plot: I think that the conditions of US academia are wholly sufficient for producing and propagating CRT, with all of its flaws.
They are, but a proponent of CRT would probably argue that it is the only way to correct existing institutional racism, so it is justified.
Quoting NOS4A2
That is obviously stupid. I certainly wouldn't advocate for that. But then again I'm not exactly a proponent of CRT. I just think it has some useful applications.
I appreciate your nuanced view. And who knows? Maybe all this stuff will turn out well in the end. If so I will undoubtedly hang my head in shame for opposing it. But I think it will get worse before it gets better.
Thanks for participating in the thread. You seem pretty reasonable to me. :up:
Well, then what explains all the successful AAs and Asians and Indians as well as all the poor white people?
[quote="ToothyMaw;533338"CRT is crazy. It is Maoist cultural revolution kind of stuff.
— synthesis
Sounds like you enjoy soundbites almost as much as belittling people of color whom you deem unsuccessful.[/quote]
You can do better than that. I am belittling nobody as I have been around a lot of very successful people of all colors.
I get that people have some disadvantages, but you have to do what you can to overcome them. You do that with solid ethics, strong families, and supportive communities. There is no doubt in my mind that the AA community will come into its own within the next couple of generations.
I'm a little confused; how is that relevant? I'm asking you to recognize that people of color - even the supposedly unsuccessful ones - often times are hard workers that are struggling with the effects of a history of oppression. Just because this is a trend doesn't mean that it is the case for all of them.
Quoting synthesis
Another statement typically squawked with repetition. The success of some doesn't mean that there are not serious disadvantages that cannot be merely overcome with wholesome family values, a respect for authority, and hard work. Or whatever you want to call it; its all the same.
Quoting synthesis
And they will have benefited little from attitudes like yours.
So, you would advocate communism instead of liberalism?
And how do you define "racial inequality"?
How is that relevant? You are suggesting that race is THE major factor in success. I am pointing out that the most successful groups in this country are people of color, AND the most of the poorest are white.
How does that work with your theory?
Talk of rights in liberal theory since Rawls has moved on to talk of opportunity and access. The discussion of a supposed freedom to post lies is worthy of further consideration. But pivotal here is the failure to recognise white privilege, together with the the failure to present any alternative politic.
But it's all parochial stuff; 'merican middle-class white male dominance.
What little real philosophical interest there will be here is in the comparison of argument structures between opposing sides.
So, are far-left organizations and foreign powers involved in this CRT project or not?
BLM leader Patrice Cullors has openly endorsed the policies of Socialist leaders like Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong and has described herself and other BLM organisers as “trained Marxists”.
I think she admits that in her book as well, "When They Call You A Terrorist".
Activists at BLM demonstrations have been seen carrying signs with Black Nationalist and Socialist slogans such as “Smash capitalism!” and “fight for Socialism!”
The cyber activities of the Chinese Communist Party division called "United Front Work Department" and its involvement in Western civil movements are well known.
BLM is apparently financially supported by the Chinese Progressive Association:
Trained Marxist' Black Lives Matter co-founder is being funded by group linked to the Chinese Communist Party
Quite frankly it sounds like you skimmed the OP. I literally acknowledge that white supremacy is a thing by claiming that CRT is partially right imo. And I provided an example of censorship even if it wasn't of people on the right. Furthermore, I wasn't laying out a grand scheme for some sort of all-encompassing politic but rather just providing a pretty mild criticism and attempting to start a conversation. You contribute so little for having such a high opinion of yourself.
I'll have to read into it.
Funny, isn't it, how "literally" has come to mean its antonym.
Okay, my bad. Now do you want to address something or are you going to offer another quibble (which is all you seem to do)?
Now that you have been bequeathed the title of debater this should be easy to demolish me.
And there you go, dodging out of any meaningful conversation. Have fun!
I'm not a great fan of critical theory. I think it works to display power structures and inequity - an important activity - but I don't see it as much use in providing solutions.
So back to liberalism. Given that equity of outcome is fraught, what about working towards equity of opportunity? Might we agree that that would be worthy of consideration?
There are numerous problems with CRT, and civil-rights advocacy and agitation too:
a) Race-consciousness is presumably at the core of the problem, so I do not see how increasing race consciousness would help.
b) Inequality and inequity is baked into the existing society, and the structure of the existing society will take several decades to change significantly. Adults who are economically and culturally disadvantaged, (and the older they are, the more this is true) are going to stay disadvantaged. They can not rewind their lives any more than anyone else can, to take advantage of circumstances which would have helped them 10, 20, 30, or 40 years ago.
c) Children who are reared in culturally disadvantaged environments are going to suffer from that disadvantage. By the time a new-born is 12, the changes of undoing a disadvantaged cultural background are small. For example, children who grow up in families where they learn a small fraction of the vocabulary that the majority of children learn, who hear a lot of 'command' and 'negative' expression do less well in school from the start, and by 6th grade, by which time learning to read has shifted to reading to learn, they are unable to perform well.
Obtaining "equality of opportunity" (whatever that means) is likely to take 1 or 2 generations, minimum.
One reads stats in publications that say things like "only 1 out of 30 nuclear physicists is African American". Unless there are a few hundred African American nuclear physicists just waiting for their first break, the percentage of AA nuclear physicists isn't going to change soon--no matter what. A post-doc in physics needs at least 30 years, birth to PhD+, with academic success all along the way. A lot of other top professions take similar periods of time. There certainly some AA undergraduates who could become post docs much sooner, but... not a lot.
African Americans (and other minorities) have far less housing and financial equity than middle class whites. Middle class whites have -- as a group -- been accumulating their advantage for around 85 years (since the mid-1930s). The educational attainment of middle-class whites has helped them accumulate even more equity. A relatively poor African American with white-middle-class economic aspirations has a very steep education / cash deficit to overcome.
What is true for poor culturally disadvantaged blacks is largely true for poor culturally disadvantaged whites, too. The white male 25 or 35 year old high school dropout has poor prospects, white or not. Ditto for a Latinx or Asians. Even at 25, it is probably too late (in practical terms) to change him into an upwardly mobile college-educated success story. So... poor whites and poor black are probably going to stay that way for quite some time--under the best of circumstances.
I had, up to 2 weeks ago, thought that "antifa" was some sort of 21st century coinage by the left. Nope.
http://bostonreview.net/race-politics/david-theo-goldberg-war-critical-race-theory
I'm not holding my breath though.
Also liberalism sucks, so if it's claims are indeed being disputed, good.
It is usually unwise to take people's claims at face value. Did you know that I am a "trained Marxist" as well? Sort of. $1 and my training certificate will not get me a cup of coffee from a vending machine. Cullors et al are probably well-meaning opportunists. BLM strikes me as a pretty ineffectual organization, as far as actually making changes.
I don't think CRT is clashing with liberalism and I don't understand your argument for saying it does.
We already know that equal and fair treatment of people is insufficient for combatting inequality. The US is seriously lagging behind in this understanding, mostly because of the prevailing attitudes towards capitalism and the culture around capitalism. "Success is something you have to earn, it will not be handed to you". People who overcome the odds are held up as examples of what the average citizen could be if they worked hard enough, the systemic issues are covered up by unrealistic advertisements of meritocracy and the value of hard work.
I can guess through your debate with synthesis that you more or less agree with this, so now I really don't understand how CRT and liberalism are clashing for you.
Freedom of speech is under attack from the media, social media and social justice but I think we can separate these things from CRT. The media is either politically biased or profit-motivated or both, it's simply more profitable to portray a police killing as racist, the circumstances don't seem to matter. Really being biased either way could be profit-motivated. Social media is powerful, it allows for organisation on unprecedented levels between like-minded civilians and that's true of much more serious situations than social justice. Events like the Arab spring come to mind, even the authoritarian governments of the middle east couldn't control the situation, they had to resort to fight or flight. Liberalism actually protects social media users from censorship, even if their free speech effectively makes it more difficult for others to speak their minds but I think this problem is overexaggerated often for political purposes. Social media companies are starting to become more regulated but their freedom has also led to controversies.
I don't think CRT should be judged for what it says, we should judge what people say we should do about it. Does whiteness confer special privileges in the US? Yeah, I'm sure it does. But what impact should that have on the overall narrative? For white or non-white people? And what is the appropriate response? That's where the trouble starts, I don't think we should be getting annoyed about CRT for describing the situation in terms of race, it's reasonable given the context.
If we go by what Cullors says, their ultimate goal is to replace white people with blacks, men with women and capitalism with communism. So, I think "opportunists" is the correct definition, but I'm less sure about "well-meaning".
As regards "trained Marxists", they come in many different shapes and forms. Some believe in Marxism because they've come to accept its teachings without asking too many questions. Others use Marxism as an excuse to engage in acts of violence, etc. There are big differences between groups, both in terms of ideology and practical activism. But Marxism has a long history of providing "legitimacy" to terrorist groups. Take the Irish Republican Army (IRA) for example.
Great response. I see liberalism and CRT as clashing in a meaningful way when one essentially defines a whole class of people as material objects of their oppression to be torn down instead of using racially conscious policies to address inequity. Also: attacking whiteness, as if it were a thing that could be separated from and decontextualized from the practices and viewpoints of actual white people, seems to go against the (perhaps vaunted) principle of merit that defines liberalism; while white supremacy exists and confers myriad advantages to whites, many of them really have worked hard to get to where they are and this success might be partially explained in terms of culture and individual motivation to succeed.
Quoting Judaka
Some people don't seem to understand that strong dissent is only allowed by the very thing they despise and fight against. I don't see how anyone can disagree with this.
Quoting Judaka
I think that there is a difference between defining the problem in terms of race and defining a class of people as problematic based on belonging to a category. Unless they are billionaires or war criminals; that's okay.
I would love to do more reading but I'm a peasant with no access to scholarly articles.
Of course. We should work towards that without a doubt, and if supposedly discriminatory policies in favor of people of color is the way to do it, I say go ahead.
But do you read Zizek?
I have two eyes and a heart, don't I
Good point. This seems to be so that they can shift the goalposts every time that they gain ground or are shown up.
Quoting Maw
Another good point. That's essentially what I was thinking; mere equality before the law can lead to inequitable outcomes due to the accumulation and lopsided application of power; the "emancipated class" will inevitably oppress the disadvantaged. That being said, something like freedom of speech is an overwhelming good; we must have certain liberties, even if these liberties do not strictly promote equity. And if we do have issues with the inequity being propagated under the cover of individualism, we should first focus on the propaganda targeting leftism, which can only be addressed with more speech.
Quoting Maw
Well said. I think most of us agree on that; that sounds like the way forward.
Quoting Maw
I'll have to look that up.
Quoting ToothyMaw
Quoting ToothyMaw
This is a little ambiguous, is it really "white people" that CRT is trying to tear down? This is seemingly a big premise in your argument but can you substantiate it and go into greater detail on why you think this is the case?
Quoting ToothyMaw
The acknowledgement of racism goes against the principle of merit? As I said, it is not just about what CRT says, it's about what we do with this information. Should we accuse every successful white person of simply having everything handed to them? No, we can acknowledge they've worked hard to get there, that they are good at what they do while acknowledging that racism exists as something with meaningful consequences.
Overall, I still don't see how liberalism and CRT clash in your view.
There is a thing called "whiteness studies" related to CRS which seeks to offer an objective definition of "whiteness" that can be decontextualized and hypostatized like I mention in the OP. This feeds into "White Fragility", (https://libjournal.uncg.edu/ijcp/article/viewFile/249/116) which is defined by Di Angelo as "a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves" on the part of a white person. Di Angelo goes on to say that this property, belonging to whites, serves to restore racial equilibrium to those who have been triggered.
That pretty much sounds like an indictment of white people to me: they are so entitled that any skepticism is indicative of (white) fragility. But then again, according to Di Angelo, by making this argument I'm just taking defensive moves to restore racial equilibrium; I'm just a triggered white man.
Quoting Judaka
Yeah, I think you are right. You express a nuanced but common sense view here.
I think that Di Angelo has a point, although, I take issue with her phrasing, putting that aside, I think that many people do feel threatened by the idea of racism, they don't know how to cope with being the benefactor of a racist society.
This kind of analysis dances on a tightrope, between using the exact same logic of real racism, to pin behaviours, mentalities, attitudes and so on to a race, ones which may be honest assessments of reality but nonetheless invoke a kind of emotional response. I genuinely think that there's no difference between this kind of characterisation of white people and many of the racist epithets which constitute and perpetuate real racism. On the other hand, it makes sense that within a racist society, the experiences and circumstances for different races create attitudes that need to be discussed.
