Thanks!
You’re likely more clued in on what’s happening in the right-wing media-sphere than I am, so if there’s anything useful you’ve picked up from those sources, I think they would be useful in this thread. I’m still curious about how this suddenly became such a seemingly important issue to state legislatures across the country, and if there is actually any substance to it. So far, I haven’t seen any evidence of any substance.
It is really the blind guiding the blind. Those politicians are drinking from the same sources of misinformation that many on the right wing rely on. In previous discussions, I cited that even Asians are using the CRT framework to analyze the injustices that China is doing to the Uyghurs.
Leading to the comment I made to another poster in a different thread that claimed that left leaning people in the US are not looking at that injustice. I had to comment that thanks to the ignorance that they used to pass the new laws, it means that research like the ones I linked at can’t be used by educators, they are banned to teach about that injustice if the research comes from CRT proponents.
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(Actually, by the wording, most Conservative Governors banned any teaching that smells like basic social justice when race is the subject.)
I don’t read right wing rags, but the typical thing I hear (from white people) goes something like this (paraphrasing):
My father worked in the coal mines. He got laid off. We lived up some back hollow. He couldn’t pay his bills so some months we lived without electricity and had to hunt for food. I got myself out of that situation, went to college, and now I make a good living in a decent house with kids having stuff I would never have dreamed about.
Now these liberals are telling me that I have “privilege”? I busted my ass for everything I had. They say that I got my “wealth” on the backs of slaves? The rich aristocracy used my ancestors as share croppers and coal miners just like they did free slaves! So fuck off with all of this racial stuff. Don’t sell crack and you won’t go to jail. Just put your nose to the dirt like I did and make it work for you!
That’s a 45 second paraphrase, so don’t pit nits.
Thanks. I don’t think that’s what’s actually being taught in schools, though, it I don’t know why the right wing media and legislatures are making any kind of deal over this.
[UltraVires is here citing what usually whites that don’t know much about the issue go about]
As it turns out in previous discussions, I cited CRT proponents and university students who did mention how the treatment of white families regarding the opioid crisis differs from the treatment of black families during the crack epidemic.
https://digitalwindow.vassar.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1816&context=senior_capstone
As usual, the main point has to be repeated, it is not that the proponents are in favor of not arresting perpetrators or separating children at risk from their addicted families; it is that the same help and understanding that white families get should be also applied to black and other minority families.
Thanks. I think these examples (how opioid addicts are treated differently from people addicted to crack, and also the disparate treatment between crack and cocaine are excellent examples for UV’s thread on that subject. I would post them over here, but three consecutive posts are my limit.
Here’s an example of how CRT is influencing school curriculums:
A quote from the teacher who chaired the subcommittee that oversaw the drafting of the model curriculum:
“Ethnic studies without critical race theory is not ethnic studies. It would be like a science class without the scientific method then. There is no critical analysis of systems of power and experiences of these marginalized groups without critical race theory.”
And here’s one of the many criticisms of an earlier draft of the curriculum:
Thanks! These are quite helpful.
I think that while you’re right that people have a problem separating themselves from collectivization, there appears to also be a perceived trend of a cottage industry of collective guilt being pushed as diversity education. And not at the K-12 level, but to some degree at the corporate level. Again, how true that is will probably be driven more by preconception and by anecdote.
Sounds to me that CRT is rapidly headed the way of “political correctness” - a term that means vastly different things to two sides, and hence you have both sides talking past each other about what it means, and thus arguing in complete sincerity that PC is good (or PC is bad).
Similarly, I get the impression that almost everyone wants racial equality, but disagrees on what CRT is. The bill proposed by Idaho, for instance, that opposes CRT, contained text that was essentially the definition of racial equality - banning the teaching that any race is superior or inferior.
And that is why I pointed at what Asian CRT researchers did with it by using it to point at the bad things China is doing to the Uyghurs. That example alone shows how nonsensical the right wing side definition is.
Because, banning CRT thanks to the nonsensical definition not only denies what Asian CRT researchers are doing, it also bans the teaching of that research in several states.
Mind you, many right-wingers do like to criticize China in as many ways as possible, in this issue I do agree with the right in criticizing China’s treatment of the Uyghurs (and there are many others from the left also criticizing it too for that reason). But, paradoxically, the right is hell-bent on falling for the lies that their leaders are falling for by undermining CRT research that would help their messaging against the bad things China is doing.
(Emphasis mine, and not saying this is @asterion’s thinking)
Based on my experience, I would not say anyone is pushing guilt on anyone else. But speaking personally, when I started to appreciate the incredible racial disparities that have continued to exist despite 50+ years of post-civil rights lawmaking, I felt an incredible sense of guilt at my passivity.
I was thinking in part of these two threads from last year:
https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-have-met-the-enemy-and-s-he-is-us-good-white-people/
Also some of the criticism I’ve seen regarding works like White Fragility, including both their content and how they’re written:
Again, my point (and attempted to be carefully couched against the possibility that this isn’t happening at all) is that there are works like White Fragility and complaints of highly charged “diversity education seminars” which make for easy conflation with both CRT and what should be taught as history and how. I suspect that some of the anti-CRT stuff is really a reaction to a narrative that collective guilt is being pushed in the name of diversity. I’m not even sure if there’s any truth to the narrative, but that has never stopped anything in politics.
