"Apologies for not agreeing with you this time but not for my knowledge of working the ground game against CRT before it was on the national stage. Because you didn't hear of it before Rufo took it national doesn't mean it wasn't already a problem on a national level."
š No worries, we don't have to agree every time. I love that you guysā¦
"Apologies for not agreeing with you this time but not for my knowledge of working the ground game against CRT before it was on the national stage. Because you didn't hear of it before Rufo took it national doesn't mean it wasn't already a problem on a national level."
š No worries, we don't have to agree every time. I love that you guys keep me honest. But what you're saying here just doesn't square with the facts.
First, you can literally see online interest in CRT (which was almost non-existent for decades) spike around June 2021 (https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=%2Fm%2F06d76c). Rufo wrote his tweet in March 2021. The needle first started to move in late 2020, you guess it, around the time George Floyd was killed.
Second, I didn't claim *Rufo* said CRT was an obscure legal theory from the 70s, CRT *is* an obscure legal theory from the 70s. It was conceived as a tool for analysing how the legal system perpetuates racial inequality. There are a few schools of thought that have come from some of the scholars involved in that original work, Crenshaw's "whiteness studies" springs to mind, but they're not the same thing.
And third, and most relevant, Rufo's tweet spells out in so many words his plans to "put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category." That he has "decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans." If his own words about what he did don't convince you, I guess mine aren't likely to either.
To be absolutely clear, Iām not saying critical race theory is correct. All critical theories suffer from similar fundamental flaws. Sowell, who though wonderful isnāt infallible (while I'm not a conservative seeking a conservative audience, I have a pretty good knowledge of Sowell's work), may well have taken issue with some of Bellās work. I've read some, but not enough to have a strong opinion. But it has nothing to do with the reintroduction of segregation in schools. It's not the 1619 project. It's not teachers asking kids to āconfess their whitenessā in classrooms. It has nothing to do with BLM's disinformation about police brutality. And it's only tangentially related to DEI, which really has its roots in affirmative action.
Again, Rufo was extremely effective in convincing people that CRT was all of these things too. It appears he's convinced you. And as time went by, the term was applied to more and more things, even by people on the left, that were nothing to do with CRT.
But again, here we are arguing about what CRT is, instead of focusing on the "various cultural insanities" that Rufo "froze under its brand." Rufo did this so that it would be more difficult to talk about specifics, and instead, people would just react to all kinds of different issues as if they were the same. This is extremely beneficial for somebody trying to fight a culture war, but not for meaningful discourse.
No. People had been talking about white people or "the white race" long before CRT. In fact, the concept of "being white" stems all the way back to the 1800s. But "whiteness studies", the idea of "whiteness" as a form of identity, only appeared in the early 1980s. None of Bell's work included the term. It is, as I said, quite distinct from CRT.
The 1619 project focuses almost exclusively on slavery. So that kind of language isn't surprising. But again, the idea that slavery is foundational to America is far older than CRT or Nikole Hannah-Jones. Heck, read Alexander Stephens' 1861 Cornerstone speech.
And yes, there's a strong argument to be made that desegregation *did* fail. That's not to say that he wanted segregation to continue, but that he wanted desegregation to actual lead to an integrated America. If you were a black scholar in the 70s, you could very reasonably argue that this had failed. And that the powers that be were working very hard to ensure that black people didn't succeed. There's simply no way to pin the reintroduction of segregation in schools on his work.
So no, as this conversation is demonstrating, Rufo didn't make it easier to talk about the specifics. Because it made people think that a whole bunch of unrelated things were all "CRT." Again, he literally spells out that he's doing this. Specifics like whiteness studies and racial affinity groups and and DEI and desegregation and especially racism, are much harder to talk about if they're all believed to be the same thing or even coming from the same root.
"Dr. Bell did not share MLK's dream and neither do his ideological children."
Well, you're right about that. But let's be very clear, I'll bet he was a lot closer to MLK's vision than Rufo or, to be fair, most conservatives today. Yes, MLK believed in race blindness at the individual level. But he also believed in affirmative action and reparation for slavery. He also believed in Universal Basic Income for the poor (regardless of skin colour).
So let's be very clear about his too, if King were alive today, plenty of the people who just looove repeating his "content of their character" quote would treat him with just as much disdain as they treat Kendi. If not more.
Whiteness studies is not a "child" of CRT (Wikipedia is wonderful for many things, but not for use was an authoritative source on academic literature). It is a separate field of academia, devised by one of the people who contributed to the original body of work known as CRT.
CRT uses a racial lens because it was designed to look at how the legal system produced and sustained racial inequality. It was focused specifically on this narrow field. Again, I'm not arguing that CRT got all of its conclusions correct. But broadening that philosophy to encompass everything (I don't deny that some people have done this) isn't what the original work of CRT was about.
Finally, whether white flight and the closing of certain black schools led to a more tolerant society depends very much on where you live and what colour your skin is, no? It's easy to look at desegregation with 8- years of hindsight and say what was best. But at the time, it's easy to understand why some black people saw it as a failure. Again, depending on where you live, you could argue that it's been a failure today.
Marla, I think you've made an excellent summary, thank you.
One key problem with discussing what's been happening in our culture is legitimate as well as bad faith confusion of labels vs concepts. Rather than discuss the concepts, some folks prefer to attack the labels in what I perceive to be a diversion tactic.
