My article, Do Critical Race Theorists Know What Racism Is?, inspired a range of reactions. Some people, as we saw a couple of weeks ago, felt that a teacher’s right to teach racism (as opposed to teaching about racism) should override a child’s right to an education free from it. Some (most?) were as mystified as I was that race education has reached such a low point that we’re debating whether kids should be learning that one race is superior to another.
Usually the "everyone who disagrees with me is stupid" people have PHD after their name and mention critical thinking. This is different. She's like the crackheads in the Quick-Trip parking lot near the methadone clinic asking for money. I'm not going to read it twice and I confess that I skimmed. Thanks for the laugh on an otherwise bad day.
Yeah, there's a sub-genre of the "everyone who disagrees with me is stupid" crowd who don't want to go to the trouble of getting a PhD, so they just hide their ignorance behind word salad and condescension. Sadly they get called on it rarely enough that it's a workable strategy on the internet.
Hmm. How not to use words. But Steve, back on topic: I oppose CRT and the way race and racism is being presented to students for what seem to be almost unique reasons which I think you mostly or entirely share. I don't know if the conservative and Republican opposition is quite as ignorant and evasive of the real issues and partisan as is claimed in the article below, but from my POV this is a straw man and I agree with the author's criticisms in this regard. Rufo is doing nothing better than guaranteeing that every blue state will be subjecting K12 kids to this racist indoctrination. That's half the county, which is more than the Project could have assimilated without the help of ignorant partisanship.
I oppose this "Project" (let's call it), because I think it is reversing our progress in conquering racism. It's like racism was diminishing on about as good a schedule as can be expected, (given that the vast majority of people cannot change their minds on fundamental issues past the age of about 35 and therefore some generations must pass before something like racism is eradicated as much as it realistically can be eradicated), and this Project rose up to snatch defeat from the jaws of moral victory.
I am particularly concerned about the effect of such teaching on children. There are friendships between children of different races. (We should be learning from the kids on this matter, not imposing our crazy racial distinctions on them.) I can imagine such a friendship between a black and a white child when they are say 9 years of age. But this year they are learning how different they are. The black child learns they are likely to face life-long difficulties and oppression at the hands of "whites," and the white child learns that they have sins to atone for, not because they've done anything but because of their white skin. What happens to that friendship? The result will not always be the same, and in some few happy cases they will reject feeling "how they are supposed to feel" about each other and continue to be friends. But many will distance themselves from the friendship. Many will interpret their next insignificant children's argument as evidence of the truth of the teaching. And a decade later, they may not remember why they dislike people of the other color skin, for they have been politicised and racialized at an age where they still believe that everything they are taught in school is actual, positive and useful knowledge.
Anyway, this is all to get around to my point, which is that I believe that the real goal of the Program is to increase racism and create tension and division in society. (We can discuss the validity of my contention, but that isn't my point here.) So it is amazing and unusual to read, from someone who is deeply enmeshed and invested in the Project -- an authority, if you will -- what amounts to a clear confession of malevolent intent. He may not realize it, and his readers may not see it, but I think it is screamingly clear if one reads this article of his with discernment and with one's critical faculty fully engaged. (And I mean 'critical' in the proper sense - another word they have warped.) It's this:
Yeah, somebody else pointed me in Tim Wise's direction a couple of months ago (I'd never heard of him before that), and I'm just as unimpressed now as I was then. What a collection of baseless assertions and faulty reasoning, pretty much from the first line. I'm not sure if I'd go so far as to say malicious intent though. At least I didn't see it.
This article is a classic example of something I'm seeing increasingly often from the far left (which is especially frustrating as I'd consider myself at the very least left-leaning), namely that they assert the most evil possible intentions for anybody who is even slightly further to the right than they are, and use that as justification for whatever agenda they feel like pushing.
An especially common tactic is the deep dive back as far as *1786!!* for the most emotive, awful examples of racism possible, because then it can be conflated with racism today, and anybody who dares question the bait and switch is obviously a genocidal racist monster...or something.
I don't really know what to say about articles like this. They're stupid, dishonest, cynical attempts to stir up emotion and tell people that anybody who disagrees with them is evil. They basically boil down to "racism is everywhere, all of the time and is basically the same as it was 150 years ago. Being a black person is a living nightmare that I am bravely trying to save them from. And if anybody disagrees with me, the only possible explanation is that they're an evil racist."
I can't fully express how worthless I think articles like this are, and how much I think the people who write them suck.
Steve, I don't agree with a lot of his conclusions, but I don't see either baseless assertions or faulty reasoning in this article. Could you elaborate?
Just kidding. My reply to Paul wasn't a general critique of Tim's work, as I said, I've only heard of him recently, and the one Paul linked was only the second article of his that I've every read, but I'll run through a few key criticisms.
First of all, right in the second paragraph he claims that "conservatives" want to "ban anti-racist curriculum in schools" which is demonstrably false (sadly it lays the foundation for everything that follows). The bills don't ban anti-racist teaching at all, in fact, some of them actively encourage it. They just stipulate that that education shouldn't teach certain obviously racist ideas, such as that one race is superior to another etc.
I've yet to have anybody explain what the problem with this is, other than that "the right want it so it must be bad".
Then he simply asserts things like this without any evidence:
"The right wishes to paper over injustice in the nation’s past or present, thereby helping to rationalize whatever inequities continue to face us."
and this:
"By downplaying racism as an ongoing force, they hope students will shrug at disproportionate police violence against unarmed Black people, unequal housing access, or disparities in income and occupational status, concluding that such things are somehow the fault of those victimized by them."
There are a whole bunch of serious allegations here, directed at the nameless, faceless "right", and yet he doesn't even try to defend them. He just asserts them so that we know who the bad guys are, and moves on, assuring us that "of course the conservatives would deny this, but never trying to give an honest representation of the opposing position. It's incredibly lazy.
Next he invokes abortion, anti-vax/anti-mask people and Satan himself as justification for suggesting that we should teach children whatever the hell we feel like. Presumably because if they're already being screwed up, what's the harm in making things a little worse?
A little later, as I mentioned to Paul, he goes all the way back to 1786 to dredge up the worst examples of racism he can find without in any way acknowledging how little they have to do with the present day. I'm especially annoyed by this one because it's such a lazy, transparent trick. Of course, talking about racist history is important. But making no attempt to contextualise it is a hack move.
Of course contextualising it makes it harder to make his next argument which is essentially that because very young black children experienced racism 250 years ago, it's fine to teach today's kids about violence and bigotry that I'd agree they aren't ready to grapple with. This is just a ridiculous, callous leap of reasoning.
If you want to teach very young children about racism, that's great, but there are many more valuable ways to do so than talking about injustice which they're obviously to young contextualise. Jane Elliott's "brown eyes, blue eyes" experiment always springs to mind. One of my teachers did a version of it with my class when I was little, and it stuck with me right through to today. I was probably about six or seven.
