“We have successfully frozen their brand”
Interesting.
This is what I’ve been saying all along – people are slapping the CRT label on every kind of anti-racism they find stupid or bullying or both. It’s helpful to see Christopher Rufo himself confirm that that was the plan.
I should have been dismayed and surprised to see how many people have fallen into the trap and propaganda, but I’m actually not surprised. This, fellow citizens, is how to turn a discussion that should have been opened once George Floyd was murdered (actually long before) into a discussion about crazy leftist activists who want to control you and burn down your police stations.
Bravo, right-wingers, bravo.
Cue people coming along to insist yet again that the stuff in schools IS Critical Race Theory, it is it is it IS.
I’ve been coming across critiques of CRT that make a point of separating the original academic theory from its popular derivative. The argument is that a lot of proponents are throwing around bad ideas that they call CRT, so that’s what needs to be addressed.
I had the same problem with Postmodernism. As I understood it, the basic philosophy taught by scholars was fairly complex and much more reasonable than the interpretation advocated by non-academics who turned it into fashionable nonsense. I took to calling it “Pop Pomo” after I ran across someone with a degree in Philosophy who explained what she saw as the distinction.
And today I can look at Transgender Rights, which way back when was about fighting against basic discrimination in jobs, housing, services, etc. That was the reasonable original; Gender Identity Theory and TWAW are the popular offshoot which left the rails. When we criticize Trans Rights we’re wise to remember and mention the different meanings so we don’t get shot down by critics who’d love to smear us with the accusation that we want them homeless and unemployed, but we often focus on the Right to Self Identify Into Other Categories and the Right to Be Believed When We Talk About What We Know About Ourselves and just call it Trans Rights Activism. I don’t have a problem with that.
Yep, it indeed is an implementation of CRT. Rufo has managed to be fairly effective in a fairly short period of time precisely because there is a large measure of truth in what he’s saying. Yes he’s an activist and yes he uses activist tactics (fairly successfully), but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.
(Nor does the fact that he’s a Republican make him wrong; Republicans are also more likely than Democrats to support, for example, sex-based segregation of sport.)
The absence of sensible, measured and evidence-based discussion of race in the US is not solely the fault of Fox, Carlson, and the rest of the right wingers. The left (with Kendi, DiAngelo, AOC, BLM, NYT, WP, NPR, CRT-infused school teachers, etc) are just as culpable.
There are people trying to have that sensible discussion (Wilfred Reilly, Glenn Loury, John McWhorter, etc) but sadly they’re a minority.
Ah well when you say “indeed” then there’s no more to be said.
I can agree that CRT and the various forms of anti-racism currently being implemented and excoriated have, very broadly speaking, something in common, which can be summed up as taking racism more seriously, but that just doesn’t make them all the same thing or make them all the bastard children of CRT. Why would they be? Why wouldn’t there be other sources?
Yes, so you have. You’ve also been saying that specific things that demonstrably are from CRT or its subfields are not, in fact, from CRT or its subfields. The one (people label everything they dislike as X) does not entail the other (this particular thing is not X). Sure, p, q, and r aren’t X. But s is.
I really don’t understand the apparent compulsion to exonerate critical race theory and mark anything objectionable about it as merely fringe or not even part of it. It’s like maintaining that bodily resurrection is a fundamentalist belief or not even Christian at all.
No I haven’t. I’ve repeatedly said the opposite of “not, in fact, from CRT or its subfields.” That “its subfields” is another word for “stuff that’s anti-racist and that could be influenced by CRT but also might not and we don’t really know and it’s stupid to call everything that comes after “CRT.”
And it’s not a fucking compulsion, it’s a permanent interest in accuracy.
Where? Citations please.
I think what I’ve been doing is trying to figure out what CRT is, and what various people or types of people mean when they talk about it, and how bad or destructive or nonsensical the actual claims of actual CRT really are. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m pretty damn sure I haven’t been saying that specific things that demonstrably are from CRT or its subfields are not, in fact, from CRT or its subfields, because of the “demonstrably” part. That would just be brazen lying, and I don’t think I’ve been doing that.
