Critical Race Theory: definitions and concerns

[icehorse]

It's not about quantity but about accuracy. And again specifically what is in those 6 books that contradicts the piece I cited?

Since you cited the article as a counter-definition, I think the burden is on you to cite the article's definition of CRT. I didn't read the article with extreme care, but it seemed largely to side step a clear definition of CRT, and spent most of its time discussing how the world of education has been dealing with the issue. Now there's nothing wrong with that, but it sidesteps the idea of the OP, which is to establish a definition.

 

[icehorse]

Do you think it provides a poor set of tools? If so why and what in it do you think is poor? Frankly I consider a lot of it to be self-evident.

Yes, I think that abandoning objectivity and evidence in favor of story-telling is a big step backwards. I think that the idea that you're either a racist or an antiracist is both untrue and needlessly divisive. And so on

 

[anna.]

Do you think the OP misrepresents what CRT is to any substantial degree?

How would you know, without having read all 6 books? Or have you read all six books, so that you know their ideas aren't being misinterpreted for a 21 minute video by someone named Ryan Chapman, whose credentials seem to be "thinking of general human concerns?"

I rarely watch political videos, no matter the source. That's my preference. But I do make exceptions, and I'll give this one a go for the sake of trying to understand the structure of your OP.

 

[anna.]

Hey @anna b. , @sun rise , @exchemist -

No doubt the right has distorted things. But that's not really the discussion here. The discussion here is to nail down what CRT really is.

But that really is the discussion here, is if the right has recodified CRT to further their own political agenda.

So I'd ask again, where do you find the claims in the OP or video to be wrong, and based on what? For example, do you think that the authors cited in the OP are not in fact the main advocates for CRT?

I only recognize one of the authors.

 

[Lain]

Yes, I think that abandoning objectivity and evidence in favor of story-telling is a big step backwards. I think that the idea that you're either a racist or an antiracist is both untrue and needlessly divisive. And so on

To my understanding it is pretended objectivity that is actually not that and discards evidence.

 

[Laika]

Criticism of CRT is by no means a denial that racism exists. Criticism of CRT is more about the idea that CRT provides a poor set of tools for fighting racism.

I’d only like to add that CRT does NOT have a monopoly on anti-racism or the understanding of race and racism. Criticism of CRT may well come from other anti-racists themselves. i.e. opposing CRT is not the same as supporting racial discrimination or injustice.

..and as a Marxist, the whole question of the “subjectivity” of race as an “identity” is problematic because it will conflict with Marxist claims to be an objectively true and scientific understanding of social relations and conflicts. Though it sounds like there is overlap in some areas- especially employing concepts of ideology- there will be others where Marxism’s insistence on scientific objectivity will clash with CRT and Post-Modernism.

I wish I knew more and could be more precise, but there has been a quiet struggle between Marxists and Post-Modernists because of the differences in their approaches to understanding and achieving social equality since at least the 1990s and 2000s.

I haven’t read the books below but they are written by the head of the Socialist Worker’s Party in the UK and a Marxist philosopher and deal with this area.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Against-Postmodernism-Critique-Alex-Callinicos/dp/0745606148/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1RJMU9X25Y36A&keywords=against+post+modernism+a+marxist+critique&qid=1638820058&sprefix=against+post+modernism+a+marxist+critique,aps,130&sr=8-1

Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism - Wikipedia

 

[icehorse]

How would you know, without having read all 6 books? Or have you read all six books, so that you know their ideas aren't being misinterpreted for a 21 minute video by someone named Ryan Chapman, whose credentials seem to be "thinking of general human concerns?"

I rarely watch political videos, no matter the source. That's my preference. But I do make exceptions, and I'll give this one a go for the sake of trying to understand the structure of your OP.

I don't know if you watched any of the video? If you watch even the first 1/4 of it, you'll see that the video REPEATEDLY shows pages from these books, showing direct quotes. So these authors wrote these things. That seems like a really good way to get to the heart of what CRT is, no?

 

[Kenny]

Thank you for such a great summary of the video. Couple of thoughts and questions.

1 - CRT began as a deep dissatisfaction with the civil rights discourse of the 60s and 70s. Two important values that came out of this period were:
- color-blindness, the idea that laws should apply equally to everyone
- racial integration, the idea that society should be a melting pot and that cultural exchange and power should be shared

CRT, believes these values are flawed. Instead, CRTists promote race consciousness, forming collectives without integrating into society. (A la Malcolm X)

I wonder why they believe this is flawed. Why should I be race conscious? Isn't that, basically, the definition of racism?

Or, how do you promote the skin deep race consciousness without being racist?

2 - CRT's main analysis approach is to "deconstruct" and then "reconstruct" aspects of society. Once society has been deconstructed, CRT will attempt to construct a new social reality, and direct its operation.

As part of this process, CRT has determined that equality theory, legal reasoning, rationalism, and neutral constitutional law are to be undermined. As an example, CRT considers the academic values of:
- objectivity
- neutrality
- and balance,

to be "white values", and not universally held. And anyone - regardless of skin color - who values objectivity, neutrality, and balance is "white" in practice. Instead of these academic values, CRT promotes "authenticity", which means resisting integration into the "white world". In order to achieve this, CRT promotes subjectivity and political bias. Instead of evidence, CRT promotes personal story-telling, a.k.a. "lived experience".

