Is the Holocaust fake news? You decide!

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Re: Is the Holocaust fake news? You decide!

Post by Chap »

Atlanticmike wrote:
Mon Oct 18, 2021 1:58 pm
I understand the question. You don't seem to understand critical race theory is all about labeling as many people as possible a "victim". It really is that simple.
That would be an answer to the question "what is the aim of people who advocate the teaching of critical race theory".

That is not the same as explaining what the theory actually states to be the case. Let me help you out here, if you will let me give you an example.

The "theory of universal gravitation" developed by Isaac Newton, states that between any two bodies in the universe there is an attraction directly proportionate to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centres of mass.

Are you saying that in your view 'critical race theory' states that all black people are the victims of oppression by white people? Or what?
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Re: Is the Holocaust fake news? You decide!

Post by Some Schmo »

Chap wrote:
Mon Oct 18, 2021 12:43 pm
I don't think you understood the question I asked you.
Actually, it's not the question he doesn't understand. It's the answer.
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Re: Is the Holocaust fake news? You decide!

Post by Chap »

ajax18 wrote:
Mon Oct 18, 2021 2:36 pm
Chap wrote:
Mon Oct 18, 2021 4:13 am


Yup. He does not respond to my request to write some words of his own saying what he means when he uses the expression.
A pity: I would have been interested to know. For him this is seems to be a very important and concerning concept. So presumably he must be capable to saying what it is.

Surely?

Instead, I just get a link to what someone else says.
Did you read the link? Why don't you tell me what critical race theory means to you, just so I can understand you better.

The defining principle I see of critical race theory from Ibram X. Kenadi is the idea that any law which has a disparate impact on different races must be a racist law and must be struck down by a government appointed unelected antiracism department.
Thanks for your explanation. I missed it last time I looked at the board, and so did not acknowledge it.

I looked up that guy, and found this reference, amongst others:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibram_X._ ... d_protests
Before the [George Floyd] protests, Kendi published a proposal for a constitutional amendment in the U.S. to establish and fund the Department of Anti-Racism (DOA). This department would be responsible for "preclearing all local, state and federal public policies to ensure they won’t yield racial inequity, monitor those policies, investigate and be empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas".[36]
I have to say that such a proposal does not sound like serious law to me - and even if it was enacted as a constitutional amendment I think its intention is so diffuse and open to disagreement that I don't think it could ever have the effect desired. I have no objection to finding ways to diminish racial inequity where its presence is clear, but good intentions are not enough if proposals are impracticable and in any case likely to be ineffective.

So that's it? Teaching critical race theory in schools is just a matter of teaching pupils that "any law which has a disparate impact on different races must be a racist law and must be struck down by a government appointed unelected antiracism department"? That sounds a bit odd to me. Can there really be a lot of teachers who want to go into school and say "Class! get out your notebooks and pay attention. Write down what I say: any law which has a disparate impact on different races must be a racist law and must be struck down by a government appointed unelected antiracism department. There will be a test tomorrow to check you have learned that by heart."

I mean, that isn't any kind of theory. It's just a half-baked proposal for a constitutional amendment that does not have a hope in hell of getting passed.
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Re: Is the Holocaust fake news? You decide!

Post by ajax18 »

Chap perhaps this is a better example of what people are upset about.
Black Mom Sues School After She Says Biracial Son Received Failing Grade In Sociology Class for Refusing to Confess His ‘White Dominance’
A Black mom is suing her biracial son’s Nevada charter school after she claims he received a failing grade for refusing to link aspects of his identity to oppression and dominance in a sociology class.


Gabrielle Clark and her son William Clark filed a suit in U.S. District Court of Nevada against public charter school Democracy preparation Agassi Campus in Las Vegas on Dec. 22, alleging a violation of constitutional free speech and due process rights.

William Clark claims that in the class “Sociology of Change” taught by Kathryn Bass, who is named as a defendant in the suit, he was harassed and punished for refusing to attach derogatory labels to aspects of his identity.

Clark, whose deceased father was white, is “generally regarded as white by his peers,” according to the complaint, and has “green eyes and blondish hair.”

The far-right advocacy group International Organization for the Family, which has been tracking the case closely, reports that a U.S. District Court judge said at a Feb. 26 temporary restraining order hearing, “I think William is likely to succeed on the merits’ of his compelled speech claims,” saying that “defendants will have to find a way to justify the Critical Race Theory curriculum under a strict scrutiny test,” adding, “that’s a high bar to meet.”

In the class taught by Bass, a self-described “white, Irish, American citizen,” Clark was allegedly forced to reveal his race, gender, sexual and religious identities and attach labels to the identities, which the lawsuit claims violated his right to privacy.

An instructional slide included in court documents displays dominant groups in American culture as “white,” “male,” “middle/upper class,” “heterosexual,” and “protestant/Christian,” while “everyone else” is categorized as “submissive.”

