Today is crash day, so all you get is an occasional short post when I happen to be awake. Here's another one:
Do the anti-CRT folks have any examples of what our kids are being taught in public schools? Note that I'm backing down from my request for some kind of semi-rigorous research. That's obviously not available, so now I'll be satisfied with anecdata. All I want is maybe a dozen examples of kids being taught that white people are oppressors, America is a horrible racist nation, etc.
We at least have that, don't we?
Faux News had some private school and Cali. About the only thing they came up with. Fortunately. I have not had to listen to it for the last two weeks.
Faux News had some private school in Cali. Bring back the edit function.
So, not a government school.
Meaning the Biden-Harris autocracy isn't mandating reverse racism on white taxpayers's dime.
Except in the massive administrative bureaucracies such as EPA, ATF, IRS, etc. Oh, and the military. And it isn't just on white people's dime. It is on hardworking Americans' dime - of all races.
Not to mention many universities receive federal $$$.
I don't think I am wrong when I say that the main theme of CRT is that if you are white, you are a racist oppressor pig simply because you are white.
CRT is divisive and does nothing to heal the country of its past and present racism. Instead, CRT essentially says that we still live in a Jim Crow society and tells the darker-skinned people they don't have a chance because of "systemic racism."
So now prove that those organizations are teaching those things other than in your head.
"I don't think I am wrong when I say that the main theme of CRT is that if you are white, you are a racist oppressor pig simply because you are white."
You are, in fact wrong.
CRT is a tool, used exclusively at the university and post-grad level, to examine and understand how racist structures can endure even after the policy impetus is no longer explicitly racist. It doesn't paint anyone as inherently racist, though it does point out that the white majority continues to benefit from previous racist policies (say, in housing or education) even in the complete absence of individualized racial animus.
It's bizarre to imagine society can solve a problem if it doesn't understand what the problem is or how it was created. If being told you are privileged because of the color of your skin makes you feel bad, it says more about you than it does about CRT.
How does a school in a city in Colombia have bearing on CRT in the US? …
Oh, come on, Kevin. Everybody knows they're teaching about how plantations in southern US states used African-imported slaves for labor. Of course, this will make kids hate America. And leftist school teachers know it! And there is no good reason in high school to cover current events when you have these radical left, BLM protests, and talk about the issues being protested, when what they should be talking about are the riots that happened with some of them. To empathize with BLM protestors is to hate - I say hate - America!
Next thing ya' know, they'll be telling the kids that there were people already here when Columbus discovered America.
I taught in Berkeley Unified School District and attended trainings on this stuff. Most of it I agreed with and is simple anti-bigotry. Some of it I found personally problematic.
I was taught about whiteness as a concept and that abolishing it is a goal in opposition to white supremacy. I was taught that Asians and Jewish people are included in whiteness, because they share in their privileges.
As an elementary school teacher, most of this is not stuff I was expected to teach, but it was expected to inform my teaching. The emphasis of the training was that whiteness in education is the root cause of the race gap, and that examining my privilege would lead to better outcomes among my students of color.
I wonder if you could share more with all of us here at Kevin's blog. Is there somewhere I can find materials or other information about the training you are referring to ? From your description it's not hard to see how this could be problematic for a lot of people . "Whiteness in education" ? What the heck does that even mean ?
" 'Whiteness in education' ? What the heck does that even mean ?"
In this case, it means that racial biases, in this case mostly unconsciously held by white, upper middle class teachers.
It's not completely unfounded. I taught in a low-income, high poverty school for 10 years. It took years to understand the community I was working with, and this improved my practice and outcomes immeasurably.
For me though, that didn't feel like a process of understanding race, but of understanding poverty.
Poor kids have it the hardest.
There was a piece written by some frontline teacher that I read long ago that commented that hunger was the one of the worst enemies to the pupils and teachers...
I think you must be a very good teacher. Your ten years of experience dealing with students who have a low-income, high poverty background could help the educational system better reach these students.
Another academic a while back wrote that the first principle of CRT is that "race is a social construct". If that is true, it implies that race does not really exist. I find that preposterous ("who are you going to believe; me, or your own lying eyes"). More to the point, if race does not really exist why is so much effort put into talking about and doing research into its effects?
Also, if whiteness as a concept is going to be abolished, it seems that it would be necessary to entirely abolish skin color as a concept; otherwise, it will be noted that there are people who are not black, brown or yellow and whose skin has a high albedo. That observation will, it seems to me, promptly lead to the recreation of the concept of whiteness.
