And there you go, dodging out of any meaningful conversation. Have fun!

Perhaps we can look for a meeting point. I'm reading the chapter "They are both worse!", in which Žižek points out the third alternative in any dilemma - rejecting both options.

I'm not a great fan of critical theory. I think it works to display power structures and inequity - an important activity - but I don't see it as much use in providing solutions.

So back to liberalism. Given that equity of outcome is fraught, what about working towards equity of opportunity? Might we agree that that would be worthy of consideration?

CRT asserts that race-conscious policies need to be pursued to both combat white supremacy and to create more equality of opportunity. — ToothyMaw

There are numerous problems with CRT, and civil-rights advocacy and agitation too:

a) Race-consciousness is presumably at the core of the problem, so I do not see how increasing race consciousness would help.
b) Inequality and inequity is baked into the existing society, and the structure of the existing society will take several decades to change significantly. Adults who are economically and culturally disadvantaged, (and the older they are, the more this is true) are going to stay disadvantaged. They can not rewind their lives any more than anyone else can, to take advantage of circumstances which would have helped them 10, 20, 30, or 40 years ago.
c) Children who are reared in culturally disadvantaged environments are going to suffer from that disadvantage. By the time a new-born is 12, the changes of undoing a disadvantaged cultural background are small. For example, children who grow up in families where they learn a small fraction of the vocabulary that the majority of children learn, who hear a lot of 'command' and 'negative' expression do less well in school from the start, and by 6th grade, by which time learning to read has shifted to reading to learn, they are unable to perform well.

Obtaining "equality of opportunity" (whatever that means) is likely to take 1 or 2 generations, minimum.

One reads stats in publications that say things like "only 1 out of 30 nuclear physicists is African American". Unless there are a few hundred African American nuclear physicists just waiting for their first break, the percentage of AA nuclear physicists isn't going to change soon--no matter what. A post-doc in physics needs at least 30 years, birth to PhD+, with academic success all along the way. A lot of other top professions take similar periods of time. There certainly some AA undergraduates who could become post docs much sooner, but... not a lot.

African Americans (and other minorities) have far less housing and financial equity than middle class whites. Middle class whites have -- as a group -- been accumulating their advantage for around 85 years (since the mid-1930s). The educational attainment of middle-class whites has helped them accumulate even more equity. A relatively poor African American with white-middle-class economic aspirations has a very steep education / cash deficit to overcome.

What is true for poor culturally disadvantaged blacks is largely true for poor culturally disadvantaged whites, too. The white male 25 or 35 year old high school dropout has poor prospects, white or not. Ditto for a Latinx or Asians. Even at 25, it is probably too late (in practical terms) to change him into an upwardly mobile college-educated success story. So... poor whites and poor black are probably going to stay that way for quite some time--under the best of circumstances.

Hey, you provided a link about ANTIFA accounts. I recently discovered the source of the word "antifa". A WWII German Soldier's recollection of his wartime experience included his capture by the Soviet Army. Soon after their capture, a team of "Antifa" Germans visited the POW camp to talk up communism. "Antifa" was active in Germany during the 1930s. The German soldier-author thought they were probably German soldiers who deserted for a slightly better deal with the Soviets. In the end, they apparently go no such better deal.

I had, up to 2 weeks ago, thought that "antifa" was some sort of 21st century coinage by the left. Nope.

Here's a trick for this thread. Every time a claim is advanced in the name of CRT, quote the scholar (not blog or random twitter account or BLM activist) that said it. In the meantime, here is David Theo Goldberg, just in case people would rather not just, I dunno, make stuff up:

http://bostonreview.net/race-politics/david-theo-goldberg-war-critical-race-theory

I'm not holding my breath though.

Also liberalism sucks, so if it's claims are indeed being disputed, good.

BLM leader Patrice Cullors has openly endorsed the policies of Socialist leaders like Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong and has described herself and other BLM organisers as “trained Marxists”. — Apollodorus

It is usually unwise to take people's claims at face value. Did you know that I am a "trained Marxist" as well? Sort of. $1 and my training certificate will not get me a cup of coffee from a vending machine. Cullors et al are probably well-meaning opportunists. BLM strikes me as a pretty ineffectual organization, as far as actually making changes.

