I've mostly kept a low profile on the whole CRT thing, largely because I think both sides are acting in bad faith and I don't feel like getting in the middle of it. But today Eric Levitz presents something worth a mordant chuckle from us oldsters.
Naturally this is about Virginia. It turns out that Loudoun County's public schools offered a teacher training unit on diversity last year and someone released the PowerPoint deck used in the class. Here's one of the slides:
It’s important to put this PowerPoint in context. Contrary to the insinuations of some anti-CRT agitators, this was not used as an instruction material for children. Nor was it meant to teach “that some races are morally superior to others.” Rather, it is a reductive summation of research on the ways that cultural insensitivity can impair educational outcomes for immigrant children.
It is also, by all appearances, racist.
For a moment, try to ignore the specific recommendations on this slide. They might be right or wrong, and they might be expressed in problematic ways. Instead, just consider the overall objective here: to help teachers become "culturally competent professionals" who are aware of their "assumptions about human behavior, values, biases, preconceived notions, personal limitations, and so forth."
Those of you who are my age—or close to it—will recognize this. Back in the '80s and '90s this kind of thing was considered state-of-the-art advice for corporations and school districts who wanted to fight racism. Managers were taught to recognize that many of the things white people took for granted weren't actually universal. If a Black job prospect didn't make eye contact, for example, it wasn't because he was shifty; it was because Black people consider it rude to lock eyes on someone.
I have no idea if this is actually true, but it might be. Regardless, most of the stuff in these training courses was urged on white managers by Black activists. They were the ones who wanted to educate white folks about the cultural norms of Black people so that they weren't taken as signs of sullenness or low intelligence.
But now a couple of decades have gone by. Lefties consider this sort of guidance to be reductive and racist. Right wingers view it as a sign of wokeness run amok even though it's not even remotely new. And the poor schmoes who wrote this PowerPoint deck are caught in between, confused about why they're suddenly getting beat up from all sides over something that's been commonplace for years with the best of intentions.
But times change. Cultural norms change. Acceptable discourse changes. And not everyone keeps up. Nevertheless, it's useful to at least understand the context and history behind things like this.
Ok, I'm confused. I don't see any "recommendations" in the Powerpoint slide. I see a summary of research findings discussed in a book called 'Bridging Cultures Between Home and School: A Guide for Teachers'. Pace Levitz, there's nothing remotely "racist" about it, unless he wants to argue that the very concept of culture as a shared set of values, attitudes and beliefs is racist because it necessarily acknowledges the reality of cultural differences between groups. If that's his position, he should understand he's taking on a vast body of scholarship that was originally grounded in anthropological studies but has since spread far beyond that.
You're (understandably) confused because the situation is confusing (and you're certainly not alone). One (of many) aspects adding to the confusion is this: if a word is applied to everything, it no longer means anything. And, in my own estimation, the word racism is currently thrown around with almost wild abandon (at least that may be the case among certain demographics and on certain platforms such as twitter).
It's easier to discuss a topic like racism when there's a general consensus as to its meaning. If that word implies a prejudice towards other based on little or nothing else other than their race, then at least we know what we're talking about. But, at present, there are some who assert that racism must also imply an assertion of power; hence, white people (supposedly powerful) can be racist, but black people (supposedly not powerful) cannot be. Others seem to believe (as far as I can tell) that even noticing or commenting on there mere fact of race is racist. On the other hand, some will say that NOT noticing race (so-called color-blindness) is the real racism.
So, yes, when a word gets muddled and over-applied in this manner, it's hard to keep track.
Words like "socialist", "fascist" and "fundamentalist" have been overused as slurs for years and they have lost much of their meaning, outside certain historical contexts. The rightwing word "woke" is fast going that way too. I can't count how many times I has asked people over on The american Conservative what excatly they mean by "woke"-- I have never once gotten a precise, or even a vague answer.
I believe Levitz is also not arguing in good faith, much as Antiwoke Rockefeller Republiqan Kevin Drum said of bothsides in the CRT foofaraw.