I have no problem with the concepts of white privilege and systemic racism; they clearly, observably, exist. However, when some academic tries to tell me that something I can see every day is merely "a social construct", I rebel; that's a bridge too far.
I agree that systemic racism exists. So far, I have never heard of a convincing example of white privilege. All that I have seen are either examples of class privilege, or situations where non-whites are subject to some form of harassment or interference that is seldom or never visited on white people. But that's not white _privilege_. That's white people getting what everybody is due as a matter of right, and non-whites being discriminated against.
And you do not think that NOT being discriminated against is not a form of privilege? That NOT being denied a “right” when other are denied it is not a form of privilege?
That’s a little like saying, there are people at -10 and people at 0, and I choose to believe that 0 is a “right,” so nobody is privileged and some people are … uh … negatively privileged.
Sophomoric nonsense.
The word "privilege" often connotes something extra, a perk, something above the baseline level of treatment to which all are entitled. If you are treated at a certain baseline level while others are not, then according to a very common use of the word "privilege", that doesn't make you privileged, it just means that those others are worse off than you.
Think how perverse it is to consider it a privilege to not be harassed by cops, or in general to just be treated with basic decency!
No. By definition, if it's a right, then not being denied it is not a privilege. It's just plain English. The meaning of words matters.
if it's a right, then not being denied it is not a privilege.
Lol. Not just sophomoric, but semantic nitpicking. Voilà, by defining "privilege" in a certain way, we have completely got rid of the problem! It's genius!
However, if you wish to play semantics -- which really is the lowest form of argument, then I would say that a "right" is, as you note, something to which everyone is "due," and since obviously large (non-white) portions of our population evidently are not, then those things are not "rights," in which case your argument -- such as it is -- falls apart.
bbleh: "I would say that a "right" is, as you note, something to which everyone is "due," and since obviously large (non-white) portions of our population evidently are not, then those things are not "rights,""
No, "large (non-white) portions of our population" *are* due those rights, they just often have them violated. Note that when one puts it that way, the situation looks *worse* than if one describes whites as having privilege.
By contrast, what you wrote above seems to imply that something cannot be a right if it's violated, which is obviously absurd.
"Voilà, by defining "privilege" in a certain way, we have completely got rid of the problem!"
On the contrary, by careful use of language and clear, not sloppy, thinking, it helps define the problem in ways that point towards appropriate solutions. If, for example, not being murdered by police represents "white privilege" then the solution is to eliminate the privilege by having more white people murdered by police--at the same rate as blacks are. By framing the question properly as the deprivation of blacks of their rights, we come up with the more appropriate solution of doing things to get fewer blacks murdered by police.
Oh come on, you really don’t believe race is a social construct? What race is Barack Obama, apart from how he chooses to identify himself? How about someone who has, say, an English grandfather and a Lebanese grandmother on one side and a Cuban grandfather and a Black American grandmother on the other? And I’m sure you’re aware (not) that the Irish were considered non-White in the US even into the 20th century.
FFS educate yourself.
"Race" occupies the same slot in human taxonomy that "breed" does in canine taxonomy. A dog that is half Labrador and half German Shepherd is neither a Labrador nor a German Shepherd, it's a cross-breed or mixed breed. Obama is mixed race. Same with your other examples.
There is a great deal of foolishness surrounding racial discourse. Trying to claim that the Irish are, or were, non-white is foolishness. So is claiming that race is a social construct rather than an objectively observable fact.
Lol "foolishness" because one simply prefers to ignore history? Or "foolishness" because "of course" they're white due to something something "taxonomy" something "objectively observable" something, all of which of course is scientifically grounded in the best German race-theory?
"Oh but there's not a racist bone in my body!"
It still surprises me that such people can look themselves in the mirror, and yet they do ...
Or wait, perhaps it's Southern race theory. Quadroons, Octoroons, etc. -- nice neat classification system they had for those "mixed-race" people, just without the arm-badges. Thanks heaven we have that KKK, I mean AKC, manual of "pure" breeds.
Breeds of dogs exist. Yet there are mixed breeds that are difficult to label. Of course races in humans exist.
"Of course." Because obviously, ergo QED.
Awesome logic. Truly.