After several attempts ("political correctness", "successor ideology", "intersectionalism", "identitarianism", "wokism", "neo-progressivism"), I believe the best term for the ideology in question today is "Critical Social Justice Ideology", which I will abbreviate CSJI. It's descriptive, non-pejorative, and becoming recognized by both sides. The battle over labels, however, is illustrative.
The manifestation CSJI in the area of race is an example. People who have bothered to read Robin DiAngelo, Ibram X Kendi, Delgado and Stefancic, the 1619 project, etc tend to perceive, correctly in my view, a general sociopolitical framing shared by these sources. But what can one call that common thread, without listing a 14 syllable compound collection every time?
Many parents and critics wound up using "CRT" as a label of convenience for that whole political ideology of race, which they perceived as emerging in schools, workplaces and society.
Then other people attacked that, pointing out correctly that while Robin DiAngelo's work, Kendi's work, the 1619 project's framing, and such might have been partly inspired by CRT, technically they are not CRT per se - GOTCHA!!!
In my view, that latter was both technically correct, but more importantly a bad faith attempt to avoid discussing the real issues. There is little real and honest confusion about the socio-political framing being referenced, but one side can pretend that there's nothing to discuss because the other side is using "CRT" too loosely.
It's like responding to a citizen objecting to having a smelly sewer plant put in their neighborhood by saying "well, technically it's a primary pre-colloidal treatment plant, so your complaint is ignorant and we don't need to listen to it" (even though the plant will be smelly just as you say). It's using technical terminology to prevent honest engagement, not to facilitate it.
Of course, Critical Race Theory is an expansion upon the earlier Critical Legal Studies, developed beyond a legal theory of interest to some lawyers, into a political theory about the general role of race in society whose concepts (albeit unlabeled as such) should be taught in elementary schools - but the same side that want to be persnickety about the technical definition of CRT sometimes still pretends that CRT today is still merely a legal theory.
In that (often deliberately) confused semantic space, there is a functional need for a common label for communication about the thematically connected set of political perspectives about race. Rufo chose to use "CRT" for that label, broadening its colloquial usage beyond academic precisions to include relevant contemporary themes derived from DiAngelo, Kendi, Hanna-Jones - as well as CRT per se.
If anybody has a better umbrella term than "CRT" to offer for those interwoven political threads, please do so. Until then, picking on the colloquial label for a real phenomenon for its academic imprecision serves largely to avoid engagement with the phenomenon itself.
If any readers think that having an umbrella terms makes it too difficult to discuss components of the asserted collection, please explain. I think we all know what's meant however, and can easily discuss Kendi per se within that umbrella when relevant.
If a parent at the podium says "I object to the way the school is teaching CRT as factual truth in classrooms", I think it's disingenuous to respond "You don't even understand the nuances of academic Critical Race Theory per se, so your critique can be dismissed as ignorance", rather than making a good faith attempt to address WHAT IS OBJECTIVELY BEING TAUGHT, regardless of the precision of the label.
If one wishes, more as a minor sidenote than as a core response, to note that "when teacher X taught Y to the kids as fact, they were actually presenting their interpretation of Kendi, which technically is not CRT per se", that's OK (if pedantic) - but using that tactic to avoid having the discussion about what the teacher was teaching is not OK.
In this context, I think that making a big deal of Rufo's openly stated desire to generalize the term "CRT" in the (colloquial) public mind to include related but technically distinguishable political racial perspectives, winds up being (accidentally or intentionally) yet another "look over there" distraction to unimportant things, distracting for the real issues at play.
Steve> "Rufo did this so that it would be more difficult to talk about specifics"
Marla> "Rufo made it EASIER to talk about specifics"
Steve, could you give a few examples of where you found it more difficult to talk about specifics?
I personally would have absolutely zero problem discussing, say, Ibram X Kendi's prescriptions of present and future discrimination to remedy past discrimination, because Rufo wanted to expand the colloquial term "CRT" to include related concepts like those of Kendi. Nor would I find it difficult to discuss differences between how DiAngelo, Kendi, and the general public conceive "racism".
The closest I can relate is that if I wanted to discuss Bell's concepts, I might need to identify them with Bell, or perhaps to say "CRT per se" in some sentences (to distinguish the academic from colloquial usages). But that's a small cost for me, hardly a major difficulty. Your experience may differ as a writer, and perhaps you have often had such difficulty.
Let's look at another area. Does the existence of an umbrella term like "feminism" make it more difficult for you to discuss specific elements thereof?
"Steve, could you give a few examples of where you found it more difficult to talk about specifics?"
I already did so in the conversation with Marla:
"Specifics like whiteness studies and racial affinity groups and and DEI and desegregation and especially racism, are much harder to talk about if they're all believed to be the same thing or even coming from the same root."
What ended up happening, and what still happens in some cases, is that a whole variety of topics, some good, some not, some necessary, some not, were all tarnished with this single label. All diversity initiatives and sensitivity trainings, all discussions of racism that went beyond KKK style racism, all discussions of slavery and its impact today, all of them were "turned toxic" to use Rufo's phrase, because most people aren't interested in picking apart the nuances of these topics.
As I've said many times, the Kendis and DiAngelos of the world have at least as much responsibility to bear for the racial exhaustion they created. But that doesn't mean Rufo wasn't transparently dishonest and that he didn't also create a worse discursive climate.
