To ask if anyone has looked into critical race theory?

[Warsawa31]

There are so many terms now which have crept into our language which ten years ago were confined to academic papers - white privilege, intersectionality, people of colour, non binary, woke.
I've done some research into the philosophic basis of this, it stems from something called critical race theory.

I was interested to find out more about it, it seems quite simplistic, and it does seem that the ideas it espouses form the basis of the shift in language and culture we have seen over the last few years.

Please have a look into it and after that tell me if IABU To think it's not a good ideology to base our society on. There's no content of character mentioned, good deeds, forgiveness etc just a pyramid of power based on traits.

If I've missed interpreted it please help me to learn more.

My major objection to CRT is that it functions akin to a more regressive form of religion.

It's original sin without the Christ figure.

@Stripesgalore

I responded to your post in which you said it was a unifying pillar for white Christians, northern bird.

Coming from a mixed Protestant and Catholic family, I never saw this unity.

My point was merely that the OP never suggested a reduction in unity was down to immigration. The decline in Christianity isn’t down to immigration.

You seem determined to straw man every post. Do you actually have any opinion on critical race theory?

I have responded to the OP post in which they state "Society has always been divided in some way but used to have unifying pillars - Christianity for example".

Taken from elsewhere but sums it up well:

Critical Race Theory…

believes racism is present in every aspect of life, every relationship, and every interaction and therefore has its advocates look for it everywhere

relies upon “interest convergence” (white people only give black people opportunities and freedoms when it is also in their own interests) and therefore doesn’t trust any attempt to make racism better

Is against free societies and wants to dismantle them and replace them with something its advocates control

only treats race issues as “socially constructed groups,” so there are no individuals in Critical Race Theory

believes science, reason, and evidence are a “white” way of knowing and that storytelling and lived experience is a “black” alternative, which hurts everyone, especially black people

Rejects all potential alternatives, like colorblindness, as forms of racism, making itself the only allowable game in town (which is totalitarian)

Acts like anyone who disagrees with it must do so for racist and white supremacist reasons, even if those people are black (which is also totalitarian)

cannot be satisfied, so it becomes a kind of activist black hole that threatens to destroy everything it is introduced into

Thanks for all your replies and suggestions for further reading. I knew it would be hard to post without someone eventually suggesting I am racist lol.

Anyway I will continue to look into this.

One quote from professor Derrick Bell who was a founder of CRT " racism just like alcoholism is something you have to accept you always have, all you can do is say you won't drink today"

So many people have accepted that line of thinking without even questioning it, as a PP said, to question it is a negative and racist response.

Makes me wonder how many people actually think for themselves ?

Some people really want to stick their fingers in their ears and ignore the world around them. You see people saying “we’re all the same on the inside!” or “there’s too many words, it’s divisive!” because white people are so uncomfortable talking about racism that they try to ignore it instead. Or you get people saying that protesting racism does no good because it just upsets everyone...

Do you know what is actually upsetting? The way Black people are treated in Western society! Leaving it unacknowledged might seem like the safer thing but all it does it breed ignorance.

@crazytapirlady

"The way Black people are treated in Western society! Leaving it unacknowledged might seem like the safer thing but all it does it breed ignorance"

Couldn't agree more - all I hear is the need for people to educate themselves - but why does it have to be CRT based ideals which have seeped into so many aspects of life.

Islam for example states " There is no superiority of an Arab over a non-Arab, or of a non-Arab over an Arab, and no superiority of a white person over a black person or of a black person over a white person, except on the basis of personal piety and righteousness.”

There are many different ways of approaching the question of how to create a more equal society.

Maybe the main difference is that one day I hope that skin colour won't matter - in the same way eye colour doesn't matter. But how and when do we decide this had been achieved with a base ideology stating it never can be.

It isn't from any book. I'm just not blind. Or goady....Also, if you think for a second that black Christians were on an equal footing to white Christians, you're fucking deluded.

Yes, it definately seems like you are trying to have a nuanced discussion. Thank goodness someone goady hasn't come along and deliberately mis-stated OP's question, just to derail the thread.

To the point:

CRT has value as a model for analysing structural disadvantage and prejudice (which is not the same as racism) in society.

Interpreting it at an individual level (as many do) is utterly stupid- by definition you can't apply class analysis to indiviuals. Lots of the ways that CRT is interpreted by well-meaning idiots are just patronising and silly.

@raddledoldmisanthropist

Thank you for that insightful reply. It's nice to see it written down rather than just having it as a "feeling" that is difficult to articulate iyswim.

