Forbid teaching about White privilege

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Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by bmforre » Sat Sep 05, 2020 2:00 pm

Forbid this
President Trump is moving to revamp federal agencies’ racial sensitivity trainings, casting some of them as “divisive” and “un-American,” according to a memo by the White House Office of Management and Budget.

In the two-page memo, OMB Director Russell Vought says Trump has asked him to prevent federal agencies from spending millions in taxpayer dollars on these training sessions. Vought says OMB will instruct federal agencies to come up with a list of all contracts related to training sessions involving “white privilege” or “critical race theory,” and do everything possible within the law to cancel those contracts, the memo states...
Excellent. But words like "slavery" ought not to be permitted either.
Or tales of Native Americans being moved about to make space for Whites.

Have a nice Inquisition.

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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by Little waster » Sat Sep 05, 2020 9:11 pm

TBF Trump has a point.

I mean imagine a hypothetical US society where LEA were so rife with individual and institutionalised racism they wouldn’t even have the self-awareness to realise there might be an issue unless it was pointed out to them.

In such a ridiculous scenario I imagine there would be almost daily accounts of law enforcement agents casually murdering black citizens, open collusion between the police and far-right “militias” and a c.nts’ parade of senior officials, politicians and right-wing journalists constantly and unconvincingly denying that there was any issue whatsoever. I mean in such a horrific dystopia they would probably even look to ban any such awareness-raising as being in some way “unpatriotic”.

I mean does that sounds anything like the diverse and open utopia Trump has crafted in the US today?
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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by sTeamTraen » Sat Sep 05, 2020 11:17 pm

I think it's possible for both (a) "Racism is a terrible stain on humanity, especially the United States, and large number of white people are utter c.nts" and (b) "Critical race theory is mostly bollocks" to be true simultaneously.
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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by Squeak » Sat Sep 05, 2020 11:49 pm

sTeamTraen wrote:
Sat Sep 05, 2020 11:17 pm
I think it's possible for both (a) "Racism is a terrible stain on humanity, especially the United States, and large number of white people are utter c.nts" and (b) "Critical race theory is mostly bollocks" to be true simultaneously.
And do we think that's why Trump wants to bank diversity training in federal agencies?

He is such a noted scholar that I'm sure he's definitely got a well-cited argument for the intellectual vacuity of an entire field of scholarship. I look forward to him publishing that critique in a reputable journal as I'm sure it will lead to a complete restructuring of all attempts to make the US a less systemically racist nation.

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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sun Sep 06, 2020 12:06 am

I reckon Trump wouldn't understand any of the posts on this thread.

I, on the other hand, am looking forward very much to the forthcoming discussion of the intellectual merits of critical race theory, which I'm sure will be incisive and balanced.

I am looking forward to making my own contributions to said discussion, and also to moderating the contributions of others.
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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by EACLucifer » Sun Sep 06, 2020 8:18 am

sTeamTraen wrote:
Sat Sep 05, 2020 11:17 pm
I think it's possible for both (a) "Racism is a terrible stain on humanity, especially the United States, and large number of white people are utter c.nts" and (b) "Critical race theory is mostly bollocks" to be true simultaneously.
THIS. I'd add (c) "Trump is doing this for entirely the wrong reasons", too.

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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by EACLucifer » Sun Sep 06, 2020 8:22 am

Squeak wrote:
Sat Sep 05, 2020 11:49 pm
sTeamTraen wrote:
Sat Sep 05, 2020 11:17 pm
I think it's possible for both (a) "Racism is a terrible stain on humanity, especially the United States, and large number of white people are utter c.nts" and (b) "Critical race theory is mostly bollocks" to be true simultaneously.
And do we think that's why Trump wants to bank diversity training in federal agencies?
He is almost certainly doing it for entirely b.llsh.t culture war reasons. That doesn't mean critical theory isn't a steaming pile of nonsense that can be harmful to the very causes it acts as if it has a monopoly on caring about.

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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by dyqik » Sun Sep 06, 2020 12:06 pm

I don't see the relevance of b) to this discussion beyond the scary buzzword in the quote from the racist idiot in Trump's administration. Critical race theory has nothing to do with discussions of privilege in equality trainings.

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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by Woodchopper » Sun Sep 06, 2020 12:19 pm

bmforre wrote:
Sat Sep 05, 2020 2:00 pm
Forbid this
President Trump is moving to revamp federal agencies’ racial sensitivity trainings, casting some of them as “divisive” and “un-American,” according to a memo by the White House Office of Management and Budget.