Saying that race is a social construct is not the same thing as saying that it doesn't exist. Money is very obviously a social construct, since it wouldn't exist without society, and it is only because of mutual agreement among society's members that the pieces of paper and coins in your wallet (or their electronic counterparts) can be exchanged for goods and services. Money is, of course, also very real, and very much not easily altered by any one individual.
When people say race is a social construct, when I have seen this used they say this to specifically make the point that race does not exist. We are all the same - just Homo Sapiens, meaning modern humans. Right or wrong, that is what they claim.
This is exactly right. At the level of DNA, there are actually more differences *between* peoples of African descent with black skin than there are between many Africans and those of European descent. The more you drill down to the molecular level with Homo sapiens, the more absurd surface-level distinctions appear.
Law is a social construct, too, as is money. No one is saying that law and money don't exist when they describe them that way.
Academics must take themselves seriously, but they can't make you take them seriously.
"Race" in the sense of being a set of immutable characteristics or tendencies of a group (e.g. intelligence, beauty, aggressiveness, greediness, rationality) that is signaled primarily by skin color or other physiognomic features is *absolutely* a social-historical construct, every bit as much as if you decided that a primary marker of distinction in the world dividing the righteous from the wicked were eye color or left-handedness. There is no debate there.
Eye color and right or left-handedness are, like skin color, observable, objectively real, facts; definitely NOT social constructs.
That, of course, is not what "race is a social construct means". It means biological definitions of race are not used. Someone railing against those lazy thieving Mexicans, a Hutu politician condemning Tutsis as "cockroaches", a Serbian blasting the Croat 'race', Han Chinese in Taiwan telling you confidentially that aborigines may be gifted in music and sports but their inferior in intelligence-the list goes on. But you already know that; you just want to complain about CRT.
Why are some so adamant that "race is a social construct" and that race does not exist? My take is that this idea is a weapon to use against opponents. People know that races have different measured IQs. Everyone agrees that this is in part due to environmental differences, however some think there is a genetic component too. This notion makes people's heads explode, and a potent counterargument is needed. So if you declare that there are no biological races, only Homo Sapiens, then differences in group IQs because of race are impossible.
If you read people who strongly declare that "race is a social construct", soon after they will say how innate IQs of course are the same for all socially constructed races. Winning the argument on IQ is their goal.
I agree with this: I understand what it means but I think the choice of words is unfortunate. It sets up the question: Whom should I trust, my eyes (who see different skin colors in people of your theory?
Here is what it means: Race as a biological concept obviously exists, not just in humans. What the "social construct" is trying to get at is the fact that we tend (strongly) to attach prejudices to people other than ourselves. Society invents--or constructs--reasons why one group should be superior and/or more powerful than another (for which there exists no biological foundation whatsoever; it is a construct made of nothing).
Another academic a while back wrote that the first principle of CRT is that "race is a social construct". If that is true, it implies that race does not really exist. I find that preposterous...
Race is a social construct. That social construct indeed exists (like lots of other social constructs) but it's very definitely not a meaningful word for biologists.
For instance, there is frequently greater genetic difference between different African (member of the "Black" race if you will) ethnic groups than there is between individual African ethnic groups and European (members of the "Caucasian" race) ethnic groups. And, needless to say, all 7.9 billion of us are much more closely related than the planet's 200,000 chimpanzees are.
Saying "race is a social construct" doesn't make sense to most people. People with genetic ties to different regions of the world have different physical characteristics. So populations of people with genes in common to those regions will have some similar traits.
It is true that the word "race" is used loosely, and it can be said it is socially constructed in part. But people who say "race is a social construct" typically try to say that people from different regions of the world have no differences. That is just silly.
"I was taught about whiteness as a concept and that abolishing it is a goal in opposition to white supremacy. ... The emphasis of the training was that whiteness in education is the root cause of the race gap, ...."
@Jeffrey Gordon: That sounds like the stuff of a hostile work environment to me. Have you considered hiring a lawyer?
"I was taught that Asians and Jewish people are included in whiteness"
This strikes me as more than just mildly problematic; so, I wonder if I am understanding you correctly. Because, as stated, this concept is at best simply nuts, but at worst it could be dangerous to the point of putting lives at risk.
Asking people to look at Asians and see them as "included in whiteness" is asking people to simply deny the evidence of their own eyes. It is an assertion of ideology over what people generally experience as their own empirical reality. And for any educational institution to adopt such a rigorously ideological approach is of course alarming.
