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 al…
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.
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.
--------------
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.
-------
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).
-----
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.
----
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.