In human intellectual organization there is perpetual tension between the lumpers and the splitters. There is a positive role for each, if we avoid excesses which become illogical.
> "Specifics like whiteness studies and racial affinity groups and and DEI and desegregation and especially racism, are much harder to talk about if they're all believed to be the same thing or even coming from the same root."
OK, we have:
(1) whiteness studies
(2) racial affinity groups
(3) DEI
(4) desegregation
(5) racism
I would agree with you that it makes no logical sense to lump all of those as essentially the same thing.
However, in all my reading and watching, you are the first person I've ever seen lump those disparate things - seemingly only for the purpose of discrediting such a grab bag collection. Or to be more specific, I've never seen them all lumped under the label "CRT" - by Rufo or anybody else.
If you can reference any substantial body of thought (or an influential individual like Christopher Rufo) which considers "whiteness studies" to be pretty much the same thing as "desegregation", much less calls them both CRT, I will stand corrected. Otherwise it comes across as an argument which has not yet been fully thought out and needs some rethinking.
The concept of proper lumping is to collect things which share substantial commonalities together, and stop there - like squirrels of various species. The assertion behind having a grouping (or a common umbrella term) is in fact to illuminate the shared characteristics, not to pretend there are not also differences.
Somebody artificially throwing a snail species in with the squirrels in order to discredit the concept of squirrels is not illuminating what they think it is.
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But I honestly don't see how even that makes it more difficult to discuss; the observation that squirrels have some commonalities in no way prevents one from discussing characteristics of individual species or differences between them.
Likewise, I could easily write a critique of "whiteness studies" which is specific to that subset, distinct from my critique or approval of desegregation. What's the problem? I'm not trying to be difficult, I just honestly don't see the difficulty yet.
(For the record, I think that eliminating separate drinking fountains was a good thing, but vastly different in effect and dynamics than attributing "logical thinking" to whiteness; and I have zero difficulty distinguishing them)
Now, would I say that "whiteness studies" and "racial affinity groups" in the workplace are connected? Yes, I see a substantial interweaving on multiple levels (eg: philosophical connections as well as being promoted largely by the same DEI trainers). Given the degree of ideological and practical commonality between those sociopolitical themes, I think they can reasonably be discussed under a meaningful larger umbrella when discussing those commonalities; and discussed individually when focusing on distinctions.
I don't find doing that "difficult" in the least, but I'm willing to try to understand better if anybody wishes to elaborate on the perceived problem.
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In any further discussion, let's distinguish between a particular proposed grouping (or label) which we wish to assert is flawed, versus abandoning conceptual groupings (or labels) in general. So we could discuss whether there really are meaningful commonalities between whiteness studies and workplace racial affinity groups or not.
Or one might sometimes lump whiteness studies and racial affinity groups together (under the loose label of "CRT" or otherwise), but argue that Kendi's prescription of present and future discrimination as the cure for past discrimination is distinct and should not be grouped with the first two, because the latter has very different and distinct philosophical roots, operational dynamics, effects on society, or promoting advocates. (I would likely argue the opposite, but I'm happy to hear arguments for not grouping them). But I would argue that desegregation IS substantially different, and does not belong under a common label (including CRT).
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Another facet. Perhaps you can name a specific real world program which you think is producing good results, but which you have found to be difficult to discuss, because Rufo has asserted that it's the same as, or meaningfully derives from the same roots as, other programs which you find damaging to society. Say, a helpful pre-school literacy program which has been mistakenly lumped as "CRT" (and thus falsely accused of toxicity), when in practice it has no meaningful connection to the negative things also lumped as "CRT". I'm honestly casting about for real world examples of the deleterious effect you are attributing to Rufo, the difficulty in discussing topics.
"Perhaps you can name a specific real world program which you think is producing good results, but which you have found to be difficult to discuss, because Rufo has asserted that it's the same as, or meaningfully derives from the same roots as, other programs which you find damaging to society."
I think a consistent conceptual divide between us is that you seem to think things like this are the only standard by which a claim can be judged.
As you know, I've had countless conversations about race and racism. I've spent countless more hours reading articles and listening to conversations and various podcasts and videos. I've seen people describe all of these things and more as CRT countless times. I've seen school board meetings where enraged parents called all teaching about America's racial history CRT. And these misconceptions lead to policy in schools and laws like the "anti-CRT" bills, that don't actually mention CRT, but nonetheless became a culture war symbol for people both for and against tackling racial issues.
But how do I convey all of that to you? Especially in a comment?
It would take hours to put together enough "evidence" of all this to satisfy someone who was unaware of it. And even if I pointed to a specific real-world example, you would likely, quite reasonably, say, "well this is just one example."
It's like asking me to provide evidence to convince someone that racism exists with a Google search. I could point to various racial disparities, but how could I prove that they were caused by racism? I could highlight a few hate crimes, but how could I prove intent or pervasiveness? And how could I capture the millions of subtler issues that a Google search won't reveal?
I'm not advocating for a hearsay or "lived experience" approach to social issues, I hope I've made that clear enough in my various writings, but if you only accept straight-line "this incontrovertibly leads to that" connections, you'll miss countless meaningful societal effects. At least until it's far too late to do anything about them. The only solution to this, I think, is to be more directly hands-on.
This kind of goes back to our conversation on rationality. Rationality is important. We agree completely about that. But it's never going to give you a complete picture. Human beings and society in general are far messier than that.