I don't think CRT is clashing with liberalism and I don't understand your argument for saying it does.

We already know that equal and fair treatment of people is insufficient for combatting inequality. The US is seriously lagging behind in this understanding, mostly because of the prevailing attitudes towards capitalism and the culture around capitalism. "Success is something you have to earn, it will not be handed to you". People who overcome the odds are held up as examples of what the average citizen could be if they worked hard enough, the systemic issues are covered up by unrealistic advertisements of meritocracy and the value of hard work.

I can guess through your debate with synthesis that you more or less agree with this, so now I really don't understand how CRT and liberalism are clashing for you.

Freedom of speech is under attack from the media, social media and social justice but I think we can separate these things from CRT. The media is either politically biased or profit-motivated or both, it's simply more profitable to portray a police killing as racist, the circumstances don't seem to matter. Really being biased either way could be profit-motivated. Social media is powerful, it allows for organisation on unprecedented levels between like-minded civilians and that's true of much more serious situations than social justice. Events like the Arab spring come to mind, even the authoritarian governments of the middle east couldn't control the situation, they had to resort to fight or flight. Liberalism actually protects social media users from censorship, even if their free speech effectively makes it more difficult for others to speak their minds but I think this problem is overexaggerated often for political purposes. Social media companies are starting to become more regulated but their freedom has also led to controversies.

I don't think CRT should be judged for what it says, we should judge what people say we should do about it. Does whiteness confer special privileges in the US? Yeah, I'm sure it does. But what impact should that have on the overall narrative? For white or non-white people? And what is the appropriate response? That's where the trouble starts, I don't think we should be getting annoyed about CRT for describing the situation in terms of race, it's reasonable given the context.

BLM strikes me as a pretty ineffectual organization, as far as actually making changes — Bitter Crank

If we go by what Cullors says, their ultimate goal is to replace white people with blacks, men with women and capitalism with communism. So, I think "opportunists" is the correct definition, but I'm less sure about "well-meaning".

As regards "trained Marxists", they come in many different shapes and forms. Some believe in Marxism because they've come to accept its teachings without asking too many questions. Others use Marxism as an excuse to engage in acts of violence, etc. There are big differences between groups, both in terms of ideology and practical activism. But Marxism has a long history of providing "legitimacy" to terrorist groups. Take the Irish Republican Army (IRA) for example.

Great response. I see liberalism and CRT as clashing in a meaningful way when one essentially defines a whole class of people as material objects of their oppression to be torn down instead of using racially conscious policies to address inequity. Also: attacking whiteness, as if it were a thing that could be separated from and decontextualized from the practices and viewpoints of actual white people, seems to go against the (perhaps vaunted) principle of merit that defines liberalism; while white supremacy exists and confers myriad advantages to whites, many of them really have worked hard to get to where they are and this success might be partially explained in terms of culture and individual motivation to succeed.

Liberalism actually protects social media users from censorship, even if their free speech effectively makes it more difficult for others to speak their minds but I think this problem is overexaggerated often for political purposes. — Judaka

Some people don't seem to understand that strong dissent is only allowed by the very thing they despise and fight against. I don't see how anyone can disagree with this.

I don't think CRT should be judged for what it says, we should judge what people say we should do about it. Does whiteness confer special privileges in the US? Yeah, I'm sure it does. But what impact should that have on the overall narrative? For white or non-white people? And what is the appropriate response? That's where the trouble starts, I don't think we should be getting annoyed about CRT for describing the situation in terms of race, it's reasonable given the context. — Judaka

I think that there is a difference between defining the problem in terms of race and defining a class of people as problematic based on belonging to a category. Unless they are billionaires or war criminals; that's okay.

I would love to do more reading but I'm a peasant with no access to scholarly articles.

So back to liberalism. Given that equity of outcome is fraught, what about working towards equity of opportunity? Might we agree that that would be worthy of consideration? — Banno

Of course. We should work towards that without a doubt, and if supposedly discriminatory policies in favor of people of color is the way to do it, I say go ahead.

Only one Maw allowed in this forum

But do you read Zizek?

