From https://www.newsbug.info/news/nation/commentary-attacks-on-critical-race-theory-reopen-old-wounds/article_7f053c53-270a-566e-99e3-622595161329.html
Imagine that someone was going around talking trash about you, claiming that you’d said all sorts of repellent things, and that you were part of a despicable group with villainous goals. Imagine that they persuaded people you were awful by claiming you’d said things you’d never said, rarely quoting you directly (and if they did, it was completely misrepresenting what you’d said, out of context or worse), and generally making a set of accusations people could know were wrong if they just talked to you, and listened to what you had to say. But they persuaded people, who were now going around repeating all those things without ever talking to you directly. And they were persuading people who weren’t bothering to listen to you.
You’d be furious at being treated that way. Everyone would.
Here’s the important point. If you’re a Christian, and you’d be furious if you were treated that way, then you’d feel obligated not to do that to others. Jesus said, very clearly, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Wanting people to listen to you directly before condemning you means Christians should listen to others directly before condemning them. To do otherwise is to reject what Jesus very clearly said.
Thus, if people who claimed to be Christian treated the “CRT” controversy the way they want to be treated, they wouldn’t repeat the anti-CRT rhetoric without first reading CRT, the material people are quoting that is supposedly CRT, arguments that the anti-CRT rhetoric is wrong and misleading. They wouldn’t rely on second- or third-hand versions of the what K-12 teachers are doing, what anti-racist pedagogy is, or even what CRT is.
When I point this out to people who say they’re Christian, I tend to get one of four reactions. I’ll talk about two.
Sometimes people say that they don’t need to read CRT, or its defenses—they know it’s bad because they read descriptions of it that make it clear that it’s terrible. They know it’s bad because trusted sources (i.e., “in-group”) tell them it is. Is that how they’d want to be treated—do they think it’s fine if people believed terrible things about them just because “trusted” sources say they’re terrible? Of course not.
Do Christians think it’s fine if critics of Christianity mis-quote Christians, misrepresent Christianity, nut-pick, cherry-pick, lump all Christians into one group as represented by the most marginal versions, engage in argument by association? If we think it’s wrong for others to do that to us, then it’s wrong for us to do that to others.
Do we think it’s fine if people repeat the arguments in articles, books, videos, speeches, and so on that engage in all those dodgy and fallacious attacks on Christianity? In other words, are we fine with what Richard Dawkins and his loyal repeaters do? They’re relying on “trusted” (i.e. “in-group”) sources. If that’s wrong when it’s done to us, then it’s wrong when we do it to others.
From https://www.newsbug.info/news/nation/commentary-attacks-on-critical-race-theory-reopen-old-wounds/article_7f053c53-270a-566e-99e3-622595161329.html
The fact that no pro-GOP person appalled at CRT will read this post shows they know their beliefs are too fragile to be subjected to disproof.
The anti-CRT rhetoric makes six arguments: 1. People in K-12 are teaching CRT 2. Because they are talking about racism as an institutional and structural problem, 3. And CRT talked about racism that way, and some CRT authors were Marxist (or said things that could be characterized as Marxist) 4. Therefore, anyone who talks about racism as institutional or structural is Marxist, 5. And they are violating the principles of Christianity, 6. And promoting an ideology MLK would have rejected.
The first thing I want to say is a lot of people repeating these anti-CRT talking points are doing so because they are genuinely concerned about reducing racism, and especially racial conflict, and they sincerely want a world in which racism is just not an issue.
I argue with these people a lot. And I’ll say that they aren’t all bad people, and they aren’t necessarily stupid people. They are often people tremendously successful in careers that require considerable training. But they refuse to read anything that disagrees with them, and that makes them gullible. They believe that the truth is pretty obvious to reasonable people, that you should get your information from trustworthy sources, and that a good argument is one that has data and rings true.
What those beliefs mean, in effect, is that, if you want to be an “objective” person you should only get your information from sources that confirm what you already believe. That’s pretty much the opposite of objective.
If you’re reasoning like a Stalinist, you’re reasoning badly. But the problem is that people trapped in the world in which a claim is true because it seems true don’t care whether they’re reasoning like Stalinists. They tell themselves, “Stalinists were wrong, but I’m not!” Anyone can believe that what they believe is true if they only honor sources that tell them that what they believe is true.