In the two-page memo, OMB Director Russell Vought says Trump has asked him to prevent federal agencies from spending millions in taxpayer dollars on these training sessions. Vought says OMB will instruct federal agencies to come up with a list of all contracts related to training sessions involving “white privilege” or “critical race theory,” and do everything possible within the law to cancel those contracts, the memo states...
Excellent. But words like "slavery" ought not to be permitted either.
Or tales of Native Americans being moved about to make space for Whites.

Have a nice Inquisition.
Fortunately, it looks like a publicity stunt.

From the link:
In the two-page memo, OMB Director Russell Vought says Trump has asked him to prevent federal agencies from spending millions in taxpayer dollars on these training sessions. Vought says OMB will instruct federal agencies to come up with a list of all contracts related to training sessions involving “white privilege” or “critical race theory,” and do everything possible within the law to cancel those contracts, the memo states.

The memo, released on Friday, also tells all federal agencies to identify and if possible cancel contracts that involve teaching that America is an “inherently racist or evil country.”
There's an election in little more than two months. It'll probably take longer to produce such a list. Even after the list is made 'if possible cancel contracts' is rather weak language.

If Trump wins a second term then look out for a serious assault on training. Unless that happens I expect that not much will happen.

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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by Lew Dolby » Sun Sep 06, 2020 1:42 pm

So presumably in-house traing is safe. Just contracted-out training is to go. Trump wants to stuff private companies !!??
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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by EACLucifer » Sun Sep 06, 2020 2:12 pm

dyqik wrote:
Sun Sep 06, 2020 12:06 pm
I don't see the relevance of b) to this discussion beyond the scary buzzword in the quote from the racist idiot in Trump's administration. Critical race theory has nothing to do with discussions of privilege in equality trainings.
I guess you must not be too familiar with the academic background of social privilege theory discourse. While discussions of similar concepts go back much further, the bulk of it is rooted in critical theory, with the term white privilege popularised by Peggy McIntosh in the late 80s.

The thing is, there are different reasons for opposing the use of critical race theory or discussions of privilege. Trump is almost certainly doing it because he doesn't want to reduce racism as he is racist*, and to appeal to a racist base that think that critical race theory is a type of marxism.

However, there are other reasons to oppose it too. Critical theorists love to act as if they are the only people that care about oppression, but this simply isn't true. Empiricist epistemology and universal human rights based moral reasoning can respectively recognise and describe racism and other forms of prejudice and oppression, and form the foundation of activism to oppose it. Likewise, there are marxist anti-racists, and marxism and critical theory based approaches are somewhat incompatible.

One can regard critical theory as utterly useless, completely without rigour or relationship to reality, and still care deeply about prejudice and the consequences - short and long term - of it in the real world. I can think of far better interventions on exactly the same issue for state and private employers than throwing money at expensive corporate consultants for training that appears not to work except as a way of making employers look like they care.

And on a personal level, I've found that framing things in terms of privilege is extraordinarily counterproductive in disability rights activism, except where everyone involved is very used to the terminology, and even there, it is not a helpful framework. Likewise, critical theory around disability is utterly poisonous, and no help whatsoever against ableism.


*I've just seen his comments on Mandela and jesus f.cking christ...

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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by bjn » Sun Sep 06, 2020 2:18 pm

EACLucifer wrote:
Sun Sep 06, 2020 2:12 pm
And on a personal level, I've found that framing things in terms of privilege is extraordinarily counterproductive in disability rights activism, except where everyone involved is very used to the terminology, and even there, it is not a helpful framework.
In your experience, what does tend to work in practice? (Not trolling genuinely curious).

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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by EACLucifer » Sun Sep 06, 2020 2:23 pm

bjn wrote:
Sun Sep 06, 2020 2:18 pm
EACLucifer wrote:
Sun Sep 06, 2020 2:12 pm
And on a personal level, I've found that framing things in terms of privilege is extraordinarily counterproductive in disability rights activism, except where everyone involved is very used to the terminology, and even there, it is not a helpful framework.
In your experience, what does tend to work in practice? (Not trolling genuinely curious).
Discussing the areas where disabled people are held back from doing things able bodied people take for granted. While that might not sound that different, the emphasis is very different; on unfair disadvantage, rather unfair relative advantage. It doesn't get people's backs up the same way, which means they are much more likely to want to help. Secondly, focussing on the actual problems, far from being disempowering, encourages focus on practical solutions. People are much more receptive to "this is holding me/them back, it needs to be changed" than "this is getting you ahead, it needs to be changed".