Later: Second option, Steve: find an example where people are calling desegregation "CRT" as you assert.
That would indeed be uninformed and ironic, since CRT (colloquial usage or academic usage) is closer to the move towards resegregation.
Let me be clear that conceptually, it's quite possible for people to expand "CRT" to include not just fairly closely related framings like DiAngelo or Kendi or Hannah-Jones present, but also very different concepts [like desegregation] whose inclusion in that category would be meaningfully wrong and misleading, and if we find that to be happening I will join you in decrying such illogic. I'm just questioning whether that's happening often enough to have any importance; and examples could help shift my appraisal.
The kind of example I have in mind could include things like this: California, along with other states, has eliminated the funding disparity beween school districts based on differing local tax revenues (which depend on the local appraisals times the precentage tax rates which taxpayers are willing to shoulder for the value of education). The state adds more funds to see that all districts have the same base rate, and then adds 20% more to the budgets of underperforming districts. That's pretty much traditional liberalism at play, and should NOT be lumped in under any concept of CRT (colloquial or academic). Nor have I ever seen it so conflated, but if somebody could find such an unreasonable expansion of "CRT", I'll be glad to join in correcting it.
(Aside: Sadly, this policy of seeing that the poorest districts actually receive the highest per student funding, which I support and had much hope for, has not budged the needle much in terms of academic outcomes, so far. It appears that funding differences were not as large a causative factor for the disparities as imagined and hoped.).
Steve, I understand and sympathize with the difficulty of organizing a solid presentation. I will work with you to ease that burden, and to the degree that it makes sense, share it.
How about a simpler starting point:
> "I've seen school board meetings where enraged parents called all teaching about America's racial history CRT"
Great, could you provide a link to one such of the multiple such recording which you have watched? Multiple would be better, but let's start with one.
I've watched some videos too (obviously not all of the hundreds or thousands online), and I've never actually seen parents object to all teaching of America's racial history, or call all of it CRT. What I HAVE encountered is progressives impute that to them. But I'm sure that we have watched different videos (ie: you've seen some I haven't), and I'm very willing to learn, so I'd like to see an example which fits your quoted words above.
If it's common enough to have a meaningful effect on the national discourse (rather than a rare anomaly with little societal effect), such examples should be easy to find. I'm not asking you to do my work for me - I HAVE already watched a number of videos, I just didn't find any matching your characterization yet, but I can't prove a negative. If you have found such videos, then please share.
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Let me give you an example of the distortion which I do find, nearly every time I explore some CSJ issue in detail. The progressive press was all atwitter with characterizations of Florida as forcing teachers to justify slavery, since it was actually good for the slaves because they learned skills. So I read through the entire Florida curriculum guidance on the subject for K12 (ie: the specific source cited by the activists). It was actually pretty comprehensive (in line with their guideline for other subjects). It was FAR from suppressing teaching about slavery or Jim Crow, more the opposite. Critics mined it for ONE sentence, a minor clarification note rather than direct guidance. The critics were, in my best intellectual honestly, grossly distorting the Black History curriculum, with extreme out-of-context cherry picking, omitting the much stronger counterpoint to their characterization. I'll be glad to go through the Fla Black history curriculum guidance with you (it's a few pages out of a document covering many subjects), to see if you believe it's lumping all "racial history" as CRT or prohibiting the teaching of it. After we deal with this.
I mention this, which is distinct from parents at school board meetings, just as an easily evidenced example of the kind of misrepresentation I have also found dismayingly common in progressive characterizations of such objections at school board meetings.
I see very related misrepresentations and strawman arguments presented about things like the teaching of Black history in other places than Florida of course. If I read the progressive press accounts, and then watch the hearing for myself, I often find the former to be a seriously biased "interpretation" rather than a fair account. For example, a parent will say something about wanting history taught accurately and neutrally rather than from an ideological viewpoint - and the commenter will interpret that as the parent really wanting the school to omit slavery from the curriculum. The parent didn't actually say that - but the activist just conveniently knows that's what's really in their hearts.
(By the way, I think that legislatively trying to prevent CRT from being taught is likely a bad idea - this discussion is not about that, tho, but about the assertion quoted above regarding parents at school board meetings)
But - the presence of misrepresentation in some (or even many) cases doesn't mean that there are no other cases where parents really are calling *all* teaching of Black history (or racial history) in schools "CRT" - rather than calling out only the subset of such teaching which they feel is biased by CRT. So I'm willing to explore that.
So the first step is finding one good example. A second step would be trying to cooperatively assess the prevalence. If it takes a lot of work to find such a single example, the cases which fit your characterization quoted above may be rare; if it's easy to find multiple examples, they may be common.
I'm open to anybody else also finding examples of parents at school boards who consider all forms of teaching Black/racial history to be "CRT" (distinct from saying asserting that the way it's being taught at a particular school is framed by CRT like ideologies).
My prediction is that people who search for examples of that may find that the videos they do discover are not nearly so cut and dried as they remembered them, and some biased interpretation is required to make them fit the characterization - like imputing unknowable motive to the parents, projecting what the parents *really* want (in one's imagining). If that's the best people can find, let's examine those videos together. But I'm hoping for a more solid example(s) where it would be clear to a neutral observer that the parents consider all teaching of Black/racial history to be "CRT".