Tim's whole article is built on the premise that "the right" is this collective of unalloyed racist evil, and everything they say should be interpreted in the worst, most disingenuous, most bigoted light possible. This is childish reasoning at best. And worse, I suspect he's actually smart enough to realise that.
But worst of all, speaking as a writer, is that the article doesn't *say* anything. At least nothing deeper than; "the right is racist and evil" and "it's fine to teach children ideas they're not ready for because some of them are exposed to other ideas that they're not ready for." If you don't already completely agree with him, there's nothing to take away from it, because he's shamelessly strawmanned the opposing argument.
So yeah, this ended up much longer than I planned, but those are my main problems with it 😅
OK, I see your point. I wasn't really focused on his attacks on conservatives, because I was more interested in what he was proposing as teaching methods. It is ridiculous to infer that the Moms for Liberty thought it was OK that horrible things happened to black children because they didn't want their children to hear about them. And his attacks on conservatives in general are pretty scattershot. There is probably at least one conservative somewhere who believes each of these extreme positions, but that doesn't justify attributing them to all conservatives. This unfortunately is the strategy that is used equally on both sides these days: Find one person somewhere on the other side who says something crazy, and then claim that everyone on the other side believes that. Most of the time when conservatives say "you do it too", the liberals legitimately say they are creating false equivalences. ("If you like your doctor, you can keep her" is not equivalent to "the 2020 election was stolen" ) But on this issue I think there is something like a real equivalence.
Take a look, for example, at the various positions that Paul Fiery attributes to Tim on this page. None of them are explicitly stated by Tim, in fact some of them Tim explicitly denies at great lengths. (see my replies to Paul on this page) but Paul says we must attribute them to Tim anyway. Tim at least might be technically correct, because he is making a vague claim, attributed to no one in particular. But Paul puts phrases into Tim's mouth that he never said, and in fact specifically denies. Paul is doing the same thing that he accuses Tim of: Refusing to see Tim as an individual, by assuming that he must believe everything that all the other woke people "of his ilk" believe.
Tim at least does get specific when he talks about the Moms of Liberty's rejection of the teaching of certain historical facts. According to his sources, The Moms were not confronting a school that was teaching "other individuals who merely look like the transgressors ought to be punished because they are white." They were trying to stop the teachers from talking about racist history, which we both agree needs to be done. This does indicate that in some cases at least some of these laws are leading to actual suppression of historical facts, not just of Anti-white racism. (Although his source does say that the Mom's attempts were rejected by the courts)
I don't want to be too hard on Paul here. this is just a blog where we are all thinking aloud, not a published and peer reviewed article. Paul and Tim are both unfortunately following the current methods of "Trial by Lack of Context". Most of the horror that comes from reading the facts they dig up is inspired by the speculations that spring to mind when one reads cherry-picked factual claims. In your response above, you often say things of the form "of course this could be done right if he did X". But you can't really be sure he isn't doing X just from looking at those quotes. There is relatively little detail in this one article but that's largely because he goes into greater detail in this article that is linked to it.
This comment at first only partially got posted, so I wrote an apologetic comment to explain this, at which point the rest of the comment belatedly posted itself, and I had to delete the two apologies.
Sure wish Substack had an edit function in the comments. Then I would add to this post that Tim's article gives a detailed and plausible description about how you can get small children to really understand the impact of racism without traumatizing them. That's what I liked about the article, and why I tended to ignore the vague attacks on Whiteness.
“Sure wish Substack had an edit function in the comments“
Haha, yeah, you and me both.
Yeah, as I said, I’m not trying to make a critique of Tim in general. I know far too little of his work for that. But again, Tim (like many other writers on Medium) seems perfectly satisfied to preach to the converted. In my opinion this is not only a waste of time, it’s detrimental to your message.
Many, many people won’t ignore Tim’s attacks on “whiteness” a concept which is vague and, let’s face it, racist. So any value in what he’s saying is lost to them.
I will never understand this concept of attacking the people you’re trying to reach. Honesty, clarity, forthrightness, absolutely. But leading with “you suck” is very unlikely to convince the people who most need convincing.
I think he sees only color. He doesn't see individuals. And therefore, because Black has been traumatized, White deserves to be traumatized. This seems to be a formulation of "an eye for an eye" and can be denounced just on that basis alone, if one believes the purpose of justice and law is to protect people from people who cause damage, as against the biblical idea of retributive justice that has involved torture intended to "even the score." But there is a worse thing at work here: the denial of individuality. For Tim Wise, it is perfectly legitimate that random white children should be subjected to the same traumas as black children have experienced. This is one step further on the scale of malevolence, for now it's not a question of whether the transgressing individual(s) should be punished or merely kept away from others. Now it's a question of whether other individuals who merely look like the transgressors ought to be punished. And for Tim Wise, the answer is, "Yes, of course, because they are white."
He's an educator - a teacher of teachers. He's not hugely influential in his own person, but it is likely he has multiplied his influence through his effect upon teachers. There are probably some hundreds who act out his warped concept of collective racial retribution in schools far and wide. And there are many more education bureaucrats like him. We will see the result in the form of continued individual racism through at least the next two generations.
"I think he sees only color. He doesn't see individuals. And therefore, because Black has been traumatized, White deserves to be traumatized."
I mean, the thing about that is, he's white!😅 So what the hell is going through his mind? Maybe I'm being too cynical, but I think he's just another one of those people who's discovered that he can earn money and get attention by beating this particular drum:
Let's all pretend that it's still 1800 and black people are being murdered in the streets for fun and denied the most basic opportunities in life. Ignore the black billionaires and the black president and now vice-president. They're the wrong kind of black person. Never mind the (psychologically crippling and demonstrably untrue) message this sends to young black people! Anybody who doesn't want them to entirely define themselves by the colour of their skin is a racist.
Yes, he is white. I first encountered this syndrome about 4 years ago. I know white academics who are, as I eventually realized, playing moral one-upmanship by denouncing any and all other white people for the most minute deficiencies of wokeness.
It's a mess of contradictions: If you are white you must confess to your racism, but the issue is "systemic" racism and "we are not blaming any particular person," except that "whiteness" is a disease you have if you are white and until you confess you are a racist, you are an unrepentant racist, which is worse, but not as bad as claiming you aren't a racist because then you definitely are a racist. Etc.
The highest moral ground attainable here is to be the one that points out the other white racists. It's not that unusual, we saw it under Nazism where the best way to improve your own situation was to denounce everyone you knew. In this case though, the stakes go as high as what Robin D'Angelo has "achieved".
I don't think he's a cynical grifter. I think he's 100% sincere.