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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by dyqik » Sun Sep 06, 2020 2:36 pm

EACLucifer wrote:
Sun Sep 06, 2020 2:12 pm
dyqik wrote:
Sun Sep 06, 2020 12:06 pm
I don't see the relevance of b) to this discussion beyond the scary buzzword in the quote from the racist idiot in Trump's administration. Critical race theory has nothing to do with discussions of privilege in equality trainings.
I guess you must not be too familiar with the academic background of social privilege theory discourse. While discussions of similar concepts go back much further, the bulk of it is rooted in critical theory, with the term white privilege popularised by Peggy McIntosh in the late 80s.

The thing is, there are different reasons for opposing the use of critical race theory or discussions of privilege. Trump is almost certainly doing it because he doesn't want to reduce racism as he is racist*, and to appeal to a racist base that think that critical race theory is a type of marxism.

However, there are other reasons to oppose it too. Critical theorists love to act as if they are the only people that care about oppression, but this simply isn't true. Empiricist epistemology and universal human rights based moral reasoning can respectively recognise and describe racism and other forms of prejudice and oppression, and form the foundation of activism to oppose it. Likewise, there are marxist anti-racists, and marxism and critical theory based approaches are somewhat incompatible.

One can regard critical theory as utterly useless, completely without rigour or relationship to reality, and still care deeply about prejudice and the consequences - short and long term - of it in the real world. I can think of far better interventions on exactly the same issue for state and private employers than throwing money at expensive corporate consultants for training that appears not to work except as a way of making employers look like they care.

And on a personal level, I've found that framing things in terms of privilege is extraordinarily counterproductive in disability rights activism, except where everyone involved is very used to the terminology, and even there, it is not a helpful framework. Likewise, critical theory around disability is utterly poisonous, and no help whatsoever against ableism.


*I've just seen his comments on Mandela and jesus f.cking christ...
Clearly you aren't familiar with the diversity and equality trainings in question, or you wouldn't have written this entirely irrelevant screed. I've actually taken some of these trainings, and critical race theory is not presented.

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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by dyqik » Sun Sep 06, 2020 3:04 pm

And I'm not going to bother debating with someone who assumes that disagreement with him implies that the person disagreeing is uninformed.

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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by EACLucifer » Sun Sep 06, 2020 3:17 pm

dyqik wrote:
Sun Sep 06, 2020 3:04 pm
And I'm not going to bother debating with someone who assumes that disagreement with him implies that the person disagreeing is uninformed.
Given your previous post contained just such an accusation - and absolutely nothing to rebut the point I made - I'd suggest you check your hypocrisy, but on past form, I doubt you'd have the self awareness to see it.

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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by dyqik » Sun Sep 06, 2020 3:26 pm

EACLucifer wrote:
Sun Sep 06, 2020 3:17 pm
dyqik wrote:
Sun Sep 06, 2020 3:04 pm
And I'm not going to bother debating with someone who assumes that disagreement with him implies that the person disagreeing is uninformed.
Given your previous post contained just such an accusation - and absolutely nothing to rebut the point I made - I'd suggest you check your hypocrisy, but on past form, I doubt you'd have the self awareness to see it.
I do have the self-awareness, thanks, and I knew I was doing it.

But it's also a fairly safe assumption that you haven't taken US Federal government training courses in the last couple of years. If you have taken US Federal diversity trainings, I'm interested to know why.

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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by Woodchopper » Sun Sep 06, 2020 6:01 pm

Lew Dolby wrote:
Sun Sep 06, 2020 1:42 pm
So presumably in-house traing is safe. Just contracted-out training is to go. Trump wants to stuff private companies !!??
I doubt he's thought about it.

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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by individualmember » Sun Sep 06, 2020 6:22 pm

Not being ejicated in wot phrases like ‘critical race theory’ mean, my mental meanderings are initially about wanting social change versus not wanting social change. Progressivism versus whatever the opposite of that is... objection to change in a rigid social hierarchy I guess (there must be a word for it but I can’t think of it).