But the part about Jews is where this ideology gets potentially dangerous. If Jews are included in whiteness then how does Berkeley Unified School District explain to its students the fact that White Nationalists marched through Charlottesville in 2017 chanting "Jews Will Not Replace Us"? That march should be unequivocally condemned as racist. If Berkeley is promoting a view of reality in which that march cannot be seen as racist then it may in fact be indirectly contributing to similar marches in the future (by not sufficiently highlighting the fact that Jews are in fact facing potentially dangerous levels of prejudice). One person died at that 2017 Charlottesville march.
You describe this training you received @ Berkeley, if I understand you correctly, as if it's some sort of fairly benign worldview. To me, it clearly sounds like ideological extremism. If I had kids in that school system, and I read your post, I would take them out of that school system based on what you have written. There is no way I would want my kids left in the hands of ideologues (of either the far right or the far left variety).
Kevin asked for examples of extremism, and it seems to me that you have provided one. Is that not how you see it? No offense, but if anyone attempted to train me with that kind of illiberal bullsh*t, I would have gotten the hell out of there ...
If you want my opinion on the whole thing, it's nuanced. I think we talk about race, because we know it can't be changed and we avoid talking about poverty, because we know we don't want to change it.
Education is filled with all kinds of dumb ideas. Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences is a great example. In trainings, I take everything with a grain of salt.
But I had a really different experience between Berkeley, which I hold to be a fine school district, but only taught shortly, and Alameda where I taught for nine years.
Alameda separates its low income students into just a couple of schools. I taught in the one with the highest concentration of them (some years >80%) in the same classroom, 4th grade, for 9 years straight.
Berkeley allows every kid to attend any school, and the low income students are more diffuse throughout the district.
In my school in Alameda, where most of the kids were of color, and almost everyone was poor, we didn't talk about race, we talked about poverty. In Berkeley, where most of the kids were white, and most of the kids who weren't doing well were not, we talked mostly about race and not poverty.
So I came into those trainings as a white teacher who'd already had to come to terms with my own misunderstandings of how poverty affects kids. As someone from an affluent background, that was what my first few years of teaching were about for me.
In a way, the concept of privilege is a potentially powerful one for teachers. Your privileges do create biases. To argue against that is ridiculous.
But welding privilege to race is problematic, and risks making the same unfair assumptions of people, and therefore alienating potential allies.
I was trying to focus my commentary on this observation from your previous post: "I was taught that Asians and Jewish people are included in whiteness, because they share in their privileges"
And, while it's certainly possible that I am not catching your meaning, I don't see how your reply responds to my concerns. I do appreciate the analysis of the Alameda County school district; but, again, back to Berkeley:
Yes, it can certainly be stated that there have always been bad ideas circulating through pedagogical circles (and, in fact, through most other social or professional circles);
but, that sort of observation once again leaves me with the impression that you don't seem to recognize how profoundly disturbing it is to hear that Berkeley Unified is attempting to "train" (or, indoctrinate?) its teachers into an ideology where Asians and Jews are "included in whiteness."
The potential ramifications from that statement for Asians are that they are persecuted and discriminated against because of their own success. That is, in fact, what arguably happened when the SF school board took this ideology and used it to justify a change to the admissions policy at Lowell HS.
The potential ramifications for Jews: Berkeley Unified may very well be indirectly endorsing anti-Semitism. It was barely a few years ago that many if not most elite schools and institutions in this country had strict limits on the number of Jews that they would admit. I personally know at least one elderly Jewish man who was forced to give up on his choice of a medical profession due to the cap on Jewish students at Medical Schools.
It would be nice to think we grew beyond that kind of thing, but apparently not. And the idea that Jews reached their largely successful status in our 21st century world due to some sort of privilege, after the literal centuries of abuse they have suffered, should be seen as an egregiously offensive belief.
There just is no way to dismiss these notions as in any way equivalent to other bad ideas that inevitably get knocked around. The ideology you describe is too potentially harmful for that. It needs to be actively resisted, not passively acknowledged.
A lot of critical race theorists would argue that the image of Asians as a "model minority" -- i.e. arguing that they're essentially "white" -- is itself a product of white supremacy in that it further serves to entrench images of Hispanics and Blacks as lazy and un-American while simultaneously avoiding discussion of discrimination Asians still face. Saying Jews are functionally "white" is similarly problematic, for a lot of the same reasons.