I agree that it seems to be a useful tool when properly applied, as you say it isn't supposed to be a substitute for individualism - group identity should not replaced the person themselves.

I quite like the arguments of objectivism by ayn rand - perhaps with a slightly softer approach but it's hard to see how that would lead to racism, tribal politics etc.

Most people doesn't see we are pawns being played by prevailing ideas - and judge history by our standards - when in fact we will be judged just as harshly by our descendants.

Society should not be based on any ideology or academic theory, but some of them will always be part of the environmental pressures that influences society. That's how part of how societies work, that's how academia often tries to work.

Not everything that you've listed comes from critical race theory or even academia. Person of color originated in the US as an identifier by European colonists centuries ago, then became a term of political solidarity. It was used for decades this way before it became academic or mainstream. Woke originates from AAVE and music lyrics, I don't think I've actually seen it used in academia outside of some catchy article titles.

Yes, CRT originates in US Black Liberation concepts decades ago. The universal application of it has many issues. The use of the word privilege has many issues that have been up for debate for decades. The only place where it's all held as all fact or all fake & simple seems to be media & internet discussions. CRT is a complex theoretical framework with many differing opinions within those who agree with most of it and those who don't, just like many others. We're never going to get a perfect one and any attempt at a unified social theory will have major problems.

Christianity has not and never has been a unified force in society. From the texts (whole speech by Jesus about bringing the sword and dividing families, a lot of the text is about dividing people) to the early churches rewriting some of the texts to fit their choices for canons, to other texts being destroyed in the name of keeping that canon and dividing others off as hell-bound heretics all the way to today where we have dozens upon dozens of denominations many of which have major issues with nepotism and other types of dividing corruption & some active hatred towards each other. Christanity is as much of a dividing ideology as CRT, it just has more people using it to explain society and as a carrot & stick to (dis)incentivize behaviours.

Ayn Rand's survival and personal happiness as the ultimate values, and that altrusim is a scourge on morality, is also a dividing ideology. Her works create a clear tribal divide between those who make it in a capitalist society and those who don't who she literally discussed as leeches. She was, and the Ayn Rand Foundation is now, really big that society and the law has no right to punish racists, homophobic people, or anyone else. That there is no ethical point in being against others choosing to hate others.

Yes, we will be judged by later generations just as those generations alive now judge each other. We tend to judge them by the legal and ethical (socially incentivised morality) because often that's what we evidence for. It would be good if more historical discussions could discuss personal morality through time, but it's a far more difficult topic to cover. People's personal moralities, debatably, should be higher than socially acceptable ethical minimums and the legal baseline is not a basis for morality at all. Personally, I hate the whole 'wrong side of history' argument because we're not and never can be in control of that, but it's not an argument for not analysing the legal and ethical failures of our ancestors. One of the best ways to prevent ideological thinking is to analyse and show that no 'hero' is perfect, to look at policies and their effects, not individual people or theories.

I quite like the arguments of objectivism by ayn rand

Oh dear God. That stuff makes CRT look like Aristotle's ethics.

Of course her emphasis on personal responsibility has value but overall she was a nut. As a PP says, put simplisticly she regarded much of the basic moral principles most societies agree on as wrong.

At a simple ecconomic level her idea of society would never function. She didn't seem to grasp the existence of collective goods at all. Her ideal society would devolve into a kind of feudalism very rapidly.

In practice, in the context of the US, what she really proposed was for those with power and wealth already to be 'free' to do what they like and those without power and wealth to be 'free' to do as they are told for payment or starve.

I use bits of critical race theory in my academic work (and, like most sane people, I also notice that the theory has moved on a lot since its inception!).

I think it's a sweeping comment to say it's responsible for all of the terms you quote. I don't think 'non binary' comes from critical race theory at all. I would associate that with queer theory and queer activism, parts of gender studies too.

I think 'people of colour' is just a simple US/UK issue. The phrase has been around for years. Growing up near Nottingham in the 90s (not exactly exotic) there was a cosmetics advert addressed to 'women of colour'. But it's a commoner term in the US.

I don't get the issue with activists using bold language, which seems to be your issue. If you're an anti-racism activist, sure, you are not going to pull your punches when describing the effects of racism. You are going to be honest about how you see it, and if you see it as a huge, systemic problem ... well, that's what you'll say.

Loads of activist positions work like this. Feminism, Marxism, you name it. And not just from the left, either - you look at the rhetoric of hard-line Brexiters about immigrants, and they're just as keen to insist that the EU is the root cause of all evil.

If you feel alienated by people who hold strong views, no one is forcing you to agree with them. But it might not do you any harm to consider where you stand.