Isn’t the American dream something about not being restricted by the position each individual is born into? Like everyone should be able to transcend their background with ambition and hard work? Or something :?

It seems to me that not wanting to teach about stuff is essentially the same as not wanting anything to change. If people learned about something they might choose to do something other than what they’ve been doing forever without thinking about it and we can’t possibly allow that, if you see what I mean. Is it fear of change?

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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by EACLucifer » Sun Sep 06, 2020 7:31 pm

individualmember wrote:
Sun Sep 06, 2020 6:22 pm
Not being ejicated in wot phrases like ‘critical race theory’ mean, my mental meanderings are initially about wanting social change versus not wanting social change. Progressivism versus whatever the opposite of that is... objection to change in a rigid social hierarchy I guess (there must be a word for it but I can’t think of it).
Critical race theory is, essentially, critical theory as applied to issues of race. It is post-structuralist, going back via academics like Kimberle Crenshaw to the likes of Foucault. It is not just completely lacking in evidence base, it is fundamentally opposed to the concept of evidence and empiricism. Crticial theory is not about weighing up the actual impact of different interventions, or measuring the scale of the problem, but instead obsessed with narrative. It is descended from a school of though that - very roughly - believes that all established frameworks for studying the world (say, empiricism in science, or marxism in economics) are oppressive social constructs that need to be deconstructed. It is somewhat more modern than the civil rights struggle, proving, if nothing else, that one can be all sorts of anti-racist, from Dr. King through to Malcolm X both early and later in his life, without ever having heard of anything to do with it.

Critical theory's obsession with problematising supposed power hierarchies can quickly lead to absurd an unpleasant results.

For example, a reasonable person might notice that medical trials disproportionately use young male volunteers, and that this might result in effects in other people - pregnant women for example - being missed, and that therefore trials should endeavour to recruit more representative samples. A critical theorist, meanwhile, would point out that evidence based medicine privileges one way of knowing (observation, experimentation and working out what actually happens when you do things) over other ways of knowing (my-mate-down-the-pub-said, chinny reckons, haruspicy, etc), and that as a result, evidence based medicine is comparable to fascism.

One I've personally run up again quite a lot is the idea that a disabled person missing being able bodied, or not wanting to be defined by their disability, or wanting to still do the things they used to do before being ill, or that their able bodied friends do, is promoting a narrative that it is better to be able bodied than disabled, and thus ableist. I had a couple of people tell me that wanting to create a wheelchair that could get me out into the countryside - something I have missed to the point of considering suicide - was prejudiced against myself, but also that by reinforcing this narrative, that I was making other disabled people unsafe.

While Trump's opposition to this probably is to do with not wanting social change, in general, the support of or opposition to critical theory has nothing to do with whether or not one supports social change, but how one goes about it.
Isn’t the American dream something about not being restricted by the position each individual is born into? Like everyone should be able to transcend their background with ambition and hard work? Or something :?
It is, but one does not need theories of power-knowledge and discursive violence and so on to understand that some people are denied that opportunity due to both prejudice towards arbitrary characteristics, race among them, and the long term effects of generations of that prejudice. Nor to understand that this should not be the case.
It seems to me that not wanting to teach about stuff is essentially the same as not wanting anything to change. If people learned about something they might choose to do something other than what they’ve been doing forever without thinking about it and we can’t possibly allow that, if you see what I mean. Is it fear of change?
In the case of Trump, it's because someone tracked down the course materials used for a training session for not strictly federal workers but federal contractors, and got it onto Tucker Carlson, who undoubtedly will have focussed on the worst elements, and speculated wildly and ignorantly, not doubt adding heapings of his own prejudices. Seeing something he didn't like on the television, Trump thus lashed out.

But that doesn't mean Critical Race Theory is of any value as a way of understanding the world, and it is certainly not synonymous with anti-racism, just a queer theory is not synonymous with gay rights or sexual freedom, and so on.

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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by bjn » Sun Sep 06, 2020 8:39 pm

I used to joke with an academic friend of mine that critical theory and much of postmodernism was actually a plot by the right to undermine liberal and leftwing movements by making them look ridiculous.