"I don't think he's a cynical grifter. I think he's 100% sincere."
Hmm, I'm not sure which possibility is more depressing 😅.
I think you're spot on when you say that "the highest moral ground is to be the one who points out the other white racists," I'm just not sure this is necessarily sincere. I think it's driven by ego and a desire to be seen as "one of the good ones," rather than any deep conviction.
It's easy to learn the things you're supposed to say and parrot them for your daily dose of moral superiority. I've come across people like that many times before:
Yes, I could go with this. We may both be right. There are people who have no sense of identity beyond how (they think) others see them. In this case the desire to be seen as one of the good ones may be the greatest depth of conviction available to them.
So Godwin's law strikes again. I figured it was about time for Hitler's name to pop up. The problem is that the Nazis were evil in so many different ways you can always find some resemblance between the Nazis and someone you hate. This article demonstrates how: https://teedrockwell.medium.com/some-people-i-disagree-with-are-not-nazis-399808857282
Yes, sure, and if this is so, then I guess we can just toss out any argument from anyone that refers to some illustrative example in history! I actually was going to refer to Stalin, but most Americans are more familiar with Hitler -- who I did not actually name, BTW. And my reference to Nazis is not merely "because they are both evil," but specifically to the phenomenon of people who would denounce their friends to the Nazis (same with Stalin), as a way to keep themselves safe from persecution.
What I do suspect is that those white individuals who point at other white people and call them racists and who trade in the collectivist smear of "whiteness" may be themselves actually guilty of racism, or of living off of profits derived by their family from explicit racist policies. I personally know of one such finger-pointing person who eventually revealed to me his own direct history of this, but of course this one fact isn't sufficient to prove anything. Nevertheless, I do suspect this is so. It's a hypothesis that would explain much.
I'm reluctant to put money into his pocket, but I suppose I ought to read his latest. I'd say he's gone from the pretense of "most white people" to the thoroughly collectivist concept of "whiteness," where there is no need to differentiate between individuals of the same skin color. How else can he blithely say that white children deserve to be psychologically damaged by saddling them with blame and guilt and responsibility for things that were done in the past by entirely different individuals who also happen to be white?
I remember as a child, I first heard about racism in the form of a story about a lynching. (I was in Canada and had never met a black person; it was all news to me.) The villains were not presented primarily as white, but as ignorant southerners down there in the primitive south of the USA, and the story was definitely set in the past, not in the "past is present" style of today. This allowed me to empathize with the victim, who was an innocent black person that the enraged racist mob grabbed hold of and executed by hanging. I had several levels of reaction to this. I understood that a mob lynching was unjust even if the person were guilty because everyone has a right to a defense and to due process. (I understood this at the level of a 10 year old, but I grasped the essentials of it.)
What hit me with far more emotional force was the greater injustice that they'd grabbed "just any passing black man" without in any way proving that he was responsible for the crime. This struck me as an impossible level of injustice. It hit home because all of us have had the experience as children of being accused of something we didn't do, or of being punished for fighting when we were actually defending ourselves against some bully, etc. And it hit home on an existential level, because it showed that any one of us could be in this situation if the rule of law were to collapse and vengeful mobs roamed the streets. And it hit me on an empathic level, for I could imagine the helpless rage of righteous frustration the innocent man must have felt as the rope was slipped around his neck.
Well here we are, at a point in history where lynching by racial association is becoming a matter of public policy. Oh, there is no rope involved. This "punishment" has been transformed into more acceptable forms. White children may be psychologically punished for the sins that unrelated white adults perpetrated. The polarity of color has been reversed: Now a white person is always guilty and a black individual is always innocent. The horrific principle remains the same. There is no individuality. There is only white and black, and we know simply by skin color who "deserves" punishment, even if they are mere children.
It's crazy. I suppose I should post this as a response to Time Wise, though he seems entirely impervious to criticism. And he's right about most of his critics: The criticism he and the Project get from the partisan collectivist religious right is as flawed as he himself is. He need pay no attention to my lone voice, because I have no political constituency at all, and he may be unable to grasp what I'm complaining about anyway.
After reading one of his books I found no reason to read another or his Medium articles. It's over thing to drone on about a problem without a genuine attempt at a viable solution. That is common today. I objected to his give up, it's futile message. A Grand Wizard Klansman would love the guy. Dave your money.
It seems to me that what you call reading with "discernment and with one's critical faculty fully engaged." is actually projecting opinions on to him based on how he reminds you of other people "of his ilk". What you are saying is true of writers like DiAngelo and Walter Rhein. But at least one of the positions you attribute to him is specifically contradicted in the very article you cite above. You say "the white child learns that they have sins to atone for, not because they've done anything but because of their white skin." Tim Wise says. "we could easily short-circuit such guilt by teaching students about white anti-racist allies from the colonial era to the present. Such persons prove that whites have joined in solidarity with people of color to fight racism. This, in turn, undermines the notion that whites are inherently oppressive, providing an antidote to any potential white shame." He has a link at this spot to an article titled "How to teach about racism without guilt or shame", which lists numerous historical examples of whites who have fought racism in the past, and says their stories must be included in any history of racism or slavery. So not only does he reject the idea that all white people are evil, he provides documented arguments proving that they aren't.
Teed, I'm sharing my opinions about Tim Wise in these comments, not writing a scholarly and thoroughly researched treatise on his writing. That said, in my further opinion, there can be little doubt after reading several of his articles on Medium that he considers an individual's identity as secondary to their racial collective, and therefore he sees individuals as morally interchangeable elements representing their race, color, sex, etc. I judge this as reprehensible. I do evaluate things on a scale, collectivism of this kind ranks a 10 for me.
Nevertheless, I am in complete sympathy with Tim Wise and the victims who suffered the injustice when he writes of examples such as:
"Over and again, kids as young as 8 were hanged, set on fire, and shot by mobs — accused of rape, assault, or merely insulting white girls. Others were killed for allegedly stealing from whites or throwing rocks at them."
For me, the fact that this was white against black is a horror because it is real racism, but it vies in my mind with the horror that these racist white people would grab anyone who was black and punish them for the alleged crimes. This **interchangeability**, this cancellation of individuality, seems to me an equally terrible injustice. But it is an injustice no one seems to focus upon, and I would say it is an injustice that many, (not all but IMO the vast majority of those who say they fight racism from the far left), are actually tolerant and even enthusiastic about when the colors are reversed, and when the colors are not reversed, well they just don't highlight the concept involved because this would undermine the project's constant promotion of collective white guilt.
Tim clearly promotes this too. It is right there in the subtitle to his piece: "If Black and brown children are old enough to experience injustice, white children are old enough to learn about it." He doesn't claim that white children will not be traumatized by stories about the terrible things white people have done. No, he is explicitly saying that black kids were hurt, and therefore it is some kind of collective justice that white kids can learn about it. He just fails to add, "even if it fills them with collective guilt and self-loathing."