Again... thank you... but it makes me wonder, if there is such a thing as a "white world"... the question arises then as to what exactly is "personal story-telling - lived experience". What does that look like? And how does someone with less melanin express that? ( I wonder)

3 - Racism is THE defining issue of our time. You can either be a racist or an antiracist. An antiracist makes fighting racism the most important societal issue. You CANNOT be non-racist. If you don't act like a racist, BUT you don't hold racism as the most important issue, you are a racist.

Yet, it would appear to me, that the concentration on "whiteness" (skin deep less melanin), is it not racist in its foundation?

4- America is a regime of white supremacy. It's laws, educational system, politics and culture are all in support of white supremacy and must be undone. The replacement plan is not yet clear, but includes:

- making hate speech illegal
- voter redistricting to support race consciousness
- passing an antiracist constitutional amendment and creating a Department of AntiRacism that would oversee all law making.
- embedding CRT into all aspects of academia
- ending capitalism

Interesting that they don't have a clear replacement. How do you reconstruct if one doesn't know what it looks like?

I don't understand why "ending capitalism" is a less melanin issue. I can't comprehend how race consciousness isn't racism in and of itself. Wouldn't have the slightest idea what they would constitute as hate speech (I thought we already had those laws). What is wrong with 'it's laws?"

All in all, CRT is clear as mud IMO.

 

[icehorse]

But that really is the discussion here, is if the right has recodified CRT to further their own political agenda.

I only recognize one of the authors.

In order to determine a recodification, don't we first have to codify? That's what the OP is attempting to do. To codify

 

[The Hammer]

Yes, I think that abandoning objectivity and evidence in favor of story-telling is a big step backwards. I think that the idea that you're either a racist or an antiracist is both untrue and needlessly divisive. And so on

But those are your only issues with it? Seems like slim pickings.

 

[The Hammer]

In order to determine a recodification, don't we first have to codify? That's what the OP is attempting to do. To codify

Try a college campus, not gonna nail down a "simple" definition for CRT anywhere else. Got to talk with the people actually writing the books. Not us lowly plebes

 

[icehorse]

But those are your only issues with it? Seems like slim pickings.

What part of "and so on" was confusing

 

[icehorse]

Try a college campus, not gonna nail down a "simple" definition for CRT anywhere else. Got to talk with the people actually writing the books. Not us lowly plebes

If you don't want to codify a definition, you're free to ignore this thread

 

[Nakosis]

At the bottom of this post is a link to a 21 minute video I'd encourage you to watch. I'll attempt to summarize some of the important ideas in the video here. First off, the video cites 6 books as being the essential foundation of CRT (titles and author lists summarized):

1 - CRT: The Key Writings, Crenshaw +
2 - How to be an Antiracist, Kendi
3 - CRT: an intro, Delgado and Stefancic
4 - Words that Wound, Matsuda +
5 - White Fragility, DiAngelo

6 - Traditional and Critical Theory, Horkheimer (older, foundational)

Throughout the video, important claims about CRT are cited with screenshots of pages from these books. This seems like a very sound approach to defining CRT.

== Key Ideas in CRT

1 - CRT began as a deep dissatisfaction with the civil rights discourse of the 60s and 70s. Two important values that came out of this period were:
- color-blindness, the idea that laws should apply equally to everyone
- racial integration, the idea that society should be a melting pot and that cultural exchange and power should be shared

CRT, believes these values are flawed. Instead, CRTists promote race consciousness, forming collectives without integrating into society. (A la Malcolm X)

2 - CRT's main analysis approach is to "deconstruct" and then "reconstruct" aspects of society. Once society has been deconstructed, CRT will attempt to construct a new social reality, and direct its operation.

As part of this process, CRT has determined that equality theory, legal reasoning, rationalism, and neutral constitutional law are to be undermined. As an example, CRT considers the academic values of:
- objectivity
- neutrality
- and balance,

to be "white values", and not universally held. And anyone - regardless of skin color - who values objectivity, neutrality, and balance is "white" in practice. Instead of these academic values, CRT promotes "authenticity", which means resisting integration into the "white world". In order to achieve this, CRT promotes subjectivity and political bias. Instead of evidence, CRT promotes personal story-telling, a.k.a. "lived experience".

3 - Racism is THE defining issue of our time. You can either be a racist or an antiracist. An antiracist makes fighting racism the most important societal issue. You CANNOT be non-racist. If you don't act like a racist, BUT you don't hold racism as the most important issue, you are a racist.

4- America is a regime of white supremacy. It's laws, educational system, politics and culture are all in support of white supremacy and must be undone. The replacement plan is not yet clear, but includes:

- making hate speech illegal
- voter redistricting to support race consciousness
- passing an antiracist constitutional amendment and creating a Department of AntiRacism that would oversee all law making.
- embedding CRT into all aspects of academia
- ending capitalism

==

Now one might argue that the video maker has cherry picked some of the most controversial ideas from these books. To that I would say, perhaps, but so what? If you think there is an alternate "CRT-lite", that might be great news, can you provide citations?

