What Is CRT?

stevil said:

I didn't get this from the summary in the video at all.
Where did they say that cultures of other groups don't have any impact on the outcomes?

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It doesn't say that at all....to be sure.

However, I have seen the reaction to anyone who suggests this possibility.

It's a sort of conversational limbo. The very idea of such explanations gets a sort of guaranteed response of "victim blaming" or "being on the wrong side of history" or other such moral accusations.

I think the reason it isn't stated is because CRT proponents ultimately do want to discuss the cultural aspects of "marginalized groups" (the label itself is a moral accusation) but only in a positive manner.

The idea that racial groups have racial cultures which create and perpetuate their own positive and negative cultural norms would undermine the whole idea of CRT.

CRT holds central the assumption that all social ills come from "whiteness" which is their word for white culture. I can give you examples if you want. There's a poster on here who, without any hint of sarcasm or insincerity, claimed that the reason for a black man perpetrating a hate crime upon an asian woman was his desire to participate in "whiteness". He got this position from an editorial suggesting that explanation if I remember correctly.

I'll see if I can find it...

RDKirk said:

Those were not examples of CRT, just racial awareness.

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I don't think I'd equate racial stereotyping with racial awareness.

I think that some of those materials are either old or need updated.

Imagine if your kid went to school and on the worksheet labeled "black privilege" the list of statements included....

"Nobody asks me to atone for the immoral behavior of people from the past simply because we share a similar skin tone"

Would you consider that a "black privilege"? Or would it just be a sort of passive aggressive racist judgment?

RDKirk said:

The culture developed by any people group will naturally place its own on its cultural pedestals. Even though it may broaden many concepts as a result of contact with other cultures, examples of its own will represent its cultural ideals. Their most manly man will be a man of their own culture. The most feminine woman will be a woman of their own culture. Their standards of loyalty, honor, justice, truth--that is, their ethics, aesthetics, and epistemology--will have been developed through their own history to benefit their own environmental situation to the greatest benefit of their own people.

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I'll be honest, I never really thought of it that way.

I'd always divided cultures into groups of categorical markers. The one most people defer to immediately when describing a culture are what I think of as the superficial markers. These are styles of dress, food, hairstyles, and they can manifest in other ways like art or architecture. They are obvious differences that are perceived in a sensory manner.

The second group of markers is what I would group the narrative stories, traditions, and hierarchies in. I tend to think of these as the meaningful markers....because they can sometimes manifest into truly unique cultures. You'd be surprised though, to see how unremarkable and similar so many are though. Traditions like marriage, trade, customs, religions, folklore, superstition, all form out of these cultural narratives and circumstantial factors that are typically out of the control of a society.

Warrior cultures....for example, and I mean true warrior cultures where the only "true men" were warriors were rare. Spartans are a good example, the Zulu, the Vikings, and easily the most obvious examples of the Huns and Mongols. They are both rare and remarkably similar in the ways they arose. People tend to imagine the Mongolian empire as a result of some great tactical brilliance of Ghenghis...but it had far more to do with the centuries of brutal Mongolian culture that preceded him. He was left with an army of light calvary archers of unparalleled competence....something that basically no army of his day had faced. Most cultures had developed warrior subcultures but few ever had full blown warrior cultures. Other unique aspects developed out of unique narratives. The Jewish people are uniquely difficult to assimilate or convert...as is expected from a people who have told themselves they are God's chosen people alone for millenia. I think there's a transition in the culture from arrogance and pride in this idea to one of humility that came from being so humbled by Rome. Islam has spawned cultures uniquely intolerant as can be expected of a narrative of being the last religion. These are my opinions of course.

There's few examples of cultures centered around a love of knowledge...as I think it first requires a love of communication...and I think India has had some of these, though they tended to be wrapped up in religious beliefs and explanations. China was probably the first to come close to divorcing these two ideas...and confucian thought tried to encompass both pursuit of knowledge and morality. I don't know of any place save for Greece where knowledge became so deeply entangled in truth and the resulting foundations of logic, philosophy, and science would uniquely benefit whomever encountered their ideas later.

