Critical Race Theory?

[Kooky]

However, I don't see that anti-racism and multiculturalism are necessarily one and the same. They're often associated with each other, but technically speaking, they are separate and distinct political objectives. In some cases, they may even contradict each other. That's the puzzle that society will ultimately have to resolve.

"Multiculturalism" is not a "political objective" except perhaps in xenophobes' conspirational fantasies. It is simply a fact of life that any population center of sufficient size will be host to a diversity of cultures, ethnicities, and communities.

 

[George-ananda]

So, if I understand you correctly, the best argument of your theory that genetical differences are responsible for intelligence and that this explains racial gaps in achievements is linked to brain size and interconnecting neuron fibers differences between racial groups.

PS: how did you isolate for false positive also known as the the ''correlation doesn't equal causation'' problem.

No, my main reason is my observation of humans and human society. The science and Bell Curve theorists just seems to also correlate to what Is observed,

 

[epronovost]

No, my main reason is my observation of humans and human society.

What did you observed? how did you gathered the data? How did you establish causal links?

The science and Bell Curve theorists just seems to also correlate to what Is observed,

Pedantic I know, but the Bell Curve isn't a scientific research or book. It never was submitted to peer review nor did it gather its data from a neutral source. It's a polemic book based on a resurrected scientific hypothesis.

 

[epronovost]

"Multiculturalism" is not a "political objective" except perhaps in xenophobes' conspirational fantasies. It is simply a fact of life that any population center of sufficient size will be host to a diversity of cultures, ethnicities, and communities.

That's incorrect. It's only true in areas where immigration is abundant and where the law tolerates or even encourages and protects cultural expression and differences. You can have massive population centered that are largely monocultural like in Turkey for example.

 

[InChrist]

Everything you say here about conservatives, applies to liberals as well. Most do approach others as individuals and take them at their merits. That's a maturity thing, not a liberal or conservative thing. What is different however is recognizing a system stacked against minorities. That system, is bigger than any one individual's values or morality. Do you not understand this? That is the core of the whole issue. Not you or me as individuals, but the system we participate in, which influences us even when we do not recognize it. I can own that. Can't you too?

Can you explain to me what "systemic causation" means? Do you understand what systemic racism means, and can you provide examples of it? Or do you believe there is no systemic racism, and that everything is fully open to anyone who has the desire to get ahead in life, and that those who fail or don't get ahead, is because of themselves alone to blame? Do you believe that?

Systematic causation is basically the idea that system is the cause or responsible entity, rather than the individual.


At this point in time, I think there is individual racism, but I don’t think systematic racism is in place, at least not legally. There was a time when racism actually was built into the system, first with slavery, then with Jim Crow Laws, and in the southern states with overwhelmingly Democratic party administrations. Those state and local governments were the system and were often racist. Then with the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s came the abolition of such laws. The law could no longer be used to oppress blacks or other minorities. That is when systematic racism legally ended.
According to Thomas Sowell, a black economist, who grew up during the Jim Crow era, poor blacks in this country do suffer from systemic problems, but not based on racism. Rather, Sowell points out that black families, individuals and their economic stability has been hurt by many of the instituted programs, especially Affirmative Action, in spite of good intentions.

So it seems that with the current circumstances, even though it is the leftist Democrats, who make the charge of systemic racism, it is these Democrats who have been overwhelmingly in control in areas where the conditions are the worst. The reality is that the left predominantly controls every major institution, from education to Hollywood. As well as the cities where blacks endure the most poverty and crime. So, if systemic racism is the problem, you must then also accept that Democrats are racist and they are systematically suppressing blacks and minorities.

I think ultimately the real issue is that we live in a fallen world and this means the world system is inundated with sin. I have no problem acknowledging sin: my own, that of conservatives, Christians, Republicans, Democrats, liberals, whites, blacks, everyone and anyone. If everyone would admit their sin and honesty confess to God, esteem others better than themselves, acknowledge ONE human race, and that everyone of every color is made in God’s image there would be no ongoing individual or systematic racism.

 

[Kooky]

That's incorrect. It's only true in areas where immigration is abundant and where the law tolerates or even encourages and protects cultural expression and differences. You can have massive population centered that are largely monocultural like in Turkey for example.

