I did see your post and intended to follow up to find out if CRT is actually related to CT that you pointed out and apparently it is. I don’t know quite how to look at CRT now. First of all, just sharing the name with a Marxist concept is flat out stupid. After that I see no significant substance. What is the alternative to analyzing a problem and focusing on a solution for it?
Absolutely. If you work in a hospital billing, are there policies around credit that disadvantage people whjo have historically had a harder time getting credit? If you work in retail, does your store leave it up to individual managers to decide who’s “suspicious” and should be followed around the store? If you work in science, does your lab recruit at HWCU but not HBCUs?
For me, a big part of the point is that institutional racism has tendrils in lots of places. It’s not omnipresent, but it’s not rare. Double-checking policies, procedures, norms, etc. to make sure they’re on the side of racial justice is important in every field.
Why does the name matter? I call it CRT just because that seems to be what academics in the field are calling it. But the name doesn’t matter.
Agreed. I went with police since that’s a major area people don’t have control over. People interact with the police on the police’s terms, and many times that doesn’t end well for Black people. I agree it applies to other areas, it’s just that the police have the most direct and immediate life or death consequences compared to other professions, and with the least amount of say by those being interacted with. We can choose our doctor, our plumber, our tax accountant, our dentist, our electrician, which restaurants we eat at and thus our waitstaff, to a limited extent our kid’s teachers, etc. We don’t get to choose our police.
But that was in reply to “what can we do about it.”
My point is that the bias that most of us tend to hold, due to it being pervasive in our culture, means that we make many decisions that can adversely affect the lives of minorities if we do not examine our biases.
When I was a fast food manager, I was in charge of hiring. My GM specifically told me not to hire black people, as they would get their first paycheck and be “n* rich” and we’d never see them again.
And you know what? She was right, so that confirms that we shouldn’t hire them, right? Except that it was just as, if not more, common for white people to pull exactly the same thing.
Those are the types of biases that tend to stick with someone. You see a black person do something, and that confirms your biases against black people in general, even though white people do that same thing and you consider them to be the exception.
If you don’t examine those biases, then you will likely make choices that adversely affect minorities, without meaning to at all, without having any intent to be racist, without any desire to be oppressive. And, if you don’t question those biases in those around you, then they will do so as well.
The name absolutely matters. Academics represent a tiny percentage of all people. There is no value to a theory or concept or framework or whatever you want to call that people are dismissing out of hand based on it’s name. And that’s what people are doing.
I don’t want to get sidetracked but I do want to mention that over the weekend James ‘"The Ragin’ Cajun’ Carville went on a diatribe about woke politics. I don’t want to get into the details at all since I don’t remember them and think he’s pretty nutty a lot of the time, but he did say one very important thing when pointing out the way people talk about these subjects in academic circles and on NPR, paraphrasing him, “regular people don’t talk like that”. No matter what they believe, they don’t study political arguments and use the latest wokest phraseology, they talk like regular people and regular people don’t know what Critical Race Theory means, or care to find out either. Many of them will think they’re being spoken down to, or being set up for some kind of gotcha. This has nothing to do with whatever belief system they have, it’s just not plain speech and that leaves it open to interpretation, most of which will come from partisans tending toward the extreme.
Further, I still see no substance here. Is there an alternative approach where we don’t take a critical look at racism? Is there an approach where we don’t want to do anything about racism? Who is being talked to here?
Sure, the name matters for PR. But this isn’t a thread about PR – this is a thread about ideas. Carville can talk all he wants about politics and messaging and that’s fine. But that’s not what this thread is about – this thread is about these particular ideas. Do you have thoughts about these ideas apart from the PR and political messaging?
Uh, that is like looking at something appalling like Social Darwinism and then turning around and telling biologists that they are flat out stupid for still praising Darwin.
IIUC “the Frankfurt School was made of dissidents dissatisfied with the contemporary socio-economic systems (capitalist, fascist, communist) of the 1930s.” What Critical Social Theory is now is not appreciated by Marxists, “it focuses on reflective assessment and critique of society and culture in order to reveal and challenge power structures”.
No, it’s like naming something after something many people find appalling and then wondering why so many people aren’t listening to what you say.
About as lacking in substance as a statement can be. That just as well describes people trying to return something to Amazon as it does any significant political philosophy.
When they claim to have that much of an objection to the name, then it’s not really the name that they are objecting to.
That’s basically the same as claiming that the Standard Model must be wrong because regular people don’t talk about quarks and muons or gluons.
If they are not studying political arguments, then what are they doing weighing in on them? If they object to the terminology that other people are using in their academic discussions, then what use do they have? Why should they be listened to when all they want to do is interject into a discussion their disagreement with the use of other people’s words?