Every one of those six talking points is false and fallacious, but no person worked into outrage about them will admit that. I think they know that the arguments aren’t rational, and that’s why they won’t read any CRT, or anything trying to point out that the anti-CRT rhetoric doesn’t make sense.
Lots of people arguing with them point that out refusal to be informed by reading actual sources, and it has no impact. I’ve only had one person try to defend themselves by citing CRT, but he obviously hadn’t read the link he’d offered. It was a law school textbook from 1995. So, it didn’t actually support his claim that CRT was being taught in K-12 now.
The argument that CRT is being taught in K-12, and that it’s Marxist and anti-Christian works this way. (And, unlike people up in arms about CRT, I’ve read the things I’m criticizing.) First, what is being taught in K-12 is that the US still racist, racism is a problem of institutions and structures and not individuals hostility, and the US has a history of racist action. CRT was a theory advocated by legal theorists, some of whom were Marxist, that said that racism was not a question of intent, but legal systems and institutions.
Therefore, and here’s one of many fallacious leaps, anyone who says that racism is not a question of individual intent, but institutional racism and systemic oppression got their ideas from CRT. Since Marxism also says there is systemic oppression, and then all people who say that there is institutional racism are Marxist. If someone teaches that, for instance, the GI Bill was applied in racist ways, or that the system of slavery was racist, or that segregation was systemic racism, then that person is teaching that there is institutional racism and therefore they’re a Marxist and teaching CRT.
That’s a way of arguing that makes absolutely no sense–it’s a combination of the genetic fallacy and the fallacy of guilt by association. And people can see that it’s fallacious when that kind of reasoning is applied to them. For instance, Marx said that capitalism relies on workers being desperate for employment, and therefore it requires that there be people who can’t survive without working. That was the GOP argument for workfare, and it’s what many GOP politicians have said is wrong with the stimulus package–that it’s making things harder for businesses. In other words, they are saying that a free market requires that there are people who can’t survive without working. Since GOP political leaders are saying something Marx said, they must be Marxist, and since CRT theorists are Marxists, Republicans are CRT!!!!!
I could go on. The first Puritan settlers in New England tried to hold all their property in common. Since that’s something Marx advocated, they were Marxist! Therefore, Thanksgiving is Marxist. Therefore, schools that put up Thanksgiving decorations are advocating Marxism.
That argument makes as much sense as the anti-CRT demagoguery.
Of course it’s a flawed argument, because it’s a flawed way to argue. If it’s a flawed way to argue about Republicans or Thanksgiving, then it’s a flawed way to argue about K-12 teachers.
So, let’s just start with the claim (which I’m happy to have disproven) that no one making the above six claims can support them with rational-critical argumentation.
In other words, the people making those arguments are consuming and repeating demagoguery.
As far as the first claim, that depends on making CRT every way of talking about racism that says it’s systematic and institutional. Since even abolitionists talked about racism that way in the 1830s, and Marx didn’t start theorizing Marxism till the late 1840s, Das Kapital wasn’t published till the 1867, and the first English translation was in 1887, then the claim that anyone who talks about racism as built into American institution is inspired by Marxism fails on its face. That takes care of 2-4.
Since critics of CRT will not themselves live by the standard they’ve set for their opposition (argument by association), they also fail at making a rational argument (again, even they think that the logic behind 2-4 is fallacious, but only when it applies to them, and not when they apply it to others).
The claim that there is institutional discrimination, and that not every individual has the same chances at success does not invalidate the principles of Christianity. It does invalidate the “just world model” or its incarnation as “prosperity gospel,” but those are very recent ways of reading Scripture, and not all Christians endorse them. So, talking about institutional discrimination might invalidate people who think Christianity and prosperity gospel are identical, but they don’t speak for all Christians. (And, really, they need to know their own history—the notion that people deserve what they get was used to justify slavery, after all.)
That these people claim that MLK would be on their side is the final thing that frosts my cupcake.