First of all, Turkey isn't monoethnic and never was - despite a good century's worth of nationalistic purges. nearly one third of Turkey's total population is made up of ethnic minorities (with the largest, of course, the Kurds, but also Arabs, Greeks, Armenians, Circassians, and others).

Second of all, Turkey is the remnant of the Ottoman Empire, a vast multiethnic and multireligious empire that spanned the Middle East, the Maghreb and the Balkans, and as that empire's metro area drew countless different people from the imperial periphery, and the Ottomans were in turn successors to the Eastern Roman Empire, another multiethnic and multireligious empire that likewise drew a lot of people from its periphery to the imperial core regions of Greece and Anatolia.

Third of all, I wasn't merely talking about ethnic minorities, but cultures in a more general sense - as communities based on specific ways of life. These communities will be a fact of life in any substantial society, regardless of whether they are defined by their difference in ethnicity, religion, language, sexual identity, or simply practice a way of life that is considered to be an outsider life to the mainstream culture.

Any substantial urban center is going to attract these communities - trade, travel, migration and refuge sweeps up people from all over the world, and modern travel in particular tends to increase people's mobility even further. Most larger cities that have any amount of travel and trade going on, would have expats, refugees and migrants among their populations, as well as sexual or social outsider communities living in their margins and along their peripheries.

Oh, and another thing - laws may deter travel, but they have never fully prevented people who really, really wanted to travel or migrate from doing so. Recall the porosity of the Iron Curtain, or the number of illegal migrants living within US territory despite the enormous amount of money and effort the US sinks into patrolling its borders and hunting down migrants within.

 

[epronovost]

First of all, Turkey isn't monoethnic and never was - despite a good century's worth of nationalistic purges. nearly one third of Turkey's total population is made up of ethnic minorities (with the largest, of course, the Kurds, but also Arabs, Greeks, Armenians, Circassians, and others).

You might not have heard, but Kurdish national and cultural identity is violently suppressed in Turkey. In fact, the Turkish State didn't even recognized Kurds as their own ethnic and cultural group until 1991. Today, it's still illegal to teach in public and most private one. We can't exactly say that Turkey is an open society in which various cultures are free to prosper and develop themselves. The presence of multiple culture in an area doesn't make a society multicultural. Multiculturalism is very much a political philosophy, but yes if you simply meant "diverse in terms of ethnic background" or varied in terms of lifestyle (legal or not) then yes large groups of people tend to be one or both of these, I agree.

 

[epronovost]

@InChrist

I'd careful about Thomas Sowell, he does suffer from a serious case of ultracrepidarian tendencies (that is thinking that because you are very smart and accomplished in one domain, that you are equally astute in other, unrelated domains) a problem very common amongst many academic no matter their political and philosophical inclination. While he is a fairly respectable economist if a bit fringe and contestable on some point (namely on taxation and welfare), he did peddle rather ridiculous pseudohistorical theories (like New Deal denialism and white washing segregation), pseudoscience (Global Warming denialism, DDT ban myths, etc.), he also abuses the Godwin Law of argumentation on a regular basis. The one field where he is consistently astute outside of economy is baseball. Always be careful of charismatic academic speaker talking of subject on which they are not qualified and who don't refer to their colleagues in those domains. This advice could save you from misplaced trust more often than you'd think.

 

[Kooky]

You might not have heard, but Kurdish national and cultural identity is violently suppressed in Turkey. In fact, the Turkish State didn't even recognized Kurds as their own ethnic and cultural group until 1991. Today, it's still illegal to teach in public and most private one.

Yes. As you can see, despite Turkey's best efforts, their society is a multiethnic, multicultural one: Multiculturalism is a fact of life, regardless of whether xenophobes wish it to be.

We can't exactly say that Turkey is an open society in which various cultures are free to prosper and develop themselves.

And I never said it was, nor meant I to imply as such. Multiculturalism is a fact of life, it has nothing to do with whether a society is "open" or not. People will move, and trade, and travel regardless.

The presence of multiple culture in an area doesn't make a society multicultural.
Multiculturalism is very much a political philosophy, but yes if you simply meant "diverse in terms of ethnic background" or varied in terms of lifestyle (legal or not) then yes large groups of people tend to be one or both of these, I agree.