I'm beginning to suspect that Kevin is more of a Reagan Democrat than a Rockefeller Republican.
Got it.
Funny, I think of Kevin as an OBama Dem. He is not at all Reagan D and not too far from a Rocky R since Rocky would be considered a centrist D these days. He would be hated by the right now even more then then. Boy did they hate him then.
Only problem is Reagan Democrats, at least the Union guys, were economically liberal & socially conservative, & migrated easily to Buchanan, then Ron & Rand Paul & Tulsi Gabbard. Kevin isn't either left enough economically nor right enough culturally (honestly, he seems more like he just doesn't want to have to think about abortion, gay marriage, drug legalization, etc.) to fit with that.
If anything, he started out Rockefeller Rep & aged into a Bernie Bro, antiidentitarian & at least open to a more handson government involvement with the economy (even if prefers Obamacare to Medicare4All).
Prolly explains why he ended up a Warren Democrat in 2020.
Levitz seemed to have a hasty and not very reflective reaction to this.
Has he sought sanctuary in the ivory tower of University of Austin?
In the execution of the functions of my vocation, there is sometimes little time for communication. Blind spots can lead to garbled communication and disastrous results.
I've experienced this; it's frightening in some cases and embarrassing in others. I'm not certain of the way out but I was always told and have found that honesty was paramount. I'm not sure this nation has been honest with itself, its citizens, and the world for a long time.
Very wise words painedumonde - what I do is not life or death but good communication and cultural awareness is key to being more effective at resolving the issues I am tasked to resolve.
The discussion has been highly dishonest for decades mostly on the part of conservatives. Kevin sadly seems to have a blind spot about what is really going on. Sometimes it's hard to see an issue if you have not lived it, I suspect that is the case for Kevin.
Experience has been my greatest teacher. There have been many broken eggs and toes stepped on to this point.
I believe the anger we see in many quarters is directly from being fed up with people learning this way.
What you quote would not be considered to be condemned and hated super woke crt by conservatives. There is much in it which would be disagreed with, perhaps vehemently, but not really as " woke crt" . If you think this is a good example of what is being complained about, you do not get it.
This is problematical in many respects, including overly broad stereotyping and too strict characterization by race. But what it is not , as far as I can see , is " anti white " . It seems like an attempt to , in extremely broad brushes, describe some differences in social outlook between different cultures. But trying to do so somewhat fairly and not describing the " white " characteristics as inherently negative.
The left side as described there is certainly different than the right side. But not necessarily better..more an explanation of advantages and disadvantages on both sides maybe .
I think this is perhaps a discussion that it would be healthy for the society to have even in schools. But just impossible today to have a healthy open type of discussion on any such topic .
If black people were ever promoting this themselves I would say it's Stockholm syndrome.
There's white people, and then there's everyone else. Everyone else are expected to respect their place in the authoritarian order. White people, ignoring context, are expected to be independent agents controlling property.
What's not to love about it?
Republicans are jumping for joy that in Virginia they got the Trumpies to vote for a Mitt Romney type but... I doubt they can pull it off in other states and thus... I dearly hope they try to.
No, I think Glenn Yungkins, as a man in his mid to late 50s who attended elementary & middle school just as the Commonwealth was exiting the segregation era & likewise caught the tailend of the Old Dominion's white triumphalism, possesses more than enough white grievance to speak to the MAGATS.
Brown was decided 67 years ago, & Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act eleven years after, but up to the generation already in school at the time of the second, & on to the children of those 18-24 in 1965, we see the pre-Brown ways persisting.
I would argue it hasn't been til we started to see people born ten years or more out of the Civil Rights Act started having children that the language of Democrat racists Harry & Robert Byrd (no relation) started to go the way of Etruscan or Navajo. So, let's say we won't have a president who at best speaks White Power as just a second language until at least 2035, but more likely 2050, a whole century past Brown.
WTF? There about 150,000 people who speak Navajo at home. Who speaks Etruscan at home?
Sorry.
