What is “Critical Race Theory”?

Andrew Sullivan keeps noticing the sterilzed version of CRT that the woke-permeated legacy media is promoting.  They often refer to CRT as "teaching history. They can't see it accurately because they don't want to see how CRT plays out in classrooms. Sullivan's article is titled "Don't Ban CRT. Expose It: There's a liberal way to fight illiberalism. And it's beginning to work." Here is an excerpt:

The stories in the mainstream media this past week about the broadening campaign to ban critical race theory in public schools have been fascinating — and particularly in how they describe what CRT is. Here’s the Atlantic’s benign summary of CRT: “recent reexaminations of the role that slavery and segregation have played in American history and the attempts to redress those historical offenses.” NBC News calls it the “academic study of racism’s pervasive impact.” NPR calls CRT: “teaching about the effects of racism.” The New York Times calls it, with a straight face, “classroom discussion of race, racism” and goes on to describe it as a “framework used to look at how racism is woven into seemingly neutral laws and institutions.”

How on earth could merely teaching students about the history of racism and its pervasiveness in the United States provoke such a fuss? No wonder Charles Blow is mystified. But don’t worry. The MSM have a ready explanation: the GOP needs an inflammatory issue to rile their racist base, and so this entire foofaraw is really just an astro-turfed, ginned-up partisan gambit about nothing. The MSM get particular pleasure in ridiculing parents who use the term “critical race theory” as shorthand for things that just, well, make them uncomfortable — when the parents obviously have no idea what CRT really is.

I highly recommend a full read of Sullivan's article. He offers many useful links along the way.

[Added 6/23/2021 - 9 pm CT]

What is CRT? Daily Wire offers this description, which comports with my understanding:

Critical race theory, of course, is not America’s actual history. It is a perverse worldview, unsupportable by the evidence, in which all of America’s key institutions are inextricably rooted in white supremacy; it is an activist campaign demanding the destruction of those institutions. The founders of CRT have written as much. According to CRT founders Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, CRT is founded on two key premises: that “racism is ordinary, not aberrational — ‘normal science,’ the usual way society does business, the common, everyday experience of most people of color in this country”; second, that “our system of white-over-color ascendancy serves important purposes, both psychic and material.” This means, according to Delgado and Stefancic, that “racism is difficult to cure or address” and that a formal commitment to legal equality on the basis of color-blindness is merely a guise for further discrimination. Furthermore, CRT founders say that whites are unable to understand racism, and that “minority status … brings with it a presumed competence to speak about race and racism.”

CRT therefore holds that racism is embedded deeply in American life, unconsciously into white American psyches, and that it is impossible for white Americans to understand their own racism or that of the system, let alone to remove it. The only solution: tearing away the only systems that have ever provided widespread liberty and prosperity. As fellow CRT founder Derrick Bell wrote, “The whole liberal worldview of private rights and public sovereignty mediated by the rule of law needed to be exploded.”

Are many schools pummeling their students with Critical Race Theory? They are, which is causing many schools to come under increasing scrutiny. As of late, many woke institutions have started claiming that schools are merely teaching "race history," and that those who are appalled by what is going on in many American schools don't understand what Critical Race Theory is. To that, I offer the following: A) I invite readers to check out the leaked teaching materials and first-hand accounts from many schools; and B) Consider that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck.  I strongly oppose CRT for many reasons, especially these three:

Question: Is Critical Race Theory racist?

Answer: Yes.

Critical Race Theory begins by asserting the importance of social significance of racial categories, rejecting colorblindness, equality, and neutrality, and advocating for discrimination meant to “level the playing field.” These things lead it to reproduce and enact racism in practice. It also explicitly says that all white people are either racist or complicit in the system of racism (so, racist) by virtue of benefiting from privileges that they cannot renounce.

. . .

Question: Does Critical Race Theory advance the vision and activism of the Civil Rights Movement?

Answer: No.

Critical Race Theory refers to that vision as “traditional approaches to civil rights” and calls it into question. The Civil Rights Movement called for living up to the foundational promises of the United States (and other free nations) and incrementally changing the system so that those original ideals were met. Critical Race Theory rejects incrementalism in favor of revolution. It rejects the existing system and demands replacing it with its own. It rejects the liberal order and all that goes with it as being part of the system which must be dismantled and replaced. It is therefore fundamentally different than the Civil Rights Movement (and is explicitly anti-liberal and anti-equality).