In teaching children, one should address a child's mind, not their amygdala. But he makes no such distinction. This is how a teacher knows when a child is old enough. Yes, they can "feel" about many things at a very early age. The proper question is, when are they old enough to think about what they are being told?
Now, here we come to the core issue. Please understand, I am not religious nor a partisan of either or any side. But I believe in repairing damage and in improving life wherever I can. I am therefore very much in favor of MLK's prescription to judge by individual character, not by skin. I favor this not because MLK said it, but because it is true and efficacious. I can see how this actually overcomes racism. I've internalized it as a habit of my own. It's not difficult to understand why this works, and why it is the correct and benevolent view.
Although I have asked numerous times of numerous proponents of todays "anti-racism" how it is supposed to remedy racism, I have never received an answer. The question is dodged, usually by reciting yet another atrocity from the past.
It is clear to me that to overcome racism, we must also jettison collectivism. I would be 100% in favor of a massive horizontal and vertical "anti-racist" project if the content of this project were to elevate individual character above race and color. But the content is clearly, indisputably the opposite of this. It is the elevation of color and race and other immutable collective attributes above individuality. So, I don't just "not love it." I utterly despise it, condemn it and want to see it removed from society at all levels. It is designed to do harm and it will increase and perpetuate racism, possibly to the point of destroying everything else we all depend upon.
Now, regarding your counterpoints where Tim inserts exculpatory passages such as the one you quote above: "we could easily short-circuit such guilt by teaching students about white anti-racist allies from the colonial era to the present. Such persons prove that whites have joined in solidarity with people of color to fight racism. This, in turn, undermines the notion that whites are inherently oppressive, providing an antidote to any potential white shame."
I have three things to say here. Please bear with me, I will try to be concise:
1) He first denies the possibility: "But aside from how untrue the allegation is — no curricular material suggests such a thing..." Then he says effectively, but if this were to be the case, "we could easily [remedy it]..." But how would this work in practice? Would his "we" ride their time machine back to those traumatized classes and insert this helpful bit of knowledge? He proposes a remedy for a problem he denies exists, a remedy that would have to be applied at the time the problem is created. I'm thinking you, Teed, of all people can see the flaw here.
2) Yes, and how mendaciously "generous" of him. He doesn't deny that the white kids should feel guilty. Instead, he offers them a path to redemption if they will emulate some unspecified white anti-racist allies. He offers that they can assuage their guilt by serving this particular cause. I mean, how much clearer can his actual methods and motives be? He is doing what any religion does, secular or mystical. He advocates that guilt should be induced, and offers a path to redemption that involves serving the cause he supports. There is even a collection plate, eventually, when they grow up and are able to make donations, just as many guilt-ridden white adults already do.
3) Here is the most devious aspect of his writing though. You are quite right that he frequently inserts contradictory "escape hatches" to maintain a level of deniability against accusations such as I make with my opinions about him. I don't know if you have come across it, but there was one article of his a while back where he discussed CRT and offered that before he had heard of CRT he'd been thoroughly involved
with Critical Theory, which is the Marxist "everything is class struggle" view that CRT's "everything is racist" praxis is modelled upon. So he goes back to Marcuse and all those frustrated Marxists who had, like the Millerites and other adventists, waited in vain for the "inevitable" collapse of capitalism. He's been teaching against individuality and individual freedom and free markets and all else for decades. Part of that whole program holds that reason, logic and consistency must take a back seat to the progress of history. In other words, one says what one needs to say to advance "the cause," and if saying the opposite will sometimes also advance the cause, one says that too, with no concern of contradiction.
So yes, he does sprinkle in some escape hatches here and there. I therefore judge him by the preponderance of his writings, which I evaluate as fully collectivist and racist. As to why a white man is doing this, it's pretty obvious: His color gives him legitimacy, and he delights in placing himself on morally higher ground by scolding other whites. And "it's a living."
He is of course not consistently collectivist either. It is not possible to be consistently collectivist. The game is to be it and to deny being it. The winners are those who do this trick the best.
I'd not bother being annoyed by him, except that I have grandchildren who are going through the education system that his ideas, and yes, those of his "ilk," (by which I mean the many individuals who choose to agree with him), are currently dominating. I don't believe any of these anti-CRT or whatever laws will make any difference. The destructive messaging will be conveyed by those teachers who agree with Tim in the form of tone of voice, selective emphasis and random remarks.
Finally, and not surprisingly, in the article of his at instance here and actually in most of his writing, he fails to consider the effect of such teaching upon the black children in today's classrooms. I know I am not supposed to be able to speak for those of differently colored skin, but the effect of being told that they are surrounded and outnumbered by white people who will inevitably suppress them and oppress them and that their lives will be a constant failing struggle against "whiteness" will be profoundly damaging to them. It is understandable that many of them will internalize a distrust and even a hatred of white people. It is understandable that friendships between white and black children, (which do arise and which adults should be learning from), will be stressed and likely dissolved by this teaching.
How much better it would be if both black and white kids -- all kids -- would be taught that they are individuals first, and that it is their individual ideas and actions that matter in the world and that define who they are, and that this individualistic definition of self should be understood as being of far greater significance than are any visible differences between them. Were this what teachers were teaching, I would have no concern about traumas or broken friendships or psychological problems like hate and guilt and collectivism and **racism** arising from the classrooms of America.
I will agree with Kendi on this one point: You are either with this or against this. There is no middle ground. This is because it is being forced upon us by a massive, well-funded ideological coup working its way through all of our institutions. We either fight it, or we will be engulfed by it. This is the choice. Choose.
Did a search of Makayla on Medium and found this comment attached to a story that is no longer available. "Wow MaKayla! This is a masterpiece. What i can say is you have a great set of storytelling skills. I was caught up reading your story and it just seemed perfect to me.". I think this does refer to the same Makayla, judging from the fact that she deleted her article. No accounting for taste, I guess.
Yeah, she’d actually written a few articles. They were as coherent as you’d expect from her comments here, but a few people seemed to like them. As you say, no accounting for taste.😅
Usually the "everyone who disagrees with me is stupid" people have PHD after their name and mention critical thinking. This is different. She's like the crackheads in the Quick-Trip parking lot near the methadone clinic asking for money. I'm not going to read it twice and I confess that I skimmed. Thanks for the laugh on an otherwise bad day.
Yeah, there's a sub-genre of the "everyone who disagrees with me is stupid" crowd who don't want to go to the trouble of getting a PhD, so they just hide their ignorance behind word salad and condescension. Sadly they get called on it rarely enough that it's a workable strategy on the internet.