I still don't see how even "white fragility" or "white privilege" interacts with liberalism, thus, I don't know what the topic is anymore. Personally, I think these kinds of concepts are fine, she is trying to describe reality, I don't think she's trying to tear down white people, even if white fragility was acknowledged by all, I don't see how that would tear down white people, it would just become something to "lookout for". It's not much different than the ideas of implicit bias or internalised racism or whatever.
Di Angelo is probably a huge reason as to why she sees so much white fragility, she's provocative, both in her ideas and her language, I don't know if it's intentional but you couldn't have done a better job at writing this book in a way that angered people more than it did. We can critique her in many ways but the "white race is being threatened!" response is probably the worst. I hope you can see why it sounds bad without it having to be explained.
Quoting Apollodorus
I was just being polite, giving them the benefit of the doubt about their well-meaningless. Their goals, as you state them, sound like some demented political cell. From what I have seen, their demonstrations amount to: A) a very narrow focus on police-on-black death B) a zillion signs and graffiti saying 'black lives matter' and C) marches where demonstrators yell over and over, "say his [her] name, George Floyd" repeat ad nauseam.
The single issue focus has had distorting effects on the discussion of violence and black deaths. Black on black shootings ought to be a far bigger issue within any justice group.
My own Marxist training was in a group branched off from the Socialist Labor Party, started by Daniel D. Leon in 1890 in the United States. SLP held that socialists in a country with democratic machinery (such as the US has) must use that machinery to strengthen unions, elect socialists to public office, educate the pubic, and eventually convert the economy from capitalist to socialist. Fat Chance!
Despite its failures (about as failed as every other socialist party) it was a group of decent people. We all worked quite hard for 20-odd years to educate the public about socialism (mostly here in Minneapolis and St Paul) without any lasting success.
People who want to replace whites with blacks or men with women aren't marxists to start with.
Give me the old-time religion of SNIC, NAACP, CORE, Martin Luther King et al. Of course, they like the socialist leaders of the past are mostly dead now, by one means or another. They were more specifically goal oriented. And maybe it was easier to be more goal oriented them with so many goals to accomplish.
I don't know what, exactly, BLM followers want--they and their various advocates, enthusiasts, marchers, and would-be beneficiaries.
About - Black Lives Matter
I don't think that you give them enough credit. Though somewhat vague, which I think has more to do with being inclusive than anything else, there is a clear push for either police reform or prison abolition and a general anti-racist imperative. They only came together recently as a relatively decentralized network and don't have too concrete of goals because of that. Sure, the protests have been going on for years, but, they haven't received the degree of attention and support that they have until just recently. They're not like what Zizek said of certain riots in that they were an act of "pure protest".
Quoting ToothyMaw
I think that you fail to take into consideration the situational context in which the posts were labelled as "fake news". Both Donald Trump and Matt Gaetz had made explicit comments which nearly warranted the hunting of people within the loosely affiliated set of anti-Fascist activists that is generally referred to as "Antifa". The articles had incited a moral panic and there were armed right-wing militias who were preparing to defend the suburbs from an ostensive Antifa invasion. Had they not labelled the articles as such, the situation could have gotten out of hand.
Obviously, there's an inherent danger to a company deciding what information is deemed veritable, especially one like Facebook, but this is actually one of the few instances where I think that they adequately responded to a dangerous cult phenomenon that occurred on their platform. They didn't ban the articles or their users; they just added the disclaimer that they were "fake news". Though such disclaimers could be used as a form of censorship, they can always be checked by the First Amendment. It seems unlikely to me that a company in the West would be willing to cope with a lawsuit for violating the First Amendment. Then again, though, only so unlikely. I don't know. Perhaps the danger you foresee is real, but that the example you have chosen isn't quite to the point? When it comes to cult phenomenons, you just have to consider the situational context.
Which I assume is indeed the situation with a great majority of people - which begs the question: why is it the case that every second political dabbler now has an opinion on critical race theory? Honest to God I don't think 95% of the people who have uttered the phrase have read a single word of CRT scholarship outside it's invocation in some Heritage Foundation scare piece. There's definitely a conversation to be had about the accessibility of scholarship to the wider populace, but for the most part the conversation around it is Red Scare discourse transposed into a different color. Boogymen under the bed kinda thing.
I think that ToothyMaw has just titled his thread as such to sound more academic on a forum that they believe is as such. While they have clearly confused black supremacism with Critical Race Theory, when Maw engaged them in conversation, they did seem to be willing to take what he said into consideration. I get that it's vexing for people to offer opinions on things like this when they know next to nothing about them, but giving them a basic clarification as to what it is and referring them to an article or two about it is just the sort of thing to change their misguided opinions.
Well, okay.
To also clarify, it's not really this forum that I have a certain set of qualms with; it's just the socio-political climate that it is reflective of. Both Liberal and left-wing academia all too often all too willing to readily dismiss just about anyone, usually via some form of cynical mockery or another when they could easily change their mind with just a simple conversation. As I don't plan on ritually slaying my political opponents in any indefinite and indeterminate future, at least, that is what I have decided to posit. I guess that I just keep challenging the status quo here as an experiment.
Half of the time, though, what's really going on is that I'm trying to figure out how to shout well enough into the void of The Philosophy Forum so as to level a dispute with a set of rather arcane Anarchists who call themselves Communists primarily in the U.K. an France, best, perhaps, described as half of the readership of Ill Will, at least, to the best of my knowledge, so to as abolish the form of arbitration that they have secured over the Anarchist movement, thereby granting me my position as a Pacifist within it, when I'll probably just continue to claim that I have become a-political, anyways.
All of which is to say that it's nothing to you and is just errata.
Anyways, you are correct about the general discourse centered around CRT. That ToothyMaw has confused it as such, I think, is evidence of that.
Correct. Black-on-black deaths are definitely something to look into without making it a "white problem". Incidentally, in the UK these groups highlight the fact that black men are "four times more likely to get killed than white men". But what remains unsaid is that the killers in these cases tend to be blacks. The overall effect is that issues of this type tend to create division in society and this is used by foreign powers (China, Iran, etc.) to destabilize Western governments.
The US Socialist Labor Party was an offshoot of Marx and Engels' London-based International. As in Europe, socialism in the US later came under the influence of Fabian Socialism as promoted by the London Fabian Society which also founded the UK Labour Party. The Fabians were supported by the big bankers and industrialists of the day (Carnegie, the Rockefellers and others) and preached a form of non-revolutionary, gradualist socialism that was convenient to capitalist interests that had the same monopolistic aims as the Fabians, i.e., the concentration of financial, economic and political power in the hands of elite groups.
The Fabians' infiltration and takeover of socialist groups from political parties to union organizations and other institutions and movements on both sides of the Atlantic has enabled corporate interests to maintain their control over economy, politics and other aspects of public life.
In the UK, for example, the whole current leadership of the Labour Party consists of Fabian Society members. Through the think tanks, research universities and other institutions they have founded, the Fabians have the resources to suppress any other socialist groups which are often driven into the arms of extremists creating problems that are then "solved" by means of policies suggested by Fabian think tanks and government advisory groups. The people as such, are increasingly excluded from the political process. This is why in spite of superficial appearances, Western society is becoming less and less democratic.
And yes, I do agree that a lot of socialists are decent people. Unfortunately, they are up against forces about which they can do very little, if they are even aware of their existence.
High income, educated Whites are the only group for which CRT seems to have any positive benefit in framing policy prescriptions.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/anti-racist-messaging-is-failing-with-voters-so-why-cant-liberals-quit-it-opinion/ar-BB1gxbxn?li=BBnbfcL
As the 2018 Hidden Tribes paper found, the "Woke" are the whitest single political group next to explicit White nationalists, beating out conservative Evangelicals in their monolithic demographics.
So, what's going on politically? Why is an unpopular framework dominating one party?
It's probably a mix of things. For one, CRT activists' use of cancel and harassment campaigns give them extra leverage. You don't need facts to win an argument. When the 1618 Project was called out by academics for cherry picking and misrepresenting colonial era newspaper archives, defenders could simply point out that too many of the critics were old White men, and that history departments are inheritally enablers of racism.
The framework of CRT itself also allows adherents to write off criticisms about electability. They are, after all, fighting a deontological battle, the forces of good versus the forces of evil. White opponents are exhibiting fragility and racism if they oppose CRT. Black opponents suffer from internalized racism. People who don't respond positively to racial framing are variously racist or sick with internalization. You can add in high income White progressives' measurable bias against White people (a weird, seldom seen form on in group negative bias), since it never hurts to have negative views of a demographic group when shooting yourself in the foot with them electorally.
And here's the important issue. This a problem of class and income inequality, which goes beyond race. Yet better to put the emphasis on the racial side of this and let the poor white people, who often are called white trash in the US, know that they enjoy white privilege. Divide et impera, I say.
I think it's dangerous to reduce disparities to class. In a whole host of terms, Blacks tend to fare worse than their poorer White peers, and many institutions were set up with explicit racist intent.
That said, you probably have a point. Wealthy Whites embrace of CRT probably has something to do with:
A. It only discussing redistribution to a select group, thus reducing the burden they would have to face in paying for said redistribution.
B. CRT's unpopularity. You can take a radical stand on the side of goodness knowing full well you aren't at risk of having to follow through on the radical promises. And indeed, we we wealthy Whites jumping ship and moving in cases where they actually win victories on these fronts.
While class is important, as Timothy points out, poor whites do tend to fair better than poor people of color. This is largely due to programs that, while not explicitly racist, tend to leave out poor people of color. For instance, this article points out a disparity between treatment of people of color and whites with regards to hunger relief: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/what-white-privilege-looks-when-youre-poor/ As the author says, it isn't like anyone said that the hunger of people of color is less important, but it is indicative of a problematic trend nevertheless. That being said, white privilege doesn't really confer substantial benefits to dirt poor white people. This article contains a good bit of subtlety and regard for this fact while still acknowledging myriad privileges: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/explaining-white-privilege-to-a-broke-white-person_b_5269255
It's telling that a lot of leftists who indeed are leftists do oppose the theory, unlike who seems to think that it's just a red scare issue while the theory itself is just fine. Yet It's basically a flawed theory which basically starts explains everything with slavery. The major idea I guess is that racism is a systemic feature of social structure, hence you have a lot of explaining how racist the society is. Sure, the US does have it's past and the present is an continuation from the past, but this viewpoint doesn't seem to notice that a) things and views change and b) there can be other explanatory factors too.
And what a better way for things to stay the same than by putting on a pedestal a flawed theory. But let's take an example of what this theory is like by reviewing one critical race theorist, Cheryl I. Harris just as an example.
Perhaps it's telling that Cheryl I. Harris in her article "Whiteness as Property" written in 1993 starts with the experiences of her grandmother in Chicago in the 30's. Not with the experiences of herself, not of her mother, but grandmother (and written quarter of a Century ago). She writes:
”Slavery as a system of property facilitated the merger of white identity and property. Because the system of slavery was contingent on and conflated with racial identity, it became crucial to be ”white”, to be identified as white, to have the property of being white. Whiteness was the charasteristic, the attribute, the property of free human being…”
And thus, she makes the deduction:
”Whiteness fits the broad historical concept of property by classical theorists”.
So property rights are whiteness. And then she concludes:
”Whiteness as property has carried and produced a heavy legacy. It is a ghost that has haunted the political and legal domains for in which claims for justice have been inadequately addressed for far too long. Only rarely declaring it’s presence, it has warped efforts to remediate racial exploitation. It has blinded society to the systems of domination that work against so many by retaining an unvarying focus on the vestiges of systemic racialized privilege which subordinates those perceived as a particularized few – the Others.”
Perhaps it's similar to a feminist giving as proof of the dominance of the patriarchy that people referred to things like "The rights of man". Yet for an outsider the obvious question would be if the rights of a man or a woman are really different. They have been earlier, but not so much now. And a major question is if these findings are taken out of the US context and other countries which are racially homogenous, does one find similar issues between poor people and rich people? Are there example of the system being biased for the more affluent and the owning class? Surely there is, even if slavery doesn't exist.
But if whipping a horse has worked before and brought success, why stop whipping it if suddenly has become "quite passive and inert", yet you still win?
I did some more thinking, considered your comments and, apart from some racially conscious policies, I don't believe that CRS and liberalism clash. In fact, I don't even think it is that much of a threat to anybody except insofar as it is detrimental to the cause of social justice by framing the issue almost purely in terms of race and by being a little too aggressive. I still maintain that white fragility is a concept fraught with issues (not all whites take defensive moves to avoid racial considerations; whiteness cannot be as homogeneous as it is claimed to be). I also still maintain that hypostatizing whiteness and attributing it to all whites will just reinforce the attitude I originally expressed in the OP; no one wants to think that their very identity is an artifact of someone else's oppression, even if white privilege exists.
It is more so that she is saying that whiteness is a property possessed by whites much like property rights are possessed by anybody I think, which is even worse.
