"banning teachers from advocating “any doctrine or theory promoting a negative account or representation of the founding and history of the United States of America,”
Am I the only one alarmed at this? I hope not.
The falsification and sanitization of history is called revisionism and it is immiscible with democracy, in fact it is explic…
"banning teachers from advocating “any doctrine or theory promoting a negative account or representation of the founding and history of the United States of America,”
Am I the only one alarmed at this? I hope not.
The falsification and sanitization of history is called revisionism and it is immiscible with democracy, in fact it is explicitly totalitarian. This goes beyond "spin" and "perspective." This is the explicit dissemination of falsehood. I've even read some of the crazier right wingers saying that slavery was a sweet deal, slaves were fed and sheltered. Never mind that they were worked to death or that the master could take their adolescent daughters to the mansion to be sodomized.
No country has a pristine past and America's has a lot more shame than most. It was one of the last countries to abandon slavery, there was the internment of Japanese-Americans in WWII, native Americans were deliberately infected with smallpox.
The hysteria around CRT is predictable. The wingers claim that it's a form of Socialist indoctrination, that it's being taught to elementary school students, they stop just short of claiming that holding racist views is vital to their identities, which it is.
Yeah, as Marie points out below (and as I do in the conversation), this text isn't in the bill. In fact, I've seen no evidence that it was *ever* in the bill, and nothing like it was in any of the other bills I read while researching the article.
America certainly has plenty to be ashamed of in its history, but this is almost entirely separate to the question of the validity of Critical Race Theory. Again, the question of whether some of the more extreme stuff happening in schools is most accurately described as CRT is irrelevant in my opinion. Nobody cared about CRT until Christopher Rufo but the term in everybody's heads.
The issue is how to improve race education whilst neither hiding the truth nor creating new lies. It feels as if this point is getting lost in the noise.
Yeah... a comment I made on another Substack a few months ago applies here: 'People don’t dislike the far left’s approach to thinking and talking about racism because a sleazeball like Rufo (mis-)labeled it “CRT.” They dislike it because it’s dehumanizing, paranoid, inflammatory, and cultish. They just needed a word for it.'
I remain uncomfortable with calling anything in American politics "left," much less "far left." Far left is peasant collectives. The American political left died in 1939 with revelation of the reality of Stalin's Worker's Paradise and it has never come back.
To call someone like Ocasio-Cortez "far left" doesn't pass the laugh test.
As for the Social Justice Warriors there is nothing at all "leftist" about them; they are outrage junkies and nothing more.
We have reached the point that wanting human freaking decency and justice in governance is regarded in the same light as the killing fields (not far from where I live now).
The trouble with broad and sweeping labels is that none seem to fit. The "left" has not been the least bit liberal for many years and calling them progressive is meaningless. Progress toward what? Opinions vary if it is to something good or bad. Is the "right" conservative? Conserve what? Opinions vary if it is to something good or bad. As I mentioned in another comment, depending upon the individual issue, some would try to assign me to a political tribe, but it would be a lie since I don't check all the boxes on any tribe's statement of ideology.
There are traditional progressive causes like wealth equality, opposition to racism, environmental preservation. But the punch has a dead rat floating in it now as progressivism has come to be identified with grievances and by people who are looking for attention to themselves more than by better lives for all.
Take feminism. Please. What started out as a movement with measurable and tangible goals like wage equality—and achieved some progress toward those goals—quickly became a movement of grievance. where progress couldn't ever be claimed or measured.
When it comes to wage equality I am an ardent feminist; when it comes to "eliminating patriarchal attitudes" I'm not interested. I will continue to advocate for metrical progress but then I don't give a damn about definitions with broad consensus as having more functional utility.
Your personal concept of "left" differs from the common usage in discussion today in the US. Since my writing is motivated by desire to communicate with others based on shared definitions when possible, I will continue to use the definitions with broad consensus as having more functional utility.
The association with a label like "far left" is *always without exception* going to depend on context. There is no absolute and objective framework which transcends time and place. In the Stalinist USSR it will have a different association than in contemporary US usage. If I'm discussion issues with a Stalinist, I'll keep your concept in mind; if I'm discussing things with a contemporary American, I'll use contemporary contextual word definitions.