Of whiteness studies:
Directly downstream:
The relation between critical race theory and whiteness studies is as that between physics and cosmology, acoustics, or quantum information science. You say this: “I think what I’ve been doing is trying to figure out what CRT is”. How can you be certain that whiteness studies nonsense isn’t inherited or derived from something in the parent CRT? How can you be certain that whiteness studies nonsense hasn’t found its way back up the ladder to the parent CRT?
Let me extend an olive branch to go with my previous comment:
I am a firm believer that properly applied pedantry is valuable, and if we’re to be pedantic, it would not be nonsensical to say that a subfield/subdiscipline is not representative of its parent as a whole. So one could argue that acoustics may not be representative of physics as a whole. Likewise, one could argue that whiteness studies may not be representative of critical race theory as a whole, or that critical race theory may not be representative of critical theory as a whole.
This is the template that has been used so successfully to prevent the implementation in the US of the kind of medical care enjoyed by pretty much every advanced country on Earth. By branding public health care as “socialist” or “Marxist,” the Right has managed to convince many of the people who would most benefit from it to oppose it. This keeps the United States from being an advanced country. Look at all the right wing media assholes, who have themselves been vaccinated, telling their audiences and followers not to vaccinate.
Reducing or eliminating racism would make the United States (or any country for that matter) a better place to live for all of its citizens. The wealthy, who have benefitted most from the status quo, who have the most to lose, who are afraid of having to pay reparations, restitution, or whatever, have to convince those who would be at least risk of shouldering any such burden, that it will somehow cost them, too.
Lindsay and Rufo are not remotely good faith actors here, but they’re right, they’ve successfully poisoned CRT in any form. So that’s the new starting point; solving racism has hit a new stumbling block we’re not likely to address in a long time so best to move on.
Nullius –
I can’t, but I don’t think I was claiming I could. But things that descend from X can change and become different from X. Things that in some sense descend from X can also descend from Y and Z – they can have multiple sources. CRT and whiteness studies may be closely entangled, I don’t know, but they’re not just the same thing.
I’m not particularly invested in the good name of CRT, I don’t really have an opinion either way, so far, on account of not knowing enough about it, but I don’t think Rufo’s muddying the waters is any help at all.
By doing so they’re attempting to poison any response to address racism.
Something only has to be branded as being CRT for it to be discredited; there is no need to prove that it is CRT, or that CRT is actually bad. Just like how in some circles, JKR is now just assumed to be a violent transphobe. No need to make an effort to prove the case when it’s common knowledge.
Ophelia:
This is all true, and I wouldn’t want to deny it. Critical race theory and whiteness studies are not the same thing, equivalent, or isomorphic.
Earlier, I was pondering some interrelated rhetorical tactics. One is to smash together concepts that are linked but substantively different, illegitimately flattening those differences so as to transfer moral valence between the two. A second is to illegitimately exaggerate differences between linked and substantively similar concepts so as to prevent the transfer of moral valence. Neither treats the subject honestly, and both are unpleasantly common. Perhaps that’s due to the human tendency to meet like for like. If Sally mischaracterizes something in one direction, Harry is likely to mischaracterize it in the opposite direction.
That’s fair. Muddied waters (as opposed to Muddy Waters) aren’t particularly great, and many on the Right are confusing things through a combination of ignorance and maliciousness. I just believe the Left has its share of bad actors who do the same kind of difference flattening as those on the Right, only what they smash together is all opposition to CRT. Just like how TRAs lump feminists in with fundies, a large proportion of the intelligentsia equate opposition to CRT with opposition to addressing racism, teaching accurate history, etc.
YNnB:
This is definitely true for a subset of those who voice opposition to critical race theory in particular and wokeness in general. Others believe themselves in opposition to something that poisons any attempt to remediate racism.