Children for more affluent families tend to fair better than children from poor one's.
Quoting ToothyMaw
27 million went to an area that is has more whites than US average? Hmm.
I'd think far better examples would be to compare Indian reservations to other communities, as there historical reasons for the disparities are even more obvious. What is true in the US is that povetry & minorities go hand in hand in the US. Yet it's a complex issue that straight forward conclusion can hide real factors.
Huh? I don't believe I said that. The state of the current discourse around CRT is definitely a red (brown and black?) scare issue, but that CRT is itself somehow unimpeachable or something is not at all what I said. And of course 'leftists oppose the theory' - not even those counted among CRT scholars all agree with each other. But of course, the portrayal of CRT as 'a' theory - and not a whole set of discussions with various positions staked out by various participants motivated by similar themes - is just the kind of silly thing that attests to the utterly garbage state of discourse around it.
And it should be noted that your reading of the quotes you provide is quite wrong. Harris's point - which is literally in the title of the article you're quoting from - is that whiteness counts as a form of property, not that 'property rights are whiteness' - which doesn't mean anything at all and doesn't even make grammatical sense. This may or may not be a good way to think about it, but gosh, at least get the minimal content of the claim grammatically correct, let alone substantially so.
Moreoever, the fact that you had to quote an article from 1993 - nearly 30 years ago at this point - is exactly testament to the fact that the panic around CRT is precisely a fantasy in search for a target of relevance. Digging in whatever obscure archive to justify it's own need for validation.
If race (or class, or gender, etc.) is the only unit of analysis you concern yourself with, then of course variances there will explain all of world history.
The problem for these types of theories is that slavery, extremely high rates of violence, human sacrifice, and cannibalism show up in every human habitat if you look back far enough.
Arguments tend to hinge on Europeans becoming the heirs to wealthy countries with high levels of technological development and low levels of violence due to their oppressing other peoples and extracting wealth from abroad. However, the development of thought that would lead to the scientific revolution pre-dates European colonization. The Spanish and Ottoman Empires continued to colonize more lands and take more slaves as they declined, while northern Europe, without a legacy of colonies, became the most developed region. It's essentially an ahistorical history whose purpose is moralizing, not looking to explain the causes of phenomenon, and so its policy prescriptions seemed doomed to faliure from lack of understanding.
The whole concept of Whiteness itself has to start around the 1930s, as the prior peak in US immigration levels two decades earlier, overwhelmingly from Europe, produced a massive backlash against immigration, and by far and away the harshest restrictions on immigration the US ever had. The immigrant share of the population of the US plunged after the 1910s. A strong White national identity didn't develop until a full generation later. The consolidation of identity certainly was helped by the shared challenges of the Depression and WWII, along with the equality promoted by the New Deal, but also followed intentional actions to develop a shared national identity and to get citizens to shed their old ethnic identities.
However, probably the largest factor was the dramatic cut off of immigration under US law. There is ample evidence that immigrants impose externalities, congestion effects essentially, on the rates at which other immigrants assimilate to their new host countries and gain parity in economic status. The implication being that one of the best things the US could do right now to solve racial divisions is to dramatically curtail immigration, since it has reached and will soon exceed prior peaks (1:8 residents being foreign born and 1:4 either being foreign born or having foreign born parents). Since immigration necissarily increases inequality due to the fact that most immigrants are coming from developing countries, and since demand for unskilled labor is plummeting, this would also help to assuage class divisions, and yet CRT generally posits that restrictions on immigration are definitionally racist.
The quote you cite is emblematic of another problem, which is the trend towards labeling everything that correlates with racial disparities as racist. The problem is that some of the beaurocratic systems, designed to treat people equally in all cases, which are essential to high functioning states, can also help produce feedback loops of racial inequality. This does not mean those essential systems need to be dismantled however. At its worst, CRT advocates for the neopatromonial politics common to African nations, where elected leaders main role is to represent their own ethnic group above all else, and bring resources back to them, which is a relationship that is the hallmark of failing states, not high functioning ones.
For example, now standardized tests are racist, where once they were a method for excluding bias in university or job selection. How do we know they are racist? Because there is a test score gap.
And yet, if questions on a test are loaded with racial bias, as with the famous "regatta" SAT question, we can identify those with statistical analysis. Indeed, test do employ these methods, and remove from scoring those questions whose answer rate has too strong a correlation with race, and subjects those to further examination for identifying potential sources of bias. You'd do a lot better looking at how schools are funded than trying to get rid of standardized tests, but I suppose they are low hanging fruit. Indeed, it's ironic since standardized tests are a great way to identify talented individuals who might be preforming well because they are in poor school enviornments, it's exactly the sort of thing you don't want to get rid of.
Oh yes, the state of Maine is far more multicultural than Finland. And indeed, few countries are so homogenous as my country. Yet I do see the same problems even here and that's what I find so interesting. I have lived a small but crucial time in the US, so where the country is going does interest me. Yet even here, in a Nordic welfare state, coming from a more affluent family or even more affluent region does have an effect. It just seems that once race is involved, there's not much else to be seen.
And of course: there are the proponents of critical race theory here, of course.
That's a good example of how complex policy issues in education are. Yet simple answers with a simple focus on any issue are easy to grasp, the reality behind it is more difficult.
I wasn't making a straightforward conclusion but rather noting that it is indeed more complex than just divide and conquer on the part of the rich; obviously class and race both matter.
Know ye, then, that it appears CRT initially developed in law schools, of all places, where its focus was, unsurprisingly, on the legal system. It was claimed that racism was a feature of the system and perpetuated racial inequality. And it came to pass that the same was soon said to be the case in political and social systems and institutions. Soon sexism and other isms were joined with racism and it was claimed that what was the case with racism was also the case with them as well. The dread word "systemic" was used in describing the scope of each objectionable ism.
As I'm a lawyer of vast experience and unsurpassed ability, it comes as no surprise to me to learn there are people who believe that racism is a feature of our legal system. I think it clear that it's a feature of that system, notwithstanding the laws prohibiting it. That's because I think people may be racist even where the law is not (just as they may be sexist), and am aware that the legal system includes law enforcement and application in practice, not merely in theory, and in fact includes most of our nation/society--especially politics.
CRT has become one of the issues involved in the dreary and tedious culture wars that beset our Great Republic. Recently, the State of Idaho prohibited the teaching of CRT (and Socialism and Marxism for good measure) in its public schools, thereby continuing the American tradition of regulating what is taught and learned by our youth. It isn't clear to me that there are many Americans who know what CRT, Socialism or Marxism consist of, but all of us probably live in fear that our children will learn things we don't know or at least don't approve of; a haunting fear indeed.
I think the practical problem with CRT and other such theories purporting to define or describe immensely complicated societies and their history (the theoretical problem with them is their absolutism) are the zealots who preach them and interpret them, and the zealots who oppose them. Those who think racism an aberration are foolish; those who think (for example) that racism has been a peculiarly American trait or phenomenon because a privateer intercepted a Portuguese ship and brought about 20 enslaved Africans to Virginia in 1619 are guilty of poor thinking, if nothing else.
The preaching zealots make a more lively debate than the dreary timid professional, who confuses the audience with multiple viewpoints of the issue at hand.
And in our times, the preaching zealots get more hits, be they likes or thumbs down doesn't matter.
I agree, absolutism with respect to anything other than maybe a few axioms will always result in an imperfect picture of reality - and perhaps some ambiguity is okay. I think it is also worth noting that the interpretations and preachings of zealots so often give way to megalomania once they achieve any measure of success in propagating their views.
I'm neither dreary nor timid, but am professional, in that I'm confident, skillful and assured. But I have my flaws. For example, when I think I've been slighted, I cannot forget it. It's a weakness of mine.
I wondered why we got along so famously! Now we have it.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
The north county is indeed deep in the heart of barbarian white supremacy. So it may be a good thing, then, that the U of I lies so far north of the center of power, and it's bitch, BSU. An isolated outpost has some benefit to freedom of thought. Though, presenting a danger of the insurgency of truth, these "Vandals" can face the prospect of a withering on the vine should no troops with their gold be sent out as reinforcement, or for pillaging. Better the loot go to BSU, where the elite can keep an eye on them, and gather in the stadiums to watch their well fed gladiators with a thumb on the scale.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
:100: A fear there might be something short of zeal for our way of thinking.
I think it's more a fear that children will be taught something inconsistent with what must be taught for them to believe that their parents, their parents' lives, their parents' beliefs and their parents' country are admirable--are, in fact, right. Anything which could be construed as questioning that righteousness is viewed with resentment if not outright alarm. It's in some respects a fear that parental authority will be undermined earlier than it should be (if it should be at all).
Most of all, though, we're defensive about racism. We know (or should know) our sad history on matters of race, and like to think that we've taken care of the problem. It's comforting also to believe that it never was as bad as all that, except perhaps during the time when slavery was accepted and tolerated. It's claimed that there was and is nothing special about racism here, and so we see recourse to references to slavery existing throughout history and from place to place. When those accused of racism are singled out, the claim is made that a kind of racism supports the accusation of racism. It shouldn't be surprising that there are such reactions when accusations made are broad, extreme and absolute, I suppose, but neither the accusations nor the reaction to them achieves any resolution of the problem, which persists though perhaps in a less obvious form.
The SLP in the United States may have been an effective organization at one time, but it degenerated into bureaucratic in-fighting and ossification (so I have been told). "Effective organization" is a good thing if the cause is good. The New Union Party, the organization I was involved in, may or may not have been effective. At one time I thought it was, but now that just about everyone involved in the organization is dead or has drifted away, I think it was not. It was too staid with a rigid stale style that fell flat with the public.
Quoting Apollodorus
I would need to study up on this before accepting the alleged "infiltration and takeover of socialist groups from political parties to union organizations and other institutions and movements". It doesn't seem like corporate interests have needed help to maintain their control over everything. As somebody said, "the labor movement didn't die of natural causes; it was murdered" -- the assassins being the corporations, congress, and state legislatures. The law in the US is heavily stacked against unions.
I'm pretty sure the BLM movement has been infiltrated by the government--just based on past Federal behavior.
Thanks for the clarification. Jumping the gun is one of my flaws, too.
Though I find for the vague support for Eugenics à la Julian Huxley on the part of the Fabians to be highly suspect, I think that a comparison between they and BLM would be more than unfair.
The Counter Intelligence Program, COINTELPRO, is well known, well documented, and widely discussed. I think that most activists assume for such activities to continue today. That any radical organization, however, is likely to have been, to some degree, infiltrated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation can not be cited as evidence of that any organization is somehow complicit in some form of police collaboration. Within the Anarchist movement, for instance, it is all too common for any initiative whatsoever to become wholly dysfunctional because of a generalized paranoia concerning law enforcement. We know that police informants and agent provocateur do exist. That is no reason, however, to let the entire social ecology of the movement as a whole to become completely untenable because of the nihilating fears of that this or that person is a "cop". I, thankfully, didn't grow up in the Bronx and am glad to have more common sense than what some people there all too often mistake for wisdom.
I should hope that you don't take the above paragraph as a dig, as I am really just using this opportunity to address a qualm that I have with Anarchism in general.
I am sure that the police monitor some BLM activists. The decentralized organization, however, has not gone under in any way, shape, or form.
An aside:
There's an Anarchist that I know whom I actually hold in fairly high regard who uses a certain idiom to tip people off about that any given situation is somehow precarious, being, "Have you seen Sketch around?" Upon reflecting upon this phrase, though it did have the effect of convincing me to leave the party that I was at, I felt that its use bore both a certain irony and certain humor. Asking someone this has the effect of, first, convincing them that they are accusing you of being an undercover cop, second, convincing you that they are an undercover cop, and ultimately leaving you wondering as to just who the undercover cop is. It's an odd kind of language game that has the effect of generating a certain cult pathology concerning undercover cops.
There's another phrase that is like this that people say before smoking a bowl of weed, which is, "Would you like to pipe down a bit?" Asking a person this before toking up has the effect of convincing them that they have laced the bowl with some sort of other narcotic or another so as to conscript them within an act of provocation. To my estimation, environmentalist Anarchists only use such idioms so as to force themselves to liberate themselves from any number of paranoid fears created because of the rare cases of infiltration by law enforcement and a kind of autopoietic fanaticism which relates to either the prison abolition movement or Anarchist Black Cross. They basically only say them to figure out as to why it is that they shouldn't. In a way, though I doubt that anyone else here has spent enough time in a dancehall to relate to this, it's kind of like a certain joke that the band, Twin Peaks, was making by describing themselves as having created "chi-chi rock and roll" on their bandcamp. Get it? There's just not a reason for you to listen to it. It's all very absurd and kind of funny to me.