So we're not disputing facts, but definitions. While that's fine, I don't really care very much about it.
I've said my piece and since your argument does not disagree or challenge my main points I'll let it sit there.

 

[oldbadger]

Critical Race Theory is racist anti-white propaganda and a radical attempt to indoctrinate naive and impressionable people into more extreme far-left ideas and world views.

It is clearly obvious. Ignore the inaccurate descriptions and actually learn about what is being taught, and discover this truth for yourselves. It doesn’t solve racism. It creates more of it. It doesn’t make people more united. It divides them further.

How have you studied CRT?
What exactly has been taught, where and who by?

 

[ImmortalFlame]

SAGE Journals: Your gateway to world-class research journals

I will focus on Whiteness as a condition one first acquires and then has—a malignant, parasitic-like condition to which “white” people have a particular susceptibility. The condition is foundational, generating characteristic ways of being in one’s body, in one’s mind, and in one’s world. Parasitic Whiteness renders its hosts’ appetites voracious, insatiable, and perverse. These deformed appetites particularly target nonwhite peoples. Once established, these appetites are nearly impossible to eliminate. Effective treatment consists of a combination of psychic and social-historical interventions. Such interventions can reasonably aim only to reshape Whiteness’s infiltrated appetites—to reduce their intensities, redistribute their aims, and occasionally turn those aims toward the work of reparation. When remembered and represented, the ravages wreaked by the chronic condition can function either as warning (“never again”) or as temptation (“great again”). Memorialization alone, therefore, is no guarantee against regression. There is not yet a permanent cure...


Whiteness, taking this injunction as its own, transforms it into an epistemology of entitled dominion, a mode of coming-to-know in which identity and entitlement are fused. We are licensed at birth, and therefore entitled, to find, capture, dissect, and overpower our targeted objects. As such, we will finally come to know and take dominion over them. Within the terms of the epistemology of entitled dominion knowledge becomes both a sign of superiority and an instrument of power. The steps from knowledge to dominion are clear. The more We know, then, the more We can do; the more We can do, the more We can control; the more We can control, the more We can dominate; and finally, the more We can dominate, the more We are realizing our divine mandate to “have dominion . . . over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” Triumphantly submitting to this mandate, Whiteness pursues a utopia of permanent satisfaction and assigns to nonwhite peoples the task of being its ideal, infinitely need-satisfying object, there to service its voracious, and uncheckable, appetites.

This doesn't seem particularly ideological. Historically, "whiteness" has been an exclusionary category that results in tremendous privilege imbalances and is often not recognized as such from within the grouping. This essay just seems to be using medical language to describe a well understood sociological and historical phenomenon.

 

[Stevicus]

We both know and agree racism will never completely disapear nor is racism now the same as a 100 years in the past both in terms of occurance, but also in terms of style.

Here's one problem linked to those facts. Let's say the government stops making race a category in survey questions as do all other large database with raw informations since that would be maintaining the ideological basis of racism. How will we know if there is no discrimination based on race? How will we know if there isn't a resurgence? Now its going to be the personnal experience of one against the others. If you are blind to people race's, even if you are not racist yourself, how would you be able to notice trends like hate crimes on the rise?

Well, if it's merely a matter of "how will we know," I don't see that as an insurmountable issue. How do we know now? How do we know that Derek Chauvin is a racist? I wasn't really making a point about how governments keep statistics, but more about the public dialogue and the kinds of ideas which are being propagated. There's something contradictory about telling people not to judge others by their race while society continues to do exactly that.

It's not like racist people aren't prone to dismiss or reject accusation of racism against themselves. How would we deal with stereotypes or unconscious bias? How would you make a racist person, who is in denial of their racism, realise that what they are doing is racist. These people are ''color blind'' or at least believe they are strongly, but they are not.

It may not be able to affect anyone who is already racist (although I don't see it as impossible). However, there's also a matter of what society teaches future generations. Does teaching students to categorize by race influence them to not be racist?

I would also note that many of the systemic issues in question are, in many cases, class-based, not necessarily race-based. Yet, ever since the 1980s, liberals and progressives have essentially sanitized the issue and made a point of all but avoiding class as an issue. They've tended to make it all about race and identity politics, all the while supporting the War on Drugs, gentrification, outsourcing, the diminishing of our industrial base and infrastructure, and various other policies which aren't explicitly racist, yet have still harmed the standard of living and well-being of US citizens (including citizens of color).