"...examining my privilege would lead to better outcomes among my students of color."
Well, that's more useful than common core or NCLB—but no matter if the content, the model for teacher training in America bugs me. It removes features from their classroom to make them students in the trainers classroom.
What if the district hired the same trainer for a whole semester, and they spent a day in each classroom, with a sub for the last 90 minutes while the trainer takes the teacher through their material one-on-one?
Or whatever schedule makes sense, as long as the trainer spends some time in the teacher's classroom, then one-on-one or maybe small group.
Whatever curricula/trainer the district chooses, be it CRT or MBA or NWA, delivered to you by someone who's observed your teaching.
And this just validates all the concerns of people who are speaking out against CRT.
"All I want is maybe a dozen examples of kids being taught that white people are oppressors, America is a horrible racist nation, etc."
Are you being fatuous, or are you seriously describing Critical Race Theory in those terms? Some of your readers might take that as the definition of CRT.
True or not that's the emerged popular understanding, where it can seem to give license to any interpretation by any bad actor for whatever reason they may have.
It really would be best if everybody just stopped using the term CRT. The term is now bandied about to mean so many different things that it's impossible to have a serious discussion about it from any perspective.
As far as I can tell, nobody was using the term CRT outside of law schools, until conservative media decided to make it this year’s “Ebola” or “caravan” or “term chosen to whip people into a frenzy.”
I still don’t use CRT in everyday conversation. And the only time I ever hear it is when somebody in media brings it up. For an all-encompassing problem threatening to destroy everything good about America, CRT certainly is never mentioned in my workplace nor in conversations I have with parents of school age children.
I can only conclude that CRT must be the silent killer of 2021.
That doesn't mean CRT is not working its way into discussions on race. The notion that our laws are racist is being heard more and more. How can that be when laws are designed specifically so that they don't discriminate on race? It's because when you look at outcomes based on the legal structure, blacks come up short. Thus there is systemic racism baked into our laws, and we live in an innately white supremacist society. Where did this concept about our laws come from? It comes from CRT.
It's a depressing line of thought. We've removed overt discrimination from laws, yet it's said they still oppress severely and stealthily.
When I look for examples of this, things are pretty murky. One example would be that drug laws cause more blacks than white go to prison. Thus the drug laws have systemic racism. Right or wrong, that is what CRT says.
"How can that be when laws are designed specifically so that they don't discriminate on race?"
LOL. So now go read the recent Republican efforts to make voting harder and why they choose to block things like Sunday voting which is used predominantly by Black churchgoers.
All I want is maybe a dozen examples of kids being taught that white people are oppressors, America is a horrible racist nation, etc.
Hahahahahaha! Examples? You mean like, actual factual evidence? And you want it from the “anti-CRT folks”? Hahahahaha, stop, yer killin’ me!
These people do not exist in a world of fact or rationality. They exist in a world of belief and emotion. They do not employ facts, they do not care about facts, they are not persuaded by facts. They want to believe and to emote — mostly to be angry — and CRT (which they know nothing about and don’t want to) is just something the anger merchants have sold them to be angry about. To attempt to elucidate facts or reasons, or even to have a rational conversation with them, much less convince them, is a fool’s errand.
What you describe are CRT believers themselves.
O no! The dreaded "I know you are but what am I?" retort, against which, as all playground children know well, there is no possible defense! Aiyee, I am sore wounded, O woe, O lie me under the greenwood tree ...
You could have gone with the potent "I'm rubber and you're glue" defense.
While not directly responsive to your question, I have an example of, in my opinion, completely inappropriate application of anti-racism theory at a ‘elite’ university: note, I am on an advisory board at this school and this story was shared by the university’s Provost (basically a college’s number two executive).
A midterm exam was given for Calculus I (entry level math at this university). Apparently, there was a concentration of students of color in the bottom quartile of performance on the test. A parent of one of student’s complained and accused the Professor of bias based strictly, as I understand, on outcomes: no student nor parent provided examples of bias action such as unequal treatment in the classroom.
The Professor responded that Teaching Assistants graded the text. The Teaching Assistants use a single grading rubric. Further, student numbers but not student names are on the test. In Calculus there is a single correct answer. However, the Professor asked another Math Department Professor to review all the tests to search for inconsistency such as bias in the allocation of points for partial credit. No bias was discovered but the situation made the school (online) newspaper.