Was thinking of the old news headline, "Klingon speakers now outnumber Navajo speakers".
I recall in the 1970s parents still fearful of sending kids to integrated schools. There were lies about race riots in the local HS, that you could not use the wrong bathroom and get beat up. My mom fearful of the bad influence of public school kids duly enrolled us in the local parish school instead.
I think the language may have evolved but the racism remains stubbornly there.
Your first paragraph is similar to my reaction to his comment "That's not the Virginia I grew up in" ( please excuse any deviation from his actual phrasing," but I think this is very close).
When my family moved East/South/whatever, we were shocked to discover that our neighbors in Maryland flocked to Glen Echo, while we never considered patronizing a segregated venue.
And then Virginia- worse by our standards, yet within the past decade a Black woman said that she hired me because I made eye contact while listening & speaking. My Black friends, the last two of whom died in 2017, never mentioned any feeling about not looking directly at anyone, but it sounds more like a holdover from the time when a strong gaze of a Black person at a white was regarded as dangerous - to the Black citizen.
I think we may be speaking, or commenting rather, right past each other.
Are you telling me Youngkin is anti-immigration, anti-trade, anti-China, and anti-Wall Street (key points of original 2016 version Trumpism, that is)?
While also having $400 million in the bank from sucking on defense contracts and shutting down US companies and moving manufacturing abroad while running the Carlyle Group, one of the ur-revolving door outfits in the DC suburbs?
The guy has a 31 acre horse farm which got some environmental dispensation that knocked his property taxes down 95%.
He's a coastal elite if there ever was one. As a national candidate he'd last exactly one week.
Like I said, the brilliance of his campaign was plugging into that weird obsession with childhood "purity" that the Q folks have, and knitting that together with suburban parents who are touchy at the moment on the subject of schools. Point being, Youngkin and his ad team very cleverly found the one issue -- save the kids! -- that the Trumpies and the country clubbers can agree on.
Problem for them is kids aren't really being indoctrinated at school and it'll be impossible to pull this stuff off elsewhere. I think.
As to racism, the best path for the Democrats is ignore it (as a campaign subject, that is) and move on. We're the first multi-racial democracy in world history, and damned proud of it. We're happy with anyone who wants to work hard and play by the rules, and we want them to have as much opportunity and as good a life as possible. That's the message. Forget the other stuff.
"As a national candidate he'd last exactly one week."
You mean just like that other rich hedge-fund elitist, Mitt Romney, whose first success in politics was a victory in a close gubernatorial race?
Well yeah it's pretty much my point that Mitt would have no chance nationally at the moment. The Trumpies hate him.
Ignoring racism isn't a path for Democratic success. The victims of racism comprise a large enough share of the Democratic base that they can and do demand that the issue be part of any campaign. Presidential candidate that ignore the issue fail to win primaries outside of Iowa and New Hampshire.
Opening Mouth Again.
Same basic age cohort as Kevin. This statement rings true and my making it has caused me lots of heartburn "I think both sides are acting in bad faith".
To the post, not only do I remember this being state of the art and best practice, I remember producing these schemas! And getting paid for it!
I worked for many years in the civil rights community and this was not foreign, and was considered pretty damn progressive. I remember an official EEOC presentation I made in 1990 that could have been screenshot from this. 🙂
Watch old TV shows. Some that were "progressive" in their day are cringe worthy now. A few hold up--if viewed thru a time capsule like lens.
This is so true - Hawaii Five-0, the original one with Jack Lord was progressive for it's time but also featured a few episodes where white actors were playing Asians while wearing face prosthetics. Kojak while having a multi-cultural squad room shows a NYC very run for and by white guys. Magnum, PI, the original one with Tom Selleck is looking very bad in the 21st century.
And this stuff really bothers you?
"The prevalence of laughable race malarkey in progressive spaces isn’t one of the left’s biggest problems. But it is among its most readily solvable ones. Liberal-minded public-school systems could simply not pay for teacher trainings that reify racist fictions. Progressive organizations could start handing out copies of Racecraft instead of Tema Okun’s pamphlets. House Democrats could not hire Robin DiAngelo to brief them on “white fragility.”
