Critical Race Theory

[Seabass]

I gave my explanation along with the relevant posts.

You provided your interpretation of what Seabass' words meant. Missing: Seabass saying that white Europeans are more violent. All I could find is him saying that racism is a huge problem in the US and in the US white people are the racists.

I'll wait for you to quote the bits I'm missing.

My bold. I wouldn't even say that, actually. It's not like non-white people can't be racist. In the US white people are the majority, so it is their racism that becomes systemic/endemic/structural.

[Hermit]

...hmmm

What part of my claim about how Seabass's approach will be understood--which I've apparently only intuited--do you have trouble believing?

Is it that people will come to see whites of the time as fundamentally different?

You did not start with what other people mistakenly intuit Seabass and CRT to mean, and I have no problem believing that this is the case, nor do I have a problem believing that you wrote they would, but that is not where we started. For that we'll have to go back to a post of yours before you began backpedalling. I suggest we go there now.

Addressing Seabass, you started a post with an assertion and finished with a pair of rhetorical questions. I highlighted those bits for you.

You focus on race too much. The most important bit isn't the race but the power imbalance. This is made clear by pointing to similar behaviors observed across races e.g. natives selling their peers into slavery. So, why didn't any particular natives dominate to the extent white Europeans did? Is it because white Europeans are particularly nasty when compared to natives?

At this point you did not talk about what other people intuit. It was what you did, and you are wrong on both counts. Seabass is focusing on what is now, and has been in the past the most pressing problem in the US - racism perpetrated by whites, mainly WASPs, and your intuition that the way he expresses the problem presents white Europeans as particularly nasty when compared to natives is an artefact of your imagination.

In your next post you recommended he start talking about democracy instead of racism. That is totally barking up the wrong tree. Tucker, and people like him will immediately counter with something like: "We have democracy, for we have equality before the law. Our laws - including the new election laws introduced by dozens of states - apply equally to people of black, white and brindle complexion." Of course they are, but they do affect different strata of society differently, akin to a 19th century French law. about which Anatole France sarcastically remarked in 1894: "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread."

Despite the apparent evenhandedness not all sections of society are even meant to be equally affected, and the lying bastards who formulate and enact those laws bloody well know it. They always have. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned this glaring example: President Nixon didn't say 'black' when he declared his 'war on drugs' in 1971, but everybody with two synapses or more between their ears knew what he meant. In 1994 Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs, John Ehrlichman explained it to those who did not.

The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.

So, no, attacking US problems from the angle of democracy won't fly. Not only have the racists have that covered, they are actually using formal democratic processes to further their racist agenda. You need to call them out on their racism.

[Hermit]

I gave my explanation along with the relevant posts.

You provided your interpretation of what Seabass' words meant. Missing: Seabass saying that white Europeans are more violent. All I could find is him saying that racism is a huge problem in the US and in the US white people are the racists.

I'll wait for you to quote the bits I'm missing.

My bold. I wouldn't even say that, actually. It's not like non-white people can't be racist. In the US white people are the majority, so it is their racism that becomes systemic/endemic/structural.

Yes. Quite. Non-white people can be as racist as anyone else. We're talking about people who have the power to exercise their racism in the US though, right? I thought that was understood.

[Seabass]

I gave my explanation along with the relevant posts.

You provided your interpretation of what Seabass' words meant. Missing: Seabass saying that white Europeans are more violent. All I could find is him saying that racism is a huge problem in the US and in the US white people are the racists.

I'll wait for you to quote the bits I'm missing.

My bold. I wouldn't even say that, actually. It's not like non-white people can't be racist. In the US white people are the majority, so it is their racism that becomes systemic/endemic/structural.

Yes. Quite. Non-white people can be as racist as anyone else. We're talking about people who have the power to exercise their racism in the US though, right? I thought that was understood.

[Seabass]

The HORROR!



https://twitter.com/SlyngCartoons

[Seabass]

[Sean Hayden]

Actually Hermit I started with:

Well, technically, shouldn't you point out instead the historical power imbalance? Regarding skin color and harm the shit is universal e.g. natives selling their peers into slavery.

Of course if you focus on power the shitheel has a point, overegged to hell of course, absurd even.

Given the context of the discussion this is a perfectly reasonable start to looking at a problem with Seabass's approach. There has been no backpedaling

People are concerned teaching CRT will lead to hatred of whites.

...

Someone should inform Fucker that the history of the US makes Rwanda look like a fucking stroll in the park, and that it wasn't the people with dark skin doing the genociding and enslaving.

[Sean Hayden]

Well, maybe we should say I started with this instead:

e.g. how about a sample problematic lesson plan.

Can we get that much at least? Without examples I'm going to assume our schools don't actually resemble a Black Hebrew Israelites meeting, or Seabass's living room.

It's almost like I've always been concerned with Seabass's approach for how it reads...

[JimC]

Why the obscene wealth inequality? Racism. Why the gun zealotry? Racism. Why so little spending on the public weal? Racism. Why no UHC? Racism.

Wealth inequality is more obscene in the Netherlands and Sweden. Margaret Thatcher has basically axed all spending on the public weal and there was no UHC in Australia until 1972. While I don't claim that racism is nonexistent in those countries I do assert that racism is not a factor in those failings. Racism does not cause them. They do acerbate them.