If there's any other marker....it's an abstraction. It's the willingness to abandon and adapt traditions at will or need in recognition of a better idea or method. It is, in my opinion, one of the defining features of the first 2/3rds of Roman history. It's similarly found in ancient China. It's practically embedded in our Constitutional ability of amendment. I think our forefathers' first attempt at making a nation...the Articles of Confederation...gets glossed over as an embarrassing mistake. I think it's pretty amazing that these men who tried to take their destiny in their own hands had the humility to be able to say they messed up, made bad mistakes, and came together to fix them.

I've long since abandoned the idea of cultural heroes. A hero is just a man you never learned the awful things about.

This isn't the case with ADOS chit'lin' culture. Underlaying all our relationships is a basic foundation of "white is right," which has been hammered into us since 1619, but that's an ideal we can never reach...which has resulted in psychoses of dissonance throughout our history in America. While gaining civil rights through the 40s to 70s has certainly made our sojourn in America more tolerable, it's also increased the level of psychosis with the false hope that ADOS can reach American ideals.

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You treat the word psychosis too lightly.

Malcolm X's solution was to reject white culture entirely and replace it with a supportive, benevolent Islamic-like culture of our own devising.

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Was this a version of the NOI that was very different from the one before and after Malcolm X?

I know the story they tell about white people. I don't think you'd defend it.

CRT rejects white culture, but has nothing to replace it with.

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I don't think that's the worst part of it. It attempts to construct an idea of white culture that is designed to humiliate at best...condemn at worst. I can't think of any good coing from that.

The end result of "judged by the content of their character" would eventually be intermarrying and finally completely disappearing as a separate people. That is a feasible solution because, after all, white culture does work for its own, as does any natural culture.

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Lol I remember stories of a far off future where we all have the same skin tone as well. It's hard for me to imagine now that we will last that long as a species.

TLK Valentine said:

Yep. That's what I said.

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Hopefully you can see why it's wrong now.

Generally speaking, it's considered arrogant and obnoxious to try to "tell" people about their chosen profession.

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If your chosen profession is the defining of people's identities for them under the guise of a moral benefit...you should be prepared for some criticism.

It would be a much more productive use of everyone's time to listen to people who actually know whay they're talking about.

If nothing else, it would be a novelty...

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I've listened. Crenshaw puts her lectures online and can be found in their entirety on YouTube.

If you feel like I've gotten something wrong in my explanations....try to do better than just claiming "you're wrong".

If that is true (and while I do not know for certain, I certainly would like permission to ask), then it means the system is broken and in desperate need of fixing.

This should hardly come as a surprise to anyone, there are countless flies in the ointment, spanners in the works, bats in the belfry, etc... Racism being but one of many that needs to be addressed.

How it became the sin that cannot be mentioned is a mystery.

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I don't believe in sin. I believe in human failings.

As for racism, I cannot recall any point when I was alive that it wasn't mentioned. The only time it isn't addressed is when it's racism towards white people. Cue the mockery and dismissal and prove my point.

As for problems...I like people who can point out problems. I like people who have solutions even better, but those are rare. I dislike people who cannot see problems....but they are many so I don't hold it against them. I dislike people who see problems in everything....because the only problem they cannot see is the one within themselves. I trust no one who demands that the entire system be torn down to solve a problem, or they must be given all the power to fix a problem, or worse...everyone must think as they do to solve a problem.

There is no clearer sign of evil in my eyes.

That's correct. The system may be perpetuating a great injustice, but the individuals who are part of that system are not cognizant of this fact.

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The logic of this is rather simple.

If the problem exists without individuals...then it requires no individuals to be fixed. One only need to point out the problem in the system and change it.

Why would mass indoctrination be required?

All of these schools are wasting money. Just give me one CRT expert who can identify the problem and fix it....we can leave everyone else alone.

It's actually quite simple -- their actions are having negative consequences that they do not intend and are not even aware of.

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Actions?!? You just said that the problem exists without individuals.

You're already contradicting yourself.

If we remove all individuals from the system.....does the problem exist or not?

If the problem exists....then we're talking about a problem within the system. If it doesn't exist....then we're talking about a problem within the individuals.

We're talking about some pretty basic logic here. I can understand why someone might not want to go around blaming people....especially if you want them to listen to you....but you're either blaming them or you aren't.

Which is it?