Also - if anybody does start searching, and discovers that they cannot actually find any good examples, I would expect silence, but I can hope that they would report back on their lack of success.
"Apologies for not agreeing with you this time but not for my knowledge of working the ground game against CRT before it was on the national stage. Because you didn't hear of it before Rufo took it national doesn't mean it wasn't already a problem on a national level."
š No worries, we don't have to agree every time. I love that you guys keep me honest. But what you're saying here just doesn't square with the facts.
First, you can literally see online interest in CRT (which was almost non-existent for decades) spike around June 2021 (https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=%2Fm%2F06d76c). Rufo wrote his tweet in March 2021. The needle first started to move in late 2020, you guess it, around the time George Floyd was killed.
Second, I didn't claim *Rufo* said CRT was an obscure legal theory from the 70s, CRT *is* an obscure legal theory from the 70s. It was conceived as a tool for analysing how the legal system perpetuates racial inequality. There are a few schools of thought that have come from some of the scholars involved in that original work, Crenshaw's "whiteness studies" springs to mind, but they're not the same thing.
And third, and most relevant, Rufo's tweet spells out in so many words his plans to "put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category." That he has "decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans." If his own words about what he did don't convince you, I guess mine aren't likely to either.
To be absolutely clear, Iām not saying critical race theory is correct. All critical theories suffer from similar fundamental flaws. Sowell, who though wonderful isnāt infallible (while I'm not a conservative seeking a conservative audience, I have a pretty good knowledge of Sowell's work), may well have taken issue with some of Bellās work. I've read some, but not enough to have a strong opinion. But it has nothing to do with the reintroduction of segregation in schools. It's not the 1619 project. It's not teachers asking kids to āconfess their whitenessā in classrooms. It has nothing to do with BLM's disinformation about police brutality. And it's only tangentially related to DEI, which really has its roots in affirmative action.
Again, Rufo was extremely effective in convincing people that CRT was all of these things too. It appears he's convinced you. And as time went by, the term was applied to more and more things, even by people on the left, that were nothing to do with CRT.
But again, here we are arguing about what CRT is, instead of focusing on the "various cultural insanities" that Rufo "froze under its brand." Rufo did this so that it would be more difficult to talk about specifics, and instead, people would just react to all kinds of different issues as if they were the same. This is extremely beneficial for somebody trying to fight a culture war, but not for meaningful discourse.
"Where does the term 'whiteness' come from? CRT."
No. People had been talking about white people or "the white race" long before CRT. In fact, the concept of "being white" stems all the way back to the 1800s. But "whiteness studies", the idea of "whiteness" as a form of identity, only appeared in the early 1980s. None of Bell's work included the term. It is, as I said, quite distinct from CRT.
The 1619 project focuses almost exclusively on slavery. So that kind of language isn't surprising. But again, the idea that slavery is foundational to America is far older than CRT or Nikole Hannah-Jones. Heck, read Alexander Stephens' 1861 Cornerstone speech.
And yes, there's a strong argument to be made that desegregation *did* fail. That's not to say that he wanted segregation to continue, but that he wanted desegregation to actual lead to an integrated America. If you were a black scholar in the 70s, you could very reasonably argue that this had failed. And that the powers that be were working very hard to ensure that black people didn't succeed. There's simply no way to pin the reintroduction of segregation in schools on his work.
So no, as this conversation is demonstrating, Rufo didn't make it easier to talk about the specifics. Because it made people think that a whole bunch of unrelated things were all "CRT." Again, he literally spells out that he's doing this. Specifics like whiteness studies and racial affinity groups and and DEI and desegregation and especially racism, are much harder to talk about if they're all believed to be the same thing or even coming from the same root.
"Dr. Bell did not share MLK's dream and neither do his ideological children."
Well, you're right about that. But let's be very clear, I'll bet he was a lot closer to MLK's vision than Rufo or, to be fair, most conservatives today. Yes, MLK believed in race blindness at the individual level. But he also believed in affirmative action and reparation for slavery. He also believed in Universal Basic Income for the poor (regardless of skin colour).
So let's be very clear about his too, if King were alive today, plenty of the people who just looove repeating his "content of their character" quote would treat him with just as much disdain as they treat Kendi. If not more.
Whiteness studies is not a "child" of CRT (Wikipedia is wonderful for many things, but not for use was an authoritative source on academic literature). It is a separate field of academia, devised by one of the people who contributed to the original body of work known as CRT.
CRT uses a racial lens because it was designed to look at how the legal system produced and sustained racial inequality. It was focused specifically on this narrow field. Again, I'm not arguing that CRT got all of its conclusions correct. But broadening that philosophy to encompass everything (I don't deny that some people have done this) isn't what the original work of CRT was about.
Finally, whether white flight and the closing of certain black schools led to a more tolerant society depends very much on where you live and what colour your skin is, no? It's easy to look at desegregation with 8- years of hindsight and say what was best. But at the time, it's easy to understand why some black people saw it as a failure. Again, depending on where you live, you could argue that it's been a failure today.
Marla, I think you've made an excellent summary, thank you.
One key problem with discussing what's been happening in our culture is legitimate as well as bad faith confusion of labels vs concepts. Rather than discuss the concepts, some folks prefer to attack the labels in what I perceive to be a diversion tactic.
