.....then it wouldn't be critical race theory? Critical race theory is one of several different branches of critical theory, which focuses on class and location.
Well that's my point....why not focus on age? Those 18-35 are committing a vastly disproportionate share of crime. If the "demographics issue" is "crime" why wouldn't we focus on age or even gender?
I think its because I'm not making a copy paste argument. OK, we can agree that the stats say that 50% of prosecuted black crime is committed by Black people in the US.
I'm just trying to not make assumptions about what you think.
Many that have done scholarly work and research under the framework of CRT then look to history, policy/legislation, data about the crimes themselves, and other various circumstances [economics, education level, job availability, etc] to then understand what has led to the current status quo.
Well that's exactly what I'm saying with that last question...
You're talking about a cause/effect relationship. You're saying there's this cause and effect between policy of the past and phenomenon of today.
That's all I'm trying to do....actually think critically about it.
If, for example, the cause of a large portion of that violent crime was connected to gang activity (and for the sake of argument, let's say it is) I would want to look at the average age that a black person joins a gang, and then I'd try to find a large sample of those people and find out why they joined a gang.
If their reasons ultimately add up to something like "I tried to find a job and couldn't so joining seemed like the only option" I could then perhaps work my way backwards to some racist policy of the past that has had this outsized large factor effect on the demographic.
If however, the big reasons for joining are largely socially constructed...things like "everyone I know is in a gang" or "gang members are my friends" or "gang culture is cool...they get girls/money/status/etc" then I have a whole new set of reasons I need to dig through.
CRT doesn't actually do this...it starts with the assumption that the phenomenon of today is caused by some racist white person in the past....and works it's way forward. That's why it's always going to sound like racist scapegoating...anyone actually familiar with the problem of gang violence in black communities. They know gang members aren't typically going around putting in job applications, getting rejected, and then trying to join a gang as a job.
It's as if CRT skips all the actual legwork in studying sociological phenomena and starts with the conclusion (white people's fault) and then works it's way backwards.
Its not as simple as saying, because policy X person does Y. Its more centered on probability.
I totally understand that...there's lots of reasons why someone would want to join a gang...but if gang violence is largely responsible, then we'd want to examine and try to understand those reasons.
If for example, we continue on with actual critical examination and find that these gangs formed largely out of the collapse of the middle class during the death of the manufacturing industry during the 70s-80s....that's not going to have much to do with the racist policies of the past. It's going
to have more to do with the opening of foreign labor markets than some racist decisions of a CEO. I'm fairly certain that if we had records of those decisions....they probably won't consider anything racial at all.
We might be able to continue down the cause and effect chain and find some link to a racist policy in the past....but by then the influence of the policy on the present is going to be minimal, isn't it?
I certainly can't think of a racist reason for the death of so much American manufacturing that would be valid. Most of the foreign labor markets weren't white.
What is the likelihood of a white person joins a gang. Same questions arise.
Even better....the Aryan Brotherhood is one of many almost completely racially homogeneous prison gangs. They make up less than 1% of the prison gang population in the US at any time. Despite this, they commit about 18% of all prison murders and undoubtedly a vastly huge percentage of the other crimes that occur in prison.
How would CRT examine this? Are we going to start with the assumption that some nonwhite person in the past is responsible for this "demographic issue"? Or would it be white people again? And why?
CRT asserts that since many of the conditions that help to breed crime were caused by policies and legislation that a government that was primarily focused on the interests of "White" people. That the stats make sense and that its evidence of the concept of "White Supremacy".
I'm going to have to ask what you mean by "white supremacy" and how it's different from "a white person who is racist"?
I'm just asking you because I see the term thrown around these days in confusing ways. You have people talking about the threat of white supremacist groups that are defined by their belief in a white ethno-state. You also have people who say that a white person who votes for Trump is a white supremacist, even though Biden is also white, and very few people seem to believe in an ethno state.
This does not exonerate people for doing acts that are detrimental to society, it just adds context and is hopefully used to fix policy and legislation.
We can only hope to fix any problem if our understandund of it's cause is correct. If we begin with a theory that assumes a cause....we're going to be wrong a lot of the time.
If you genuinely believe there's a direct connection between poverty and elevated crime....we'd need to effectively rule out the vast majority of the biggest causes of poverty before we can conclude that past or present racism must be the cause.