Hmm. How not to use words. But Steve, back on topic: I oppose CRT and the way race and racism is being presented to students for what seem to be almost unique reasons which I think you mostly or entirely share. I don't know if the conservative and Republican opposition is quite as ignorant and evasive of the real issues and partisan as is claimed in the article below, but from my POV this is a straw man and I agree with the author's criticisms in this regard. Rufo is doing nothing better than guaranteeing that every blue state will be subjecting K12 kids to this racist indoctrination. That's half the county, which is more than the Project could have assimilated without the help of ignorant partisanship.
I oppose this "Project" (let's call it), because I think it is reversing our progress in conquering racism. It's like racism was diminishing on about as good a schedule as can be expected, (given that the vast majority of people cannot change their minds on fundamental issues past the age of about 35 and therefore some generations must pass before something like racism is eradicated as much as it realistically can be eradicated), and this Project rose up to snatch defeat from the jaws of moral victory.
I am particularly concerned about the effect of such teaching on children. There are friendships between children of different races. (We should be learning from the kids on this matter, not imposing our crazy racial distinctions on them.) I can imagine such a friendship between a black and a white child when they are say 9 years of age. But this year they are learning how different they are. The black child learns they are likely to face life-long difficulties and oppression at the hands of "whites," and the white child learns that they have sins to atone for, not because they've done anything but because of their white skin. What happens to that friendship? The result will not always be the same, and in some few happy cases they will reject feeling "how they are supposed to feel" about each other and continue to be friends. But many will distance themselves from the friendship. Many will interpret their next insignificant children's argument as evidence of the truth of the teaching. And a decade later, they may not remember why they dislike people of the other color skin, for they have been politicised and racialized at an age where they still believe that everything they are taught in school is actual, positive and useful knowledge.
Anyway, this is all to get around to my point, which is that I believe that the real goal of the Program is to increase racism and create tension and division in society. (We can discuss the validity of my contention, but that isn't my point here.) So it is amazing and unusual to read, from someone who is deeply enmeshed and invested in the Project -- an authority, if you will -- what amounts to a clear confession of malevolent intent. He may not realize it, and his readers may not see it, but I think it is screamingly clear if one reads this article of his with discernment and with one's critical faculty fully engaged. (And I mean 'critical' in the proper sense - another word they have warped.) It's this:
https://timjwise.medium.com/students-deserve-the-truth-about-injustice-and-schools-should-teach-it-fdfc988cb133
Yeah, somebody else pointed me in Tim Wise's direction a couple of months ago (I'd never heard of him before that), and I'm just as unimpressed now as I was then. What a collection of baseless assertions and faulty reasoning, pretty much from the first line. I'm not sure if I'd go so far as to say malicious intent though. At least I didn't see it.
This article is a classic example of something I'm seeing increasingly often from the far left (which is especially frustrating as I'd consider myself at the very least left-leaning), namely that they assert the most evil possible intentions for anybody who is even slightly further to the right than they are, and use that as justification for whatever agenda they feel like pushing.
An especially common tactic is the deep dive back as far as *1786!!* for the most emotive, awful examples of racism possible, because then it can be conflated with racism today, and anybody who dares question the bait and switch is obviously a genocidal racist monster...or something.
I don't really know what to say about articles like this. They're stupid, dishonest, cynical attempts to stir up emotion and tell people that anybody who disagrees with them is evil. They basically boil down to "racism is everywhere, all of the time and is basically the same as it was 150 years ago. Being a black person is a living nightmare that I am bravely trying to save them from. And if anybody disagrees with me, the only possible explanation is that they're an evil racist."
I can't fully express how worthless I think articles like this are, and how much I think the people who write them suck.
Steve, I don't agree with a lot of his conclusions, but I don't see either baseless assertions or faulty reasoning in this article. Could you elaborate?
Ugh, you're going to make me read it again?!😁
Just kidding. My reply to Paul wasn't a general critique of Tim's work, as I said, I've only heard of him recently, and the one Paul linked was only the second article of his that I've every read, but I'll run through a few key criticisms.
First of all, right in the second paragraph he claims that "conservatives" want to "ban anti-racist curriculum in schools" which is demonstrably false (sadly it lays the foundation for everything that follows). The bills don't ban anti-racist teaching at all, in fact, some of them actively encourage it. They just stipulate that that education shouldn't teach certain obviously racist ideas, such as that one race is superior to another etc.
I've yet to have anybody explain what the problem with this is, other than that "the right want it so it must be bad".
Then he simply asserts things like this without any evidence:
"The right wishes to paper over injustice in the nation’s past or present, thereby helping to rationalize whatever inequities continue to face us."
and this:
"By downplaying racism as an ongoing force, they hope students will shrug at disproportionate police violence against unarmed Black people, unequal housing access, or disparities in income and occupational status, concluding that such things are somehow the fault of those victimized by them."
There are a whole bunch of serious allegations here, directed at the nameless, faceless "right", and yet he doesn't even try to defend them. He just asserts them so that we know who the bad guys are, and moves on, assuring us that "of course the conservatives would deny this, but never trying to give an honest representation of the opposing position. It's incredibly lazy.
Next he invokes abortion, anti-vax/anti-mask people and Satan himself as justification for suggesting that we should teach children whatever the hell we feel like. Presumably because if they're already being screwed up, what's the harm in making things a little worse?
A little later, as I mentioned to Paul, he goes all the way back to 1786 to dredge up the worst examples of racism he can find without in any way acknowledging how little they have to do with the present day. I'm especially annoyed by this one because it's such a lazy, transparent trick. Of course, talking about racist history is important. But making no attempt to contextualise it is a hack move.
Of course contextualising it makes it harder to make his next argument which is essentially that because very young black children experienced racism 250 years ago, it's fine to teach today's kids about violence and bigotry that I'd agree they aren't ready to grapple with. This is just a ridiculous, callous leap of reasoning.
If you want to teach very young children about racism, that's great, but there are many more valuable ways to do so than talking about injustice which they're obviously to young contextualise. Jane Elliott's "brown eyes, blue eyes" experiment always springs to mind. One of my teachers did a version of it with my class when I was little, and it stuck with me right through to today. I was probably about six or seven.
Tim's whole article is built on the premise that "the right" is this collective of unalloyed racist evil, and everything they say should be interpreted in the worst, most disingenuous, most bigoted light possible. This is childish reasoning at best. And worse, I suspect he's actually smart enough to realise that.
But worst of all, speaking as a writer, is that the article doesn't *say* anything. At least nothing deeper than; "the right is racist and evil" and "it's fine to teach children ideas they're not ready for because some of them are exposed to other ideas that they're not ready for." If you don't already completely agree with him, there's nothing to take away from it, because he's shamelessly strawmanned the opposing argument.