After several attempts ("political correctness", "successor ideology", "intersectionalism", "identitarianism", "wokism", "neo-progressivism"), I believe the best term for the ideology in question today is "Critical Social Justice Ideology", which I will abbreviate CSJI. It's descriptive, non-pejorative, and becoming recognized by both sides. The battle over labels, however, is illustrative.
The manifestation CSJI in the area of race is an example. People who have bothered to read Robin DiAngelo, Ibram X Kendi, Delgado and Stefancic, the 1619 project, etc tend to perceive, correctly in my view, a general sociopolitical framing shared by these sources. But what can one call that common thread, without listing a 14 syllable compound collection every time?
Many parents and critics wound up using "CRT" as a label of convenience for that whole political ideology of race, which they perceived as emerging in schools, workplaces and society.
Then other people attacked that, pointing out correctly that while Robin DiAngelo's work, Kendi's work, the 1619 project's framing, and such might have been partly inspired by CRT, technically they are not CRT per se - GOTCHA!!!
In my view, that latter was both technically correct, but more importantly a bad faith attempt to avoid discussing the real issues. There is little real and honest confusion about the socio-political framing being referenced, but one side can pretend that there's nothing to discuss because the other side is using "CRT" too loosely.
It's like responding to a citizen objecting to having a smelly sewer plant put in their neighborhood by saying "well, technically it's a primary pre-colloidal treatment plant, so your complaint is ignorant and we don't need to listen to it" (even though the plant will be smelly just as you say). It's using technical terminology to prevent honest engagement, not to facilitate it.
Of course, Critical Race Theory is an expansion upon the earlier Critical Legal Studies, developed beyond a legal theory of interest to some lawyers, into a political theory about the general role of race in society whose concepts (albeit unlabeled as such) should be taught in elementary schools - but the same side that want to be persnickety about the technical definition of CRT sometimes still pretends that CRT today is still merely a legal theory.
In that (often deliberately) confused semantic space, there is a functional need for a common label for communication about the thematically connected set of political perspectives about race. Rufo chose to use "CRT" for that label, broadening its colloquial usage beyond academic precisions to include relevant contemporary themes derived from DiAngelo, Kendi, Hanna-Jones - as well as CRT per se.
If anybody has a better umbrella term than "CRT" to offer for those interwoven political threads, please do so. Until then, picking on the colloquial label for a real phenomenon for its academic imprecision serves largely to avoid engagement with the phenomenon itself.
If any readers think that having an umbrella terms makes it too difficult to discuss components of the asserted collection, please explain. I think we all know what's meant however, and can easily discuss Kendi per se within that umbrella when relevant.
If a parent at the podium says "I object to the way the school is teaching CRT as factual truth in classrooms", I think it's disingenuous to respond "You don't even understand the nuances of academic Critical Race Theory per se, so your critique can be dismissed as ignorance", rather than making a good faith attempt to address WHAT IS OBJECTIVELY BEING TAUGHT, regardless of the precision of the label.
If one wishes, more as a minor sidenote than as a core response, to note that "when teacher X taught Y to the kids as fact, they were actually presenting their interpretation of Kendi, which technically is not CRT per se", that's OK (if pedantic) - but using that tactic to avoid having the discussion about what the teacher was teaching is not OK.
In this context, I think that making a big deal of Rufo's openly stated desire to generalize the term "CRT" in the (colloquial) public mind to include related but technically distinguishable political racial perspectives, winds up being (accidentally or intentionally) yet another "look over there" distraction to unimportant things, distracting for the real issues at play.
Steve> "Rufo did this so that it would be more difficult to talk about specifics"
Marla> "Rufo made it EASIER to talk about specifics"
Steve, could you give a few examples of where you found it more difficult to talk about specifics?
I personally would have absolutely zero problem discussing, say, Ibram X Kendi's prescriptions of present and future discrimination to remedy past discrimination, because Rufo wanted to expand the colloquial term "CRT" to include related concepts like those of Kendi. Nor would I find it difficult to discuss differences between how DiAngelo, Kendi, and the general public conceive "racism".
The closest I can relate is that if I wanted to discuss Bell's concepts, I might need to identify them with Bell, or perhaps to say "CRT per se" in some sentences (to distinguish the academic from colloquial usages). But that's a small cost for me, hardly a major difficulty. Your experience may differ as a writer, and perhaps you have often had such difficulty.
Let's look at another area. Does the existence of an umbrella term like "feminism" make it more difficult for you to discuss specific elements thereof?
"Steve, could you give a few examples of where you found it more difficult to talk about specifics?"
I already did so in the conversation with Marla:
"Specifics like whiteness studies and racial affinity groups and and DEI and desegregation and especially racism, are much harder to talk about if they're all believed to be the same thing or even coming from the same root."
What ended up happening, and what still happens in some cases, is that a whole variety of topics, some good, some not, some necessary, some not, were all tarnished with this single label. All diversity initiatives and sensitivity trainings, all discussions of racism that went beyond KKK style racism, all discussions of slavery and its impact today, all of them were "turned toxic" to use Rufo's phrase, because most people aren't interested in picking apart the nuances of these topics.
As I've said many times, the Kendis and DiAngelos of the world have at least as much responsibility to bear for the racial exhaustion they created. But that doesn't mean Rufo wasn't transparently dishonest and that he didn't also create a worse discursive climate.
In human intellectual organization there is perpetual tension between the lumpers and the splitters. There is a positive role for each, if we avoid excesses which become illogical.
