Doctor CamNC4Me wrote: ↑Wed Aug 04, 2021 3:55 pm
Res Ipsa wrote: ↑Wed Aug 04, 2021 2:37 pm
I’ve never heard whiteness described as an “original sin” as part of critical race theory. And the theory itself certainly has nothing to do with sin. It’s possible that one could find YouTube clips of folks spouting over the top rhetoric, but that has nothing to do with the theory itself.
Most of the discussion that I hear among regular folks about critical race theory is based on fairly significant distortions of what the theory says and why it says it. When the right seized on as the bogeyman of the day, it created a straw man of the theory, which is what 90% of the popular discussion is based on.
I don’t understand how most of what you said relates specifically to critical race theory. It’s familiar as part of your general critique of the left, but I don’t see the specific connection to critical race theory.
Well. critical race theory is a malleable concept, even Khiara Bridges admits as much. That’s probably why there’s so many different ideas that surround it - many, many articles that come up with a Google search touch on a lot of grievances. Granted, they’re pretty well founded in the reality of structural racism, but the guilty parties tend to shift around a bit. You can see thousands of posts and tweets by POCs that make no distinction between “white” ethnicities and “whiteness” when it comes to structural racism, so I’m left with the impression that the lens through which ‘intersectionalists’ view the issue isn’t nuanced.
1) If we allow that race is not biological, but social, then we must allow that structural racism is really more about structural ‘ethnicism’ and gatekeeping.
2) critical race theory then flips back to race as a real concept when it states that racism is a normal feature of society and is embedded within systems and institutions. This is true to a degree as demonstrated by historical actions of a government determined to keep races segregated and POCs disadvantaged. This is also true that the same government has implemented specific race-related policies to make up for its history. So, race, whether or not Leftists will ever admit biological differences, will be treated as a hard reality and a hard concept where lines will be drawn.
3) critical race theory teaches, again from Khiara Bridges‘ own mouth, that racism is so thoroughly embedded in our culture AND structures, that whites are the inherent benefactors and prop up the system to maintain their supremacy. That’s what I mean by original sin.
4) As a result, POCs are inherently and forever disadvantaged, where whites aren’t to a similar degree. This ignores the many ethnic differences within “whiteness” and our own struggles to make it in this world. Whites are essentially told to just accept the narrative that they’re more advantaged than POCs so shut it. This one is tricky because there is in fact advantages a majority enjoys over a minority, but critical race theory lumps whites together in order to achieve its aims of elevating POCs.
5) critical race theory is, in my opinion, useful for an egalitarian society to
theorize, examine, and challenge the ways which
ethinic hegemony has been achieved, but again, lumping whites together is lazy and pretty transparent with regard to to Leftists goals. It seems to be working, though. I’m not sure how that’s going to go over the long run, but I’m guessing it’s not going to go well when the solutions are attempted.
6) critical race theory explicitly states there’s an existing racial hierarchy. This again moves the goalposts from ‘race is a social construct’ to ‘race is literally a thing’. I’d suggest it misses the mark by using a shotgun approach instead of sharpshooting, but again they seem to have the upper hand on the topic because they have the support of academia, the media, and enough of the political apparatus to have staying power.
finally
7) critical race theory has enjoyed a coalition of intersectionality that explicitly takes aim at whites and in particular white males. That’s why you get LarCrit, AsianCRT, TribalCRT, LGBTQ-critical race theory. In other words, critical race theory grew out of Legal Critical Theory and has now gained enough steam that it’s just repackaged variations of Marxist theory. So, of
course they’re going to take aim at their perceived problematic power structures, because that’s the struggle and revolutionary raison d’etre.
So, for me, as a centrist, I think critical race theory is interesting and useful as a sort of soul check, but it’s quickly turning into revolutionary propaganda and people see that. They’re not
that uninformed, people can see when they, their families, their identities, and their own hierarchies are under ideological attack. This is why I think there’s a lot of push back happening.
- Doc
Bridges is neither one of the originators nor the sole voice of authority with respect to critical race theory. So, quoting snippets of things she has said doesn't hold much sway with me when talking about the nature of the theory itself.
I think your first two paragraphs involve a major equivocation on the meaning of "real." I don't pretend to have read everything on the topic, but I don't believe there is any evidence that people can be divided into "races" on the basis of DNA -- at least not as race has been historically defined by American and European scientists. There's nothing about the DNA of black folks that can explain the extreme differential in incarceration of black folks v. white folks in the U.S. So, biologically, I think it's fair to say that race isn't "real."
