“Some things have racist implications, and other things do not, depending on the specifics” is a pretty baseline summary of CRT, actually.
I think what I’m pointing out with my hypothetical is that removing an overtly racist element may still leave you with a racially biased outcome. What, in your opinion, is interesting in contemplating a racially biased outcome with a front loaded racist element?
What’s the racially biased outcome in your altered hypothetical?
It’s the question of whether having a different impact on different races in itself makes a policy wrong. Since the two examples given also seem to disadvantage poor people, we would probably object to them regardless of the racial element.
So let me make my own hypothetical. The company with the parking policy has two car parks, and each has a separate entrance. Most of the employees live in one of two neighbourhoods that lie in different directions. The front car park is easy to reach from both neighbourhoods, but the entrance to the side car park is much more difficult to get to from one of them, due to a complicated and busy one way system. Therefore employees living in this neighbourhood will be worse off under the new rule.
Is the parking policy a problem, and should it be changed if:
a) most of the black employees happen to live in one neighbourhood and most of the white ones in the other (and does it matter which way round?)
b) the two neighbourhoods have a fairly even mixture of employees of all races
Rank and file workers have their cars vandalized more than executive staff. If we’re to focus on the minority population in both groups, those who are rank and file experience a disproportionate amount of suffering; something which is generally true, we can all agree, in society at large. So the questions is: should the executives parking policy include this CRT framework in it’s governance/administration of this parking policy? Note that I’ve tried to simplify the built in bias of a non-representative executive class with my tweak of the hypothetical as originally presented.
But if the management has the same racial profile as the staff, this isn’t a racially biased outcome.
I don’t understand. Isn’t the goal of CRT to examine policies for racist or anti-racist outcomes, regardless of intent? Sure, the executives didn’t set out with the intention to harm the production line workers, but their policy might still be viewed, using the CRT lens, as contributing to existing racial bias.
I mean, that’s pretty much it. What is it that you say that you don’t understand?
Are you thinking that CRT means that all policies contribute to existing racial biases, even if they don’t? That’s the only way that your statements make sense along with your declaration of not understanding.
So you agree with Miller in that the only thing that determines whether the disproportionate suffering experienced by the production line employees is a result of racial bias is whether or not the composition of management is racially representative?
Isn’t that what Kendi is saying and what we’re talking about?:
Right. And if we examine your altered hypothetical through a CRT lens, we can see that there’s no racial disparity in the results of the parking lot policy, therefore there’s no reason to challenge the policy on racial grounds.
Which, of course, does not rule out challenging the policy on other grounds.
Based on your understanding and application of CRT or on Kendi’s?
I never said anything like that.
Fair enough. I apologize for misrepresenting what you said. Can you show me what I got wrong?
I’m not sure I can. I have no idea how you got that from anything I’ve written here.
I’m trying to reconcile Kendi’s interpretation of CRT and your conclusion which states that there is ‘no racial disparity as a result of the parking policy’. Do you think Kendi would agree with your conclusion?
“So you agree”… is almost always followed by something that no one would agree with…
You overgeneralized there from a specific policy to pretty much everything in their lives, and that’s not within the scope here.
As to this specific policy, if the management and exec is of the exact same demographics as the employees, then this specific policy of having employees park in the less guarded lot does not produce racially biased outcomes.
So, yes, in some very specific and unlikely scenario, you have found a way to show that this one policy does not have a racially biased outcome. That’s both trivial and meaningless.
Kendi is talking about the real world, not some modified hypothetical where you have managed to philosophically balance an infinite number of angels on the head of a pin.
And in the real world, there is not very likely to be a policy that does not contribute either to equality or inequality. The real world just doesn’t have that perfect balance that you would need for a policy to actually be neutral.
As I said earlier, it’s likely that many policies are close enough to neutral that it’s not as worthwhile to examine them to see which side of the knife’s edge is favored as those that contribute much more to inequality. But that still doesn’t mean that they are actually neutral.
Racism is the predominant thing that crt is focused on these days.
I don’t think anyone other than you disagrees with this.
The fact that you can apply some crt principles to other dominant groups like the han chinese in china doesn’t make it any less about racism here in the usa.
When if comes to the woke sjw stuff I don’t think the “powerful politicians” care if the crt researchers are white or minority. Its all just stupid woke sjw crap to them.
Does the rightness or wrongness of the policy depend on it having racially biased outcomes, though? It’s wrong for the management to make employees park in the shitty lot, but if a few of the top guys leave and they hire black managers to replace them, then it becomes okay?
Wouldn’t a simple solution be to hire a security guard for the crappy lot, and put up some lights and cameras too.
Do you accept the premise as laid out by Kendi that policies have either racist or anti-racist outcomes? If so, do you still posit that this policy does not produce racially biased outcomes? Furthermore, what population are you using for context to reach that conclusion? Just the set of all corporate employees in both parking lots?