Right. “I know Blacks were treated badly, but I didn’t do it myself, so I don’t want to feel bad about it – and I damn sure don’t want some woke teacher making my kids feel bad about it.”
Unless the individuals in question are themselves racist, why should they feel bad about it? Same for their kids. Why should they feel bad just because great great grandpa was in the Klan back in the day? My guess is that all of us have ancestors that did some evil shit back in the day the day. It makes no sense for us to feel guilty about it (again unless we are still taking part in said evil shit), since that was our ancestors, and not us, who did that stuff.
I think the difference is that one side is actually the one that actually created CRT, while the other one is just reacting to what they think it is. Its like if you want to learn what the tenets of Christianity are. Do you ask a Christian or do you ask a atheist whose never attended church or read any of the bible, but has read that they eat the body and drink the blood of Christ and so must be cannibals.
It’s important that you not dismiss this answer because, because this is exactly what’s happening. Fox News concocted a totally bullshit definition of CRT, lied that it’s being taught in elementary schools. That is 100% the reason for the current moral panic. There’s no underlying substance whatsoever.
Imagine that a bunch of people decided that they don’t like the PATRIOT act because they believe it legalizes kicking puppies. Then those people go to their congress-critters and demand action.
The legislators could say “Great news, we don’t actually have to do anything because the PATRIOT act doesn’t say anything about puppies.”
But what a wasted opportunity to claim credit for doing nothing! Instead they draft a bill that says “henceforth it shall be illegal to kick, mutilate, or machine-gun puppies to death in the state of Idaho.”
The press release goes out, and uninformed folks like yourself raise their eyebrows and say “by god I’m glad they did something about this menace. Mildred, get in here, you’ll never guess what the liberals are doing now.”
It is entirely, 100% a crisis manufactured by American conservatives to stay mad.
You don’t have to be an active racist or the descendant of a Klan member to feel guilty about the persistent racial inequity in this country. To quote myself from a few posts back, “when I started to appreciate the incredible racial disparities that have continued to exist despite 50+ years of post-civil rights lawmaking, I felt an incredible sense of guilt at my passivity.”
IOW: You’re not racist? Great! But what have you done to combat the consequences of past racism? Because, if you’re White, you’ve benefited from that racism, even if you or your ancestors didn’t actively perpetrate it.
(The “you” here being a general you, not you @FlikTheBlue 
)
If you take that message to heart, as I have, you probably feel a little guilty about it. If your kids hear things like that, they may have uncomfortable questions for you.
I think this is at the root of the resistance to CRT and DEI from people who aren’t actually racists.
In my opinion, the only thing a white American who isn’t racist can do about the situation is to vote Democrat. I realize that sounds like a simplistic answer, and it could very well be. The problems, however, are such that they can only be fixed by changing racist laws and removing racist people from positions of power. The only way to accomplish those things, short of being a racist person who changes their mind and decides to become a good person Robert Byrd style, is to vote Democrat.
One of our senatorial candidates in NC just posted this video about the CRT controversy. As he says, it’s just the outrage du jour. Give it two months, and it’s gonna be something else.
Having been in a study group on Zaretta Hammond’s Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, I think she’d call that multicultural education, not culturally responsive teaching. The latter goes much deeper than that. The idea is that different cultural groups have some pretty deep underlying differences in norms. The dominant US cultural group emphasizes individual achievement, Hammond suggests, including competing against one another, identifying one’s own accomplishments as distinct from other folks, and quiet individual work. (Edit: note that I’m operating from memory here, and almost certainly oversimplifying her case; if you think it’s oversimplified, you’re probably right, but that’s on me, not her). Many non-dominant US cultural groups emphasize community achievement, cooperation within the community, collective accomplishments, and noisy cooperative interactive work.
One example of culturally-responsive teaching would be to use call-and-response.
I hate call-and-response. When it’s used in professional development, it’s real hard for me to participate instead of crossing my arms and glaring at the presenter. It makes me feel dumb. When I use it in the classroom I feel like a fool.
Recognizing that feeling, I can respond in a couple of ways:
I’m far from perfect at it, believe me. But that’s how culturally responsive teaching works.
It intersects with critical race theory inasmuch as the latter is a tool to recognize that our institutions, including our schools, were built by the dominant culture according to dominant cultural norms, and that they privilege members of the dominant culture. Which is to say, they make school a lot easier on average, in this way, for White kids than for Black kids. I don’t need to feel guilty about that, but I do need to recognize the racist history of public education, and continuing in the same pedagogical traditions means perpetuating a racist system.
I can’t be neutral here: either I perpetuate the racist system, or I dismantle it to replace it with a fairer system. And even then, it’s not an all-or-nothing thing: some days I’m dismantling, other days I’m perpetuating. Critical Race Theory helps me reflect on what I’m doing day by day, and try to spend more days dismantling than perpetuating.