An epilogue:
Within any given form of either political or lifestyle Illegalism, someone is willing to invoke Wilhelm Reich so as to suggest that whoever it is that has generated this or that cult pathology is probably the person responsible for it. People within such circles only really say such things so that whatever form of Illegalism it is that they have consigned to remains both to their benefit and liking. As wittingly saying them for this purpose has the effect of creating a social environment that even they believe could be better, especially considering that what now goes on at the back of everyone's mind is that they have been orchestrating the general cause of more or less everyone's plights, which they may even, to some degree, be willing to admit, though there is a world outside of any given social scene, they often find themselves within the certain predicament of that coming clean is what can ameliorate their social situation, but will ultimately have the effect of isolating them from the social scene that they helped to create, aside from the loss of social capital that they have taken such great care to cultivate. Thus, the endless cycle of death and rebirth of the often mythic police spies. I have tried to explain this well, but you may just have have to have had put kind of a lot of thought into the pointed claims that hipsters make about certain bands by now to come to a full understanding of it.
Being said, law enforcement agencies do do whatever it is that people assume that they do. It's not like we live in a world without police. I only bring this up because I think that a person should go to Art School is a better life choice than attempting to land themselves within the next New York City Underground is just simply good advice that not enough people are willing to take. All that any of this should take is just a little bit of common sense. Anyways, I will stop rambling now and even thank you for reading this if you do. There's wisdom, if you will, to it, despite that a person should've probably abandoned every social scene of which it was required to put this much thought into figuring out how to circumnavigate. It's wisdom nonetheless, though.
Coda:
All of which is to say nothing of that diffuse paranoia is nothing but all to likely to get people to be willing to give others information as they figure, when this is supposed to be an omnipresent occurrence, why shouldn't they just clear their name? What Thomas Pynchon said of paranoiacs just rings true. Hopefully someone on the internet will find this and explain it to the rest of the world better than I ever possibly could. Maybe they already have? Who knows?
:100:
Do they? That seems to be the kind of vaguely plausible claim people like to use when they have no actual knowledge on the matter.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
That's just a list of claims connected by a theme, but not an actual argument. The exact causes for Europe's leap ahead of the global average are a topic of some debate. What's pretty clear is that once that lead was established, much of Europe's wealth in subsequent centuries was the result of intentionally exploitative policies.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Because Whiteness could not have existed outside the US?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
"Probably" as in "I assume it is".
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
How would that contribute to solving racial divisions between people whose grandparents were already born in the US, but with different skin colours?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Perhaps CRT isn't interested in merely "assuaging" divisions in some way? After all racism isn't primarily wrong because it's not a solution to some given problem, but because it is morally wrong.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Labeling something as racist is not the same as calling for it to be dismantled.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I wonder what made you chose Africa, of all places, for this example.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Well how else would we know? The only way equality can be measured is by comparing outcomes. Everything else is a value judgement. There has to be some reason there is a test score gap. Prima facie, racism is a possible one.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
That's precisely the same kind of analysis that leads to the argument that the entire standardized test is racist - the test results (supposedly) have too strong a correlation with race. What should then follow is an examination for identifying potential sources for that bias.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
So someone came to a wrong conclusion regarding the source of the problem. What's the relation with CRT here? No doubt many wrong things are said by proponents of CRT, but that doesn't necessarily tell me anything about the theoretical framework itself.
How come no one has been fulminating about free speech an' all and the whatever amendment that guarantees it, or is it the well armed militia that does that, I get so confused?
I think that public school teachers should not be free to teach whatever they want (I'm thinking mostly intelligent design), but yes, teachers should be allowed to teach some basic things about communication, open-mindedness, and cultural awareness imo. That seems reasonable. And yeah, hardly anyone is going to fight for that on the grounds of free speech. Also I realize now that my OP is a little cringeworthy - CRS doesn't really conflict with liberalism or free speech all that much.
Actually, one proponent of CRT, Gloria Ladson-Billings, outlines a number of components related to race that add up together to create the inequality we see between people of color and whites. It's pretty solid stuff, I think. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Ladson-Billings She calls it an educational debt. Furthermore, she doesn't merely look at test scores. So it is kind of a straw man to say that proponents of CRT simply explain the issues with the educational system as a disparity in test scores. She does look at funding - and much more.
Indeed. One man's freedom of speech is another man's indoctrination of radicalism and fundamentalism. Always good to look at who espouses which virtues on what occasion, and particularly at whose expense. But you don't really need to try very hard to teach that the playing field isn't level, it's just that when you have the slope advantage, you like to feel its your talent rather than the slope. Boo, therefore, to CRT and talk of privilege.
[quote= Bob Dylan]I'm liberal to a degree...[/quote]
This becomes less important the more you educate yourself I think; while, like I said, maybe we shouldn't allow public school teachers free reign to teach their ideologies, at the university level in the US it is largely just assumed that students can deal with potentially radical or unpleasant ideas and viewpoints, and sift through them, finding personal, and perhaps even objective, truths where they might. At that level free speech is paramount. Which is why I think Cornell West should have been tenured at Harvard. The guy is a hero.
Well, I'm equally surprised that you haven't heard of it as you seem to belong to the more enlightened type of socialist (the type I normally have long and interesting conversations with, by the way).
But if you want I can give you a few links to sources that explain everything in detail. I would highly recommend Fabian Freeway: High Road to Socialism in the U S A by R. Martin
Obviously, Martin's analysis is a critical one but still extremely instructive IMO, with loads of references and sources. But if you prefer a more sympathetic but equally revealing study written by a (Fabian) socialist you can try H. W. Laidler, History of Socialism. Unfortunately, I can't find a link for Laidler right now but I've got a long list of sources, mostly authored by Fabian and other socialist historians, archivists, etc. and a few by non-socialist critics.
What I take issue with, which absolutely no person here has mentioned, is the rather naive interpretation of abolition that activists of such inclinations have. While I can imagine a society in the indefinite and indeterminate future that has no need of police, the facts in the world today that there are occasions where people do. In cases of Mafia coercion, Neo-Fascist terrorism, and certain kinds of political or economic crimes, for instance, there is nothing that a person can do about them aside from go to law enforcement. Being said, the oft cited disproportionate number of black American citizens in prisons ought to be convincing enough of that there does exist some form of systemic racism, which Critical Race Theorists, to my estimation, debate the details of. I don't understand why this is controversial.
Quoting ToothyMaw
Di Angelo does not claim that every white person is affected by white fragility and that would be an absurd claim. I also think that a lot of what she calls white fragility, is actually just basic resistance to being called racist or oppressor, words that carry such weight in this day and age, it's too heavy for anyone to bear. Accepting racism in many cases isn't easier for non-white people because they're exposed to more racial tension, it's easier because they're not being accused of being supporters of a racist, oppressive system - benefactors of a racist history and guilty of doing nothing to challenge the injustices. On top of that, Di Angelo speaks in a way that is accusatory, judgemental and offensive, there's no empathy, the stakes just keep rising higher and higher until merely not having an opinion makes you a horrible person. She thinks white people have an obligation to help and if they fail to do so, that this is an indictment on their character, inaction amounts to collaboration with the racist system.
CRT can have valid points but overall has serious issues.
My two major issues are that CRT tunnel visions on race to the extent that it promotes racialised worldviews and hyper focuses on race, which has served to actually deepen racial tensions rather than resolve them. Secondly, it proposes race-based solutions to these race-based problems, most importantly, the issue of racial inequity, this is the wrong way to go from my perspective. Racism is not just happening but has happened and the consequences have been extreme, this accounts for many of the issues faced by minorities in the US and other countries too. The aftermath of racism is not racism, a lack of effort to reverse the effects of racism is not racism and trying to undo the consequences will be difficult and painful. What we're really talking about is poverty but I don't think the reasons why someone is born into a poor family should matter, was it due to racism or because their father had a mental illness or whatever the reason is, doesn't matter. Thus, place the aftermath of racism into race-neutral categories of larger social issues such as poverty, poor infrastructure, poor healthcare system etc.
Racism is such a broad category of stuff, from what an individual says or does and even what they don't say or do, implicit bias, internalised racism, often irrespective of their opinion. Then there's all of the components of the government, the private businesses, the social structures which can be racist and for so many different reasons with no agreed-upon way of determining guilt or innocence. Forget accounting for geography, demographics, history, economics, culture and all the variables which all play important roles. Navigating this issue responsibly is very difficult and while most people can see racism when it presents itself to them, people who look for racism can and will find it in almost everything. Problems in society can be reduced to racism and most CRT comes off that way to me, it is a reductionist, narrow-minded way of viewing the world. When we combine CRT with intersectionality, we get the identity-orientated reductionism where every societal problem, any imbalance, it's racist, sexist, classist, ageist, transphobic, body-shaming - whatever.
Is CRT is just doomed to be reductionist based on its structure? Researchers are looking for racism, they've got control over what information they present, over how things should be interpreted, over what elements of their research should be emphasised and so on. There are always going to be race-based conclusions, the number of uses of the words "white" and "black" in some CRT books, can be staggering. I wrote a thread about this problem, of "arranging truth", where we really construct the truth by reducing a subject to a manageable or convenient level. We need to decide what information is relevant, how to interpret it, what narrative to construct and characterisations to make and so on. CRT isn't even written by impartial analysts, they're often themselves activists such as Di Angelo. There's surely some good work out there that shines a light on real problems but I think people are right to be concerned about it and the effect it might - or does - have on people who study it.
That being said, I don't like socialism either but the average American right-wing voter seems to have no idea socialism is - even though they hate it and they hate all these people and parties for being socialist. So, I don't necessarily look for camaraderie with people who dislike CRT.
Besides liberalism, you're worried about white people being unfairly treated or town down, which does make it seem like you're proving Di Angelo right. Matters such as white privilege should be treated as pieces of an overall argument or sentiment. When we say "white privilege" how extensive is that, what exactly is being referred to and what does that say about white people or society overall and how is the term being used - this can vary greatly from person to person. If someone is merely trying to respectfully describe social reality, white privilege is not an unreasonable term to use, although I think "racial privilege" would be better because it's race-neutral, not a big deal. We need to give some lee-way to describe problems intuitively but we don't need to give lee-way to racist, aggressive uses of the term white privilege, I don't think the line has been crossed merely by using these kinds of terms.
The ubiquity of slavery in ancient history should be apparent in reading any histories of the era. It existed in all state level societies. As for levels of violence in pre-state societies, the bibliography of Pinker's "Better Angles of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined," has a copious list of sources. Both modern observation of hunter gatherer societies and forensic archeology converge on extremely high rates of homicide, significantly higher than Europe even if you take 1914-1945 as your measuring period, or the nations with the highest homicide rates today (concentrated in Central America).
I mention Africa in terms of neopatrimonial political systems because SSA has the best examples of pure neopatrimonial models, and Francis Fukayama draws most of his examples from the region in his "Origins of Political Order," and "Political Order and Political Decay."
(IMO, by these two volumes are by far and away the best works on state development. Not so much because of Fukayama's own insights, although those are good, but because he cogently summarizes the insights of Weber, Machiavelli, Jared Diamond, John Mearsheimer, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, etc. while also showing the flaws in their models and creating a new synthesis. He also avoids endlessly selecting on the dependant variable, unlike "Why Nations Fail," or the Tragedy of Great Power politics.")
Anyhow, if the implication is that Africa's problems stem from problems other than its politics, you are, of course, correct, but the negative relationship between explicit neopatrimonial relationships and governance quality extends outside the region. Countries with governments set up to ensure given levels of representation by given ethnic groups, rather than open elections (e.g. Lebanon's history) are far more likely to enter a civil war and more likely to return to war if an ethnic based political system is used following a cease fire. This is a replicable finding, although obviously all IR studies deal with low N studies and lack of experimentation.
I don't know what you mean by "intentionally exploitative policies." This is obviously true, although you could argue that modern capitalism was less exploitive that the systems that preceded it. In any event, my point was specific to colonies.
It's certainly not a settled matter, but the balance of findings in historical macro economic analysis is definitely on the side of colonies being net money losers for European nations. They were pursued for prestige and strategic reasons, and had the side benefit of letting the well-connected loot the treasuries of European nations, but they were a net drain on the host nations, particularly later colonial projects during the 19th century.
This is true even if the incredibly extractive, downright genocidal Belgian Congo project.
Secondly, the nations that gained the most from colonies (analyses generally conclude Spain saw short term benefits from gold and silver inflows) were impoverished by the early 20th century and relied on "catch up growth," to grow near to the main European powers in terms of development. Even today, Spain and Portugal, with their vast, early empires are significantly poorer than France and the UK.
Meanwhile, Denmark's rise to being one of the most developed nations in Europe occured after it lost its colonies. Austria's development trajectory increased after losing its empire. Switzerland and the Nordic nations are the most developed in Europe, despite the lack of colonies. Finland and Korea were impoverished backwaters into the 1950s, and modernized via institutional reform, not colonization, meaning colonies are neither necessary, nor sufficient for development.