But do you read Zizek? — ToothyMaw

I have two eyes and a heart, don't I

Critical Race Theory seems to be the boogeyman du jour phrase for conservatives and as typical for conservatives their employment of the phrase is purposefully fuzzy and ambiguous, despite a multi-decade body of academic work behind it. While Liberalism did provide a philosophical justification for individual rights which are arguable indispensable, nevertheless the history behind Liberalism is fraught with violent oppression against non-white ethnicities (and some which we would consider white today), working classes, espoused anti-democracy, anti-egalitarianism sentiments in favor of a select emancipated class. Critical Race Theory can help expose and critique that verifiable history, including contemporary liberalism and even Marxist assumptions, and looks for ways to universalize emancipatory Liberalism without falling back into racialized and class-based demarcation that has typified Liberalism. Charles W. Mill's Black Rights/White Wrongs: The Critique of Racial Liberalism is a good read.

Critical Race Theory seems to be the boogeyman du jour phrase for conservatives and as typical for conservatives their employment of the phrase is purposefully fuzzy and ambiguous, despite a multi-decade body of academic work behind it. — Maw

Good point. This seems to be so that they can shift the goalposts every time that they gain ground or are shown up.

Liberalism did provide a philosophical justification for individual rights which are arguable indispensable, nevertheless the history behind Liberalism is fraught with violent oppression against non-white ethnicities — Maw

Another good point. That's essentially what I was thinking; mere equality before the law can lead to inequitable outcomes due to the accumulation and lopsided application of power; the "emancipated class" will inevitably oppress the disadvantaged. That being said, something like freedom of speech is an overwhelming good; we must have certain liberties, even if these liberties do not strictly promote equity. And if we do have issues with the inequity being propagated under the cover of individualism, we should first focus on the propaganda targeting leftism, which can only be addressed with more speech.

Critical Race Theory can help expose and critique that verifiable history, including contemporary liberalism and even Marxist assumptions, and looks for ways to universalize emancipatory Liberalism without falling back into racialized and class-based demarcation that has typified Liberalism. — Maw

Well said. I think most of us agree on that; that sounds like the way forward.

Charles W. Mill's Black Rights/White Wrongs: The Critique of Racial Liberalism is a good read. — Maw

I'll have to look that up.

I see liberalism and CRT as clashing in a meaningful way when one essentially defines a whole class of people as material objects of their oppression to be torn down instead of using racially conscious policies to address inequity. — ToothyMaw

Also: attacking whiteness, as if it were a thing that could be separated from and decontextualized from the practices and viewpoints of actual white people — ToothyMaw

This is a little ambiguous, is it really "white people" that CRT is trying to tear down? This is seemingly a big premise in your argument but can you substantiate it and go into greater detail on why you think this is the case?

seems to go against the (perhaps vaunted) principle of merit that defines liberalism; while white supremacy exists and confers myriad advantages to whites, many of them really have worked hard to get to where they are and this success might be partially explained in terms of culture and individual motivation to succeed. — ToothyMaw

The acknowledgement of racism goes against the principle of merit? As I said, it is not just about what CRT says, it's about what we do with this information. Should we accuse every successful white person of simply having everything handed to them? No, we can acknowledge they've worked hard to get there, that they are good at what they do while acknowledging that racism exists as something with meaningful consequences.

Overall, I still don't see how liberalism and CRT clash in your view.

This is a little ambiguous, is it really "white people" that CRT is trying to tear down? This is seemingly a big premise in your argument but can you substantiate it and go into greater detail on why you think this is the case? — Judaka

There is a thing called "whiteness studies" related to CRS which seeks to offer an objective definition of "whiteness" that can be decontextualized and hypostatized like I mention in the OP. This feeds into "White Fragility", (https://libjournal.uncg.edu/ijcp/article/viewFile/249/116) which is defined by Di Angelo as "a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves" on the part of a white person. Di Angelo goes on to say that this property, belonging to whites, serves to restore racial equilibrium to those who have been triggered.

That pretty much sounds like an indictment of white people to me: they are so entitled that any skepticism is indicative of (white) fragility. But then again, according to Di Angelo, by making this argument I'm just taking defensive moves to restore racial equilibrium; I'm just a triggered white man.

we can acknowledge they've worked hard to get there, that they are good at what they do while acknowledging that racism exists as something with meaningful consequences. — Judaka

Yeah, I think you are right. You express a nuanced but common sense view here.