Labels like “white” are associated by Bass with “privilege,” while words like “female” and “working class” are associated with “oppressive.”

The Clarks’ suit makes several explosive claims about Bass. It said she referred to the students as “social justice warriors,” and also informed them that they would have to “undo and unlearn” beliefs, attitudes and behaviors associated with oppression.

Legal filings in the case depict Bass as using a meme featuring an image of SpongeBob SquarePants to communicate to students that “reverse racism doesn’t exist.”


Clark and other objected to the instructor’s ideals, but that wasn’t well-received by Bass, court documents show.

When Clark said “everyone can be racist” and “that prejudice anywhere from anyone can harm others,” Bass “terminated the discussion,” the lawsuit says.

“For this protected speech and others like it, Defendant Kathryn Bass terminated class discussion immediately with the intent to chill and discourage future objections to Defendants’ sponsored politicized ideology,” the complaint reads. The suit also indicates that the school encouraged other forms of protest like “occupying a cafeteria,” but that the same privilege seemed to not extend to Clark.

Slides from the curriculum also linked “Family,” with concepts like, “reinforce racist/homophobic prejudices,” while “religion” was characterized as “homophobic prejudices” and “right versus wrong judgment.”

The complaint also states that the school forced Clark to complete the class as a graduation requirement, instead of allowing him to replace it with another course. He ultimately received a failing grade in the class. Clark and his mother are seeking damages for the “permanent” negative implications the course will have on his “academic and professional prospects,” and expressed concern over the mental and psychological stress they both endured.

Gabrielle Clark told Fox News she feared for her son’s safety, and added, “I tried to instill in all of my children that you need to respect everyone and treat everyone the same … and do what Martin Luther King said. You don’t judge people on the color of their skin. You judge them on the content of their character.”

The suit also seeks to ensure that Clark is not denied a high school diploma and is provided with “an alternative non-discriminatory, non-confessional class.”

Several other school administrators are also named defendants in the complaint.

A spokesperson for Democracy preparation said in a statement, “Our curriculum teaches students about American democracy and movements for social change throughout our history. We strongly disagree with how the curriculum has been characterized in this filing.”

An expedited evidentiary hearing and trial is tentatively scheduled for the month of April.
https://atlantablackstar.com/2021/03/15 ... dominance/
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Re: Is the Holocaust fake news? You decide!

Post by Cultellus »

Yeah. The institutional treatment of biracial students has been a problem in the schools where my kids attended as well. They had to keep creating more, and more, and more, and more unique affinity groups. Then the kids had a walkout over the damn concept because, as it turned out, the kids were fine. It was the adults that were having issues. Turns out, the institution was having a melt-up over something that the kids were fine to resolve on their own without all the drama.
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Re: Is the Holocaust fake news? You decide!

Post by Chap »

ajax18 wrote:
Tue Oct 19, 2021 2:51 pm
Chap perhaps this is a better example of what people are upset about.
I would agree that the behavior of the teacher as described in that article you quote is not what I would think of as a normal approach to a group of school students. I would've course also want to hear the teacher's account too before making any firm judgement on this matter.

It would be just as bad if the teacher was insisting that the students followed a set of conservative "America is just wonderful and people shouldn't complain, or else they should just leave" positions. That is not teaching either. It's not really the topic I object to in either case, it is the teacher's insistence on an improper degree of control over the students' speech and writing.
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Re: Is the Holocaust fake news? You decide!

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The defining principle I see of critical race theory from Ibram X. Kenadi is the idea that any law which has a disparate impact on different races must be a racist law
In a very brief skim of "critical race theory" I'd say for me, the two main takeaways are 1) constructivism 2) binary class tension.

Ironically, Marxism's deep roots are in Hegel, who had concluded that Germans were essentially, the master race.

Prior to Hegel, philosophers were stuck on how to 'know what we know': How does a subject (Ajax) know that the grass is green? It's a trap, because there is no way to ever distinguish between a real external world with grass, and a world where a disembodied mind is fed the impression of grass.

On the one hand, the modernist idea of a subject makes the individual a god in the sense that an individual's mind mediates all of reality; on the other, a mind can't get past itself to know what the mind knows. Hegel scraps the modernist subject. He puts ideas, things in the mind, outside of the mind and into the world. It's kind of like a platonic form, say, a triangle, but not in an otherly world, in this world; but unstable, working itself out against other forms in the way of a dialectic. People are pawns in a chess game of higher concepts defining themselves; basically, empires fighting for world domination until white wins. Most important: the individual is no longer arbitrator of reality.