So yeah, this ended up much longer than I planned, but those are my main problems with it 😅
OK, I see your point. I wasn't really focused on his attacks on conservatives, because I was more interested in what he was proposing as teaching methods. It is ridiculous to infer that the Moms for Liberty thought it was OK that horrible things happened to black children because they didn't want their children to hear about them. And his attacks on conservatives in general are pretty scattershot. There is probably at least one conservative somewhere who believes each of these extreme positions, but that doesn't justify attributing them to all conservatives. This unfortunately is the strategy that is used equally on both sides these days: Find one person somewhere on the other side who says something crazy, and then claim that everyone on the other side believes that. Most of the time when conservatives say "you do it too", the liberals legitimately say they are creating false equivalences. ("If you like your doctor, you can keep her" is not equivalent to "the 2020 election was stolen" ) But on this issue I think there is something like a real equivalence.
Take a look, for example, at the various positions that Paul Fiery attributes to Tim on this page. None of them are explicitly stated by Tim, in fact some of them Tim explicitly denies at great lengths. (see my replies to Paul on this page) but Paul says we must attribute them to Tim anyway. Tim at least might be technically correct, because he is making a vague claim, attributed to no one in particular. But Paul puts phrases into Tim's mouth that he never said, and in fact specifically denies. Paul is doing the same thing that he accuses Tim of: Refusing to see Tim as an individual, by assuming that he must believe everything that all the other woke people "of his ilk" believe.
Tim at least does get specific when he talks about the Moms of Liberty's rejection of the teaching of certain historical facts. According to his sources, The Moms were not confronting a school that was teaching "other individuals who merely look like the transgressors ought to be punished because they are white." They were trying to stop the teachers from talking about racist history, which we both agree needs to be done. This does indicate that in some cases at least some of these laws are leading to actual suppression of historical facts, not just of Anti-white racism. (Although his source does say that the Mom's attempts were rejected by the courts)
I don't want to be too hard on Paul here. this is just a blog where we are all thinking aloud, not a published and peer reviewed article. Paul and Tim are both unfortunately following the current methods of "Trial by Lack of Context". Most of the horror that comes from reading the facts they dig up is inspired by the speculations that spring to mind when one reads cherry-picked factual claims. In your response above, you often say things of the form "of course this could be done right if he did X". But you can't really be sure he isn't doing X just from looking at those quotes. There is relatively little detail in this one article but that's largely because he goes into greater detail in this article that is linked to it.
https://aninjusticemag.com/how-to-teach-about-racism-without-guilt-or-shame-6326ca98c3b6
See also the two other articles that I have linked in my response to Paul above.
This comment at first only partially got posted, so I wrote an apologetic comment to explain this, at which point the rest of the comment belatedly posted itself, and I had to delete the two apologies.
Sure wish Substack had an edit function in the comments. Then I would add to this post that Tim's article gives a detailed and plausible description about how you can get small children to really understand the impact of racism without traumatizing them. That's what I liked about the article, and why I tended to ignore the vague attacks on Whiteness.
“Sure wish Substack had an edit function in the comments“
Haha, yeah, you and me both.
Yeah, as I said, I’m not trying to make a critique of Tim in general. I know far too little of his work for that. But again, Tim (like many other writers on Medium) seems perfectly satisfied to preach to the converted. In my opinion this is not only a waste of time, it’s detrimental to your message.
Many, many people won’t ignore Tim’s attacks on “whiteness” a concept which is vague and, let’s face it, racist. So any value in what he’s saying is lost to them.
I will never understand this concept of attacking the people you’re trying to reach. Honesty, clarity, forthrightness, absolutely. But leading with “you suck” is very unlikely to convince the people who most need convincing.
I think he sees only color. He doesn't see individuals. And therefore, because Black has been traumatized, White deserves to be traumatized. This seems to be a formulation of "an eye for an eye" and can be denounced just on that basis alone, if one believes the purpose of justice and law is to protect people from people who cause damage, as against the biblical idea of retributive justice that has involved torture intended to "even the score." But there is a worse thing at work here: the denial of individuality. For Tim Wise, it is perfectly legitimate that random white children should be subjected to the same traumas as black children have experienced. This is one step further on the scale of malevolence, for now it's not a question of whether the transgressing individual(s) should be punished or merely kept away from others. Now it's a question of whether other individuals who merely look like the transgressors ought to be punished. And for Tim Wise, the answer is, "Yes, of course, because they are white."
He's an educator - a teacher of teachers. He's not hugely influential in his own person, but it is likely he has multiplied his influence through his effect upon teachers. There are probably some hundreds who act out his warped concept of collective racial retribution in schools far and wide. And there are many more education bureaucrats like him. We will see the result in the form of continued individual racism through at least the next two generations.
"I think he sees only color. He doesn't see individuals. And therefore, because Black has been traumatized, White deserves to be traumatized."
I mean, the thing about that is, he's white!😅 So what the hell is going through his mind? Maybe I'm being too cynical, but I think he's just another one of those people who's discovered that he can earn money and get attention by beating this particular drum:
Let's all pretend that it's still 1800 and black people are being murdered in the streets for fun and denied the most basic opportunities in life. Ignore the black billionaires and the black president and now vice-president. They're the wrong kind of black person. Never mind the (psychologically crippling and demonstrably untrue) message this sends to young black people! Anybody who doesn't want them to entirely define themselves by the colour of their skin is a racist.
Yes, he is white. I first encountered this syndrome about 4 years ago. I know white academics who are, as I eventually realized, playing moral one-upmanship by denouncing any and all other white people for the most minute deficiencies of wokeness.
It's a mess of contradictions: If you are white you must confess to your racism, but the issue is "systemic" racism and "we are not blaming any particular person," except that "whiteness" is a disease you have if you are white and until you confess you are a racist, you are an unrepentant racist, which is worse, but not as bad as claiming you aren't a racist because then you definitely are a racist. Etc.
The highest moral ground attainable here is to be the one that points out the other white racists. It's not that unusual, we saw it under Nazism where the best way to improve your own situation was to denounce everyone you knew. In this case though, the stakes go as high as what Robin D'Angelo has "achieved".
I don't think he's a cynical grifter. I think he's 100% sincere.
"I don't think he's a cynical grifter. I think he's 100% sincere."
Hmm, I'm not sure which possibility is more depressing 😅.
I think you're spot on when you say that "the highest moral ground is to be the one who points out the other white racists," I'm just not sure this is necessarily sincere. I think it's driven by ego and a desire to be seen as "one of the good ones," rather than any deep conviction.
It's easy to learn the things you're supposed to say and parrot them for your daily dose of moral superiority. I've come across people like that many times before:
https://steveqj.substack.com/p/my-goal-is-to-make-sure-the-white-170
Yes, I could go with this. We may both be right. There are people who have no sense of identity beyond how (they think) others see them. In this case the desire to be seen as one of the good ones may be the greatest depth of conviction available to them.