If they think that MLK never talked about institutional racism, then they’re just showing that they reason and read badly. But, really what they’re showing is that, just as they’ve read no CRT (but only things about it), they’ve read little or no MLK. In fact, MLK talked a lot about how racism was not about angry redneck individuals, but white “moderates” who wouldn’t face the institutional problems (that’s the point of most of “Letter from Birmingham Jail”). For instance, from his speech “The Other America” (which every critic of CRT should read in its entirety):
But we must see that the struggle today is much more difficult. It’s more difficult today because we are struggling now for genuine equality, and it’s much easier to integrate a lunch counter than it is to guarantee a livable income and a good, solid job. It’s much easier to guarantee the right to vote than it is to guarantee the right to live in sanitary, decent housing conditions. It is much easier to integrate a public park than it is to make genuine quality integrated education a reality. And so today, we are struggling for something which says we demand genuine equality. It’s not merely a struggle against extremist behavior toward Negros. And I’m convinced that many of the very people who supported us in the struggle in the South are not willing to go all the way now. [….] I say that however unpleasant it is, we must honestly see and admit that racism is still deeply rooted all over America. It’s still deeply rooted in the North, and it’s still deeply rooted in the South. [….] In 1875, the nation passed a civil rights bill and refused to enforce it. In 1964, the nation passed a weaker civil rights bill, and even to this day, that bill has not been totally enforced in all of its dimensions. The nation heralded a new day of concern for the poor, for the poverty-stricken, for the disadvantaged, and brought into being a poverty bill. But at the same time, it put such little money into the program that it was hardly and still remains hardly a good skirmish against poverty. White politicians in suburbs talk eloquently against open housing, and in the same breath, contend that they are not racist. And all of this, and all of these things, tell us that America has been back lashing on the whole question of basic constitutional and God-given rights for Negros and other disadvantaged groups for more than 300 years. [….] But at the same time, it is as necessary for me to be as vigorous in condemning the conditions which cause persons to feel that they must engage in riotous activities, as it is for me to condemn riots. I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society, which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. And in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. So in a real sense, our nation’s summer’s riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.
What I learned arguing with Stalinists is that some people believe that personal certainty is objectivity, data is proof, and sources that agree with them are unbiased. The Stalinist were wrong on all counts. But, if reasoning like some group means you are part of that group (people who talk about institutional racism are like CRT and CRT are Marxist), then critics of CRT are Stalinists.
From https://www.newsbug.info/news/nation/commentary-attacks-on-critical-race-theory-reopen-old-wounds/article_7f053c53-270a-566e-99e3-622595161329.html
Persuading an audience to go to war necessitates radicalizing them. War always involves the killing of noncombatants–even the most carefully conducted wars kill noncombatants through bombings, drones, starvation, failure of infrastructure. When there is a fear of partisan action, there are massacres. If the war is intended to be a war of subjugation or extermination, then persuading people to go to war necessarily means persuading them to ignore normal ethical considerations about fairness, compassion, concern for innocent bystanders. Radicalizing an audience means that that extremism becomes a virtue, and that constraints on behavior are framed as weakness, cowardice, disloyalty, lack of patriotism (for more on this see Kruglanski et al). A radicalized audience doesn’t want to think, but wants to punish (Thucydides’ point).
Radicalizing an audience is rhetorically straightforward. There are two main strategies. One is to create a hobgoblin—something that doesn’t actually exist at all (Jews poisoning wells, lesbians persuading women to get abortions, witches who seduce children, Satanic childcare workers). The other, much easier, is the junior high school mean girl strategy. Imagine that there are three people: both Chester and Abilene are friends with Hubert, and Chester wants Hubert to be irrationally committed to him–that is, radicalize Hubert. Chester would tell Hubert that Abilene is spreading rumors that Hubert [does something shameful]. If Chester wanted Hubert to attack Abilene physically, then the rumors would be relentless and extreme attacks on Hubert’s prestige.
Notice that this strategy only works if Chester can persuade Hubert not to talk to Abilene directly. That will be important later. It’s also useful to point out that Chester is the one making Hubert feel shamed.
Radicalizing an audience means framing the situation as a war against [this group] as justified because They are evil people committed to shaming or destroying us.
If a political figure succeeds at persuading a base that “we” (the political figure sometimes is, but often is not, a member of the group they’re claiming to protect) is threatened with a loss of prestige, power, or existence (and those three things get confused), then that political figure can count on zero accountability. It’s war, after all, and so in-group political figures are not constrained by any moral or legal norms other than crushing Them.
And, if you’re a political figure or party, then zero accountability is desirable. The more that you can persuade your base that you are a loyal fighter against some hobgoblin, the less they will hold you to any standards at all–the only standard is that you are an enemy of Them.