Marx takes the dialectic idea and turns it into a theory about workers and owners of capital. Western Marxism develops ideas about movements of opposing groups shaping reality (among other things). So in "critical race theory" there is the familiar tension of a "dialectic" -- 'races' in tension, and constructivism, where a group -- presumably the group in power -- has 'constructed' the [false] idea of 'race' in order to maintain power.

How in God's name you'd teach "critical theory" to kids in high school is beyond me. Do they teach Descartes, Hegel, Marx, Adorno and Walter Benjamin first? I fail to see how critical theory per se, even critical race theory, would be constrained to result in policies that help people. Like postmodernism, which trades in a lot of similar ideas, it can be used to any end conceivable.

And that brings me full circle to the original point about individuals arbitrating reality: back in the day, as a conservative, we were supposed to be horrified at 'postmodernism' because we were supposed to believe that "the grass is green" is a factual statement about an objective world, not a social construct. Right-wingers still complain about 'Marxism' and these 'left wing" theories, but they've embraced all the main elements of these kinds of theories themselves. The grass is green because CNN tells everyone it's green. Right-wingers are the most unhinged social constructivists I've ever met, believing in a dialectic of left-wing 'elitists' and the 'regular guy' conservative; and that the regular guy will overthrow the oppressors under Donald Trump. Everything from climate science, to the financial world, to viruses, to elections is an elaborate social construct created by liberal elite with the help of Jewish bankers. as A-Mike says "everything is really just politics" -- that's the essential message of postmodernism and critical theory. I studied postmodernism and ultimately couldn't go the distance with it, and so the fact that right-wingers have become the worst examples of postmodern theorists ever is a major reason why I would never be able to identify with the right as it stands today.
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Re: Is the Holocaust fake news? You decide!

Post by Physics Guy »

In 1936 J.M. Keynes wrote:Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.
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Re: Is the Holocaust fake news? You decide!

Post by Morley »

Gadianton wrote:
Tue Oct 19, 2021 7:38 pm
The defining principle I see of critical race theory from Ibram X. Kenadi is the idea that any law which has a disparate impact on different races must be a racist law
In a very brief skim of "critical race theory" I'd say for me, the two main takeaways are 1) constructivism 2) binary class tension.

Ironically, Marxism's deep roots are in Hegel, who had concluded that Germans were essentially, the master race.

Prior to Hegel, philosophers were stuck on how to 'know what we know': How does a subject (Ajax) know that the grass is green? It's a trap, because there is no way to ever distinguish between a real external world with grass, and a world where a disembodied mind is fed the impression of grass.

On the one hand, the modernist idea of a subject makes the individual a god in the sense that an individual's mind mediates all of reality; on the other, a mind can't get past itself to know what the mind knows. Hegel scraps the modernist subject. He puts ideas, things in the mind, outside of the mind and into the world. It's kind of like a platonic form, say, a triangle, but not in an otherly world, in this world; but unstable, working itself out against other forms in the way of a dialectic. People are pawns in a chess game of higher concepts defining themselves; basically, empires fighting for world domination until white wins. Most important: the individual is no longer arbitrator of reality.

Marx takes the dialectic idea and turns it into a theory about workers and owners of capital. Western Marxism develops ideas about movements of opposing groups shaping reality (among other things). So in "critical race theory" there is the familiar tension of a "dialectic" -- 'races' in tension, and constructivism, where a group -- presumably the group in power -- has 'constructed' the [false] idea of 'race' in order to maintain power.

How in God's name you'd teach "critical theory" to kids in high school is beyond me. Do they teach Descartes, Hegel, Marx, Adorno and Walter Benjamin first? I fail to see how critical theory per se, even critical race theory, would be constrained to result in policies that help people. Like postmodernism, which trades in a lot of similar ideas, it can be used to any end conceivable.

And that brings me full circle to the original point about individuals arbitrating reality: back in the day, as a conservative, we were supposed to be horrified at 'postmodernism' because we were supposed to believe that "the grass is green" is a factual statement about an objective world, not a social construct. Right-wingers still complain about 'Marxism' and these 'left wing" theories, but they've embraced all the main elements of these kinds of theories themselves. The grass is green because CNN tells everyone it's green. Right-wingers are the most unhinged social constructivists I've ever met, believing in a dialectic of left-wing 'elitists' and the 'regular guy' conservative; and that the regular guy will overthrow the oppressors under Donald Trump. Everything from climate science, to the financial world, to viruses, to elections is an elaborate social construct created by liberal elite with the help of Jewish bankers. as A-Mike says "everything is really just politics" -- that's the essential message of postmodernism and critical theory. I studied postmodernism and ultimately couldn't go the distance with it, and so the fact that right-wingers have become the worst examples of postmodern theorists ever is a major reason why I would never be able to identify with the right as it stands today.
Well done.

I'm with you. I'd dearly love to sit in on a class where a high school teacher was trying to lead a discussion on Dialectic of Enlightenment.
.
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