But none of that will happen (or stop happening) if progressives honor a taboo against criticizing any left-adjacent inanity that enters the right’s crosshairs."
I suppose this is admirable on one level. But how are we to know that Okun, diangelo, etc. are pushing laughable race malarkey? How are we supposed to know about racist fictions? It is literally all we hear about race these days. And who is pushing it? People like Levitz and his colleagues all over the media (and book tours). Now suddenly he sees the downside of this effort at what he calls the "progressive movement’s broader agenda for racial justice."
I'll leave others to determine if this agenda for "racial justice" is either necessary or desirable. Someone can, perhaps, define the goal. Is it reparations? Is it forgiveness for criminal behavior? Or is it just a desire to see an end to discrimination based on race? We've largely achieved the latter, I think. But now the well paid writers and consultants have moved on to the first two... or something like them. So we have the 1619 project and all these books on anti-racism which are all chock full of laughable race malarkey.
Finally Levitz points to yet another book which, I suppose, isn't laughable race malarkey. I haven't read the book but the helpful link he provides sounds a lot like the same diangelo / kendi malarkey.
"the practice of racism produces the illusion of race, through what they call “racecraft.” And this phenomenon is intimately entwined with other forms of inequality in American life. So pervasive are the devices of racecraft in American history, economic doctrine, politics, and everyday thinking that the presence of racecraft itself goes unnoticed.
That the promised post-racial age has not dawned, the authors argue, reflects the failure of Americans to develop a legitimate language for thinking about and discussing inequality. That failure should worry everyone who cares about democratic institutions."
So again... all white people are racist. And we can't help but be racist. How is this different?
Probably shouldn't respond to someone calling the 1619 project malarky, but anyway.
People try to make this so much more complicated than it is. Modern research on racism is basically saying people stereotype. They stereotype badly. These stereotypes are reinforced by their culture and they resist changing them even in the face of overwhelming evidence. Despite these evident failings most people, especially people in decision making roles, think they are great judges of character.
The solution is to be aware that everyone is in fact a terrible judge of character, that we allow our stereotypes and biases to get in the way of objective reasoning, and that we need to give others more agency to define themselves rather than try to assign character traits to others based on brief interactions with them. Reduce the scope for individuals to make judgements about others based on brief interactions in favor of evidence based, outcome focused measurements. Focus on outcomes rather than intentions.
Some of this stuff is more difficult in practice than just saying it, but test after test shows that people refuse to learn and try to assign roles and traits to other individuals rather than actually listening to others. The slides posted here are just a simple case. There are some supposedly anti-racist messages that try to substitute new categories for the old ones, but these are really a minority position that seems to be mostly pushed by management type in business or non-profits who really don't like the idea of actually listening to people and instead want to replace a bad racist heuristic with a bad, anti-racist heuristic. But this isn't possible because using any kind of simplistic heuristic this way is necessarily racist, the only way out is to actually give individuals more agency within organizations; and they aren't willing to accept this.
The 1619 project is malarkey because it lies. The fact 17th century negros owned "slaves"(really indentured servants) until it was outlawed and true slavery began in the late 1600's escapes the ignorant. It's why socialist reeducation camps need opened up for these people.
I don't get why people bother to post nonsense like this when the issue of race in the revolution and the development of the US made it out of academia and into popular histories decades ago. The 1619 project played a huge popularizing role of these ideas but anyone with an interest in American history had been exposed to them long before. The fact that people of African descent also owned indentured servants or slaves adds context but doesn't do anything to change the basic facts of how race and slavery influenced the development of institutions.
Now as a separate matter many people are woefully ignorant of African history and how those institutions could be contrasted with the development of attitudes to slavery in the US, but I don't think this is really an appropriate space for that discussion.
"I don't get why people bother to post nonsense like this . . ."
It's a troll. It leaves its droppings to get attention. Please don't feed the troll.