I agree. The general wealth disparity in the US between the ultra wealthy and the rest is because of a highly politically protected version of capitalism, not racism. Within that, the specific disparity between white and black is certainly caused by systematic racism, as is the rate of imprisonment and many other measures of social inequality.

Gun zealotry? A marginal connection, if that...

Poor public spending on the general welfare and health of citizens? It impacts the poor of all races, and benefits big corporations and the very wealthy. Of course, the racist element within such financial decision making is that, on average, a higher proportion of black people are adversely affected simply because they represent a higher proportion of the very poor.

So, it is simply too simplistic to invoke racism (or the Republican Party) for all the ills afflicting people in the US. That can be said without ceasing a robust critique of both.

[Hermit]

Well, maybe we should say I started with this instead:

e.g. how about a sample problematic lesson plan.

Can we get that much at least? Without examples I'm going to assume our schools don't actually resemble a Black Hebrew Israelites meeting, or Seabass's living room.

It's almost like I've always been concerned with Seabass's approach for how it reads...

That post was funny.

But you did reject discussing US problems from the racism/CRT angle and advocated approaching it from a democracy point of view before switching to what you and other people intuit. I don't doubt that you and other people intuit the stuff you do. I also know that "teaching CRT will lead to hatred of whites" is the latest mantra of those on the right end of the political spectrum. They also fear that certain events will lead to their replacement. I can do nothing about either intuition.

I tried to explain why discussing racism is the right topic to focus on. Perhaps you might respond to the actual core of this post.

[Seabass]

Why the obscene wealth inequality? Racism. Why the gun zealotry? Racism. Why so little spending on the public weal? Racism. Why no UHC? Racism.

Wealth inequality is more obscene in the Netherlands and Sweden. Margaret Thatcher has basically axed all spending on the public weal and there was no UHC in Australia until 1972. While I don't claim that racism is nonexistent in those countries I do assert that racism is not a factor in those failings. Racism does not cause them. They do acerbate them.

I agree. The general wealth disparity in the US between the ultra wealthy and the rest is because of a highly politically protected version of capitalism, not racism. Within that, the specific disparity between white and black is certainly caused by systematic racism, as is the rate of imprisonment and many other measures of social inequality.

But it's so much worse than that, Jim. It's not like there's just the normal, general inequality that everyone deals with, and then another layer of inequality that black people experience on top of that. Racism is like rocket fuel that makes the inequality so much worse than it would be otherwise. Much of white America votes for policies that they wouldn't vote for if not for racism. One of our two major parties espouses an ideology that is built entirely on the belief that black people are inherently lazy and therefore any policies that aim to reduce inequality are nothing more than a transfer of wealth from productive whites to non-contributing blacks.

quote from one of Reagan's goons:

Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry S. Dent, Sr. and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now you don't have to do that. All that you need to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues that he's campaigned on since 1964, and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster.

Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?

Atwater: Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger". By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this", is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger". So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the back-burner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwat ... trategy%22

Gun zealotry? A marginal connection, if that...

Marginal? Really?

How did the European colonizers manage to nearly wipe out the native population? Guns. How does a Southern planter family manage to keep 200 slaves from rising up? Guns. How do whites in Jim Crow South manage to keep blacks in line in areas where blacks outnumber whites? Guns. This is not to say that every gun nut is racist, but the insane gun culture in this country clearly has its roots in white supremacy.

Poor public spending on the general welfare and health of citizens? It impacts the poor of all races, and benefits big corporations and the very wealthy. Of course, the racist element within such financial decision making is that, on average, a higher proportion of black people are adversely affected simply because they represent a higher proportion of the very poor.

So, it is simply too simplistic to invoke racism (or the Republican Party) for all the ills afflicting people in the US. That can be said without ceasing a robust critique of both.

Did you read this, Jim?
http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... 22&t=55240
I would encourage you to read it.

I think you grossly underestimate the degree to which racism affects how much of white America votes. So much of white America would rather immiserate themselves than share with undeserving black people.

Here's another book that comes to more or less the same conclusion:
https://www.dyingofwhiteness.com/

[Sean Hayden]

--still think this is the right approach Hermit? "Dying of Whiteness".

--//--

I apologize for not giving my responses more time. I'll look into what you asked. But it will be a few days as I'll be traveling.

[Seabass]

--still think this is the right approach Hermit? "Dying of Whiteness".

--//--

I apologize for not giving my responses more time. I'll look into what you asked. But it will be a few days as I'll be traveling.

The author is a white guy. The title makes perfect sense if you read it.

Why are you so defensive about whiteness?

You know I'm half white, right? I don't hate white people. This is ridiculous.

[Sean Hayden]

--sorry

Why do you focus on whiteness so much? I thought racism was the issue.

[Seabass]

--sorry

Why do you focus on whiteness so much? I thought racism was the issue.

I don't focus on whiteness. White supremacy != whiteness. In the country where I live, black supremacy isn't so much of a problem, so I end up thinking about white supremacy more.

Obama didn't become president because of racism. Trump did.