Are they to be blamed for this? Of course not! Evil (as racism is) is a choice. One cannot "accidentally" do evil. To be an unwitting pawn in a larger wrongness does not make one evil... At the worst, it makes one a dupe.

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I disagree. The most monstrous evils done throughout history were almost always done by people who believed they were doing some great good.

Indians threw off British colonial rule by striving for a heroic victory. A righteous struggle against their oppressors.

The Nazis packed Jewish people onto trains to their deaths because they were convinced they were struggling for a heroic victory. A righteous struggle against their oppressors.

That's a similarity....I'm not saying they were the same. They were very different. The Indians could point to the laws, the injustices that created second class citizens of them.

The nazis however, could not. They imagined that the Jews were conspiring against them. They believed the Jews were inherently immoral and greedy. They believed that they had caused the German defeat in WW1 by some hidden behavior. They actually pointed to disparities between the numbers of Jewish professors and bankers and their percentage of the population. They imagined some great wealth hidden away by the Jewish people. By the time they started teaching this in schools...many of the Jewish people had rightly fled.

The Indians...they didn't have to imagine a conspiracy. They could point to the laws that explicitly treated them differently.

I can understand why generations of movies may lead you to believe otherwise. There's nothing unique about the story of righteous struggle for heroic victory though. It's usually found in the great evils as well as the moral good.

Indeed. As we (I hope) agree, the system is broken on several levels; race being but one of many. CRT does not exist to address all the problems; just one.

Seems pretty sensible.

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If their solution is racial discrimination or racial indoctrination....I'm curious what problem they hope to address? Surely not racist beliefs and racial discrimination?

There's bad solutions and then there's extremely bad solutions. I can understand a man being dumb enough to try to gamble his way out of debt. It's unlikely to work...but there's a slim chance he can get lucky.

Now imagine a man whose house is burning....to use a common metaphor. He says that the fire started when a gas can exploded....and we should pour more gas on it. I point out that this is just going to make the fire worse and burn down his neighbor's house. He says "trust me, I'm an expert on burning houses....after all, my house is burning".

That man is either incapable of identifying solutions or trying to burn everything down.

Well, just about every power structure in American society is built on the foundation of American government... Which actually had the temerity to put in writing in its founding document that those people of color literally only counted as 3/5 of a human being... You don't get marginalized much worse than that (although I suppose it could have been 2/5)

Our society eventually corrected that mistake -- although hundreds died in the process... and hundreds of thousands died to preserve the mistake as well...

Is correcting the mistake the same as fixing the damage caused by it? That's a question worth being allowed to ask...

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That's a rather simplistic view of the 3/5ths clause. We're the people arguing for that piece of legislation the immoral ones? Because there were people arguing that slaves should be counted as 1 person...just like everyone else. You know who they were, right? The slave owners. Were they the morally good people because they wanted slaves counted as whole people?

You realize that argument was about representation, right? The slave owners wanted more power....those less fond of slavery wanted the slavers to have less power. Who do you think the slaves were rooting for?

Never mind all that lol....you're the teacher here...you have the 20/20 hindsight....

Who is on the right side of history there?

Work hard --> success. That's always been the American Dream, hasn't it? I believe it was George Carlin who said that they call it that because you have to be asleep to believe it.

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That's an ideal....not a right, guarantee, or even a vague promise.

As before, if that is so, there are plenty of reasons why... CRT seeks to dive deep into one reason: racism. Not everyone's cup of tea, but for those who are interested, why not dive in?

So.... If I were to listen to the good folks at UCLA, they'd probably say something interesting about it. And agree or disagree, I'd walk away having learned something worth my time... which I value.

.... because that's what happens when one listens to people who know what they're talking about.

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One doesn't dive into the pool of knowledge if they already have the answers. I already know who CRT blames....and regardless of who does the study or gives the lecture....I always guess right.

How do I have this magical ability? Easy, the conclusion is built into the premise.

It's a dive into the deep end with no water.

RDKirk said:

I wouldn't call that a privilege one way or another.

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Right...nor would I call half of the items listed in that worksheet a privilege.

One of them was about thoughts related to the race of actors on tv. What possible privilege is that related to?

Why would we teach children about white privilege unless we intend to cover the hundreds of other privileges?

It's the "dry snitching" of racism. It's gone from an abstract idea to racist trope that's taught as fact.