So Godwin's law strikes again. I figured it was about time for Hitler's name to pop up. The problem is that the Nazis were evil in so many different ways you can always find some resemblance between the Nazis and someone you hate. This article demonstrates how: https://teedrockwell.medium.com/some-people-i-disagree-with-are-not-nazis-399808857282
Yes, sure, and if this is so, then I guess we can just toss out any argument from anyone that refers to some illustrative example in history! I actually was going to refer to Stalin, but most Americans are more familiar with Hitler -- who I did not actually name, BTW. And my reference to Nazis is not merely "because they are both evil," but specifically to the phenomenon of people who would denounce their friends to the Nazis (same with Stalin), as a way to keep themselves safe from persecution.
What I do suspect is that those white individuals who point at other white people and call them racists and who trade in the collectivist smear of "whiteness" may be themselves actually guilty of racism, or of living off of profits derived by their family from explicit racist policies. I personally know of one such finger-pointing person who eventually revealed to me his own direct history of this, but of course this one fact isn't sufficient to prove anything. Nevertheless, I do suspect this is so. It's a hypothesis that would explain much.
I bought one of his books years ago. My review. https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1YI4BI8DA0FEM/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B0051BN2GC
I'm reluctant to put money into his pocket, but I suppose I ought to read his latest. I'd say he's gone from the pretense of "most white people" to the thoroughly collectivist concept of "whiteness," where there is no need to differentiate between individuals of the same skin color. How else can he blithely say that white children deserve to be psychologically damaged by saddling them with blame and guilt and responsibility for things that were done in the past by entirely different individuals who also happen to be white?
I remember as a child, I first heard about racism in the form of a story about a lynching. (I was in Canada and had never met a black person; it was all news to me.) The villains were not presented primarily as white, but as ignorant southerners down there in the primitive south of the USA, and the story was definitely set in the past, not in the "past is present" style of today. This allowed me to empathize with the victim, who was an innocent black person that the enraged racist mob grabbed hold of and executed by hanging. I had several levels of reaction to this. I understood that a mob lynching was unjust even if the person were guilty because everyone has a right to a defense and to due process. (I understood this at the level of a 10 year old, but I grasped the essentials of it.)
What hit me with far more emotional force was the greater injustice that they'd grabbed "just any passing black man" without in any way proving that he was responsible for the crime. This struck me as an impossible level of injustice. It hit home because all of us have had the experience as children of being accused of something we didn't do, or of being punished for fighting when we were actually defending ourselves against some bully, etc. And it hit home on an existential level, because it showed that any one of us could be in this situation if the rule of law were to collapse and vengeful mobs roamed the streets. And it hit me on an empathic level, for I could imagine the helpless rage of righteous frustration the innocent man must have felt as the rope was slipped around his neck.
Well here we are, at a point in history where lynching by racial association is becoming a matter of public policy. Oh, there is no rope involved. This "punishment" has been transformed into more acceptable forms. White children may be psychologically punished for the sins that unrelated white adults perpetrated. The polarity of color has been reversed: Now a white person is always guilty and a black individual is always innocent. The horrific principle remains the same. There is no individuality. There is only white and black, and we know simply by skin color who "deserves" punishment, even if they are mere children.
It's crazy. I suppose I should post this as a response to Time Wise, though he seems entirely impervious to criticism. And he's right about most of his critics: The criticism he and the Project get from the partisan collectivist religious right is as flawed as he himself is. He need pay no attention to my lone voice, because I have no political constituency at all, and he may be unable to grasp what I'm complaining about anyway.
After reading one of his books I found no reason to read another or his Medium articles. It's over thing to drone on about a problem without a genuine attempt at a viable solution. That is common today. I objected to his give up, it's futile message. A Grand Wizard Klansman would love the guy. Dave your money.
Sorry about the wrong words thanks to swipe on my phone. Save your money, but it's ok to give it to Dave if you like ;0)
Here are two more examples of Tim's more nuanced writing.
Sure Black Folks can be racist, but there's a catch.
https://timjwise.medium.com/sure-black-folks-can-be-racist-but-theres-a-catch-dc19a7337a71
Stop Fetishizing Protest — The Movement is More Than Marching
https://gen.medium.com/stop-fetishizing-protest-the-movement-is-more-than-marching-39c58c8f82c5
It seems to me that what you call reading with "discernment and with one's critical faculty fully engaged." is actually projecting opinions on to him based on how he reminds you of other people "of his ilk". What you are saying is true of writers like DiAngelo and Walter Rhein. But at least one of the positions you attribute to him is specifically contradicted in the very article you cite above. You say "the white child learns that they have sins to atone for, not because they've done anything but because of their white skin." Tim Wise says. "we could easily short-circuit such guilt by teaching students about white anti-racist allies from the colonial era to the present. Such persons prove that whites have joined in solidarity with people of color to fight racism. This, in turn, undermines the notion that whites are inherently oppressive, providing an antidote to any potential white shame." He has a link at this spot to an article titled "How to teach about racism without guilt or shame", which lists numerous historical examples of whites who have fought racism in the past, and says their stories must be included in any history of racism or slavery. So not only does he reject the idea that all white people are evil, he provides documented arguments proving that they aren't.
Teed, I'm sharing my opinions about Tim Wise in these comments, not writing a scholarly and thoroughly researched treatise on his writing. That said, in my further opinion, there can be little doubt after reading several of his articles on Medium that he considers an individual's identity as secondary to their racial collective, and therefore he sees individuals as morally interchangeable elements representing their race, color, sex, etc. I judge this as reprehensible. I do evaluate things on a scale, collectivism of this kind ranks a 10 for me.
Nevertheless, I am in complete sympathy with Tim Wise and the victims who suffered the injustice when he writes of examples such as:
"Over and again, kids as young as 8 were hanged, set on fire, and shot by mobs — accused of rape, assault, or merely insulting white girls. Others were killed for allegedly stealing from whites or throwing rocks at them."
For me, the fact that this was white against black is a horror because it is real racism, but it vies in my mind with the horror that these racist white people would grab anyone who was black and punish them for the alleged crimes. This **interchangeability**, this cancellation of individuality, seems to me an equally terrible injustice. But it is an injustice no one seems to focus upon, and I would say it is an injustice that many, (not all but IMO the vast majority of those who say they fight racism from the far left), are actually tolerant and even enthusiastic about when the colors are reversed, and when the colors are not reversed, well they just don't highlight the concept involved because this would undermine the project's constant promotion of collective white guilt.
Tim clearly promotes this too. It is right there in the subtitle to his piece: "If Black and brown children are old enough to experience injustice, white children are old enough to learn about it." He doesn't claim that white children will not be traumatized by stories about the terrible things white people have done. No, he is explicitly saying that black kids were hurt, and therefore it is some kind of collective justice that white kids can learn about it. He just fails to add, "even if it fills them with collective guilt and self-loathing."