One of the things I dislike about the "social justice warriors" you reference is how often they focus in distracting word games, rather than agreeing to some shared definitions so we can move into the core of the conceptual disagreement. I'm a bit wary of your framing for similar reasons.
I think your underlying point ("correct" word usage aside) is that the range of political approaches humans have historically adopted exceeds the contemporary American contextual understandings of "far left" to "far right", which is undisputed. Neither Genghis Khan nor Pol Pot fit within the spectrum of contemporary US politics. However, we are not discussing them much today. If we were, I would agree with you that contemporary conceptions of "far left" and "far right" are inadequate. But within contemporary usage, AOC might reasonably be seen as on the far left end of today's mainstream politics, as the terms are used today.
I think you're right. But the point I wish more liberals would understand is that the left is at least as, if not more, guilty of generating that noise.
If we can agree that there is troubling stuff happening in schools (and I think any reasonable person can), then why are so many on the left busy nitpicking about whether it's properly described as CRT or not? Why not address the problem first and worry about terminology afterwards?
I think you've kind of answered that. I would hypothesize that it may be because not everybody is operating in good faith; some participants may use that "nitpicking" as a way to avoid engaging in real discussion, which they are not confident of succeeding at.
A major root of the problem is excessive tribalism. I see neo-progressives smugly saying "opponents of (political) CRT in the classroom are all ignorant and do not even know what (academic) CRT is".
OK, so we bought and read the most widely recommended source, *Critical Race Theory: An Introduction* by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic (very important seminal figures in CRT).
It turns out that most of those smug mockers are ignorant of what CRT says. It's not so much about "accurately" portraying history, as about explicitly overturning the liberal order in favor of a post-Marxist revolution - from their own words.
Rather than defend that to the bulk of the American people who would not buy into it, nitpicking can seem like a useful tactic.
That line was removed from the NH bill… might still be in other states’ bills? I think we’re all alarmed at the overreach of some of this anti-CRT legislation, it’s possible to also be alarmed at some of the anti-racist overreach in the classroom.
"banning teachers from advocating “any doctrine or theory promoting a negative account or representation of the founding and history of the United States of America,”
Am I the only one alarmed at this? I hope not.
The falsification and sanitization of history is called revisionism and it is immiscible with democracy, in fact it is explicitly totalitarian. This goes beyond "spin" and "perspective." This is the explicit dissemination of falsehood. I've even read some of the crazier right wingers saying that slavery was a sweet deal, slaves were fed and sheltered. Never mind that they were worked to death or that the master could take their adolescent daughters to the mansion to be sodomized.
No country has a pristine past and America's has a lot more shame than most. It was one of the last countries to abandon slavery, there was the internment of Japanese-Americans in WWII, native Americans were deliberately infected with smallpox.
The hysteria around CRT is predictable. The wingers claim that it's a form of Socialist indoctrination, that it's being taught to elementary school students, they stop just short of claiming that holding racist views is vital to their identities, which it is.
"Am I the only one alarmed at this? I hope not."
Yeah, as Marie points out below (and as I do in the conversation), this text isn't in the bill. In fact, I've seen no evidence that it was *ever* in the bill, and nothing like it was in any of the other bills I read while researching the article.
America certainly has plenty to be ashamed of in its history, but this is almost entirely separate to the question of the validity of Critical Race Theory. Again, the question of whether some of the more extreme stuff happening in schools is most accurately described as CRT is irrelevant in my opinion. Nobody cared about CRT until Christopher Rufo but the term in everybody's heads.
The issue is how to improve race education whilst neither hiding the truth nor creating new lies. It feels as if this point is getting lost in the noise.
Yeah... a comment I made on another Substack a few months ago applies here: 'People don’t dislike the far left’s approach to thinking and talking about racism because a sleazeball like Rufo (mis-)labeled it “CRT.” They dislike it because it’s dehumanizing, paranoid, inflammatory, and cultish. They just needed a word for it.'
Wow, God, that absolutely nails it! Absolutely perfect.