On the other hand, the Gulf States boast per capita GDP levels on par with Southern Europe due to natural resource wealth, yet remain authoritarian states with lower quality of life by most commonly used measures, due to lack of core institutions. In modern state development literature these institutions are normally represented as a three or four legged stool of: accountable government/some for of voting, rule of law, and a strong centralized state with a monopoly on violence. Sometimes a strong, independent, professional, merit based beaurocracy is a fourth leg, others it is rolled into the strong state definition. The risk of CRT reducing development to extraction is that it then follows that simply transferring wealth to marginalized groups will be enough to reduce violence and increase standards of living. Yet this experiment has been run, with many poor nations inheriting vast natural resource wealth, and the result has often been a small minority benefiting from said wealth.
As to immigration causing congestion effects for other immigrants, or immigration reaching a tipping point at which the host nation's populace experiences an increase in anti-immigrant and anti-welfare state sentiment, this is a finding that appears in the immigration literature over and over, and can be found on Google Scholar readily. For example:
https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781781001264/9781781001264.00013.xml
Aside from academic sources, you can also look to industry. 19th and early 20th century industrialists made no secret of their attempts to intentionally hire a diverse workforce because it reduced the risks of worker cooperation and unionization efforts. Moving to today, Amazon had a leak showing that it also pursues diversity as a means of reducing the risk of unionization efforts, using it as a key metric of risk in statistical models.
Fukayama among others, lays out the case for reduced immigration being a factor in the homogonization of America after the 1910s. Whether or not it was the main factor is, of course, nigh impossible to prove, since there is a complex relationship between immigration, support for the welfare state, and unionization. What is certain is that curtailing immigration necessarily reduced economic inequality by reducing the number of low asset, unskilled workers entering the country, while also having modest to large effects on wages, depending on how you try to measure said effects.
As to Whiteness existing outside the US in the early 20th century as a unifying concept, I submit as evidence that it wasn't the fact that Europe experienced huge waves of ethnic cleansing (Germans totally removed from large swathes of Eastern Europe they had inhabited for centuries, Armenians subject to genocide in Turkey, the Holocaust of European Jews, the genocided in the Balkans, etc.). Racial theorists of the time also posited different European groups as different races. White, as an overarching identity shows up first as a meaningful social force in the US, and has gained relevance in Europe following the Post-War integration of Europe and the introduction of large non-European populations into Europe. Certainly a form of white identity existed in Europe prior to the 20th century, but it was not the inclusive identity it became in America.
Finally, as to: "The only way equality can be measured is by comparing outcomes," sure. The next step though, advocating for the elimination of anything that shows disparities in outcomes, is necissarily making the error of confusing correlation with causation.
CRT advocates have a real problem with doing absolute junk science, or badly misrepresenting the results of academic research, and then, when confronted with this, deflecting in an almost Freudian way with: "academia itself is a racist institution, and your disagreement is a sign of internalized racism/white fragility."
For example, the slide below is the definition of statistical error:
[Img]https://i.ibb.co/WvLktYX/1593699725881-1.png
[/img]
There are ways of measuring type I and II error in tests. There are ways of assessing their predictive power. The SAT, ACT, and GRE are not perfect predictors for academic and career success, but they are better than students grades.
Standardized tests for civil service positions were implemented with the exact goal of reducing bias in hiring. If the goal is to increase minority hires/admissions, then the solution might be to give those groups even larger preference on exams. The push to remove testing entirely isn't required to shake up admissions rates. A quota system would be the most effective means of doing that. I'd argue that tests are being jettisoned more because disparities in the test scores of those admitted/hired allow critics of affirmative action to use an easy quantitative means to critique said practices, rather than for any practical selection reason. Standardized tests allow bright students with poor grades due to poor quality, non-challenging academic settings to demonstrate their talent, which could be a boon for minority students.
My guess is you know about the First and Second Amendments. You raise an interesting issue regarding the First Amendment. Unlike so many other instances where it's claimed "free speech" is being infringed, it's clear that government action is involved in prohibiting speech related to CRT (and Socialism and Marxism, and perhaps evolution and other things as well) and so the First and Fourteenth Amendments actually apply, for once.
My guess would be that something like the time, place and manner restrictions on speech allowed in the law would be invoked. I think the argument would be that the public interest in education, of grade school and high school students, at least, is such that certain subjects be emphasized over others--e.g. reading, writing and 'rithmatic rather than political, social and moral theories and opinions, which may only detract from teaching of essential knowledge and skills. Grade school is arguably not the place for anything but "the basics." I don't know, though, what the argument would be. This must have been played out in some court or other, but I haven't looked into it. High school in this country is, of course, little more than a zoo and a place at which certain rights of passage take place in an almost ritualistic fashion.
Yes, but slavery in the ancient world in the West was different from slavery as practiced in the U.S. and by the nations of Europe during and even after the colonial period. In the ancient world, race wasn't a determining factor. Anyone could be a slave. Slavery would often be the fate of those defeated in battle. Many slaves were white and well-educated--better educated, in fact, than their masters in some cases. Slaves were tutors, doctors, administrators, gourmet chefs as well as household workers, gladiators and laborers. The Romans regularly and quite blithely enslaved all manner of folk, not because they were considered inferior racially or intellectually; they were socially inferior-inferior in status. Many became free in the regular course of events and became quite rich, powerful and influential.
Correct. Most slaves were white because whites were readily available. Some became slaves through debt but, increasingly, as prisoners of war.
The very word "slave"/"sclavus" comes from the Slavic tribes members of which were often captured in war. The Romans also has many slaves from Celtic and Germanic populations which all were white.
Not only that, but slavery was an accepted element of economy and culture in the ancient world, including in Africa-Egypt, the Middle East, India, China, and the Americas. It is totally wrong and unacceptable to interpret it as a white invention.
This is very interesting. This reinforces my view that CRT and also the "Culture Wars" play well to those in power as a divide and rule -strategy to separate the middle and lower classes and being in separate groups.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Sharing the same skin color didn't stop racism as 20th Century Europe clearly show. To the European racists the idea of Germans, Poles and Russians all belonging to the same racial group is very new. Yet this is happening, as you said.
Now the dominance of US culture is so evident that Europe basically shares the same narrative as in the US. The stupidity is that the narrative isn't changed nearly at all, but basically has to fit the US narrative.
That we have sufficient historical evidence for. And slavery in this context is a broad category, which is sometimes difficult to distinguish between other kinds of servitude.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I'd concede the levels of violence point. What I reject is the implication that because all societies have been varying degrees of worse in the past, this makes all past behaviour of different societies roughly equivalent.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Fair enough, I remember the term from Fukuyama, though not the particular example.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I think the problem here is that most of these countries have to deal with arbitrary border drawn without regard for ethnic groups, as well as with a lack of institutions to deal with the resulting conflicts. This doesn't seem to be good evidence that the quota system here is significant as a cause of the problem.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
What I meant was that colonial administration was in almost all cases deliberately set up for the extraction of wealth to the Metropole, though in terms of the magnitude of the extraction, there are differences between the first (roughly until 1800-1850) and the second phase of colonial rule.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
If you include private wealth extracted? That'd be the opposite of everything I have heard on the topic.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Second phase colonial projects tended to be less overtly exploitative in terms of the budget balance between the colonies and the Metropole, but generally still very lucrative for private citizens of the Metropole, who had appropriated most of the resources of the colony.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I don't think anyone argues that colonies are a necessary or sufficient condition for development. But this does not mean that the colonies did not represent transfers of wealth to the colonisers, or that they don't have a lasting structural impact on international relations. I'm not arguing for some deterministic model of human development. Colonies can develop very rapidly after the retreat of the Metropole, and conversely having colonies isn't a guarantee for a powerful economy or technological advances. But it'd nevertheless be very hard to argue that colonisation wasn't exploitative and ultimately immoral.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
But clearly keeping the wealth concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority isn't really a solution either, so I'm not sure what the thrust of this argument is. Are you arguing that the approach of CRT to wealth redistribution is wrong, of that wealth redistribution is generally inefficient?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This may be true, but I'm not sure what we can conclude about the merits of immigration strategies based on such sentiments, because they're not natural occurrences but results of political and ideological conflict.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Which is why the socialist movement of the 19th and early 20th century was explicitly internationalist, as many modern socialist movements are as well. But again I don't quite see the relation to the claim that reducing immigration would be an overall positive, or what the relation with CRT is (apart from an allegation that wealthy elites cynically use CRT for their own ends, which is plausible, but not really a statement on CRT itself).
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This is a fair point. Though I think the level of inclusiveness of "Whiteness" in both the US and Europe prior to the 1950s was more a matter of degree. An important factor here is that the US is a unified country with a federal government and a two-party system. This necessarily structures political conflict along more "inclusive" lines. Nevertheless, Republicans could oppose segregation in the south while opposing citizenship for white immigrants in the north.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I really don't know enough about who the CRT advocates are or what position they have on specific issues to comment on those individuals. The problem here is determining to what extend there is a problem with CRT, and to what extend there is a problem with amplifying extreme voices.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Arguably, trying to get rid of standardized tests could be seen as a symptom of desperation and lack of trust in any possibility of a fair educational system. Practically, education is an area where you mostly want equality of outcome. If there are consistently unequal outcomes based on socio-economic factors, something is wrong. But if all attempts to reform the educational system on a larger scale, concerning financing, resource allocation etc. consistently fail politically, one might instead fall back on a more narrowly identitarian strategy to change the status quo.
Sure, race as a concept didn't have the same sort of relevance for ancient cultures, but certainly there were cases where it was acceptable to capture people considered "other" and to hold them and their descendants in bondage, whereas members of one's own culture could only be held for a period of time. Rome didn't allow you to go around kidnapping Tuscans to work to death in your mines, or use as sex slaves, but the same actions would be allowable for Gauls in the late Republican era. The Ottomans and Persians also tended to take slaves from other peoples, who were considered open game for enslavement due to not being subject to moral protection. Thus, Ottoman slavers raided Sub-Saharan Africa and southern Europe for slaves, not villages within the empire. Thralls taken by vikings tended to be Celts, hence Iceland being almost as much Celtic in descent as Nordic.
Educated slaves, like educated people in general, were the exception in the ancient world. There were educated slaves in Haiti as well, but it was hardly the norm.
I'm not sure what you're getting at here. What would make a cross-cultural political trend natural versus unnatural?
In any event, it seems apparent that public sentiment and political conflict vis-a-vis political feasibility, are essential to public policy decisions. In general, how people do act is far more important to formulating policy than how they ought to act. If people acted how they ought, we shouldn't need armies, taxes to cover externalities such a pollution, or prisons. However, they act how people do act, necessitating things like standing armies and prisons.
As evidence of the destabilizing effects of rapidly shifting demographics in West I'd submit the rise and major electoral success of Far-Right parties, and the large shift towards minority rule and ethno-nationalism in the American Republican party. You can see this in any week's headlines. This week France's military is warning of a civil war over migration for example
This destabilization has far reaching consequences not just for the citizens of Western nations, who are protected by stable institutions and high functioning states, but more so for people living in developing nations who stand to benefit from a stable international system, particularly vis-a-vis developed nations getting thier shit together on global warming. It's not that much of a winding causal path between the destablizing effects of rapid demographic shifts on politics, the rise of the Far-Right, and the lack of progress on containing carbon emissions.
Direct migration to developing countries can only benefit a vanishingly small minority of people in developing countries. Even if the US and Europe trippled immigration rates, you still wouldn't get close to 5% of the developing world moving to developed nations. This is why, to my mind, the left should take the destablizing effects of immigration more seriously, or at the very least get rid of the fantasy that pops up fairly often (from John Oliver for example) that declining birth rates in developed nations will allow meaningful percentage of people in developed nations to act as "replacements," for the declining population. The numbers don't add up, you're talking slow decline in developed nations versus multiple billions in population growth in the developing world, primarily Sub-Saharan Africa, over the next 80 years.
People in general underestimate the scale of the shift. The major European nations, France, the UK, and Germany, will all be minority European by around 2080. This represents a more rapid demographic shift than the Americas saw after 1492. Governments need a plan for handling that shift, and CRT, with its extreme moralizing trend, is supremely unhelpful at framing the discussion.
My problem with CRT is that it generally refuses to conceive of immigration in any terms except racism. That is, any policy in favor of restricting immigration must have at its core, racist intent. This simply isn't the case. Given that immigration appears likely to be, with enviornmental issues related to pollution, the defining political issue of the next century, it's a pretty big liability to be caught up in reductive moralizing on the issue.