. . .

Question: Does Critical Race Theory say that all white people are racist?

Answer: Yes.

More specifically, Critical Race Theory says that all white people are either racist or that they are complicit in a “system of racism” (so, racist) that they wittingly or unwittingly uphold to their own benefit unless they are “actively antiracist” (and usually even then). Those benefits of “whiteness” are labeled “white privilege” in general and are said to be outside of the scope of things that white people can intentionally renounce. The most they can do is “strive to be less white” and to become aware of and condemn “whiteness” as a system.

With regard to Reason #2, "The Woke Temple" coarsely (but accurately) describes it:

[More . . . ]

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About Trigger Warnings

First, a Tweet from Obaid Omer:

Yes, indeed. If we're going to abuse 10-year olds by telling them that they are oppressors (or victims of their oppressor-classmates), shouldn't we at least warn them first? And yes, many schools are abusing children like this.

I have no way of proving this, but I am imagining a group of woke young adults sitting around in the privacy of someone's apartment talking about sex, violence, rape, you-name-it. I doubt that any of them give each other "trigger warnings" in private. That demand is reserved for professors in public spaces only. Even though the "trigger warning" is supposedly about the topic, not the person mentioning the topic.

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Ed Snowden Discusses “The Most Dangerous Form of Censorship”

Ed Snowden has begun writing at Substack. He has named his column "Continuing Ed." In his first post he discusses the most dangerous form of censorship, beginning his essay with a quote by Serbian-Yugoslav writer Danilo Kiš. Kiš, who narrowly escaped the Holocaust and whose work was eventually suppressed in Yugoslavia, wrote passionately on this struggle:

Whichever way you look at it, censorship is the tangible manifestation of a pathological state, the symptom of a chronic illness which develops side by side with it: self-censorship. Invisible but present, far from the eyes of the public, buried deep down in the most secret parts of the spirit, it is far more efficient than [official] censorship. While both of them induce (or are induced?) by the same means — threats, fear, blackmail — this second ill camouflages, or at any rate does not denounce, the existence of any outside constraint. The fight against censorship is open and dangerous, therefore heroic, while the battle against self-censorship is anonymous, lonely and unwitnessed, and it makes its subject feel humiliated and ashamed of collaborating.

Snowden's essay is a commentary on this most dangerous form of censorship: self-censorship:

“Lonely and unwitnessed,” “dangerous and condemnable” — Kiš's perfect and tragic adjectives — describe how many people feel today, when confronted with the internet's many opportunities for self-presentation, and equally many opportunities for self-destruction. Under the pitiless eye of mass surveillance, which funnels the most tentative keystroke into our permanent records, we begin to surveil ourselves.

Unlike in Kiš's milieu, or in contemporary North Korea, or Saudi Arabia, the coercive apparatus doesn't have to be the secret police knocking at the door. For fear of losing a job, or of losing an admission to school, or of losing the right to live in the country of your birth, or merely of social ostracism, many of today's best minds in so-called free, democratic states have stopped trying to say what they think and feel and have fallen silent. That, or they adopt the party-line of whatever party they would like to be invited to — whatever party their livelihoods depend on.

I constantly feel that urge to self-censor, because I know that I'm pissing off people who will be vocal, many of whom I consider to be friends. I assume--perhaps presumptively--that many more will agree but will be silent). I often speak up anyway because I know that silent acquiescence by the supposed owners of this country is not a healthy want to run the country. I motivate myself to speak out by thinking of the many brave people who have spoken out against ignorance and injustice under conditions that are far more dangerous than anything I have ever faced.

A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

As a general rule, people should publicly say the sorts of things that they are thinking. The American experiment requires that we collaborate with each other, and the best way is by using our words instead of throwing rocks and shooting guns. When we talk openly, we will offend others, and that is the unavoidable cost of free speech. When we bravely say the things we are thinking, we are able to function imperfectly as a coordinated whole, e pluribus unum. When a person self-censors, that person is only pretending to be part of the body politic. A wide-open national cacauphonous chattering is what bubbles up, in the aggregate into public policy. Any form of censorship thus degrades democracy and impairs social flourishing, even to the extent that idea seems like a terrible and offensive idea.