By the time a Black student takes a calculus exam, years of systemic racist bias have done their work. The test itself isn't the issue. Just look at the grading system that students have been subject to: Full of bias and subjectivity up and down the line.
A parent's complaint is not an example of a school teaching "CRT". The complaint was reviewed and it was concluded there wasn't a problem. How is this inappropriate?
colbatguano - you are correct the situation was not teaching CRT: rather, it was an attempt to apply the theory to a math class.
I shared the situation because there was at least one parent who believed, likely based on the work of Ibram Kendi, that the measure of racism is outcomes: the anti racism construct does not support, for example, the possibility that not all the students were equally prepared for the test.
Rather, a Calculus test that results in more kids of color in the bottom quartile must, by definition be racist.
CRT has been around since the late 60's. It's tried on and off.
Last week Christopher Rufo put out a list of 30 public (elementary) schools or school districts who have used, in some way, Not My Idea - A Book About Whiteness by Anastasia Higginbotham which teaches kids that "whiteness" is a contract with the devil which they should renounce: "you can be white without signing on to whiteness". YMMV as to whether this is a good thing or not, but it seems to fit your request. https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1413292881264005126/
This is Rufo's thoroughly dishonest claim:
Anyone reading that would assume teachers are using the book as a text in class.
Here is the reality, from one of his districts picked at random http://www.ashland.k12.or.us/News.asp?NewsID=3076
There follows a long list of websites and books, one of which is 'Not My Idea'.
In other words nobody is "teaching it". Parents are being encouraged to talk about it with their children. It should be assumed that Trump Republican propagandists like Rufo are lying through their teeth until there is conclusive evidence to the contrary.
I agree that Rufo does appear to have a chronic habit of exaggerating his case. But not all the instances he lists are just the Higginbotham book appearing on a long list of recommended readings. The Evanston/Skokie school district does teach it in class for all 3-5th graders, for instance. I know Evanston is progressive, but would they have used a book like this one 5-10 years ago? Seems to be a cultural sea-change.
I know Kevin is being sarcastic, but he hits on the real problem. Conservatives view CRT the way Kevin defines it - but they are wrong. That's not CRT. They want to define it that way because if the real definition is used people won't get up in arms.
I have 2 kids in the CA school system (the Bay Area - even worse!) and review thier homework on a regular basis. The most CRT-ish lessons are basically: Racism is bad. Slavery was bad. You should treat everyone nicely.
" Racism is bad. Slavery was bad. You should treat everyone nicely."
Well, there you go. How is any kid ever going to vote Republican again if they're brought up believing that!?!
I haven't read it yet, but there's the complaint filed a few weeks ago in Federal court by a teacher in the Evanston, IL public school system: https://345h6j74bj93ldnop2phvizr-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2021/06/202106029-Deemar-v.-D65-Complaint.pdf
Appears to have been written by Lyn Wood on behalf of Vox Day.
I issued a similar challenge in a comments thread on 'The Hill' a few days ago. The only response I got was a link to a blog by a conservative academic whose name I can't remember, who raged about the evils of CRT and expressed concern that it 'might seep into his children's curriculum'. The implication was clear that he doesn't believe it is being taught now.
It's abundantly clear from the tediously repetitive comments bombarding the internet about CRT being taught in schools that it's yet another case of Trump cultists mindlessly repeating the crap they heard on talk-back radio or Fox or read on one of their innumerable propaganda websites.
You want facts from that crowd? How is that supposed to work?
What about the use of Not My Idea?
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/06/anastasia-higginbotham-not-my-idea-children-police-killings/619087/
I believe much of the CRT discussion ends up tending to conflate two different things that are going on:
1) Extremist ideology occasionally overwhelming sincere, well-meaning and very welcome attempts to accurately teach US history and sociology; and,
2) Generally excessive and quite probably harmful hard-left wokeness that hurts Democrats politically.
These two phenomena, while sometimes related, aren't the same.
I tend to think the second of these is a real problem, and, to the extent it could help MAGA beat Democrats, might even play a non-trivial role in killing democracy in America.
The hype about the former, though, in my view is mostly just that: hype. That's my opinion, and I'm no expert, but anecdotes don't tell us a lot about what's actually going on as a general pattern (although anecdotes can and do go digitally viral, and thus feed into #1). And again, much of US pedagogy has been inappropriately silent over the years on the damaging effects of racism in America, and so it's desirable for this to be changed; it doesn't surprise me in the least that this ruffles some white-supremacist feathers (and sure, the occasional examples of "extremist" ideology and flat-out lefty nuttiness give the latter plenty of ammunition).