Yes, my argument is that the CRT approach to redistribution is wrong. Wrong because:
1. Historically, essentializing race as respects political representation doesn't tend to end well historically, as it results in the increased politicization of demographics. This doesn't mean race based interventions are necissarily wrong. There is a powerful case to be made for affirmative action alongside other forms of redistribution. However, I'd default towards overall redistribution in most cases. Money, access to healthcare and housing: these are relatively fungible. Access to elite schools, government posts, or mentorships are comparatively quite scarce, so in those cases race based programs make sense, since extending the benefit to everyone isn't feasible.
2. CRT fails to motivate voters. It makes voters less likely to support redistribution, even those it is intended to help most. This seems like a pretty glaring flaw for a framework that aspires to become the main paradigm for left leaning political parties world wide.
On a related note, one of the few academic studies I've seen on anti-racism training at a university had the effect of making students less likely to be friends with members of another race. That does seem like an issue, when your treatment makes you patients worse. And as much of an issue is the fact that CRT can dismiss such positivist critiques of the results of its interventions by claiming that the social sciences themselves are tools of oppression and not to be trusted, which leads to...
3. CRT's focus on moralizing and zeal, and rejection of the validity of various branches of science would appear to make it difficult for adherents to reform their efforts. If you start with the assumption that you are right, and dismiss established methods for testing your assumptions, you end up with a political doctrine that lacks internal course correction mechanisms. Essentially, you swap doctrine for dogma.
Slaves were obtained from all over the Empire, and slavery wasn't based on race; nor, I think, would it be correct to say it was based on culture in all cases. Slaves were taken from Greece, for example, and the influence and even superiority of Greek culture was acknowledged. Slavery in the Empire was very much a different thing from what slavery became.
A slave's life in most cases would be brutal, and slaves were treated as property, but there were aspects of slavery which made it a curious institution, then. For example, Roman jurisprudence considered slavery to be dominion over another person contrary to nature, which is something later proponents of slavery, especially slavery racially based, could not accept, the supposed natural inferiority of slaves being taken for granted. Slavery was considered to be contrary to natural law, but accepted in civil law and by custom. Slaves were given the right to make complaints against their masters in court during the reign of Nero. During the reign of Antoninus Pius, a master who killed a slave without just cause could be tried for murder. Slaves could become Roman citizens upon manumission. Higher status slaves could hold property and earn money, which could be used to buy their freedom.
I think there is a difference between slavery in the ancient West and slavery as it came to be, which could be significant in some cases.
For sure. Slavery in the Americas is unique in the intensity and codification of racial divisions. Law absolutely prohibited the enslavement of White citizens in the US. However it's a uniqueness in graduation as far as I'm aware, because I am aware of many cases of slavers predating foreigners primarily, because it was more acceptable.
I guess it makes sense in its own sick way. In general, if you're going to raid people and carry them off into horrors, you don't do it to your peers, both due to the way human morality tends to work, enclosing people close to one within a "moral circle" and because you risk reprisals from people living close to you. Then of course you have the state's interest in not allowing raids in its territories. So, Ottoman slavers raided non-Ottoman territories predominantly, etc. I believe Persians had a taboo of capturing Persian boys to make eunuch slaves at one points, taking foreigns instead.
However, the line wasn't as dramatic as in the US.
On a side note, I do think people overstate how cosmopolitan and open people were throughout history. You run into blatant racism in old texts fairly often. I had to set the Arabian Nights down for a second during the Prince of the Black Isles story because it sounded like something a Neo-Nazi could write. Descriptions of slavery from pre-Columbian times certainly carry plenty of racism with them.
There is an interest here, I believe (@Banno), for analytical philosophy. I hope I make a fair assessment. This is a vision of a moral world; it takes into consideration concepts of justice and fairness and freedom and rights, etc. Though it is critical of "liberalism" there is a desire for it to meet the goal of a "a rights-based approach to addressing inequality", though it is seen as failing "in ascribing special value to the property of whiteness."
The basis of a right is my claim to it. The antithesis of this is an imposition, particularly without considering me--not an agreed contract, not a punishment for one's own acts--as, say, the act of "erroneous and harmful beliefs about people of color." As summed up, "we should generally see each person for who they are, not what category they fall into."
Here I take justice to be, that: if everyone has access to their rights, we can see "who they are", which I take to mean here: what they merit, their worth. Thus, working towards a more just society, we should focus on equal rights and opportunity, and responsibility for ourselves and our actions and speech. Thus our speech should be free to be judged on its own merit.
In order for us to have justice, we should have knowledge of the Other, ("who they are"), and judge them as individuals, as a human like me, living in and subject to the same goal of a just and moral world. But Cavell points out in the Claim of Reason that the real horror in slavery was not viewing the slave as inhuman, but "seeing" them as a human, treating them as human, while they were enslaved.
So what is it that blinds us to the Other? Wittgenstein investigated our desire for knowledge that the pain of the Other is the same as our pain, instead of our facing that an expression of pain is a moral claim on us. Emerson would say character is higher than intellect--that we define our self in that moral moment. Nietzsche saw our desire for predetermined moral knowledge as a power move that striped context away allowing morality to be manufactured rather than contingent and historical.
Now this will seem ironic, as here the worry is exactly that a quality is being imposed on us. But it is as if the individual were internalizing society. As perhaps, if I make myself the target of judgment, then the justice of our society is saved by my sacrifice, before it is "torn down". I can be responsible and defend myself, not having to acknowledge the fear of the unknown, the future, the overwhelming, the Other---the state of nature that makes us cling to the social contract which both saves us, and compromises us. In order that the world not break my heart, I cut off the thing-in-itself first, and project my good into the Other. Thus we see ourselves before society, as intending meaning, as individually special. Or maybe there is another cause of our refusal to see that our culture, our language, our institutions, pre-date our coming into the world, and that they are external of our intention and theory and morality. Marx's means of production are the means of the production of our self. Our speech is bound in language--expression only being human (not hearsay) with our ability to stand for it (not anonymously).
We should not "ascribe special value to the property of whiteness". This is a statement of principal, standing alone, much as the isolated traditional philosophical terms that Wittgenstein wanted to bring back to their ordinary context and mechanics. The context of justice is the state of our world, its history, its institutions, the mechanics of judgement, interest, and what is valued. The structure that we are too scared to face was there before us--the mechanics of that structure were imperceptibly (and overtly) affected over time so that now they value whiteness, inherently, internally, as it were, systematically. Getting by is just easier for white people; they are gifted more merit; entitled to their rights; entirely seen. Not this person, or, by that person--but, by the structure of our society. Is it really just a blindness to anything that does not have an impact on us? A fear of the unknown? A lack of imagination of the Other's pain? We can not know them as we know ourselves; their body makes them opaque. But in trying to solve the skeptical problem of the Other with knowledge and morality, we black out our eyes and turn our back on the world.
Literally everything else, of course, has been made up on the spot. Nice to see the imagination at work.
I have wanted to provide counter examples in favor of Critical Race Theory, but unfortunately also know nothing about it.
"It is true that anti-racism today has been turned into something of an industry. But “diversity training,” “racial equity,” “systemic” and “institutional” racism, and indeed “anti-racism” itself are not the inventions of CRT; all but diversity training predate it. Like “diversity” over the past decade and “multiculturalism” before that, critical race theory is being made the bag now carrying the load long critical of racism. The foolishness sometimes said and done in its name—including some genuinely wince-worthy—is being used as a sledgehammer to bash any effort to discuss and remedy racial injustice. Attempts to turn these into a manual, largely by those looking to advance personal, professional, or pecuniary standing, are doomed to ridicule, which in turn unleashes the conservative caricatures."
Most of the discussion seems to have turned to a rather abstract philosophical exposition on slavery. I was told that people who study Philosophy are like this, but I never quite believed for that to be the case until now.
The assumption that I think that most people make about people who study Philosophy is that they are prone to off-topic theoretical abstraction and lacking in self-awareness. As there's a certain Western patriarchy inherent to the field, I'd say that it just comes with the territory.
Quoting StreetlightX
This likely is so, but it's that "industry" and it's effects that people are talking about. A theorist can simply deny his or her influence in anything (that is negative), yet it's the influence that typically is important. When ideas and theories are implemented to the real world, the outcomes can be far from what the thinker had in mind. In a similar fashion one could for example deny that the neoclassical "Chicago School of economics" has nothing to do with the current economic system and it's failures (or successes). Surely the economy and the financial system existed well before the economics department got it's first successful and notable neoclassical economist.
Quoting StreetlightX
Yet that is the phenomenon. And it's the corporate grifters that do take the important role. Or perhaps it's the powerful PR-people (and timid CEO's) in the corporate structure trying to keep the corporate brand totally spotless by hiring Robin DiAngelo and "going woke".
No one is under any obligation to 'correct' views which are pulled out of nowhere. Otherwise, perhaps you can tell me when you stopped beating your wife?
Quoting ssu
An idiot can simply make up a line of influence for anything (that is positive), yet they're still an idiot whom no one has to 'defend' anything from other than to point out they they made shit up.
Quoting StreetlightX
And even easier is just to call others idiots and leave it that...
[citation not needed, and if you ask for one, you're peculiar]
Woke way to go.
Moron's way to go.
Rest my case.
You would rest on that case. Or is it that you would case on that rest? More in line with your comprehension ability.
And oh, the best refutation, which it should be mentioned didn't come from you: the country that I'm from doesn't have a large black minority.
Great refutations of criticism towards CRT in a discussion about "Critical Race Theory, Whiteness, and Liberalism".
With 'arguments' so vacuous that's really all it takes.
You may be right. But when claims are made that slavery as it existed in the U.S. (or in European colonies) was not different from slavery as it existed in the Greco-Roman world, I think they're wrong because race was the basis of the former, but not of the latter.
Certainly there is support for splitting up nations by ethnic group:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09636410490945893&ved=2ahUKEwirp6Kru8TwAhXuJzQIHba7D8YQFjABegQIGhAC&usg=AOvVaw0gCJwUcrZdq4c3SxZ3YM_g
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09636410490945893&ved=2ahUKEwirp6Kru8TwAhXuJzQIHba7D8YQFjABegQIGhAC&usg=AOvVaw0gCJwUcrZdq4c3SxZ3YM_g
However, the same body of research shows that explicit ethnic power sharing agreements preform very poorly at reducing the risk of further disintegration.
Anyhow, I think it's overly pessimistic to think that multi-ethnic states are doomed to faliure by their borders. Ethnic identity is something that gains utility as other institutions and forms of identity fail. That is, ethic identity tends to be important because the state is failing moreso than the states fail due to ethnic identities.
People generally blame instability in the Middle East on its post WWI borders, but you'd be hard pressed to find any place on Earth other than China where the populations have spent more time living under consolidated empires than the Middle East, which was unified far more often than not throughout its history. Tribal antipathy wasn't an intractable problem when the Ottoman, Persian, Roman, etc. states were ascendant in the region, it became one when strong states disappeared.
The only useable definition of the word "natural" is that it refers to everything that is not in some way consciously guided by humans. Sentiments concerning immigration are very clearly consciously guided by humans, given the vastly different stances historically taken, sometimes in close proximity.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
There is an important difference, however, between accounting for the fallibility of humans and fatalistically accepting it. Obviously one must expect that political actors will seek to exploit the basic human tendency towards xenophobia. Just like you must expect that a store will have to deal with thieves. But if you preemptively structure your policy on the assumption that such behaviour is inevitably succesful, you obviously hand over political power without a fight.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I think this is a much too narrow single-issue view of the political shifts we've been seeing across Western Europe and the US. For one, it's not particularly convincing to argue that the reason nativism has gained ground in Western Europe is too much immigration, when the size of etnic minorities in Western Europe is still tiny compared to that of the US. In this scenario we'd expect that the appeal of nativist parties is roughly proportional to the size of ethnic minorities, but that does not seem to be the case. Instead, the changes in voting patterns in both the US and Western Europe are markedly consistent, and are parts of long trends going back to the 1980s - well before ethnic minorities were a significant issue in most european countries.
Picketty has therefore advanced the thesis that the rise of the nativist right can be explained much more consistently as a reaction to the transition of the traditionally social-democrat left wing parties from parties of the disadvantaged classes to parties of the intellectual elite.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I agree with this insofar as it's important to see immigration as the symptom a problem - that of massive global inequalities, which cannot be solved simply by being more accepting of immigration. The fact that the left is unwilling to adress this dimension of the problem can be explained as a symptom of the shift of it's electorate from the disadvantaged classes towards the highly educated (who are more likely to derive benefits from globalisation and it's inegalitarian effects).