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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sun Sep 06, 2020 8:47 pm

In terms of what it means in this particular context, the wiki article intro is quite helpful
Critical race theory (CRT)[1] is a theoretical framework in the social sciences that examines society and culture as they relate to categorizations of race, law, and power.[2][3] Developed out of postmodern philosophy, it is based on critical theory, a social philosophy that argues that social problems are influenced and created more by societal structures and cultural assumptions than by individual and psychological factors. It began as a theoretical movement within American law schools in the mid- to late 1980s as a reworking of critical legal studies on race issues,[4][5] and is loosely unified by two common themes. Firstly, CRT proposes that white supremacy and racial power are maintained over time, and in particular, that the law may play a role in this process. Secondly, CRT work has investigated the possibility of transforming the relationship between law and racial power, as well as pursuing a project of achieving racial emancipation and anti-subordination more broadly.[6]

By 2002, over 20 American law schools, and at least 3 law schools in other countries, offered critical race theory courses or classes which covered the issue centrally.[7] In addition to law, critical race theory is taught and innovated in the fields of education, political science, women's studies, ethnic studies, communication, sociology, and American studies.[8] Important scholars to the theory include Derrick Bell, Patricia Williams, Richard Delgado, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Camara Phyllis Jones, and Mari Matsuda.

Critics of CRT, including Richard Posner and Alex Kozinski, take issue with its foundations in postmodernism and reliance on moral relativism, social constructionism, and other tenets contrary to classical liberalism.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory

The "Critique and controversy" section expands on some of the criticisms EACL makes.

I think it's one of those fields that makes some good points, but can be taken way too far. I'm not sure how problematic the elements of CRT that occur in federal anti-racism courses would tend to be, but I expect probably not problematic enough on their own to justify Trump's ban (which obviously has other motivations).
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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by discovolante » Wed Sep 09, 2020 8:57 pm

OK this is a bit of a continued digression into CRT. More or less by chance I came across this letter wiki conversation, which I wanted to use as a starting point to explore CRT a bit further, not to fully defend it or otherwise (although it is hard to go anywhere apart from towards defence when something starts off being so heavily criticised), but because I think this kind of thing is worth discussing even if that's because it's a starting point to a broader conversation, and if something is there and becoming mainstream then well, there it is. I wanted to look through some of the things linked to in the conversation and try and post at least a fairly considered response, but in all honesty I'm having trouble finding the time and I can't see that changing much in the near future so I thought I would just go for it. I don't really expect agreement one way or the other but just to say that I'm inevitably going to overlook or miss a lot of stuff just because of that. I'm also aware that some of the things linked to are potentially a bit problematic.

Anyway, regarding evidence - it seems that in order to prove that every framework or social model is fundamentally racist, you would need to prove that each and every single one of them is. So on the one hand, it does seem quite a stretch to make this claim; on the other, if this can be demonstrated to some extent in many contexts it might not be unreasonable to draw some inferences in relation to other contexts. At the risk of creating an argument about strawmen or on the other hand 'no true CRT-ist', the example in the letter wiki is of inherited wealth:
Most directly I'm motivated by CRT to challenge how we pass wealth between generations. As it stands we lock in injustices of the past to the basic structure of society (https://www.marxists.org/reference/arch ... a/ch03.htm). It's unjustifiable even in terms of present dominant ideologies. How in a society which purports to be liberal or meritocratic can one's great grandparents' achievements entitle you to wealth? The racial effects of this are obvious given who was in a position to accumulate and pass on wealth, and honestly I think if fully faced up to would tend to support some sort of reparations style redistribution to compensate for just how badly the cumulative effect of this has malformed the distribution of wealth.
This doesn't seem like a bad example given the overall influence and power that arises from wealth, and, as far as I can remember, it's been demonstrated that inherited wealth is becoming more concentrated rather than the other way round. This person sees themselves as a critical race theorist and gives an example of something that is at least relatively testable/provable, which may mean they aren't a critical race theorist, or it may be that there are different flavours of critical race theorists.

The letter wiki criticises some of the pessimism of CRT, but it seems to me that CRT also isn't unconnected with ideas that predate it. I've noticed there seems to be a connection between people who hold CRT-friendly opinions and people who argue that racial equality and liberty should be taken, not given, i.e. a shift in the balance of power; anything that's given can be taken away. That leads to different proposals and ideas though, from ethnonationalism to more of a focus on concepts such as white privilege and so on. But anyway the general concept has been expressed explicitly for a very long time, funnily enough.