Thanks for stating this in language that (I, at least) can understand and identify with! The social "sciences" have gone overboard with non-intuitive, bloated, near-incomprehensible and probably meaningless jargon that talks and talks and talks in order to make a point -- and offends more than it enlightens.
As a side note, biz literature does the same thing, but there, the idea is clearly to deceive, to use imploded word clusters to suggest things that are deeply meaningful and important, but in fact are just patter to fool the rubes.
Remove the headers: "White Individualism" and "Color Group Collectivism" and substitute in either of the following:
Male/Female
Wealthy/Poor
Protestant/Catholic (or Muslim or Jewish)
If I were more creative, I could probably think of more. What is important, however, is that the characteristics that are allegedly based upon race (or gender), in fact reflect success strategies connected to a person's social and/or economic standing. Individualism as described can be applied to multiple categorical groupings, but it is only possible with a certain level of wealth, standing, and/or educational attainment that functions as a hidden insurance not available to those with less secure grounding within the social/economic structure. In other words, if you are poor, or a woman, or of a color group, or belong to a religious sect held as "suspicious" by the larger group, or any number of groupings that have a more tenuous grasp on social/economic success within the American social system success/survival is oftentimes more obviously built into connectedness with community members. Collectivism here could as easily describe the social expectations of rural and small town, white West Virginians as it does to "Color Groups." In other words, the slides are nonsense as written and as Levitz says, since they ascribe social systems and behaviors to the biology of skin color, they are quite racist.
Well said, though I would describe the content of the slides as ‘racial stereotyping’, not necessarily racist, though the former almost inevitably leads to the latter. As tzimiskes notes here, people stereotype - it’s one of those cognitive heuristics we use to simplify (and often over-simplify) our lives; though we do it badly. Any discussion of cultural norms or putative group characteristics ought to emphasize the wide range of intra-group variation, and the importance of responding to others as individuals. Wasn’t this always a part of white privilege, thinking of ourselves as unique individuals, while saying “all [insert minority group here] look alike”?
Thanks. Great points.
There is a lot of literature on cultural competence these days, especially in healthcare.
What always strikes me when reading the interview quotes with patients in the journal articles is how much of it just boils down to treating people with kindness and respect.
Kindness & respect?
Fuck your feelings!
I'm old enough that I remember some of this from the 90s, but it is pretty clearly racist. The 80s and 90s were really bad on racism. It's really not too much to expect someone working on these trainings to be a bit more up to date, reading a handful of books on the subject would be plenty. My wife would find something like this super offensive.
It really isn't that hard to update a training like this to make clear that cultures vary greatly on their assumptions on these, and many other, characteristics and that we shouldn't assume that the people we are interacting with come from the same culture. The problem here is that the framing seems to assert that all white people share one culture and everyone else shares another.
The gap here is really glaring, people of color can easily assimilate into white culture, and just because someone presents as white doesn't mean that they can't have the cultural traits of what is described here as "color group collectivism." It was a big triumph decades ago just to get the idea that cultures differ into trainings like this, but it really shows how racist our culture is that these kinds of observations had to be put into a racial lens rather than acknowledging that cultures differ and that it's necessary to actually talk to someone and listen in order to identify how their cultural assumptions might differ from yours.
The problem with this, and so much else, is that people want reductive answers that allow them to define someone else rather than taking the simple step of giving agency to the other person and actually listening to them.
Conservatives are woke themselves. Heavily driven by Semitic debt expansion. Enemies of the indoeuropean peoples. Hence so called "white culture" is a scam and a ponzi scheme.
I FEAR these type of documents play into racist stereo types. In the US Black outcomes (economic and social) and generally inferior to White and Asian outcomes.
- While structural issues are significant do you believe they account for 100% of the difference?
- If structural issues don't account for all the difference then what is the second factor? The second factor would have to be some, broadly defined set of cultural issues. Note, I completely discount the genetic argument
If the left is defending cultural challenges in the Black communities then we are losing....