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I have found no source that supports a claim that "Europeans" will be a minority in Europe by 2080. That seems like an extreme and highly questionable prediction.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Obviously a theory concerned with race will analyze the issue of immigration in terms of race. CRT is not a theory of everything or purports to be one.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I mostly agree with your solutions here, but I do want to point out that CRT is really a reaction to the consistent importance of race in political conflicts in the US. That clearly predates CRT.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
As a political strategy, this is a fair point. Though I don't see many politicians openly espousing CRT.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
It's kind of difficult to tell how valid this is as a cirticism of CRT, given that it refers more to the public perception of CRT advocates than to anything CRT explicitly says. We'd have to discuss any specific version of the theory to tell whether it "starts with the assumption that it's right" and dismisses any kind of criticism.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
That is probably true, but it's difficult to build effective institutions and national identities if parts of the population feel excluded. The European experience does show that cooperation can fairly rapidly defuse ethnic tensions. Though, in line with the argument of the article you linked, this happened after military victory. In any event, noone seems to have the methods at hand to repeat the success of European integration.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Strong states disappeared partially because of excessive european - in this case British and French, meddling though. The conflict over the middle east extends well beyond merely the Sikes-Picot agreement. Britain and France fought a veritable cold war in the middle east until the 1950s.
Here the problem is that the success stories simply aren't taken into account. Prosperous multiethnic countries simply don't have any kind of power sharing by ethnic lines. They are not viewed as first and foremost multiethnic countries. The political fault lines are drawn by the ordinary left-right axis and not by ethnicity. We simply don't even consider them so multiethnic as they are. Think about Belgium, Canada or my country. Then again Italy, German and France could also be seen this way too, as they are composed of multiple earlier countries.
Because that isn't projected, Europe is much larger than the three largest Western European nations' populations combined. The French government doesn't collect data on race, so extrapolations are all by third parties. The topic itself is considered politically sensitive.
However, the UK is more open to discussion, and the ONS has been predicting Europeans would be a minority in the UK in the 21st century for 20 years, with confidence intervals generally dipping more than they increase:
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/when-britain-becomes-majority-minority
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/sep/03/race.world
Already 33% of births in the UK have at least one foreign born parent, although that includes European migrants.
This is not an accurate accounting of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It had long been in a state of decay pre-1914, similar to the Austrian Empire. When it was dissolved, there was no existing state structure that European meddling could make disappear. A more appropriate argument might be that there was a power vacuum that the European states failed to sufficiently fill, although it's really unclear that they could have filled it if they wanted to.
I mean, what are you claiming existed outside the Ottoman administration for the Europeans to undermine?
In any event, the former Ottoman states did better than the former Austrian ones did initially. The hallmark instability came after WWII.
A typical way to get statistic models that show Europeans becoming a minority is simply use the peak migration levels or extrapolate past increase trend in migration to the future. Then you can get these statistics showing that Europe's population will change. Of course, these models didn't take into account that EU would decrease immigration as it did. Or later that a pandemic happened.
Will someone worried about immigration use a chart like this:
Or these kinds:
The story can go on differently when the public attention is somewhere else.
Typical? I don't know, maybe for alarmist outlets claiming that such a change is around the corner, not more than half a century away. The UK's Office of National Statistics is not doing that and uses a multiple model approach that is refined over time, and the projected shift to a minority European population pre-dates 2015.
Models projecting a century out are subject to all sorts of problems, but for the last two decades they have stayed fairly on track.
Go look at the articles I posted or check Google scholar for third party reports. This isn't alarmist high end modeling, it's been the consensus since at least the early 2000s.
Also, think about historical migration flows. They generally follow changes in climate and move in the direction of more resource rich areas. The fact that the area to the south of Europe is going to experience massive population growth (Africa will have a larger population than Asia by 2100 in UN models), and that the region remains both less developed, less secure, and at the highest risk for the effects of climate change would suggest that migration, or at least the demand for migration, would increase dramatically over the century, rather than their being a shift down in demand.
Europe would do better to prepare for higher levels of migration than to assume best efforts at modeling migration will prove faulty. Right now, I would say they are generally doing worse with the issue than the US, which is not exactly a high bar.
For example the media, let's say. Usually you don't have great scoop that the things are getting back to normal. (Here the pandemic has been an exception.) No news is good news, as the saying goes.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Demographic models are very accurate for a couple of decades: everybody that can increase the population is already alive and migration can be forecasted. Yet 50 to 100 years and then the modelling gets surprisingly difficult.
If your theory is jettisoning the sciences under the theory that they are inheritally corrupted by power relations, and it's raison d'etre is addressing political concerns, then turning off voters or developing anti-racism interventions that increase racism seem like fairly large problems. A politically unpopular system of thought that focuses on epistemology or aesthetics doesn't have the same issue of being self defeating.
Critical theory, by definition, puts its moral claims ahead of the sciences' epistemological claims. This doesn't necissarily mean starting with the assumption that you're correct, but it's certainly not welcoming of the same kind of skepticism that scientific inquiry has at its heart. This is, to my mind, a pretty major flaw for a theory that wants to shape public policy, given how counter intuitively the externalities of many policies tend to do the exact opposite of what policymakers were intending to accomplish.
"It's politically sensitive" isn't an excuse for making a claim without evidence.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Neither of these articles supports your claim.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I didn't try to give an accurate account of the collapse of the Ottoman empire. What I wanted to point out is that the regional powers - Britain and France - used ethnic and religious divisions to try and destabilise each other's territories, including arming terrorist groups, allowing such groups to shelter in their territories etc.
This is not meant as a deterministic claim that, given foreign interference, no stable peace in the middle East was possible. But it would be wrong to assume that European influence on the trajectory of the region was confined to simply drawing borders.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
By what definition? That science is a social activity and that scientific results are therefore influenced by social relations - power structures - is an epistemological claim.
To use an example that's unrelated to race: The idea that the basic structure of the universe ought to "make sense" and be "aesthetically pleasing" has arguably had a large influence over basic research in physics. Critics say this has lead to one-sided interpretations of data and contributed to the stagnation in the field.
So I don't think any claim to the effect that power dynamics influence the generation of knowledge is prima facie absurd. We'd have to look at the actual argument in question to say more.
Both articles mention non-European majorities in the UK based on government statistics, the more recent in the subtitle.
We're off track and I'm done with the:" I'll implying every last fact you put out is highly questionable and needs a citation," game. I've provided numerous sources, but I'm not going to bother if your method of argument is claiming I'm being disingenuous on every last fact claim, when I've demonstrated that I'm not by following up on the first several, particularly if they're just going to be dismissed anyhow.
Didn't say it was.
Right, and said bias is to be sought out, and quantified. This is a fairly common target for publication, an analysis of the field and its biases themselves.
It's funny that you use that example, because projecting such purpose on to research findings is an explicit aim of critical theory. In science, it is, as you rightly describe, a bug, in critical theory it is a feature.
Or to take their own definition of methods:
This is the definition of beginning an inquiry looking for something that "makes sense," and is "politically pleasing."
This is the methodological equivalent of pointing out the speck in your neighbor's eye and ignoring the plank in yours.
This is what you wrote:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This is a pretty specific and extraordinary claim. I'm not "implying" this is questionable, I said so directly. It's simply not the kind of thing where I'd go "well he seems pretty knowledgeable otherwise, so I'll just roll with it".
And I want to point out that you do seem otherwise pretty well informed, and you're making good points. Which makes things such as the one above stand out to me.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Well, I guess the argument of a proponent of Critical Theory would be that just calling it a "bug" doesn't make it go away. It's always there. Critical Theory just makes it explicit and therefore opens it up for discussion, rather than letting the existing power structures simply determine it. Replacing the already present focus with a new one, explicitly chosen for the benefit of humanity.
The social sciences at large are probably trying to be too specific rather than wide reaching into other fields that they clearly overlap. Any social scientist not knowledgable about anthropology, mathematical modelling, poitics, psychology and philosophy, is going to end up fighting in an imaginary corner.
I would ask anyone who feels a strong inclination toward Critical Theory to give an explicit definition/s of what exactly is meant by Power and how Power can manifest. Then as a follow up I'd ask what brings Power into social existence and whether or not Power is an inevitable social structure we have to work with rather than beliving it is something that can be destroyed and/or reimagined (I get the impression from many that nullifying Power is what the y secretly wish for, so that is why I ask what it is to them/those that think this way).
Here, with CRT, we have a sociological discussion. The role of the philosopher in this is not necessarily to evaluate the legal or sociological merits of the subject (although he certain may do that), but rather to evaluate the validity of the conceptual premises and the thinking involved. With this in mind, the first duty of the philosopher is to call attention to the fact that the concept of human race is a fallacy, an arbitrarily derived fiction having no biological basis. Those who subscribe to this concept seek, in a triumph of clumsy artifice, to artificially impose distinctions, 'shoehorning' members of the human species, which naturally present as a spectrum...a seamless continuum of physical types across the globe, into one or another of several "racial" catecories. Calling attention to this obvious category mistake is the initial task of the philosopher in any discussion involving the concept of human "race".
It seems to me that you are saying people cannot logically use a tool that does not exist. If that is the case, I'd like to introduce you to the human race.
:point: :rofl: Good point, sir. Good point.
Good luck with that. Nobody hasn't actually defended the theory itself. The "defending" comments, if you can say there are those, usually make the point that those making a critique about the theory in the first place are just wrong (in so many other ways).
I was just trying to get at all too often people talk cross purposes in this area as there are different sections within Critical Theory that offer up quite different uses of the term 'power'. I don't see how viewing Critical Theory through any one particular lens does anything but damage without the context of myriad possible 'other' lens - none of which can be measured empirically to any degree.
Note: I don't think it is an entirely futile exercise. It is good for flexing the mind and seeing what you may not be thinking about from time to time. As a potential tool of skepticism it is more useful than not.
Well. let's see if you get an answer.
https://archive.is/rX8Uj/again?url=https://jaymans.wordpress.com/jaymans-race-inheritance-and-iq-f-a-q-f-r-b/
Quoting Xanatos
While intelligence is inherited largely, there is no evidence that people of color are actually genetically predisposed to being stupider. At all. You are probably trolling, so I don't know why I am bothering at all, but that's what the facts say.
The amount of electron shells and the number of protons in an chemical element can be stated as an obvious difference as the elements do differ from each other in this way. I guess calling this scientific observation an 'social construct' simply means that absolutely everything that humans have thought of scientifically is a 'social construct'. Of course with that definition the word is utterly useless.
But compare the periodic table to the way how "Hutus" and "Tutsis" or the "Aryan Race" and "The Nordic Race" are defined and separated from each other. Seems more of a "social construct" than the number of electron shells or protons in chemical elements.
I guess you don't care to offer up any definition? Are there hazy areas for any definition you offer? Does any definition serve to reveal something of importance for the social sciences or is it mainly based on assumptions and opinion? ;)
For a "social construct"?
I have no trouble with the definition:
I would simply state that the differences between the chemical elements are part of objective reality, not a result of human interaction. That we describe the differences between the elements by using the atomic model and have a periodic table doesn't change their existence. Sorry, but I can imagine that even without humans around, the chemical elements what we call "hydrogen" or "gold" will exist and have their peculiar characters. The elements had them when we weren't around and will continue to have them when we are extinct.
While on the other hand, let's look at the "science" behind racial theories. I'll give an example of my own people, the Finns, and how they were looked at by racial experts:
From this example you can see how obvious "social construct" nazi racial theories were as it fits perfectly to the definition given above for a social construct. And this goes with other similar racial theories too.
It looks to me like a rehashing of the dated concept of 'nature vs nurture'. Clearly there is no dividing line between what is and isn't 'nature' or 'nurture' it is a mishmash.
Quoting ssu
And this is where I see some making the leap that you CANNOT imagine because you're human, so if there were no humans they'd be no science nor any 'Periodic Table' (trust me I've seen this kind of argument used).
Also, Quoting ssu
That we can describe observe and measure intelligence (albeit poorly) doesn't deny its existence. 'g' is about as objective as anything else, but we don't fully grasp what it is.
I am playing devil's advocate a little here :)
There are some telling genetic differences between certain groups. Some medicines are tailor made to help such groups. Sadly the historical scientific beliefs/ideas surrounding 'race' and the advent of Darwin led to a whole lot of uninformed speculation that was considered 'objective' at the time.
Which is rather silly. Basically you hear this reasoning when someone is argued into a corner or something.
Quoting I like sushi
Genetics is another thing, really. Racial theories and eugenics have been right from the start political and a "social construct".
The analogy fails. You may reject the periodic table for being a social construct based upon rheorization, but if you do, there yet remains the fundamental objective reality of the various elements and their chemical properties, which the table comprises, and which one cannot similarly reject. There is no analogous objective reality underlying the concept of human race. Rather, distinctions of "race" involve the artificial imposition of categories upon the uncategorizable.