But the fact that race isn't biologically real does not mean that society doesn't treat race as if it were real. It hasn't been that long since some areas of the U.S. had whites only drinking fountains and bathrooms. So, from a sociological perspective, race was very real because society treated it as real.
So, I don't see the inconsistency that you think is there. It's not inconsistent to say that race is a meaningless biological category and at the same time say that society treats race as a real category. In my opinion, quibbling about whether we should use the word "race" or "ethnic" or some other term is kind of a red herring.
Thanks for explaining your original sin comment. But from what you say, being white isn't viewed as sin by critical race theory. If the concept of "sin" even applies, the "sin" is denying the racism that is embedded in the structures and fighting to preserve the structures as they exist rather than fighting to reform the structures to eliminate the racism.
As to overgeneralization and oversimplification, that's pretty common to almost anyone who argues any theory about anything. Nothing in the theory itself says that it cannot apply to different ethnicities within the grouping of "white folks." Or that every white person is better off than every POC. The guts of the theory aren't even limited to race, despite the name of the theory. It applies just as well to sex. But at the time critical race theory was first articulated, there were already comparable theories under the umbrella of feminism. So, I'm sure that one can find some statement from someone that assumes that the listener or reader understands that there are always exceptions when discussing broad categories. But that doesn't change the nature of the theory itself.
When you talk about "leftist goals," you're indulging in the same type of generalization that you are criticizing. If you have any experience at all within "the left," you know that there are all flavors of leftists with all kinds of goals. There is no single "strategy" employed by the left, because the left not only includes a whole spectrum of goals, it is also notorious for having significant internal disputes about strategy. Most modern social movements on the left are ad hoc and lack hierarchal organization. Black Lives Matter is a good example. So is Occupy Wall Street.
To repeat (because I think it's important), there is no goalpost moving in claiming that race has no biological basis and there is a racial hierarchy. Compare the situation to the caste system in India. There is no biological basis for the caste system. Yet, one would be delusional to claim that a caste hierarchy didn't exist. (I'm using past tense because I actually have no idea whether some form of the system still persists today.) It's not goalpost moving to both accept what science tells us about race and accept that race has societal consequences.
Through sheer luck, I was taught Critical Legal Theory in law school. I think I have a pretty good grasp on what it is. It was absolutely originated by Marxists, but there is no necessary connection between CLT and Marxism. Yours truly finds CLT to be a very excellent tool, and uses it regularly. But I'm not a Marxist. When you break it down, it's really not that complicated. We have a society that is based on the notion of equal opportunity. Not identical opportunity, but equal in a broader sense. What CLT really does is recognizes that social theories that appear to create equal opportunity in theory do not necessarily translate into equal opportunity in practice. Most rights discourse takes place in the air, so to speak. CLT says that rights discourse in the air isn't meaningful -- one must look at how things are playing out on the ground. It requires one to take into account the existing distribution of political and economic power and how the way the laws and structures of society function in relationship to equal opportunity. That's all.
You're a centrist, I'm a pragmatist. There is no reason, other than historically contingent events, that Critical Theory of any flavor should be identified with the left and not the right. For me, its a tool to understand, for example, why the high amount of racial disparity in the prison population exists. A classical rights theorist would say: well, our system theoretically provides equal opportunity for all, so there must be something wrong with black and brown folks. I say, hmmm. That's not the way we designed our political and economic system to work. Better check out how our systems are operating in real life to make sure they aren't operating in a way that provides inferior opportunities to black and brown folks. And that's really all there is to it.
Part of the reason it's become so emotional and confrontational is that many white folks have adopted a definition of racism that requires a bad guy. I think I beat this concept to death in our recent discussion about sexism. It's a defense mechanism that allows those folks to deny that racism even exists, and allows them to derail any conversation about race by arguing that they aren't racist. I found the book
White Fragility by Robin D'Angelo to be helpful in illustrating how this defense mechanism works.
In my opinion, part of the solution is to ignore the finger pointing and blame games that our politics have become. The incarceration rate of black men is a sign of serious systemic dysfunction. It's a symptom of a problem. You can be lazy and simply assert that there is something wrong with black folks. Or you can roll up your sleeves to try and figure out what the problem is and how to fix it. Critical (Race) Theory is a tool that helps us do the former, and warns us of the law of unintended consequences with respect to the latter. Depersonalize the issue, ignore those who try to make it personal instead of focussing on solutions, and get to fixing the problems.