I’ve never met anyone who complains about critical race theory who can explain what critical race theory is.
Down with CRT! Flat-screen is the future! No more pointing electron guns at children!
Don’t see the issue. I sat close to CRTs as a kid, and I turned out just fine.
I hate all the fuss about CRT… it’s just history, and the concepts are pretty simple.
If your great grandparents were slaves, practically or literally, then your grandparents were likely very poor. Those grandparents weren’t allowed to get a good education or a good job, which means your parents likely grew up in poverty. This means you are far less likely to have inherited any wealth, and thus the cycle of poverty, drugs, incarceration, etc. continues.
It always gets me that full blown slavery in the US was not very long ago at all, and very little changed for black people during the 100 years between the end of the civil war and the beginning of the civil rights movement.
Of course this is just one facet of CRT, but I just don’t understand why right wing white people are afraid of reality. The first step in addressing an issue is acknowledging the existence of the issue. Is it just white guilt or are they just racists?
To be blunt, even this isn’t CRT.
CRT is more generally “for the longest time, non-white people have been excluded from civic participation which has led to laws and structures that implicitly benefit white people”.
That is, it’s a concept about political and legal power in the US.
And what’s more disturbing is what the right ACTUALLY means by CRT. They are mad about civil rights AND the historical facts about racism BEING TAUGHT AT ALL. Literally “we don’t want kids taught that slavery and segregation existed and/or that it was morally wrong”.
I think correctly defining CRT somewhat misses the more disturbing problem of “wait, what DO you mean by CRT”.
Are you saying that systematic generational poverty imposed on black people via discriminatory policy and law is not a component of CRT?
Good point though… what the far right means when they say/hear the term CRT is as disturbing as it it incorrect.
Are you saying that systematic generational poverty imposed on black people via discriminatory policy and law is not a component of CRT
As far as I understand, no. Related for sure but not really what CRT is about.
The important thing about CRT, in my understanding, is that it takes a view that even with non-racist intent, racist laws are setup due to the lack of participation.
For example, let’s say a city wants to build out a mass transit system, however, nobody on the board lives in neighborhoods where POC live. As a result, when placing the lines they don’t consider the problems with running them through those neighborhoods or not having enough stops in those neighborhoods. A racist outcome even though the people making the decisions may have never considered race while making those decisions. It’s simply the fact that nobody affected by those decisions had representation.
The critical in CRT refers to critical theory, which posits that problems in society can generally be attributed to social structures more than anything else.
Another example would be in policing. Consider what may seem to be a good policy “Let’s send police to areas with high rates of crime.” The issue is, crime rates are a result of policing so a natural consequence of sending police to where crimes are found is police will find more crimes which creates a feedback loop. Add in just a few cops with racial biases (even unconscious) and now this seemingly benign policy has racist enforcement.
What CRT would posit is that getting more POC into positions of power would ultimately limit the effects of legal racism. A failure of the CRT notion is that while race is related, so is socioeconomic status. The issue with just seating a black person is black people like Clarence Thomas exist. Further, the black people you would seat are highly likely to have participated in the education and social situations that have caused the issues of systemic racism in the first place. You can’t just pick the person from the same neighborhood as the rest of the board that has melanin and think “This solves racism”.
In otherwords, America is broken on more than just race, class is a major issue. Which is what you touch on. People of color have by and large historically been forced into a lower class and that’s where a lot (not all) of the racism problems stem.
Hope that makes sense. This is mostly just my understanding though so feel free to correct it if you’ve got good resources on it. I’m not an expert, just interested in the rantings of my political enemies.
Oh no the terrors of checks notes teaching kids about the reality they live in
How do you mean?
A reality in which the thread of racism has been so pervasive throughout our history that we can find its downstream effects in surprising ways. A reality in which - and I’m dead serious about this - we can clearly trace the path from prehistoric mineral deposits, to slavery, to congressional districts. A reality in which the implementation of fundamental institutions can be shown to work in favor of white people. A reality where it took until Google decided to do something about before we began to redesign cameras so they produced equally good photographs of black people as they do white people.
I could go on but I hope you get the picture
I had to look up what critical race theory was after your comment, and am less confused. Whilst it not something I’d argue against, I wouldn’t give it that name. Maybe I’m just too European, but it seems quite American
While America has it especially bad, because of our history with black slavery, the subject isn’t limited to America by any means, and isn’t limited to black people.
For example, the camera issue I discussed above is not limited to the US.
Racism exists all over the world. And anywhere that racism exists, and the racists held authority or leadership positions, you will find applications of critical race theory. Because even really, really subtle racism gets institutionalized in crazy, unexpected ways.
EDIT: I’ll add that it’s not just race either. There are all sorts of weird ways that preferential treatment of the majority in power sneaks into our lives.
Here’s a silly one: Novelty coffee mugs are biased against left handed people. No joke.
The mug example is an excellent example of systemic or institutional bias.
It’s worth explaining.
No one sat down and said “we’re only going to make right handed mugs”.
It’s just that most people and therefore most designers are right handed so when they are designing the mug they imagine it in their own hand. Et voilà, most mugs are for right handers.
This goes one step further: a template is made for said right hand mug, now all the left handed designers are also designing right handed mugs.
There’s also the fact that there was a concerted effort to beat left-handedness out of people for a very very long time.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_against_left-handed_people
If you go down to Unfavourable Perceptions, there’s a load of info on this. Efforts in North America to switch everyone to right-handedness ended around ghe 60s and lefties were more socially accepted by the late 70s. That said there’s still a lot of places in Asia that attempt to force lefties to be righties.
My mum is a leftie and in school was beaten for writing with her left hand.
Hopefully we’re now in a slightly more enlightened time.