I think that Di Angelo has a point, although, I take issue with her phrasing, putting that aside, I think that many people do feel threatened by the idea of racism, they don't know how to cope with being the benefactor of a racist society.

This kind of analysis dances on a tightrope, between using the exact same logic of real racism, to pin behaviours, mentalities, attitudes and so on to a race, ones which may be honest assessments of reality but nonetheless invoke a kind of emotional response. I genuinely think that there's no difference between this kind of characterisation of white people and many of the racist epithets which constitute and perpetuate real racism. On the other hand, it makes sense that within a racist society, the experiences and circumstances for different races create attitudes that need to be discussed.

I still don't see how even "white fragility" or "white privilege" interacts with liberalism, thus, I don't know what the topic is anymore. Personally, I think these kinds of concepts are fine, she is trying to describe reality, I don't think she's trying to tear down white people, even if white fragility was acknowledged by all, I don't see how that would tear down white people, it would just become something to "lookout for". It's not much different than the ideas of implicit bias or internalised racism or whatever.

Di Angelo is probably a huge reason as to why she sees so much white fragility, she's provocative, both in her ideas and her language, I don't know if it's intentional but you couldn't have done a better job at writing this book in a way that angered people more than it did. We can critique her in many ways but the "white race is being threatened!" response is probably the worst. I hope you can see why it sounds bad without it having to be explained.

I don't know much about BLM founders, actually. Or the organization itself, either. I could know more, but I haven't read too much about them.

If we go by what Cullors says, their ultimate goal is to replace white people with blacks, men with women and capitalism with communism. So, I think "opportunists" is the correct definition, but I'm less sure about "well-meaning". — Apollodorus

I was just being polite, giving them the benefit of the doubt about their well-meaningless. Their goals, as you state them, sound like some demented political cell. From what I have seen, their demonstrations amount to: A) a very narrow focus on police-on-black death B) a zillion signs and graffiti saying 'black lives matter' and C) marches where demonstrators yell over and over, "say his [her] name, George Floyd" repeat ad nauseam.

The single issue focus has had distorting effects on the discussion of violence and black deaths. Black on black shootings ought to be a far bigger issue within any justice group.

My own Marxist training was in a group branched off from the Socialist Labor Party, started by Daniel D. Leon in 1890 in the United States. SLP held that socialists in a country with democratic machinery (such as the US has) must use that machinery to strengthen unions, elect socialists to public office, educate the pubic, and eventually convert the economy from capitalist to socialist. Fat Chance!

Despite its failures (about as failed as every other socialist party) it was a group of decent people. We all worked quite hard for 20-odd years to educate the public about socialism (mostly here in Minneapolis and St Paul) without any lasting success.

People who want to replace whites with blacks or men with women aren't marxists to start with.

Give me the old-time religion of SNIC, NAACP, CORE, Martin Luther King et al. Of course, they like the socialist leaders of the past are mostly dead now, by one means or another. They were more specifically goal oriented. And maybe it was easier to be more goal oriented them with so many goals to accomplish.

I don't know what, exactly, BLM followers want--they and their various advocates, enthusiasts, marchers, and would-be beneficiaries.

About - Black Lives Matter

I don't think that you give them enough credit. Though somewhat vague, which I think has more to do with being inclusive than anything else, there is a clear push for either police reform or prison abolition and a general anti-racist imperative. They only came together recently as a relatively decentralized network and don't have too concrete of goals because of that. Sure, the protests have been going on for years, but, they haven't received the degree of attention and support that they have until just recently. They're not like what Zizek said of certain riots in that they were an act of "pure protest".

For instance, I remember a (former) facebook friend of mine posted a meme claiming that BLM was sending people of color in buses to go riot in (Minneapolis?). The post was hidden behind a button with a disclaimer that it was fake news. This is an insidious trend. Do we really want to give the CEO’s and the boards of directors of corporations the okay to dictate what is fake news? Certainly not, and this is one of the few instances in which a slippery slope argument is actually warranted: not only are people on the fringe right being censored, but also many leftists: https://nypost.com/2021/01/22/twitter-suspends-antifa-accounts-with-over-71k-followers/ — ToothyMaw

I think that you fail to take into consideration the situational context in which the posts were labelled as "fake news". Both Donald Trump and Matt Gaetz had made explicit comments which nearly warranted the hunting of people within the loosely affiliated set of anti-Fascist activists that is generally referred to as "Antifa". The articles had incited a moral panic and there were armed right-wing militias who were preparing to defend the suburbs from an ostensive Antifa invasion. Had they not labelled the articles as such, the situation could have gotten out of hand.