> "Specifics like whiteness studies and racial affinity groups and and DEI and desegregation and especially racism, are much harder to talk about if they're all believed to be the same thing or even coming from the same root."
OK, we have:
(1) whiteness studies
(2) racial affinity groups
(3) DEI
(4) desegregation
(5) racism
I would agree with you that it makes no logical sense to lump all of those as essentially the same thing.
However, in all my reading and watching, you are the first person I've ever seen lump those disparate things - seemingly only for the purpose of discrediting such a grab bag collection. Or to be more specific, I've never seen them all lumped under the label "CRT" - by Rufo or anybody else.
If you can reference any substantial body of thought (or an influential individual like Christopher Rufo) which considers "whiteness studies" to be pretty much the same thing as "desegregation", much less calls them both CRT, I will stand corrected. Otherwise it comes across as an argument which has not yet been fully thought out and needs some rethinking.
The concept of proper lumping is to collect things which share substantial commonalities together, and stop there - like squirrels of various species. The assertion behind having a grouping (or a common umbrella term) is in fact to illuminate the shared characteristics, not to pretend there are not also differences.
Somebody artificially throwing a snail species in with the squirrels in order to discredit the concept of squirrels is not illuminating what they think it is.
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But I honestly don't see how even that makes it more difficult to discuss; the observation that squirrels have some commonalities in no way prevents one from discussing characteristics of individual species or differences between them.
Likewise, I could easily write a critique of "whiteness studies" which is specific to that subset, distinct from my critique or approval of desegregation. What's the problem? I'm not trying to be difficult, I just honestly don't see the difficulty yet.
(For the record, I think that eliminating separate drinking fountains was a good thing, but vastly different in effect and dynamics than attributing "logical thinking" to whiteness; and I have zero difficulty distinguishing them)
Now, would I say that "whiteness studies" and "racial affinity groups" in the workplace are connected? Yes, I see a substantial interweaving on multiple levels (eg: philosophical connections as well as being promoted largely by the same DEI trainers). Given the degree of ideological and practical commonality between those sociopolitical themes, I think they can reasonably be discussed under a meaningful larger umbrella when discussing those commonalities; and discussed individually when focusing on distinctions.
I don't find doing that "difficult" in the least, but I'm willing to try to understand better if anybody wishes to elaborate on the perceived problem.
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In any further discussion, let's distinguish between a particular proposed grouping (or label) which we wish to assert is flawed, versus abandoning conceptual groupings (or labels) in general. So we could discuss whether there really are meaningful commonalities between whiteness studies and workplace racial affinity groups or not.
Or one might sometimes lump whiteness studies and racial affinity groups together (under the loose label of "CRT" or otherwise), but argue that Kendi's prescription of present and future discrimination as the cure for past discrimination is distinct and should not be grouped with the first two, because the latter has very different and distinct philosophical roots, operational dynamics, effects on society, or promoting advocates. (I would likely argue the opposite, but I'm happy to hear arguments for not grouping them). But I would argue that desegregation IS substantially different, and does not belong under a common label (including CRT).
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Another facet. Perhaps you can name a specific real world program which you think is producing good results, but which you have found to be difficult to discuss, because Rufo has asserted that it's the same as, or meaningfully derives from the same roots as, other programs which you find damaging to society. Say, a helpful pre-school literacy program which has been mistakenly lumped as "CRT" (and thus falsely accused of toxicity), when in practice it has no meaningful connection to the negative things also lumped as "CRT". I'm honestly casting about for real world examples of the deleterious effect you are attributing to Rufo, the difficulty in discussing topics.
"Perhaps you can name a specific real world program which you think is producing good results, but which you have found to be difficult to discuss, because Rufo has asserted that it's the same as, or meaningfully derives from the same roots as, other programs which you find damaging to society."
I think a consistent conceptual divide between us is that you seem to think things like this are the only standard by which a claim can be judged.
As you know, I've had countless conversations about race and racism. I've spent countless more hours reading articles and listening to conversations and various podcasts and videos. I've seen people describe all of these things and more as CRT countless times. I've seen school board meetings where enraged parents called all teaching about America's racial history CRT. And these misconceptions lead to policy in schools and laws like the "anti-CRT" bills, that don't actually mention CRT, but nonetheless became a culture war symbol for people both for and against tackling racial issues.
But how do I convey all of that to you? Especially in a comment?
It would take hours to put together enough "evidence" of all this to satisfy someone who was unaware of it. And even if I pointed to a specific real-world example, you would likely, quite reasonably, say, "well this is just one example."
It's like asking me to provide evidence to convince someone that racism exists with a Google search. I could point to various racial disparities, but how could I prove that they were caused by racism? I could highlight a few hate crimes, but how could I prove intent or pervasiveness? And how could I capture the millions of subtler issues that a Google search won't reveal?
I'm not advocating for a hearsay or "lived experience" approach to social issues, I hope I've made that clear enough in my various writings, but if you only accept straight-line "this incontrovertibly leads to that" connections, you'll miss countless meaningful societal effects. At least until it's far too late to do anything about them. The only solution to this, I think, is to be more directly hands-on.
This kind of goes back to our conversation on rationality. Rationality is important. We agree completely about that. But it's never going to give you a complete picture. Human beings and society in general are far messier than that.
Later: Second option, Steve: find an example where people are calling desegregation "CRT" as you assert.