Final note, I am White/Hispanic and likely on dangerous ground in this post
I can't "drive while black" because I'm not black. But I know of the discussions families have to have with their black children, esp. once they start to drive. In the document above, the "no eye contact" was presented as part of the "black culture", whereas maybe it just showed the black person was given "the talk".
As kawsunflower said above:
"And then Virginia- worse by our standards, yet within the past decade a Black woman said that she hired me because I made eye contact while listening & speaking. My Black friends, the last two of whom died in 2017, never mentioned any feeling about not looking directly at anyone, but it sounds more like a holdover from the time when a strong gaze of a Black person at a white was regarded as dangerous - to the Black citizen."
The structural issues are, to be frank, several hundred years of public policy and private prejudice that systematically favored the success of white, European-descended people in this country, then attributing that success to personality traits and habits rather than the policies. There are habits that are potentially positive or negative on both sides of that ledger, depending on the situation. But automatically assuming that the "white" characteristics are superior is like making all the implements in a room only usable by right-handed people and then saying lefties sadly don't have what it takes to succeed.
The problem with this slide presentation is not the information in it per se, but that it casts it as a comparison/contrast of racial, as opposed to cultural, traits. A person raised in a Mennonite community, for example, is going to look as white as the driven snow, but have a lot of the same values as someone from the "color group" here.
I'll also add that the *real* controversy with the 1619 Project (as opposed to the one rattling around in the fever dreams of racist Fox-watchers) was Hannah-Jones's assertion that the leaders of the Revolution had been motivated primarily by the desire to preserve slavery. That's completely reductive and simply not supported by the historical evidence and she retracted those parts of the report. There's a similar lively debate going on now over Noah Feldman's new book on Abraham Lincoln -- did Lincoln have to destroy the Constitution (viz. by abolishing slavery) in order to save the nation? But the larger argument that the importation of African slaves into the colonies beginning in 1619 created a massive racial underclass whose historical disempowerment, even after the end of slavery -- and struggle to overcome that disempowerment -- continues to profoundly shape American politics and culture today is, well, a simple reality. The predictable histrionics of the critics who deny that only affirms how profound a truth it is.
Not really the point of Kevin's post, but not making eye contact has more to do with power than either shiftiness or cultural norms. The Nazi looked into the eyes of the Jew and the Jew looked away. "I can look you into the eye" assumes equal power and then, perhaps, a good conscience helps.
I realized this many years ago when I couldn't meet the gaze of my girlfriend who had been untrue. I needed her more than she needed me. That was all there was.
Anyone else get the vibe it was McKinsey consultants that infiltrated the Occupy movement and spread the Woke(TM) Agenda? Sort of like Pinkertons of old. The plutocrat class was able to avoid the guillotines as long as they promised, at some future date, to adorn their social media profiles with Pride-flagged logos.
Is it really that strange to imagine?
I am really glad that the most pressing issue facing the nation is the content of a Powerpoint presentation used for teacher training in Loudon County VA.
Yup.
Those of you who are my age—or close to it—will recognize this. Back in the '80s and '90s this kind of thing was considered state-of-the-art advice for corporations and school districts who wanted to fight racism. Managers were taught to recognize that many of the things white people took for granted weren't actually universal. If a Black job prospect didn't make eye contact, for example, it wasn't because he was shifty; it was because Black people consider it rude to lock eyes on someone.
No. As a manager in the corporate world back in those days, I never once encountered a chart describing black and white cultures like the one here. We had code of conduct training every year, including subjects like cross-cultural sensitivity, but never anything defining what whites are like and what Blacks are like. We would have laughed at that. FWIW, we had a highly diverse workforce, and that was one of the strengths of our company.
I just skimmed the Levitz article. I could quibble about using the word "racist," but he's right that the thrust of the chart is ridiculously stereotypical and the wrong direction from where race relations should be headed.
I came of age in the '60s and '70s and remember great efforts made to fight "prejudice." Prejudice was the wrong that needed to be defeated. Prejudice is judging people based on assumptions about their color, ethnic background, heritage, religion, etc. -- i.e., their group. Don't judge people based on stereotypes. Instead, judge people based on them as individuals. It was best put by MLK: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." That's still the north star on how we should live with people of other races.