As Snowden describes, self-censorship is insidious. No one will come to your rescue because you are not making any public call for help. Further, it's easy to get used to self-censorship because there is a constant immediate cheap payback: it is extraordinarily rare that anyone will criticize you for failing to speak your mind on an important topic. Our self-censorship constitutes a payment to an intellectual protection racket. Institutions and governments won't shit on you so much when you muzzle your words and thoughts. That deal works out well enough for those who are willing to look in the mirror everyday to see someone lacking the courage of their convictions.

Continue ReadingEd Snowden Discusses “The Most Dangerous Form of Censorship”

The Presidents’ Respective Children

Here is yet more evidence that the two political parties have two separate sycophant news teams.  They cover the dysfunctional children of former President Trump and President Biden in starkly different ways.

Do you remember how the left-leaning news media hid the Hunter Biden laptop discovery? And then Twitter blocked the account of the New York Post as the election drew near? As Glenn Greenwald stated, the story was newsworthy for the corruption angle.

"Pretending that the Biden laptop story was about sex or drugs is utterly deceitful. A person's addiction struggles [and] consensual adult sex is not news. The story was (and is) about financial corruption. And there's *zero* doubt the docs were authentic," Greenwald wrote on Twitter.
Hunter Biden has never denied that it was his laptop. In this CBS interview Hunter Biden stated that it could have been his laptop.

If this laptop and big paycheck (to a person lacking any credentials to merit that kind of pay) had been about any of Trump's degenerate children, the media would have been all over it. I thought about this disparity further while watching excerpts from Russell Brand's recent interview with Glenn Greenwald.

But now there is more about Hunter, yet you will not see any of this in the NYT/NPR/WaPo side of the media:

Really and truly, people are talking about paying Hunter Biden $500K for paintings that look like this.   The NYT did comment on Biden's interest in painting, but never mentioned the big money it is anticipated he would be paid, allegedly, for his paintings. 

Some people who have been in high places are noting the stench in the air:

President Barack Obama's ethics chief on Monday slammed Hunter Biden's 'shameful and grifty' sale of his art pieces for up to $500,000 to anonymous buyers as part of an upcoming exhibition that has already sparked bribery and potential money laundering fears.

Walter Shaub, the former Office of Government Ethics director, also warned that it could be a way for 'influence seekers' or foreign governments to funnel money to the Biden family.

Shaub, who last week called out Biden administration officials for hiring a slew of family members to a variety of positions, has urged Hunter and his art dealer Georges Berges to reveal the identity of the buyers so the public can see if the buyers are trying to get access to the White House.

But there is yet more Hunter Biden news that the left-leaning legacy outlets has ignored. Only a few days after his father delivered a speech on the topic of racism at Tulsa, Hunter is hurling racial slurs in texts directed to his attorney, in the context of his attorney's $88K bill for work done regarding Hunter's joint venture with a large Chinese Oil Company.  One can debate how newsworthy his foul language is, but if any of the Trump kids had written these texts, they would be all over the left-leaning media.

I don't claim to know anything substantive about these deals, including the $50K/month Hunter was being paid by Burisma. Greenwald commented on that back when the story broke in October 2020:

After the Post’s first article, both that newspaper and other news outlets have published numerous other emails and texts purportedly written to and from Hunter reflecting his efforts to induce his father to take actions as Vice President beneficial to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, on whose board of directors Hunter sat for a monthly payment of $50,000, as well as proposals for lucrative business deals in China that traded on his influence with his father.

A few days ago, Hunter Biden is reported to have used additional slurs against Asians. 

My concern is, once again, that we have two media teams. They only report "news" that fits their narrative.  The left-leaning legacy news never hesitated to maul the philistine and despicable Trump children, but it is hands-off when it comes to Hunter Biden, even though big amounts of suspicious money are connected with his exploits.  And even though his moral character with regard to race relations conflicts sharply with the stated positions of his father, Joe Biden. On the other hand, the right wing media, such as the Daily Wire, is happy to heavily criticize Hunter Biden.

I'm convinced that many people don't actually want to be well informed. They choose their news sources so that they hear only those sorts of stories that make them feel like the world is the way they want it to be. This is true on the political left and the political right, and it doesn't seem like anything is going to change anytime soon. That said, can we at least start referring to the news media in a different way? Can we start referring to the two news teams as "news filters"? What news filter do you use? "I use the FOX news filter" or "I use the NPR/MSNBC/NYT/WaPo news filter. Doing this would make me feel 1% less bad about this rampant partisanship.

Continue ReadingThe Presidents’ Respective Children