Obviously, there's an inherent danger to a company deciding what information is deemed veritable, especially one like Facebook, but this is actually one of the few instances where I think that they adequately responded to a dangerous cult phenomenon that occurred on their platform. They didn't ban the articles or their users; they just added the disclaimer that they were "fake news". Though such disclaimers could be used as a form of censorship, they can always be checked by the First Amendment. It seems unlikely to me that a company in the West would be willing to cope with a lawsuit for violating the First Amendment. Then again, though, only so unlikely. I don't know. Perhaps the danger you foresee is real, but that the example you have chosen isn't quite to the point? When it comes to cult phenomenons, you just have to consider the situational context.

I would love to do more reading but I'm a peasant with no access to scholarly articles. — ToothyMaw

Which I assume is indeed the situation with a great majority of people - which begs the question: why is it the case that every second political dabbler now has an opinion on critical race theory? Honest to God I don't think 95% of the people who have uttered the phrase have read a single word of CRT scholarship outside it's invocation in some Heritage Foundation scare piece. There's definitely a conversation to be had about the accessibility of scholarship to the wider populace, but for the most part the conversation around it is Red Scare discourse transposed into a different color. Boogymen under the bed kinda thing.

I think that ToothyMaw has just titled his thread as such to sound more academic on a forum that they believe is as such. While they have clearly confused black supremacism with Critical Race Theory, when Maw engaged them in conversation, they did seem to be willing to take what he said into consideration. I get that it's vexing for people to offer opinions on things like this when they know next to nothing about them, but giving them a basic clarification as to what it is and referring them to an article or two about it is just the sort of thing to change their misguided opinions.

To be clear, my comment was not directed at Toothy himself, but at the wider discourse around CRT in general.

Well, okay.

To also clarify, it's not really this forum that I have a certain set of qualms with; it's just the socio-political climate that it is reflective of. Both Liberal and left-wing academia all too often all too willing to readily dismiss just about anyone, usually via some form of cynical mockery or another when they could easily change their mind with just a simple conversation. As I don't plan on ritually slaying my political opponents in any indefinite and indeterminate future, at least, that is what I have decided to posit. I guess that I just keep challenging the status quo here as an experiment.

Half of the time, though, what's really going on is that I'm trying to figure out how to shout well enough into the void of The Philosophy Forum so as to level a dispute with a set of rather arcane Anarchists who call themselves Communists primarily in the U.K. an France, best, perhaps, described as half of the readership of Ill Will, at least, to the best of my knowledge, so to as abolish the form of arbitration that they have secured over the Anarchist movement, thereby granting me my position as a Pacifist within it, when I'll probably just continue to claim that I have become a-political, anyways.

All of which is to say that it's nothing to you and is just errata.

Anyways, you are correct about the general discourse centered around CRT. That ToothyMaw has confused it as such, I think, is evidence of that.

The single issue focus has had distorting effects on the discussion of violence and black deaths. Black on black shootings ought to be a far bigger issue within any justice group. — Bitter Crank

Correct. Black-on-black deaths are definitely something to look into without making it a "white problem". Incidentally, in the UK these groups highlight the fact that black men are "four times more likely to get killed than white men". But what remains unsaid is that the killers in these cases tend to be blacks. The overall effect is that issues of this type tend to create division in society and this is used by foreign powers (China, Iran, etc.) to destabilize Western governments.

The US Socialist Labor Party was an offshoot of Marx and Engels' London-based International. As in Europe, socialism in the US later came under the influence of Fabian Socialism as promoted by the London Fabian Society which also founded the UK Labour Party. The Fabians were supported by the big bankers and industrialists of the day (Carnegie, the Rockefellers and others) and preached a form of non-revolutionary, gradualist socialism that was convenient to capitalist interests that had the same monopolistic aims as the Fabians, i.e., the concentration of financial, economic and political power in the hands of elite groups.