Immigration is also another related issue where the opposition is more than just a bunch of old white conservative xenophobes. Race and racism are not just "Black and White" issues. That's another thing that the mainstream narrative tends to overlook. Recently, there have been reported hate crimes against Asians and Jews where the assailants have been Black. We've also seen intense rivalries between rival gangs of Blacks and Hispanics, some of which I've even seen first-hand when I was working at a high school in California and on other occasions. I've seen articles about Blacks in the South lamenting the influx of Hispanics and other immigrants of color. There's far more going on than just the surface-level issues of "Black vs. White" that most people focus upon.

Talks of ''color blind'' society, in my opinion, occult the fact that racism, like all forms of bigotry, is a complex social and psychological phenomenon.

Trouble is, without a color blind society, people will be hard-pressed to give explanations as to why some forms of bigotry are considered acceptable while others are not. If the goal here is to try to teach people that racism and other forms of bigotry are wrong and destructive, then it seems to me the most effective way to do that would be to teach that certain ideological perceptions, blanket generalizations, and certain lines of thinking should be avoided.

Hell, since systemic racism is a thing, you might not even need racist people to produce racist effect if only they follow institutional rules that were design by and for racist purposes.

Then why not simply do away with these institutional rules? To answer my own question, I might say that the motives for some of the rules you might be referring to probably have more to do with class than race. But few people really want to address the issue of class, lest they be associated with {gasp} those evil socialists.

This is where the question of this country's racist origins becomes more relevant. The original intention of the early European colonists and their homeland governments was to make money. They saw the North American continent as an opportunity, full of rich forests, arable land, and teeming with resources which could mean greater profit and power. Greed was a much stronger motivation than racism. Racism likely came about as a system of control to help facilitate that greed. It was also possible that it was used as a way of keeping the lower class whites in check, so that (among other things) they would not bond and unify with the lower class blacks to overthrow the wealthy upper classes. (Some might point to Bacon's Rebellion as an example and an influential key event which helped shape US racist policies later on.)

That's ostensibly the line of thinking that led to the institutional rules to which you refer.

A society without racism is an ideal, a nirvana, but its not realist. People in the foreseable future will have ''racial/ethnic identity'' if only because these are associated with a history, a culture and communities. Saying that people should not hold stock on such identity and just be ''human beings'' or ''insert wider national identity here''. My question is how do we make people holding all the social identity they want and feel necessary without them comming into direct conflict over differences in social identity which are as inevitable as differences in beliefs, taste and opinions.

I'm not saying that it's a panacea or that it can ever be totally realized. But the question still remains whether we're trying to instill a consistent set of principles or if there is some other objective here.

Of course, there will always be differences in beliefs, taste, and opinions. As I noted above, our history is not just about "Black and White." People from every continent and every country have wound up on our shores at some point or another - and they didn't all get along swimmingly - even if they were of the same race (although back in the day, people would commonly refer to different nationalities and ethnicities as "races"). One thing that might have helped bring people together was the rise of the labor movement. People in labor unions saw each other as brothers, and it didn't matter what their race or nationality was. That's one real world example where color blind camaraderie can be encouraged and have a positive impact.

I'm not saying we can eliminate differences, but we can focus on the things that make us the same, the things we have in common and can unify us. It makes it far easier to focus on equality and justice when we do that.

Part of the problem is putting an inordinate focus on everything that is wrong in society. We've been talking about what is wrong in society for generations, but we always seem to come up short on solutions. It's not that people aren't making proposals for change and solutions, but when it gets into the hands of the politicians, lawyers, and pundits, it turns into unintelligible mush.

 

[Stevicus]

There are plenty of visible distinctions between humans that don't result in discrimination - hair color, eye color, freckles etc.

That's not entirely true, although there may be more innocuous and benign forms of discrimination which are not prohibited and do not cause any major discord in society.

So evidently, humans are very capable of recognizing visual differences without immediately using them as justification of oppression. Clearly, the problem here is not the existence of readily identifiable superficial difference among individuals.

I don't recall stating that that was a problem.

As for MLK, first of all, he's been dead for over 50 years now and society has changed in those intervening decades; but second of all; I cannot recall a single speech or text penned by him where he advocated for "color blindness" - that is, widespread ignorance of racial identity - but plenty where he advocated for the social and economic equality of White and Black people.