All I want for Christmas is for Kevin to add editing or at least deletion functionality to his blog's commenting software. Sigh.
Another problem with the "Whiteness" is it a CRT black went back 2000 years and saw "Whiteness" at the time. .....they may have a stroke.
Things change. In 700CE the Catholic church was a mess, losing to "whiteness" in the North and fears of the Frankish kingdom collapse would lead to the end of the church in the south. What happened??? They broke a deal with newly converted group called "Jews" who reorganized their finances, used Arab mercenaries to attack "Whiteness" and by 800, had pretty much defeated the Germanics(except for one late comer, which had come a 100 years earlier, leads to a "what if" scenario).
The Jews were the founder of capitalism. They ran the Church's finances from there. The disaster of the Black Death forced the Aristocracy to use them solely for finance. Then by the 1600's, the Aristocracy themselves armed with science, left the political world for business, expanding the new products science was creating into a new political class. The Jews, the breath of Western civilization. Then we wonder why Hitler wanted to regress 1500 years into the past????
Nonwhites come off looking like jealous neighbors, mad because they didn't have the Jews nor the capability to apply science like IndoEuropeans. Debt is finite and the system is frail. Ecologically, we have seen the downside to this science, but who thus has come up with ideas to combat it???? Not "them". If they had the choice to save the planet and accept "white privilege" they would not. If they could keep on pumping out fossil fuel pollution while making every white person poor, they would. They have not learned a damn thing.
I'm not really the addressee for this question, but some googling got me here: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/yes-critical-race-theory-is-being-taught-in-public-schools
These authors Kendi and diangelo are simply trying to make excuses for the failure of the black community to prosper. And they are surely right that white racism over the centuries has been responsible for much of this failure. But we all know black folks who are successful middle and upper class. They succeeded despite this racism. And when it comes to the dysfunctional / gangster / criminal faction among blacks, racism becomes nothing but an excuse for stupidity.
Blacks can’t beat the criminals terrorizing their community without reforming their own culture. They can’t do it without police and they can’t do it without well meaning white folks who want to help.
.... and if not, WHY NOT?
Not sure if this, from Kevin’s former blogging grounds is in the ballpark of his request but it might be close: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/07/the-moral-panic-over-critical-race-theory-is-coming-for-a-north-carolina-teacher-of-the-year/
Go to the source himself, Christopher Rufo.
Here is a post from 4/27 which lists ten.
https://christopherrufo.com/critical-race-theory-in-education/
If you want more examples, wander over to @realchrisrufo on Twitter and ask his followers to list additional examples.
Mr. Rufo is a dishonest hack looking for political advantage. Nothing he says should be considered either useful or truthful. He is just another conservative grifter.
It is easy enough to check out the links in Rufo's post. The first link, for example, lists two source documents. The interesting question is whether Rufo, or some compatriot, crafted these documents. That I don't know. They look valid. Perhaps a good journalist could interview the presenters and ask them, "Did you present this material?"
The first document, on slide 39, has the phrase "Spirit Murder". The document does not define that term; presumably that was done verbally during the presentation. Rufo alleges that the term originated with somebody named Bettina Love, who defines it as the concept that American schools “murder the souls of Black children every day through systemic, institutionalized, anti-Black, state-sanctioned violence.”. (Commenter's note: did Rufo get this right? I don't know. )
Slide 43 says, "For many of us, the task is to stay Black and live. For others, it's time to bankrupt your privilege in acknowledgement of your thieved inheritance."
Slide 66, says, "Why center race when thinking of students' intersectional identities? We live in a race-based white-supremist society."
I already posted a comment demonstrating Rufo's rank dishonesty. How about some evidence from parents or teachers who aren't long-time Republican activists?
BTW Rufo's first link opens "Seattle Public Schools recently held a training session for teachers ..." Nothing to do with what children are taught in class, which is what Kevin asked about.
Not exactly what was requested, but in the same neighborhood . . .
A new Substack emerged which promises to explore "the Successor Ideology". One subset of the Successor Ideology is the teaching of CRT in schools.
For those whom are curious, see https://wesleyyang.substack.com/p/welcome-to-year-zero .
I love seeing rich, racist Anglo "progressives" play pretend. LOL
Cordially,
The Latinx