In teaching children, one should address a child's mind, not their amygdala. But he makes no such distinction. This is how a teacher knows when a child is old enough. Yes, they can "feel" about many things at a very early age. The proper question is, when are they old enough to think about what they are being told?
Now, here we come to the core issue. Please understand, I am not religious nor a partisan of either or any side. But I believe in repairing damage and in improving life wherever I can. I am therefore very much in favor of MLK's prescription to judge by individual character, not by skin. I favor this not because MLK said it, but because it is true and efficacious. I can see how this actually overcomes racism. I've internalized it as a habit of my own. It's not difficult to understand why this works, and why it is the correct and benevolent view.
Although I have asked numerous times of numerous proponents of todays "anti-racism" how it is supposed to remedy racism, I have never received an answer. The question is dodged, usually by reciting yet another atrocity from the past.
It is clear to me that to overcome racism, we must also jettison collectivism. I would be 100% in favor of a massive horizontal and vertical "anti-racist" project if the content of this project were to elevate individual character above race and color. But the content is clearly, indisputably the opposite of this. It is the elevation of color and race and other immutable collective attributes above individuality. So, I don't just "not love it." I utterly despise it, condemn it and want to see it removed from society at all levels. It is designed to do harm and it will increase and perpetuate racism, possibly to the point of destroying everything else we all depend upon.
Now, regarding your counterpoints where Tim inserts exculpatory passages such as the one you quote above: "we could easily short-circuit such guilt by teaching students about white anti-racist allies from the colonial era to the present. Such persons prove that whites have joined in solidarity with people of color to fight racism. This, in turn, undermines the notion that whites are inherently oppressive, providing an antidote to any potential white shame."
I have three things to say here. Please bear with me, I will try to be concise:
1) He first denies the possibility: "But aside from how untrue the allegation is — no curricular material suggests such a thing..." Then he says effectively, but if this were to be the case, "we could easily [remedy it]..." But how would this work in practice? Would his "we" ride their time machine back to those traumatized classes and insert this helpful bit of knowledge? He proposes a remedy for a problem he denies exists, a remedy that would have to be applied at the time the problem is created. I'm thinking you, Teed, of all people can see the flaw here.
2) Yes, and how mendaciously "generous" of him. He doesn't deny that the white kids should feel guilty. Instead, he offers them a path to redemption if they will emulate some unspecified white anti-racist allies. He offers that they can assuage their guilt by serving this particular cause. I mean, how much clearer can his actual methods and motives be? He is doing what any religion does, secular or mystical. He advocates that guilt should be induced, and offers a path to redemption that involves serving the cause he supports. There is even a collection plate, eventually, when they grow up and are able to make donations, just as many guilt-ridden white adults already do.
3) Here is the most devious aspect of his writing though. You are quite right that he frequently inserts contradictory "escape hatches" to maintain a level of deniability against accusations such as I make with my opinions about him. I don't know if you have come across it, but there was one article of his a while back where he discussed CRT and offered that before he had heard of CRT he'd been thoroughly involved
with Critical Theory, which is the Marxist "everything is class struggle" view that CRT's "everything is racist" praxis is modelled upon. So he goes back to Marcuse and all those frustrated Marxists who had, like the Millerites and other adventists, waited in vain for the "inevitable" collapse of capitalism. He's been teaching against individuality and individual freedom and free markets and all else for decades. Part of that whole program holds that reason, logic and consistency must take a back seat to the progress of history. In other words, one says what one needs to say to advance "the cause," and if saying the opposite will sometimes also advance the cause, one says that too, with no concern of contradiction.
So yes, he does sprinkle in some escape hatches here and there. I therefore judge him by the preponderance of his writings, which I evaluate as fully collectivist and racist. As to why a white man is doing this, it's pretty obvious: His color gives him legitimacy, and he delights in placing himself on morally higher ground by scolding other whites. And "it's a living."
He is of course not consistently collectivist either. It is not possible to be consistently collectivist. The game is to be it and to deny being it. The winners are those who do this trick the best.
I'd not bother being annoyed by him, except that I have grandchildren who are going through the education system that his ideas, and yes, those of his "ilk," (by which I mean the many individuals who choose to agree with him), are currently dominating. I don't believe any of these anti-CRT or whatever laws will make any difference. The destructive messaging will be conveyed by those teachers who agree with Tim in the form of tone of voice, selective emphasis and random remarks.
Finally, and not surprisingly, in the article of his at instance here and actually in most of his writing, he fails to consider the effect of such teaching upon the black children in today's classrooms. I know I am not supposed to be able to speak for those of differently colored skin, but the effect of being told that they are surrounded and outnumbered by white people who will inevitably suppress them and oppress them and that their lives will be a constant failing struggle against "whiteness" will be profoundly damaging to them. It is understandable that many of them will internalize a distrust and even a hatred of white people. It is understandable that friendships between white and black children, (which do arise and which adults should be learning from), will be stressed and likely dissolved by this teaching.
How much better it would be if both black and white kids -- all kids -- would be taught that they are individuals first, and that it is their individual ideas and actions that matter in the world and that define who they are, and that this individualistic definition of self should be understood as being of far greater significance than are any visible differences between them. Were this what teachers were teaching, I would have no concern about traumas or broken friendships or psychological problems like hate and guilt and collectivism and **racism** arising from the classrooms of America.
I will agree with Kendi on this one point: You are either with this or against this. There is no middle ground. This is because it is being forced upon us by a massive, well-funded ideological coup working its way through all of our institutions. We either fight it, or we will be engulfed by it. This is the choice. Choose.
It pains me to see the approach I experienced in school gaining momentum, though it makes sense.
The Atlantic has been doing a great series of articles on this that maybe you’ve seen. Here’s one: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/should-black-lives-matter-agenda-be-taught-school/618277/
Yeah, Conor Friedersdorf has been doing great work on this and other topics. Definitely a fan of his.
Did a search of Makayla on Medium and found this comment attached to a story that is no longer available. "Wow MaKayla! This is a masterpiece. What i can say is you have a great set of storytelling skills. I was caught up reading your story and it just seemed perfect to me.". I think this does refer to the same Makayla, judging from the fact that she deleted her article. No accounting for taste, I guess.
Yeah, she’d actually written a few articles. They were as coherent as you’d expect from her comments here, but a few people seemed to like them. As you say, no accounting for taste.😅
I put her last line of word salad into Google, ans got a whole bunch of sites about the Klingon language. So apparently that's Klingon.
I can't believe I didn't even think to do that! Bonus points to you. Which may or may not be good news once I figure out what they're worth.😁