I disagree with your characterization of "color blindness" as "widespread ignorance of racial identity." I think that you've misunderstood my point.

 

[Stevicus]

"Multiculturalism" is not a "political objective" except perhaps in xenophobes' conspirational fantasies. It is simply a fact of life that any population center of sufficient size will be host to a diversity of cultures, ethnicities, and communities.

But we haven't always referred to it by that term. At one point, the term "melting pot" was more likely to be used to describe the same fact of life that you refer to. There are many examples of population centers of sufficient size which have been host to a diversity of cultures, ethnicities, and communities - although they haven't always been organized or perceived the same way. In quite a number of cases, some cultural or ethnic groups were strongly discriminated against, legally and institutionally. Some would refer to such discrimination as bigotry or racism, but would it still be multiculturalism, as the term is currently understood by most people nowadays?

 

[metis]

So it seems that with the current circumstances, even though it is the leftist Democrats, who make the charge of systemic racism, it is these Democrats who have been overwhelmingly in control in areas where the conditions are the worst. The reality is that the left predominantly controls every major institution, from education to Hollywood. As well as the cities where blacks endure the most poverty and crime. So, if systemic racism is the problem, you must then also accept that Democrats are racist and they are systematically suppressing blacks and minorities.

"Nice" stereotypes. How many other non-sequiturs do you have up your sleeve?

Again, many studies have shown that racism is higher amongst Republicans than Democrats and higher amongst the "religious right" than with mainline Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox. 83% of Evangelicals voted for Trump, which is disgusting since Trump constantly spewed and still spews utter dishonesty and bigotry. And now we have the proof that he tried to overthrow the government of the U.S. that are contained in some of his e-mails that were released to the public yesterday.

 

[epronovost]

Well, if it's merely a matter of "how will we know," I don't see that as an insurmountable issue. How do we know now? How do we know that Derek Chauvin is a racist?

We don't know that Derek Chauvin is racist. All we know is that he is a brutal careless man and that's all we need to know about him. Is the policing system of his city having a serious problem of systemic racism? That's a different question of which George Floyd murder is only one point of data.

I wasn't really making a point about how governments keep statistics, but more about the public dialogue and the kinds of ideas which are being propagated. There's something contradictory about telling people not to judge others by their race while society continues to do exactly that.

There is a difference between judging people for their ethnicity or race and identifying for a wealth of social, cultural and historical reasons as a member of a specific community. That you want it or not, Black American are their own sub-culture and they don't see this as a particular problem. They see being mistreated as one though.

Does teaching students to categorize by race influence them to not be racist?

Does teaching them we are all the same for we are all human erase cultural differences and crushes cultural minorities and sensitivities?

Of course, there will always be differences in beliefs, taste, and opinions. As I noted above, our history is not just about "Black and White." People from every continent and every country have wound up on our shores at some point or another - and they didn't all get along swimmingly - even if they were of the same race (although back in the day, people would commonly refer to different nationalities and ethnicities as "races"). One thing that might have helped bring people together was the rise of the labor movement. People in labor unions saw each other as brothers, and it didn't matter what their race or nationality was. That's one real world example where color blind camaraderie can be encouraged and have a positive impact.

You are sorely misinformed if you believe the Labor movement was equalitarian. You are aware that the Skinhead movement is born out of the Labor movement with one group being fiercely xenophobic and racist and the other fiercely anti-racist and both groups at each others throat and that's not without going into machismo where there was a lot conflict between Labor movements in support of women's equality (the largest group) and those hostile to it (the smaller group). No the Labor Movement was never a good example of color blind camaraderie. Some individual movements and unions were very open, but others clearly not. Don't forget that social identities are complex, numerous, fluid and intersectional.

 

[Stevicus]

We don't know that Derek Chauvin is racist. All we know is that he is a brutal careless man and that's all we need to know about him. Is the policing system of his city having a serious problem of systemic racism? That's a different question of which George Floyd murder is only one point of data.

I would suggest that it goes beyond the policing or the politics of that one particular city. The exact same issue has come up over and over and over. The same issues were brought up and the same narrative was heard during the Rodney King case - which was 30 years ago. 30 years, and what have we done since then? That's what we should be looking at, not rehashing the same old narrative each time. It's getting stale and fossilized, and we need to take a new approach. The old ways aren't working.