Does that solve all our race problems? No, we still have historical and structural problems that we need to fix. But judging people based on stereotypes about their group is a step in the wrong direction.
Yes. The message I get from most of the commenters here is, in our everyday interactions with others, we should recognize their uniqueness of personality, interests, attitudes, etc.; but in making policy, we necessarily must take onto account group characteristics: history, culture, socioeconomic status, etc. Policy should ideally be data-driven, not subject to distortions of stereotyping nor unsupported claims of those with axes to grind (such as whitewashing [!] the past).
The Power Point stuff is very clearly racist, making sweeping and practically exclusive characterizations of "white" and "color" groups. This may be derived from research of some kind (no, I am not going to chase down the book) but it sure looks like highly subjective interpretations. It could be read as derogatory of "whites", characterizing them as selfish, although some of this is not too much of a distortion of actual rightist ideology (which is hardly Christian).
Although it is supposed to be for teachers, presumably the they would pass this on to kids in some way. Aren't there enough facts for kids to learn without passing on this kind of subjective characterizations? What we actually should be having now is a debate about which facts to teach in school. Slavery existed and was the reason for the Civil War, Jim Crow and lynchings existed, and White Supremacy was the law in the South until 50 years ago ("segregation" was a euphemism).
If the Power Point stuff is actually a part of education anywhere parents might have some reason to be dissatisfied, although I suspect that Kevin's memory is faulty about this if he thinks it was very common. Of course what the right is on to now is phony claims about CRT, not facts or real teaching methods.
For conservatives education should not be about facts, it should be about attitudes. Because facts make them look like jerks.
This is another instance of Kevin creating a fake outrage by leaving out context from the original piece, and not bothering to take more than 30 seconds in his analysis, giving him the chance to rant once more about "wokeness".
First Kevin conveniently leaves out Mr Levitz context of why he thinks the chart is racists (it is). For instance this:
"The notion that expecting one’s children “to form and express opinions” and “questions elders” is a definitionally white parenting style, while expecting children to “show respect by quiet listening” is a “color group” one, is a racial caricature. As is the broader idea that white families prize individualism over communal obligation. Positing fundamental cultural distinctions between people with different pigmentations — not different class, regional, national, or religious backgrounds, but merely different concentrations of melanin — is a task better left to white supremacists than equity coaches."
More importantly, the book research which this graphic is trying to condense is a book that looks at strategies to improve education and parent-teacher collaborations in a multi-cultural society, and particularly focuses at cultural differences between children from Latino immigrants and children from local families.
Yet somehow the dunderheads that made the table felt that things could be summarized as "white individualism" and "Color Group Collectivism", as if only whites were "locals", and all immigrants were "colored", and as if what made the differences was the color of the skin, and not the differences in culture, religion, or economic background.
Re: "white individualism" v "color group collectivism".
This dichotomy is really ignorant of American history and settlement patterns. The "collectivism" that's decried as "something those minorities do" was characteristic of the (white) New England settlements and the upper Midwest. In these zones, whole groups arrived and established orderly towns, with schools, libraries, and city halls as soon as they arrived. A "collectivist" mind set of people working together for the common good pervaded their societies, and to some extent, still does. That's where "liberals" and "progressives" typically come from.
The "extreme individualism" was more typical of the Appalachian backwoods, where folks arrived as individuals (or nuclear families), scratched out a homestead and subsistance farmed, working no more than necessary to keep themselves alive, and didn't bother with towns or government. Ignorance, illiteracy, and combativeness were all prized as "freedom."
The chart seems to denigrate social responsibility. Which is weird, because one would think a teacher would really want to cultivate that attitude, rather than have a classroom of smirking, arguing, self-satisfied and arrogant students.
Well no matter… it’s all your fault.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/opinion/democrats-blue-states-legislation.html
Blue States, You’re the Problem
Why do states with Democratic majorities fail to live up to their values?