If they don’t care to find out, then what are they even doing involving themselves?
Why? If you stick your nose into a physics discussion, and don’t understand what is being discussed, why do you think that you are the one being set up for a gotcha?
Nah, it has everything to do with the belief system. They don’t want to believe it is a problem, they don’t want to believe that they have any responsibility to fix it, so they claim that they have a problem with the terminology in order to prevent others from moving forward.
I’m not sure I follow. How do we address issues of racism without taking a critical look at it. Why do we not want to do anything about it.
People who are actually interested in the subject.
Did you even know the origin of the term before this thread? If so, then why’d you have to ask? If not, then why were you against it before you were able to make a connection to something you find distasteful?
But yes, you are right, people like to vilify words, rather than actually discuss concepts. It’s why universal healthcare is called “socialism”, and for pretty much the same reasons. If you can’t find a way to actually disagree with the concept being talked about, you disagree with the way that it is being talked about.
Thing is that as I read it, it is clear that the term came from people being dissatisfied with communism too. Also, that Marxists are not buddies with the ones you are trying to tar here, and then trying to tar CRT too after that is your problem, that misunderstanding is not coming from them.
IMHO Carville has fallen too by the narrative the right has been pushing and that even centrists are thinking it makes sense when it is not.
Can we talk about the effects of the number of black children who grow up without two parents? The effects of outdated beliefs about nutrition? About the use of violence in child-raising? About the incentives to have kids single, at a young age, brought about by the structure of the social services system?
This is classic racist victim-blaming. You’re blaming black people for their own poverty and oppression by pointing to allegedly dysfunctional aspects of black culture.
Let me break it down for you.
Racism is the belief that some races are intrinsically inferior to other races.
If there are major differences between the social and economic position of different racial groups, there are only two possibilities. Either there are institutional social factors which are perpetuating those differences, or there are no such factors and the poor performance of one group is the result of their intrinsic inferiority (or some combination of the two).
You are apparently claiming that, although society is completely equitable and no racial discrimination exists anywhere, black people are just more likely to make poor decisions about child raising and nutrition than white people are. Therefore, you believe that black people are incapable of making decisions as well as white people. Therefore, all you are really saying here is that you think black people are inferior to white people. QED.
I don’t imagine that you consciously perceive yourself as believing that, but I wish you would take a look at the conclusion you’ve arrived at starting from the premise that institutional racism doesn’t exist.
That is correct, but of no use.
Nonsense. People don’t discuss those things using other language.
They are US citizens and have every right to discuss the subject. Is it possible you are mistaking this thread for the real world?
I didn’t stick my nose into the news on CNN. And I don’t think I’m being set up for a gotcha.
You are flat out wrong. Those are reactions that people who have no dog in the fight will have. Talk down to them like you are trying to do to me in this thread then they’ll ignore what you say. I’m only slightly more charitable by responding to you.
When have we not taken a critical look at it or not tried to do something about it? There is nothing new here except the silly name.
IOW, the choir.
Remember, the real silly thing is coming from right wing sources that are making a caricature about CRT.
That’s wonderful information that the people no longer listening will never find out about, and never needed to either.
I agree, but I am only pointing out he is correct about the language used when these issues are discussed, and not anything else in particular that he said there.
That is a constant in politics.
You are not other people, in fact I was not aware of CRT until recently and what really got me to continue to look at it were the falsehoods many right-wingers did claim CRT was or was capable or doing in many situations, it has turned into a boogie man for the right.
You are not representative of the average American. And again, it is the lack of clear language that is like a gaping wide open door for the right wing to step in and make up their own narrative.
You say that it is correct that objecting to the name is simply a way to avoid discussing the concept, but you still object to the name?
And critical race theory isn’t discussed using other language either.
No, I don’t think that that is the problem. You are the one who is saying that the concepts that other people are discussing are going over the heads of those who don’t care to find out what it means. They have every right to discuss it, sure, but you are the one saying that they have no interest in it.
I don’t know that I follow. You just claimed that people feel that they are being set up for a gotcha. Now you are saying that’s not the case?
See, maybe that’s the problem. I’m not talking down to you. I’m discussing concepts with you, and you are refusing to understand them, and that is upsetting you. You are making claims as to what other people feel, but then say that that’s not how you feel, just how other people feel. Well, how about we forget about other people for a second, and discuss how you feel?
You know the reason that you are “responding” to me is not to contribute to the discussion, not to work forward to solving these problems, but to try to convince me not to. Not really all that charitable of you, really.
I dunno, maybe the last 400 years of the history of our country and before?
Talk about talking down to people. As if they don’t have actually thoughts and internal discussion and disagreements, you simply call all those who are actually interested in discussing the subject “the choir.”