There is a difference between judging people for their ethnicity or race and identifying for a wealth of social, cultural and historical reasons as a member of a specific community. That you want it or not, Black American are their own sub-culture and they don't see this as a particular problem. They see being mistreated as one though.

I never stated that I wanted or didn't want Black Americans to have their own sub-culture. That's beside the point.

I don't think it's as simple as you're portraying it, though. What is the "Black American sub-culture," and how would identify and characterize it? Can one also say there is a "White American sub-culture," and how would that be identified? Who decides and defines what these cultures are, anyway? Isn't it up to Blacks to decide for themselves? Or is it something that white liberals are attempting to impose on them (such as Joe Biden telling them "you ain't Black" to African-Americans who don't vote for him)?

This is an important consideration and not one to be casually dismissed or taken lightly. White liberals tend to present themselves as "objective bystanders" in this discussion, but they're on the playing field too.

Does teaching them we are all the same for we are all human erase cultural differences and crushes cultural minorities and sensitivities?

No, but perhaps it might allow us to teach about cultural differences in a coherent and objective manner. When you speak of "sensitivities," you speak of emotionalism, which may hinder our ability to be objective and rational when it comes to examining possible solutions and proposals for change.

You are sorely misinformed if you believe the Labor movement was equalitarian. You are aware that the Skinhead movement is born out of the Labor movement with one group being fiercely xenophobic and racist and the other fiercely anti-racist and both groups at each others throat and that's not without going into machismo where there was a lot conflict between Labor movements in support of women's equality (the largest group) and those hostile to it (the smaller group). No the Labor Movement was never a good example of color blind camaraderie. Some individual movements and unions were very open, but others clearly not. Don't forget that social identities are complex, numerous, fluid and intersectional.

I thought the Skinhead movement came out of England, but I could be wrong about that. In any case, I don't think it's fair to characterize the Labor movement in such broad strokes. The bottom line is that people of different cultures and ethnicities learned to overcome those differences in pursuit of a common cause. I'll admit that there were problems and it was far from ideal, but at least it shows that it's possible.

I believe it would produce far more fruitful results and positive benefits than what we've been doing the past 30 years.

 

[InChrist]

"Nice" stereotypes. How many other non-sequiturs do you have up your sleeve?

Again, many studies have shown that racism is higher amongst Republicans than Democrats and higher amongst the "religious right" than with mainline Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox. 83% of Evangelicals voted for Trump, which is disgusting since Trump constantly spewed and still spews utter dishonesty and bigotry. And now we have the proof that he tried to overthrow the government of the U.S. that are contained in some of his e-mails that were released to the public yesterday.

It is easy to be blinded by the repetition of media lies and narrative intended to divide Americans and ultimately destroy the U.S. The tactics appear to be working very well. Trump is just a pawn, as is Biden. It is sad to see the demise of our country, but I’ m sure time will reveal whose really overthrowing the government.

 

[Kooky]

It is easy to be blinded by the repetition of media lies and narrative intended to divide Americans and ultimately destroy the U.S.

It is, but apparently it was successful enough to get Trump within a hair's breath of getting re-elected.

And curiously, conservatives seem to almost crave these divisive narratives that utilize common xenophobic tropes and conspiracies - be it secret Marxist conspiracies, impending waves of illegal aliens, haughty "welfare queens", uppity men of color stalking the night, trans women sneakily assaulting women in their bathrooms, or what have you.

 

[InChrist]

It is, but apparently it was successful enough to get Trump within a hair's breath of getting re-elected.

And curiously, conservatives seem to almost crave these divisive narratives that utilize common xenophobic tropes and conspiracies - be it secret Marxist conspiracies, impending waves of illegal aliens, haughty "welfare queens", uppity men of color stalking the night, trans women sneakily assaulting women in their bathrooms, or what have you.

I don’t know exactly what goes through people’s minds causing them to vote a certain way, but I think a lot of people may have got caught up voting for Trump just because he was so out spoken against the status quo politicians, not necessarily due to the list you highlighted. He didn’t appear to be the typical, entrenched politician to a lot of voters.
Just my thoughts, but I could be wrong.