I see holding onto a racial identity as unnecessary. Generally better if you don't
CRT is a political ideology which unfortunately for liberals fits into the current conservative narrative which conservatives have taken advantage of.

It's a theory which means there is no need to accept any of it precepts. Just a theory of how one might make the world a better place. No guarantee that it would actually do this.

I've see people claim that it is a non-issue. Then ok, fine. Liberals ought to come out saying they have no interest in CRT. Anything else feeds into the narrative of the right.

 

[anna.]

I don't know if you watched any of the video? If you watch even the first 1/4 of it, you'll see that the video REPEATEDLY shows pages from these books, showing direct quotes. So these authors wrote these things. That seems like a really good way to get to the heart of what CRT is, no?

1. Have you read any, or all of the books referenced by the video? You didn't answer, and it makes a difference. I have not read any of them. Have you?

2. Holding the books up in the air, and then highlighting small quotes entirely devoid of context, so much so that we can't even see the whole page of what came before and what came after, isn't much better than not showing the quotes at all. I paused at each screenshot, in an attempt to read what came before and after and how Chapman paraphrased the quotes wasn't always on target. I'll give you an example:

Screenshot:

He says Stokely Carmichael argued "against integration" and "for race-conscious collectives," but I had to pause the video to actually read the excerpt, in which Carmichael makes a good point about integration reinforcing the idea that "white" is automatically superior and "black" is by definition inferior..." and why is that not an idea worth exploring? Is white actually the default for a good community, thus we integrate blacks into the white community but not whites into the black community?

Or here:

Chapman's commentary at this point: these are values specifically from white world academia. And yet in the very next sentence, "critical race scholars advocate and defend positions," based on their authentic experiences, which are subjective. To me, just an average citizen, I'm understanding that CRT is advocating an authentic voice speaking from their own experiences, which is subjective and political. Even though I'm white, and avoid trying to speak for people of color defining and and defending their voice, this seems perfectly logical and uncontroversial.

Anyway. I think he means to take a neutral stance and succeeds in that pretty well, but you can't summarize 5 books of academic argument regarding CRT into 21 minutes of random screenshots and paraphrases which may or may not adequately capture the nature of an idea or statement.

 

[anna.]

In order to determine a recodification, don't we first have to codify? That's what the OP is attempting to do. To codify

Rufo and the right have decodified what CRT actually is to academia and codified what they want CRT to mean to the right. Rufo was very clear about this. When he says who he is, believe him.

He said: "The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think critical race theory. We have decodified the term [from the academic] and will recodify it [for the populist audience] to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans [meaning conservatives]."

Brackets are mine, obviously.

 

[The Hammer]

What part of "and so on" was confusing

The lack of exposition.

 

[icehorse]

Rufo and the right have decodified what CRT actually is to academia and codified what they want CRT to mean to the right. Rufo was very clear about this. When he says who he is, believe him.

He said: "The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think critical race theory. We have decodified the term [from the academic] and will recodify it [for the populist audience] to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans [meaning conservatives]."

Brackets are mine, obviously.

The thing is, that CRT broke out of academia quite a while back. That's not to say it's not still a part of academia, but that it's also got a lot of traction outside of academia. So to codify what CRT means in academia is only a subset of what it means in the broader world.

As far as these ideas being unpopular with conservatives, I think many of these ideas are much more broadly unpopular. For example, do you think that objectivity and knowledge and reason are conservative values that liberals do not hold?

 

[icehorse]

How would you know, without having read all 6 books? Or have you read all six books, so that you know their ideas aren't being misinterpreted for a 21 minute video by someone named Ryan Chapman, whose credentials seem to be "thinking of general human concerns?"

I rarely watch political videos, no matter the source. That's my preference. But I do make exceptions, and I'll give this one a go for the sake of trying to understand the structure of your OP.

I have not read these books. But I've listened to many of these authors give public lectures, and the video I linked to is consistent with what I've heard.

But more broadly, the question comes up in this sort of OP about how much we can "stand on the shoulders" of the folks who came before us? Are you suggesting that none of us can talk about topics on this forum if we haven't read a bunch of books on the topic?

In other words, I feel that the OP is on pretty safe ground. and that said, I hope it was clear in the OP that if anyone has contradictory understanding, it would be welcome.

 

[anna.]

The thing is, that CRT broke out of academia quite a while back. That's not to say it's not still a part of academia, but that it's also got a lot of traction outside of academia. So to codify what CRT means in academia is only a subset of what it means in the broader world.

When did it break out of academia? Do you have a timeline?

How did the set become the subset, in your estimation?

As far as these ideas being unpopular with conservatives, I think many of these ideas are much more broadly unpopular. For example, do you think that objectivity and knowledge and reason are conservative values that liberals do not hold?

That's a very vague question, with a multitude of answers, depending on context. How about a very specific question? For example, historically, liberal didn't mean what conservatives assign to the term today.