The easy and rich rewards of making our political world a zero-sum battle between Us and Them is a rhetorical trap.
As I said, the the whole process falls apart if Hubert talks to Abilene. The narrative that 1) our world is Us and Them, and 2) They want us to feel shame, or They want us to be exterminated generally collapses if we ask for primary sources, and if we assess sources fairly.
And then we cherrypick (use a minor political official to represent the whole party), nutpick (use some random PETA person to represent vegetarians, or some pastor of a small church to represent Christians), or actively lie in order to claim that we are justified in behaving as though politics is war. Since it’s war, every member of our in-group is justified in any actions (aka, not accountable) due to moral licensing.
And that is how the radicalizing demagoguery about CRT works.
It starts by creating a hobgoblin (CRT) that has nothing to do with what advocates of Critical Race Theory say, let alone what people who talk about systemic racism say. All of which has little to do with a goal of making white people feel shame.
It’s the anti-CRT people who want it to be about shame. Notice that they can’t quote anyone who says the goal of CRT is for white people to feel shame. That’s just eighth grade bullshit.
If you have to lie about what your opponent believes—and, let’s be clear, every pro-Trump attack on CRT lies about what CRT is—then maybe you should think about that. A group with a good argument doesn’t have to lie.
But if you are a political group that doesn’t want to be held to standards of morality, legality, fairness, or reciprocity, and you don’t have a good argument, then you need to radicalize your base for total war. And that is what this is about.
From https://www.newsbug.info/news/nation/commentary-attacks-on-critical-race-theory-reopen-old-wounds/article_7f053c53-270a-566e-99e3-622595161329.html
Recently, I broke my ankle, went to the ER, got put in a boot and handed crutches (which I haven’t used since I was a kid), and was told DO NOT PUT ANY WEIGHT ON YOUR FOOT.
The next day, I got up and went to the airport for a long-planned trip to see our son. My husband had called ahead and arranged for a wheelchair at every point. We left from Austin, and had to change planes in Philadelphia. It was awful. Humiliating, exhausting, frustrating, and literally painful.
Most people were kind, a lot were just self-absorbed to the point of hurtful (who walks right in front of someone on crutches?), several were rude, and no one was deliberately trying to cause me pain. Even those who did cause me pain didn’t do so because they wanted to cause me pain. They were over-worked, understaffed, underpaid, trying to get their job done in circumstances less than propitious.
The worst experience was TSA in Austin. The wheelchair person asked if I could stand, and I said no. She asked if I could take the boot off, and I said no (as I’d been told). She told that to security. We happened to arrive at security within half an hour of a shift change. If you can’t go through the scanner, then you have to get groped. Seriously groped. It’s a pain for the TSA agent, none of whom had any interest in groping a pudgy 60-year-old woman like me. It isn’t fun to be groped like that, and I’m sure they get a lot of grief from the gropee when they have to do it.
After much waiting, and the wheelchair person approaching various female TSA agents and getting turned away (they were clearly hoping to kick the can down the road to the next shift), there was what appeared to be a shift change, and then more of the wheelchair person approaching female agents, a very young female TSA came up. Let’s call her Chester. The wheelchair person told her that I couldn’t stand, and couldn’t take off the boot. Chester then turned to me and said, “Can you stand?” I said “On one foot, but not very well.” She said, “Can you take the boot off?” I said no. She made no attempt to hide how irritated she was about the situation, and that irritation was getting directed at me.
Perhaps because I was raised by dogs, when I’m dealing with someone who has a shitty job and they’re irritated, my impulse is to be as nice as I possibly can. So I was doing my best to be thankful and helpful. She remained irritated; she continued to direct that irritation at me.
We go through the initial complicated procedures necessary when someone can’t go through the scanner, she takes me through and to the grope place, says, “Can you stand?” I said, “On one foot, but not very well.” She points me to a table I can touch, and she is very grumpy about exactly how much I can touch it. She is grumpy about the whole process—I need to lift my pants leg so she can get to the boot, but not before she tells me to. I can’t touch my wheelchair. If I touch things before the right moment, she has to do things over. And she is not happy when that happens.
We get through most of the groping, and she says, “Can you take off your boot?” I say, “No.” She says, really irritated now, “You told me you could take off your boot.” I hadn’t. I had told her I couldn’t.