I remain uncomfortable with calling anything in American politics "left," much less "far left." Far left is peasant collectives. The American political left died in 1939 with revelation of the reality of Stalin's Worker's Paradise and it has never come back.
To call someone like Ocasio-Cortez "far left" doesn't pass the laugh test.
As for the Social Justice Warriors there is nothing at all "leftist" about them; they are outrage junkies and nothing more.
We have reached the point that wanting human freaking decency and justice in governance is regarded in the same light as the killing fields (not far from where I live now).
Fair enough, I take back the use of "far left."
The trouble with broad and sweeping labels is that none seem to fit. The "left" has not been the least bit liberal for many years and calling them progressive is meaningless. Progress toward what? Opinions vary if it is to something good or bad. Is the "right" conservative? Conserve what? Opinions vary if it is to something good or bad. As I mentioned in another comment, depending upon the individual issue, some would try to assign me to a political tribe, but it would be a lie since I don't check all the boxes on any tribe's statement of ideology.
There are traditional progressive causes like wealth equality, opposition to racism, environmental preservation. But the punch has a dead rat floating in it now as progressivism has come to be identified with grievances and by people who are looking for attention to themselves more than by better lives for all.
Take feminism. Please. What started out as a movement with measurable and tangible goals like wage equality—and achieved some progress toward those goals—quickly became a movement of grievance. where progress couldn't ever be claimed or measured.
When it comes to wage equality I am an ardent feminist; when it comes to "eliminating patriarchal attitudes" I'm not interested. I will continue to advocate for metrical progress but then I don't give a damn about definitions with broad consensus as having more functional utility.
Your personal concept of "left" differs from the common usage in discussion today in the US. Since my writing is motivated by desire to communicate with others based on shared definitions when possible, I will continue to use the definitions with broad consensus as having more functional utility.
The association with a label like "far left" is *always without exception* going to depend on context. There is no absolute and objective framework which transcends time and place. In the Stalinist USSR it will have a different association than in contemporary US usage. If I'm discussion issues with a Stalinist, I'll keep your concept in mind; if I'm discussing things with a contemporary American, I'll use contemporary contextual word definitions.
One of the things I dislike about the "social justice warriors" you reference is how often they focus in distracting word games, rather than agreeing to some shared definitions so we can move into the core of the conceptual disagreement. I'm a bit wary of your framing for similar reasons.
I think your underlying point ("correct" word usage aside) is that the range of political approaches humans have historically adopted exceeds the contemporary American contextual understandings of "far left" to "far right", which is undisputed. Neither Genghis Khan nor Pol Pot fit within the spectrum of contemporary US politics. However, we are not discussing them much today. If we were, I would agree with you that contemporary conceptions of "far left" and "far right" are inadequate. But within contemporary usage, AOC might reasonably be seen as on the far left end of today's mainstream politics, as the terms are used today.
Losing the point in the noise IS the point
I think you're right. But the point I wish more liberals would understand is that the left is at least as, if not more, guilty of generating that noise.
If we can agree that there is troubling stuff happening in schools (and I think any reasonable person can), then why are so many on the left busy nitpicking about whether it's properly described as CRT or not? Why not address the problem first and worry about terminology afterwards?
I think you've kind of answered that. I would hypothesize that it may be because not everybody is operating in good faith; some participants may use that "nitpicking" as a way to avoid engaging in real discussion, which they are not confident of succeeding at.
A major root of the problem is excessive tribalism. I see neo-progressives smugly saying "opponents of (political) CRT in the classroom are all ignorant and do not even know what (academic) CRT is".
OK, so we bought and read the most widely recommended source, *Critical Race Theory: An Introduction* by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic (very important seminal figures in CRT).
It turns out that most of those smug mockers are ignorant of what CRT says. It's not so much about "accurately" portraying history, as about explicitly overturning the liberal order in favor of a post-Marxist revolution - from their own words.
Rather than defend that to the bulk of the American people who would not buy into it, nitpicking can seem like a useful tactic.
That line was removed from the NH bill… might still be in other states’ bills? I think we’re all alarmed at the overreach of some of this anti-CRT legislation, it’s possible to also be alarmed at some of the anti-racist overreach in the classroom.