That would indeed be uninformed and ironic, since CRT (colloquial usage or academic usage) is closer to the move towards resegregation.
Let me be clear that conceptually, it's quite possible for people to expand "CRT" to include not just fairly closely related framings like DiAngelo or Kendi or Hannah-Jones present, but also very different concepts [like desegregation] whose inclusion in that category would be meaningfully wrong and misleading, and if we find that to be happening I will join you in decrying such illogic. I'm just questioning whether that's happening often enough to have any importance; and examples could help shift my appraisal.
The kind of example I have in mind could include things like this: California, along with other states, has eliminated the funding disparity beween school districts based on differing local tax revenues (which depend on the local appraisals times the precentage tax rates which taxpayers are willing to shoulder for the value of education). The state adds more funds to see that all districts have the same base rate, and then adds 20% more to the budgets of underperforming districts. That's pretty much traditional liberalism at play, and should NOT be lumped in under any concept of CRT (colloquial or academic). Nor have I ever seen it so conflated, but if somebody could find such an unreasonable expansion of "CRT", I'll be glad to join in correcting it.
(Aside: Sadly, this policy of seeing that the poorest districts actually receive the highest per student funding, which I support and had much hope for, has not budged the needle much in terms of academic outcomes, so far. It appears that funding differences were not as large a causative factor for the disparities as imagined and hoped.).
Steve, I understand and sympathize with the difficulty of organizing a solid presentation. I will work with you to ease that burden, and to the degree that it makes sense, share it.
How about a simpler starting point:
> "I've seen school board meetings where enraged parents called all teaching about America's racial history CRT"
Great, could you provide a link to one such of the multiple such recording which you have watched? Multiple would be better, but let's start with one.
I've watched some videos too (obviously not all of the hundreds or thousands online), and I've never actually seen parents object to all teaching of America's racial history, or call all of it CRT. What I HAVE encountered is progressives impute that to them. But I'm sure that we have watched different videos (ie: you've seen some I haven't), and I'm very willing to learn, so I'd like to see an example which fits your quoted words above.
If it's common enough to have a meaningful effect on the national discourse (rather than a rare anomaly with little societal effect), such examples should be easy to find. I'm not asking you to do my work for me - I HAVE already watched a number of videos, I just didn't find any matching your characterization yet, but I can't prove a negative. If you have found such videos, then please share.
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Let me give you an example of the distortion which I do find, nearly every time I explore some CSJ issue in detail. The progressive press was all atwitter with characterizations of Florida as forcing teachers to justify slavery, since it was actually good for the slaves because they learned skills. So I read through the entire Florida curriculum guidance on the subject for K12 (ie: the specific source cited by the activists). It was actually pretty comprehensive (in line with their guideline for other subjects). It was FAR from suppressing teaching about slavery or Jim Crow, more the opposite. Critics mined it for ONE sentence, a minor clarification note rather than direct guidance. The critics were, in my best intellectual honestly, grossly distorting the Black History curriculum, with extreme out-of-context cherry picking, omitting the much stronger counterpoint to their characterization. I'll be glad to go through the Fla Black history curriculum guidance with you (it's a few pages out of a document covering many subjects), to see if you believe it's lumping all "racial history" as CRT or prohibiting the teaching of it. After we deal with this.
I mention this, which is distinct from parents at school board meetings, just as an easily evidenced example of the kind of misrepresentation I have also found dismayingly common in progressive characterizations of such objections at school board meetings.
I see very related misrepresentations and strawman arguments presented about things like the teaching of Black history in other places than Florida of course. If I read the progressive press accounts, and then watch the hearing for myself, I often find the former to be a seriously biased "interpretation" rather than a fair account. For example, a parent will say something about wanting history taught accurately and neutrally rather than from an ideological viewpoint - and the commenter will interpret that as the parent really wanting the school to omit slavery from the curriculum. The parent didn't actually say that - but the activist just conveniently knows that's what's really in their hearts.
(By the way, I think that legislatively trying to prevent CRT from being taught is likely a bad idea - this discussion is not about that, tho, but about the assertion quoted above regarding parents at school board meetings)
But - the presence of misrepresentation in some (or even many) cases doesn't mean that there are no other cases where parents really are calling *all* teaching of Black history (or racial history) in schools "CRT" - rather than calling out only the subset of such teaching which they feel is biased by CRT. So I'm willing to explore that.
So the first step is finding one good example. A second step would be trying to cooperatively assess the prevalence. If it takes a lot of work to find such a single example, the cases which fit your characterization quoted above may be rare; if it's easy to find multiple examples, they may be common.
I'm open to anybody else also finding examples of parents at school boards who consider all forms of teaching Black/racial history to be "CRT" (distinct from saying asserting that the way it's being taught at a particular school is framed by CRT like ideologies).
My prediction is that people who search for examples of that may find that the videos they do discover are not nearly so cut and dried as they remembered them, and some biased interpretation is required to make them fit the characterization - like imputing unknowable motive to the parents, projecting what the parents *really* want (in one's imagining). If that's the best people can find, let's examine those videos together. But I'm hoping for a more solid example(s) where it would be clear to a neutral observer that the parents consider all teaching of Black/racial history to be "CRT".
Also - if anybody does start searching, and discovers that they cannot actually find any good examples, I would expect silence, but I can hope that they would report back on their lack of success.