I took off the boot. It hurt to do so. She checked out the boot and my purple and swollen foot, and gave me the boot back. It hurt to put it back on. I hated being lied to; I hated being accused of lying. Also, my ankle now hurt enough that I was working hard not to cry.
There were other glitches in our travels—not being able to get on a tram because the wheelchair person was on break, my husband commandeering an apparently unused wheelchair, American Airlines agents commandeering wheelchairs because there weren’t enough people on the wheelchair staff, and just so many delays waiting for wheelchair assistance that sometimes never arrived. There were also kind people.
Nothing bad or inconvenient that happened to me was because someone hated people with disabilities and therefore intentionally harmed me. Nobody got up in the morning hoping to oppress people with disabilities. Chester had no personal hostility to me, although a lot to her job. And I don’t really blame her. All of the people who were rude or hurtful, by things done or undone, will (if they live long enough) someday be on crutches or in a wheelchair; they probably already have. They know and love people with disabilities. Some of their best friends are in wheelchairs or on crutches. Everyone reading this will be on crutches or in a wheelchair if they live long enough; everyone reading this loves someone who is or will be on crutches or in a wheelchair. This isn’t about individual intention.
I wasn’t treated badly because individuals wanted to hurt me personally or because of any individual’s desire to hurt people with disabilities; I was treated badly because airports weren’t built for post-9/11 security needs, and so security is shoved into whatever places happened to be available (in one airport, we had to go upstairs for security and then downstair for the flight), Chester was probably legitimately grumpy about why she always ended up doing the groping of Olds simply because she’s the newest employee, and all the other women had enough seniority to dodge that part of their job. Other people were grumpy or failed to show up because airports don’t pay wheelchair people enough, any kind of accommodation for people with disabilities is duct tape and bailing wire on existing airports and TSA screening processes, people cut me off because they were distracted, planes aren’t built for people with disabilities, and so on. It isn’t about individuals. It’s about institutions, systems, and decisions made fifty years ago.
So, how do we solve this problem?
Should people without disabilities be filled with shame? No. That does no one any good.
Is it a question of individual agency? Could I have willed myself to a better experience? No. It’s a systemic issue about how things, even the physical environment, were designed.
Could Chester have willed herself to a better experience? She could have been nicer to me, sure. But that wouldn’t have necessarily reduced her justifiable irritation about the situations. The system requires that a female grope women like me, many of whom are grumpy about being groped. A better system would have included people with disabilities in the design plans from the beginning, instead of suddenly discovering they exist. Could she have been nicer to me? Yes. But should she? Her job sucks, and it sucks because the way TSA handles people with disabilities sucks. It isn’t her, and it isn’t her boss. It might not even be TSA. It might be the laws, regulations, and policies TSA is required to follow. She had to grope me because the system makes her grope me. It sucked less if I could take off the boot, so she lied to make her job slightly less sucky.
She isn’t the problem. Her feelings aren’t the problem. Her intentions aren’t the problem. The people who wrote the laws, regulations, and policies didn’t necessarily, as individuals, have any intention to discriminate against people with disabilities. It wasn’t their intention to harm that causes the harm. It was their failure to think about inclusion.
My experience was a brief summer shower of what it’s like to try to fly when you have a mild and temporary disability, and has little or nothing to do with what it’s like for people to try to fly who have a more serious or long-term disability. I’m not talking about my experience because it exemplifies what travelling with a disability is like.
My point is that travelling even with a minor and temporary disability shows that we have a system that discriminates against a group of people, regardless of the feelings or intentions of the individuals who happen to be the momentary agent in that system, or even the intentions of people enforcing the rules. There can be discrimination and harm not because of individual intentional hatred, let alone a desire to “oppress,” but as a consequence of systemic thoughtlessness.
Discrimination isn’t about the intentions of individuals, good or bad. Oppression doesn’t actually require oppressors. It’s about systems that were put in place a long time ago but that still constrain what we do; it’s about policies and processes that are thoughtless and convenient; it’s about how saving money or time by relying on stereotypes about what’s normal does harm; it’s about certain kinds of discrimination, such as discrimination against a person who needs crutches, is baked into our buildings.
If we can admit that discrimination against people with disabilities is not about individuals, or shame, or hostility, but a systemic problem, then we can think about other kinds of discrimination as systemic. It shouldn’t be that hard.
