Whatever happened to the fight over Critical Race Theory?
How Republicans’ brief national crusade against CRT changed the political landscape.
.
for those who are not aware, i should mention that the bogus scandal over 'critical race theory' was invented out of whole cloth by a specific #GQP strategist, christopher rufo, who didn't even try to his cold-blooded, sadistic cynicism about using this to scare low-information voters into voting for GQP people and initiatives.
by 'didn't even try,' i mean: he literally tweeted out his strategy [and his reasons for recommending it].
and guess what: it worked.
.
@LiberalLibrarian wrote:
Critical race theory should be taught from kindergarten.
No. I'm not saying white people should feel guilty. But they and their children should be fully aware of the entirety of American history. And oddly, most people agree, according to this study.
@grapho @LiberalLibrarian I completely disagree regarding critical race theory. I took it in law school and it is a legal analysis. Children don’t study the law. We can deliver claims of education, but critical race theory isn’t appropriate for kids because they can’t understand legal concepts.
There are plenty of other ways to address the issues of racism and discrimination. I never had critical. Race theory when I was in school and I very much understood racism was wrong.
@J_Windrow I may have had my tongue firmly in cheek. Just to show that, yes, the totality of US history, good and bad, needs to be taught. @grapho
there is a lot to unpack in your comments here. some of what might appear as substantive disagreement may actually be confusion over terminology.
your remarks do not appear to take into account the fact that the phrase 'critical race theory' now means at least two things in the public discourse.
[contd]
one, the earlier and arguably more accurate meaning, is what you were probably taught in law school. [the words 'critical' and 'theory' are key here, on which more in a moment.]
the other is, unfortunately, the meaning the phrase has acquired since rufo defiled it: namely, '"woke" historical accounts of racial oppression in america.'
a key distinction here, as noted, is what the words 'critical' and 'theory' bring to the conversation.
[contd]
to some extent, 'critical' in this context is a gloss on 'theory.' but what i would emphasize above all is that THEORY is distinct from HISTORY.
by blurring that distinction, rufo & co. have discounted [even effaced] the actual historical record. this is one of the most cynical things about his program: posing as a patriot embracing 'traditional' values, he is actually advocating for an orwellian rewriting of the facts.
[contd]
this points up another details in your comments that deserves attention: i emphatically disagree that 'everybody's history is different.' facts are facts. historical events are historical events.
what DOES differ for each individual is their INTERPRETATION of the historical record. for any event X, they may have wildly divergent interpretations of both the causes and the effects of X. and/or they may seek to suppress knowledge of X entirely.
[contd]
@grapho @LiberalLibrarian The history is the same facts. However, we all know that facts are buried and humans are far more impacted by feelings and the story than the reality.
We have Stone Age minds operating in a world they haven't evolved adequately to deal with.
I annoy the hell out of people by insisting on supporting documentation.
My brother once had to back down on something because his argument was Biblical while he was claiming to be an atheist. Emotion is not fact.
what a good 'critical theory' will offer is not a different set of 'facts,' but a framework within which to understand or interpret those facts.
and this brings us back to the question of academic courses for children.
the question 'can history" be taught to children without "critical race theory?"' obscures the fact that no teacher can teach history without a critical framework.
[contd]
@grapho @LiberalLibrarian And teachers must adhere to educational guidelines. Guess which state the textbook companies look to: Texas. I worked for one and we had to be able to market to Texas or the project would collapse.
So it's back to dealing with state government in a very right-wing state.
the effects of this are instantly operative – in the simple process of the teacher's deciding what events to include or exclude. from there, it extends to ways of seeing, ways of evaluating [e.g. 'is fascism a good thing or not?']
but it's not just teachers who have [and must have] theoretical frameworks. we all do, and must.
[contd]
i submit that you yourself did not learn those horrible facts about the parents of your japanese/ american classmate without fitting them into a theoretical framework – a 'worldview,' if you will. a way of understanding good and evil, of right and wrong, of what helps or hinders the maintanenace of a healthy body politic.
but/and at that age, i doubt that worldview [and its moral implications] were self-apparent to you.
[contd]
@grapho @LiberalLibrarian I'm a whole lot less interested in intellectual masturbation than on developing something workable.
rather, you likely absorbed them from [or were explicitly taught them by] family, friends, teachers.
and that is, above all, my point in addressing 'CRT' [in the popular, largely uneducated sense] today:
children need to be taught the events of history, yes. but they also need to be taught HOW to think about them; and, ideally, what the implications are [for good or il] of thinking about them in opposing ways.
[contd]
the #GQP is hell-bend on preventing those recommendations from happening in US public schools.
why? because to teach as i have recommended would make it much much harder for them to manipulate the populace as they would like.
[and that is, i would argue, because an ample grasp of the historical record itself, taught within the critical framework i have espoused, would make terrifyingly clear the dangers of their political aspirations.]
@grapho @LiberalLibrarian I need to get off for a while. Terrible electrical storms hit. I may be back later.
@grapho @LiberalLibrarian Lets get CRT out of the discussion for k-12 and redefine it.
Just as defunding the police was a terrible term that guaranteed pushback.
@grapho @LiberalLibrarian I don't know if you're aware but the "Nutshell" book on Criminal Law kept in law libraries deals with CRT without calling it CRT.
Institutionalized racism (which is so much more than police and courts and the construction of law) is woven into the fabric of our society.
It was also woven into the society of Great Britain.
We got a lot of our law from them and then gave it compound interest.
I don't feel guilt, but I take responsibility for what I do now.
@grapho @LiberalLibrarian The way CRT is being used by conservatives is appalling.
I'm presently in East Texas and some of the conversations I have here make it 100% clear that people here have been lied to and believe the lies.
@LiberalLibrarian @grapho I think we can teach history and social responsibility age appropriately.
The nuns did a good job by saying all humans were like cells in the body of Christ. I got that age 7.
We could say that we're a microcosm of Gaia (god not required).
We teach kids what they can absorb and understand at various ages.
Mostly we teach through our actions.
My daughter grew up in a multicultural environment with friends from all races, religions, etc. Same<-->same.
@LiberalLibrarian @grapho I agree that we need to teach history. But be aware that everybody’s history is different. Think about how the Japanese have hit the history of what happened in China for instance. History seems to always be tolls from the perspective of the person who won.
When I grew up, I went to school with kids who his parents were in the Japanese internment camp. I became extremely aware of what happened. And it wasn’t because it was taught in school.