The Fabians' infiltration and takeover of socialist groups from political parties to union organizations and other institutions and movements on both sides of the Atlantic has enabled corporate interests to maintain their control over economy, politics and other aspects of public life.

In the UK, for example, the whole current leadership of the Labour Party consists of Fabian Society members. Through the think tanks, research universities and other institutions they have founded, the Fabians have the resources to suppress any other socialist groups which are often driven into the arms of extremists creating problems that are then "solved" by means of policies suggested by Fabian think tanks and government advisory groups. The people as such, are increasingly excluded from the political process. This is why in spite of superficial appearances, Western society is becoming less and less democratic.

And yes, I do agree that a lot of socialists are decent people. Unfortunately, they are up against forces about which they can do very little, if they are even aware of their existence.

Interestingly, in every attempt to research CRT's electoral appeal, it appears to be an election loser. It variously makes Whites and some minority groups less likely to support progressive policies, while making Black voters no more likely to support those same policies. In general, a demographic group will be no more, or slightly less motivated by racial appeals for progressive policies versus class based ones, and will be significantly less supportive of policies framed by race when the race described as benefiting is not their own (this works between minority groups).

High income, educated Whites are the only group for which CRT seems to have any positive benefit in framing policy prescriptions.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/anti-racist-messaging-is-failing-with-voters-so-why-cant-liberals-quit-it-opinion/ar-BB1gxbxn?li=BBnbfcL

As the 2018 Hidden Tribes paper found, the "Woke" are the whitest single political group next to explicit White nationalists, beating out conservative Evangelicals in their monolithic demographics.

So, what's going on politically? Why is an unpopular framework dominating one party?

It's probably a mix of things. For one, CRT activists' use of cancel and harassment campaigns give them extra leverage. You don't need facts to win an argument. When the 1618 Project was called out by academics for cherry picking and misrepresenting colonial era newspaper archives, defenders could simply point out that too many of the critics were old White men, and that history departments are inheritally enablers of racism.

The framework of CRT itself also allows adherents to write off criticisms about electability. They are, after all, fighting a deontological battle, the forces of good versus the forces of evil. White opponents are exhibiting fragility and racism if they oppose CRT. Black opponents suffer from internalized racism. People who don't respond positively to racial framing are variously racist or sick with internalization. You can add in high income White progressives' measurable bias against White people (a weird, seldom seen form on in group negative bias), since it never hurts to have negative views of a demographic group when shooting yourself in the foot with them electorally.

What is true for poor culturally disadvantaged blacks is largely true for poor culturally disadvantaged whites, too. — Bitter Crank

And here's the important issue. This a problem of class and income inequality, which goes beyond race. Yet better to put the emphasis on the racial side of this and let the poor white people, who often are called white trash in the US, know that they enjoy white privilege. Divide et impera, I say.

I think it's dangerous to reduce disparities to class. In a whole host of terms, Blacks tend to fare worse than their poorer White peers, and many institutions were set up with explicit racist intent.

That said, you probably have a point. Wealthy Whites embrace of CRT probably has something to do with:

A. It only discussing redistribution to a select group, thus reducing the burden they would have to face in paying for said redistribution.

B. CRT's unpopularity. You can take a radical stand on the side of goodness knowing full well you aren't at risk of having to follow through on the radical promises. And indeed, we we wealthy Whites jumping ship and moving in cases where they actually win victories on these fronts.

And here's the important issue. This a problem of class and income inequality, which goes beyond race. Yet better to put the emphasis on the racial side of this and let the poor white people, who often are called white trash in the US, know that they enjoy white privilege. Divide et impera, I say. — ssu

While class is important, as Timothy points out, poor whites do tend to fair better than poor people of color. This is largely due to programs that, while not explicitly racist, tend to leave out poor people of color. For instance, this article points out a disparity between treatment of people of color and whites with regards to hunger relief: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/what-white-privilege-looks-when-youre-poor/ As the author says, it isn't like anyone said that the hunger of people of color is less important, but it is indicative of a problematic trend nevertheless. That being said, white privilege doesn't really confer substantial benefits to dirt poor white people. This article contains a good bit of subtlety and regard for this fact while still acknowledging myriad privileges: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/explaining-white-privilege-to-a-broke-white-person_b_5269255