So for me, an analogy would be capitalism and sexism, or rather unequal distribution of power between the sexes. E.g. in my opinion, capitalism has been developed by well white cis men, for well white cis men. Just taking the sex aspect of that, if you don't own the means of production then the natural outcome is that you need to be productive 100% of the time in order to survive, as you won't get paid if you don't work. Women (and disabled people, but I'm focusing on women for now, just because I am one) are disproportionately affected by this because they have children, which limits their capacity for work. So the law has had to intervene and create things like statutory maternity rights. These are good things, but they are positive rights that have had to be created to disrupt the 'natural order' and can also be diminished or removed completely, subtly or not so subtly (e.g. repeal, or perhaps just failing to increase the rate of statutory maternity pay in line with inflation, and so on). So we have these good things, but they are anomalies created to rectify an imbalance in what is seen as the default, rather than part of the system itself. For what it's worth, apart from the Equality Act, I'm also struggling to think of positive legislation that actively addresses imbalances in power arising from race, even though we have things like the Equal Pay Act which don't things that are inherently related to biology, and the Equality Act has specific provision for disabilities. Not that they are adequate, but they're there.

Anyway I'm digressing a bit. Just to say though, that saying someone shouldn't want a wheelchair because of whatever is stupid. I'm thankful that pretty much all of the disability activism I've seen has been explaining how liberating wheelchairs and other aids are, while also arguing in favour of the social model of disability; they're two things that seem like they could be mutually exclusive but don't necessarily have to be.
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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by sTeamTraen » Wed Sep 09, 2020 11:18 pm

It seems to me that one can argue for a generational component to racism that is different to that for cis/het/sexism, in that Black people are typically mostly descended from generations of other Black people who have all faced similar disadvantages, whereas (to a close approximation) all men and all women have historically been descended from an equal number of other men and women, the great majority of those being cis and heterosexual. Of course, sexism, etc, are intergenerational, but that's at a collective level. Within any given family, half of the N kids get the male deal and half get the female one. I think that makes a difference, although I'm not sure that I can say how right now.

Along with race, it seems to me that class is the other big generational factor. Indeed, there are Black scholars who argue that most of the disadvantages suffered by Black people in the US are principally problems of poverty rather than the result of systematic racial hatred; the latter has an effect but it's smaller than the economic problem. (It also means that in the last sentence of my previous paragraph, we could add a consideration of who gets the better deal: a boy born into a poor family or a girl born into a well-off one. Of course, one can also apply that to, say, the daughters of a poor US white family, versus Malia and Sasha Obama.)
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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by Millennie Al » Thu Sep 10, 2020 12:25 am

discovolante wrote:
Wed Sep 09, 2020 8:57 pm
Anyway, regarding evidence - it seems that in order to prove that every framework or social model is fundamentally racist, you would need to prove that each and every single one of them is.
You might be able to prove that any non-racist model must have some set of properties and that there is a contradiction in the set so it is impossible. Just like we can easily prove there is no largest prime number without having to examine them all. But it does seem extremely unlikely.
At the risk of creating an argument about strawmen or on the other hand 'no true CRT-ist', the example in the letter wiki is of inherited wealth:
Most directly I'm motivated by CRT to challenge how we pass wealth between generations. As it stands we lock in injustices of the past to the basic structure of society (https://www.marxists.org/reference/arch ... a/ch03.htm). It's unjustifiable even in terms of present dominant ideologies. How in a society which purports to be liberal or meritocratic can one's great grandparents' achievements entitle you to wealth?
However the idea that we pass wealth like that is ridiculous. How many very wealthy people have inherited it from their great grandparents? Generally when people inherit wealth they are less able to manage it than their parents, and another generation or two generally sees the wealth decline a lot.

And, quite apart from that, it betrays a fundamental error in how the world works. Wealth is not zero sum. In aggregate, people today are wealthier than their parents, who in turn were wealthier than their parents. You don't have to go very far back before the comparison gets to the point that an ordinary person today is wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of their ancestor.

To take a very simple and concrete example - houses. There has been lots of house building going on, resulting in a very obvious and tangible increase in the total wealth to go around. And it's certainly not the case that the new houses are distributed amongst the descendants of wealthy people. Many homeowners have become so simply by paying for their house.
as far as I can remember, it's been demonstrated that inherited wealth is becoming more concentrated rather than the other way round.
I would be very interested to see such a demonstration, as it seems very highly implausible. Especially in the UK with inheritance tax at 40%.

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