Initially I was going to have to vet the sincerity of your curiosity before I deigned to satisfy it. I was going to ask what was it that I said that caused you to ask me that question. Then I read and found that he answered quite nicely. So there you have it.
:100:
Secondly, what's your explanation as to why exactly Ashkenazi Jews are, on average, smarter than white gentiles are? If you reject the evolutionary explanation for this, then what's your proposed alternative explanation? A Jewish conspiracy?
Someone can look 'white' and have predominantly African or Asian heritage. 'Race' is a bit like nationality. It says something about your cultural upbringing bit certainly doesn't completely determine how you were brought up or how you view the world.
But just what are you measuring? Genetical research tells something about your ancestry, but far better does traditional historical geneology about your ancestors.
First of all, do note how genetics (or population genetics) actually notes these differences. It has nothing to do with political boundaries like Ukraine or Belarus. After all, just short time ago you would be talking about people of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth. And as the Sentinel Islands belong to India, then the Sentinels are de facto Indian citizens, at least legally. And the time frame in which population genetics is interested is far more longer.
Even very broad divisions of the human population into races is a bit problematic. One traditional one is to separate by continents, which still is problematic. For example, what's the purpose of pooling such different people together as "Asian"?
And basically the classic "race theories" involve culture, language, religion, history and social status to the definition, which obviously cannot be biological / genetical.
Well, just look at a dictionary definition of an ideology:
or
Quite easy to argue that ideologies are of the doing of humans and thus are "a result of human interaction" and "exist because humans agree that they exists". Again that animals of a same species do have different genotypes and phenotypes is something different.
Edit:
Am I vaguely in the correct ballpark in saying that 'Critical Race Theory' is not about eradicating 'racism' per se (as the view is that is cannot be annihilated), but more or less about how to counteract inequalities that exist due to 'racism'?
As a critique of this view - building on what I mentioned above - if we're happy to state that our common view of 'race' is about superficial appearances and more closely related to culture and upbringing, then to be categorised as race x or y is more about the cultural aspect than mere skin pigmentation. Examples of such racism exist between peoples who look very similar (if not identical in most respects). The problem from here is how anyone identifies as this or that 'race' becomes something of a 'choice' yet the main issue is that no matter how you perceived yourself you cannot realistically expect everyone else to agree with you on this. This seems to be the biggest problem.
That critique aside (and looking to the US) it seems pretty messy to ask people to pay for their ancestors views/actions, yet it does seem unfair that - according to how I understand Critical Race Theory - a large section of US society has been viewed in a bad light and basically held back and not allowed the same opportunities as others.
Clearly the racism has reduced in the US over the centuries but it is still not good enough that great advances have been made. It just might be that we have to sadly wait it out, so to speak, and that in a generation or three thigns will continue to 'progress'. How to progress in the meantime? I believe this is precisely what Critical Race Theory is about ... am I correct?
People are quite happy to refer to patriotism as a good thing, yet nationalism isn't. I was wondering if there is a similar discrepancy between two differing views of 'race' as their is to 'nation'? Might be a useless idea but I thought I'd bring it up just in case someone sees something of value in it.
For some leftists (internationalist socialists) patriotism is as grave a sin as nationalism. They at least agree that the two terms mean the same thing. Patriotism and nationalism have potential negative aspects, for sure. "My country, right or wrong!" is never good foreign policy.
Race hatred is clearly a bad thing. We have seen plenty of that (and not just in the US). I would describe "race hatred" and run of the mill "racism" as different points on a continuum. Race hatred leads to lynching. Ordinary racism leads to segregated suburban communities and schools. White suburbs are not in the same category as KKK terrorism.
Racism has resulted in social structures that permanently disadvantaged racial targets. Cutting blacks out of the real estate expansion of the post-war boom hardened economic disparities. Racial discrimination in employment, accommodations, education, and so on, further cemented inequality into place. Then there is the feedback loop. Well off people don't usually want to live with poor people which leads to further racial separation.
Did I get this from critical race theory? No, just from reading history.
I don't believe in white supremacy, white fragility, and the like. I believe that people are far more alike than they are different. One can count on groups of people pursuing their own advantage. If they happen to be in the majority, happen to have more money, happen to have more power -- then they are going to come way out on top, and those who don't have those assets probably won't.
Only SOME white people had all that. We have a wealthy ruling class and a smaller prosperous middle class. Together, they make up maybe 20% of the population. The rest of the population is working class, and generally they have not done all that well, historically or recently. The majority of the working class has been white. Whiteness didn't help their class status.
Racism blames the losers for not coming out on top. That's just stupid, of course. Poor people, white, black, hispanic, asian, or what have you are usually poor because their parents were not members of the ruling or prosperous middle class. The escalator of upward mobility doesn't start on the basement level.
"Yes but... There are millions and millions of white people who own homes that are worth a lot of money. They are getting rich while we, who couldn't get a mortgage, are getting poorer."
Not so fast. Most working class people do not own the homes they live in. They are in debt up to their ears for much of their lives. They don't have clear ownership of their house until they pay off the mortgage.
House, car, college loans, and credit cards are a sort of indenture. If you want to keep your house, car, and the stuff you bought on credit, you had better be a compliant employee. IF NOT... there are serious consequences. Then there is that degree you worked hard for, paid for on credit, and may not now be able to pay back. Again, there are unpleasant consequences for being a deadbeat.
The people who deserve the envy of the poor are prosperous middle class and ruling class people with enough money to actually pay for the large properties, cars, educations, travel, and so on that they enjoy.
I'm not sure there is a cure for racial hatred. Containing it may be all we can do.
The best bet to reduce racism is for working class people -- black and white together -- to recognize they are in the same sinking boat. It's mostly about money. Follow the money, as the saying goes. Economics explains why a few are on top and most of us are not.
Trying to change racial attitudes in a vacuum, or because they seem like bad manners, is just not worth the effort.
I find patriotism kind of repugnant myself. I understand why people have a sense of patriotism (I likely do myself in some superficial respects) I just don't see any logical justification in it other than a needful clinging to what I assume is an innate human attribute of wanting to be part of something bigger that we can understand perhaps (akin to religions).
It seems to me that a lot of the racial debate follows this same path. I'm not fond of it but I cannot say it is 'right' or 'wrong' when so many are invested in it and probably because they have the innate drive to be invested in it. For those reasons I want clarification on what exactly Critical Race Theory is compared to my limited understanding of it as marked out above.
I have referred to racism as merely one type of prejudice before. Many berated me for this as they viewed 'prejudice' as being a less impactful term than racism and believed I was trying soften act of racism as 'mere prejudice'.
I think so too. Critical race theory starts from the idea that racism is inherent (to white people?) and includes far more things than the ordinary definition of racism; that there are people who hold racist ideas. Blurring the line just what is racism seems to be also the case. Furthermore, it seems to totally accept and endorse the division between people by race.
What I find odd in the US and UK are that many applications ask about the race or ethnicity of the applicant. Perhaps the structural issues start from things like that.
Well, people don't know the term jingoism and the term chauvinism has another definition today also. But I guess any word meaning that people would have some positive thoughts about their nation will be something very negative to some.
In the US patriotism is still accepted, but I think in Europe many are viewing it as something negative. Nation states are bad!
I see this kind of thing from some but certainly not all in what I've read. As in 'white people,' and talkign about racism in such a way that isn't exactly an 'accusation' aimed at anyone just a matter-of-factness about how historically such things have played a whole in dividing people ... so I don't think it 'endorses' any division between people but certainly does seem to say that such divisions are inevitable (which I agree with although I'm not completely sold that 'race' is anything more than a form of tribalism entwined around basic cultural norm of human behaviour.
As with a lot of topics in the mainstream it can be hard to dig past the noise and find the actual original ideas and thoughts behind them.
The differences from country to country on this topic are also quite different. Where I currently live people don't understand or care about this kind of thing generally speaking. It does exist to some degree just like it does everywhere and given that the population is quite isolated (historically) from other countries and has good reason to not exactly be overly fond of western interference in it's colonial aspects, but they don't much care about it.
I feel a certain amount of pride in finding commonality with others who have done something admirable, but for the life of me, I cannot understand why. I think it is, objectively, delusional. So, rather than give in to it, I check myself.
I may try to do admirable things myself, and I may applaud and admire others who do admirable things, but I'll not pat myself on the back for charging up a hill that I did not charge up, just because the guy who did is a white American male like me.
The same analysis applies to ancestor worship. Ancestors may have set a standard that one should try to live up to (maybe not), but just because one is cut from the same cloth does not a garment make.
Fans and nationalists and patriots remind me of the chicken-hawk. And I don't mean the bird. The bird is okay.
Admirable things need to be done. Get out there and do them if you will. But don't take credit for things done by others just because they look like you or live where you do. If you want to feel good about yourself, that ain't how it's done.
Such delusion is just conservative feel-good politics.
I think it is just basic tribalism. Someone in your 'tribe' does something well, or even no so well, and you react as if they are some kind of extended representative of you (which to some weird measure they as you share commonalities with them in terms of cultural upbringing).
Even people from European countries who view themselves as being 'European' rather than spanish, german or whatever, are adhering to a level of tribal allegiance. no doubt they care about 'Europe' in the sense that they identify as 'European' rather than to this or that singular country.
Anyway, I am interested to learn more about what people think of Critical Race Theory because, like many other areas, I believe there is somethin in there for me to learn in regards to my views on the religiosity of human beings and how this feature translates itself into/through human culture. It seems to me there is something similar going on here that ties Critical Theory (in general), Nationalistic pride (or patriotism), and the current culture trend of Identity Politics (including sexual orientation, sexism and racism) to basic cosmological upheaval (our sense of belonging in the face of an infinitely expanding universe. If the religious persons cannot truly keep ignoring the vast endless expanse of the universe and this brings with it a sense of insignificance that I believe some just cannot even face let alone deal with so they look for 'reasons' and 'meaning' within human clusters that seem to approximate what or who they see themselves as and/or as a place where what they say or do is taken seriously and listened to (the later being the greatest need of most humans I'd say!).
Now this is true. Perhaps Critical race theory should be defined to three separate categories:
a) CRT of a specific author
b) Programs or authors close to CRT, using parts of the theory or in general have ideas close to CRT.
c) What those who are the detractors of CRT see as CRT.
And as the issue has become part of the politicized "Culture War", it's extremely confusing to follow the debate. I think the general rule is to just look at what the people actually have said themselves and never quote or follow what a third person has described them saying.
:100:
Quoting I like sushi
I don't know much about it. During the recent dust-up over the issue, I remember the "right" running with it, as if it were being taught in public schools, while the left explained it is a university, if not graduate school and law school level subject that didn't mean what the right thought it meant. This compelled me to look it up once on the interwebs and it didn't pique my interest so I moved on to other stuff. All the best in your efforts.
Prior to the Nazis, (1920s) the term "race" was still used the way "ethnic" is used now. The French and Finns might each of been referenced as a "race". At the same time, race applied to the major human groups -- Amerindians, Australians, Asians, Africans, and Europeans. The deeper you go into human origins, the more complicated it gets -- because people wandered around a lot; there was species mixing with Neanderthals and Denisovans. Populations were replaced from time to time, here and there, and/or they mixed genetically. Populations died out. All this didn't begin to settle out and stabilize until around 5,000 years ago, give or take a a couple millennia.
Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel is a good explanation of why 2 races (asians and caucasians) came to dominate world history. A lot of it had to do with geography and geology. Asians and caucasians were able to spread out along lines of latitude--east and west. (Climate tends to be similar.). Africans and amerindians were distributed along north/south lines of longitude, along which climate tends to change a lot. Second, Africa and the Western Hemisphere did not provide wild animals that were amenable to domestication. No horses, camels, water buffalo, or cows. Therefore, there were no draft animals to provide power and transportation. Third, Asians and Europeans became somewhat resistant to the diseases they encountered int heir domesticated animals (measles and smallpox, for example). Particularly when Europeans encountered Amerindians, pandemics severely reduced their populations. Smallpox (and other diseases) were worse for Native Americans than the Black Plague was for Europe or Asia.
The upshot is that Europeans and Asians were in a position to expand and dominate--not because they were superior, but because they were geographically lucky.
20th and 21st century racial theorists in the US (mostly) seized upon race, and ideas about racial supremacy -- white supremacy and white privilege -- as the explanation for "Why do Europeans have so much and Africans so little?" Layer on to that the history of global expansion (imperial, colonial) or slavery: and here we are.
People tend to be all alike, regardless of where they come from and (an important corollary) people are not nice. We have to work very hard to be nice. Whoever has the upper hand in any group encounter will tend to dominate the less fortunate, and domination is usually an ugly business.
The CRT and racial theorists tend to believe that if people get rid of bad ideas and replace them with good ideas, all will be well. Unfortunately, as I said, people with good ideas can still manage to be very not nice.