quick comment on the Big Lie supporters (believer?) - I do try to think of the other person's view. If I were convinced that there were actors illegally rigging a presidential election, and all the normal challenges were depleted, what would I want to happen? And did any Big Lie supporters take action to see it done?
Did any members of Congress try to form a committee for secure election guidelines? Did anyone talk to election experts learn what direction a state should be encouraged to go to ensure secure elections? All I saw was GOP legislatures shaving days from early voting, shaving days off mail ballot request & return deadlines, etc.
For example in Ohio, Republicans have no doubts about mail in voting. They do not purge voter registrations until like 2 elections have passed without voting. We even have a mix of paper ballots and touchscreen voting.
So where is the big push for national guidelines of no mail-in/absentee voting, hand marked paper ballots, and a std for voter ID requirements? Where is the recommendation to keep rolls accurate? And of course we all know the answer - these things only matter in "swing" states, and only matter when Republicans lose.
I really hate hearing complaints, with no accompanying ideas for solutions or requests for help with solutions.
On Tim’s question about content moderation and who decides: the government and sports worlds came up with the all-purpose response decades ago. All they said is, ``The decision was made.’’
And if parents in an individual school district conclude that the 1619 project is 'CRT' and is inappropriate for their kids, you will climb up on your high horse and declare them all bigots and morons.
Isn't that kind of where we're at in our national conversation?
It is a curious thing. When it comes to education about American racial issues, the Right refers to anything it doesn't like as 'CRT' --- often erroneously. In response, the Left uses any such error to prove its case that the Right doesn't know what it's talking about.
In the process of this simplistic back and forth, clear headed reasoning is not advanced.
For purposes of discussion, then, it seems like all should agree that while CRT may mean a very specific thing, the common understanding of it has ---- rightly or wrongly --- evolved as something very different. In this respect it would not be unlike the understanding of the term 'states rights' in the Civil War period.
All that said, it seems to me that the very real concerns of fair minded citizens (of both perspectives) are being sullied in the rhetorical mud slinging.
I can't see how to teach an honest, painful history of the United States that assumes people act solely as individuals and not as part of a system. Slavery and Jim Crow and Indian removals and lesser rights for women were most certainly systemic.
In Jim Crow states there wasn't a single honest cop, prosecutor, judge or jury member. There wasn't a single business that was allowed to practice unfettered capitalism and accept all customers. The system was written down in laws.
There’s no arguing with the right about CRT. I learned this when I was accused of falling into the trap of believing that critical race theory is exactly what it says it is as opposed to--as near as I can tell--a Trojan horse designed to bring down western civilization as we know it.
I find Charlie's critique of Sen Cruz a bit jejune. Not to defend Ted Cruz, but I also don't think Marxism should be taught to elementary school students who are developmentally unprepared for dealing with the material dialectic or ideology critique (they'll just end up assuming anything their teacher tells them is a mask for class oppression). Far better to start them off with Hegel and make sure they understand the intersection of freedom and the Absolute before letting them loose on the inherent contradictions of surplus value.
I don't believe it is taught in elementary schools. It is usually taught in a HS Political Science course when comparing different economic theories. You may not like it, but it is a legitimate economic theory.
I will never understand the right's issues with failing to acknowledge things like systemic racism, systemic classism, and the way that both of these things plus inherited wealth poison the concept of "meritocracy" that this country is supposedly so proud of. If people are excluded from equality of opportunity at universities via a systemic paywall that excludes everyone below a certain class, then you don't have a true meritocracy, you have a faux-meritocracy derived from a skewed sampling pool that excluded a lot of people who aren't there simply because they don't have enough familial wealth to compete.
Either way, once the best of our faux-meritocracy pool makes it in the new economy, they only ever marry across class at scale and concentrate their wealth into their kids so that their kids can grow up and do the same exact thing as their parents some day. Our country's best and brightest aren't doing shit to lift their fellow citizens up, they're just co-mingling with each other and "living their best lives" as they raise the cost of living on everyone else while pretending that racism and classism don't exist anymore. THAT is why systemic racism and systemic classism still exist to such a degree in this country: the rich don't want competition for their kids, they want to maintain their advantage *for* their kids. They would rather keep a sick system that their kids will benefit from in place rather than fixing the system while diminishing the advantage their kids have via familial wealth.
"They would rather keep a sick system that their kids will benefit from in place rather than fixing the system while diminishing the advantage their kids have via familial wealth. " This just seems like garden variety self-interest. It's a tough sell to ask people to deny their kids the best opportunities in the name of making a more equitable system under the best of circumstances. Harder when the criteria seem to be group-based rather than merit-based. This is why fewer people are sold on affirmative action than on dejure desegregation. And why getting rid of testing for magnet schools has caused problems in San Francisco.
Right. But patriotism is precisely what we have used to call on people to deny their self-interest for the good of the nation. Men and women in military, law enforcement, and medical services have done it. So have politicians, at least in the now, somewhat distant, past.
If patriotism can get poor kids from rural areas and ethnic minorities to risk their lives to protect the country, it should also be expected to get the wealthy to create a fair system.
This is a good point, and one I think that should be a lens to view the difference between cold war America and post cold war America. During the cold war we had a competing economic system as the bad guy that we had to make sure we kept our system better than. When the cold war was over, communism was fully discredited and thus less of a (perceived) need to sand off the rough edges of capitalism.
Yes, I have noticed that, too. Almost makes me nostalgic for the Cold War. There may have been the uneasy threat of nuclear annihilation, but at least the fear of godless Commies taking over the world kept our leaders more honest.
And then we wonder why congress is populated with people who can't spell "martial", our health care system was run by people who thought that a viral URI with asymptomatic transmission was going to "fade away", or how Elon Musk came to run three giant companies with large social ramifications.
If MTG had to *actually* compete with a Morehouse grad instead of inheriting a company her dad set up, we'd be spared her shenanigans. If the med school admissions process couldn't be gamed for thousands of dollars, maybe we wouldn't have had two terrible CDC directors under Trumps tenure. Maybe if Elon Musk had higher melanin content in his skin, the only headline he would make would start with the words "Florida Man..."
We've had these discussions before, so forgive me if I take a bit of wry amusement from your opening lines and your closing lines. You say you don't understand and then clearly lay out exactly why they wouldn't acknowledge it. And yeah, I know you do understand, just amusing is all.
The wealthy right denies the problem exists and the wealthy left loudly laments about it and then doesn't do much to fix it.
Personally I think what is needed is a focus on the inequality that doesn't lose sight of the fact that human nature seems hard-wired to marry for advantage. We aren't going to legislate that out of existence. What we can do is cut down on the factors that encourage it. Increased wealth transfer taxes, higher marginal tax rates, etc. Then use the money to help lift up those who need it (inner city and rural schools come to mind).
"Not understanding" is a rhetorical device used to ask particular questions and make particular statements. I do that al the time. Another entry into that path is "did you ever wonder..."
As you point out, it usually (not always) become pretty apparent that the person that didn't understand or wondered actually has a clue ;)
Nepotism is wired in (why wife was talking bout it this morning in connection with her job--how the ranks of the institution she teaches at are now filled with people from India and the office workers are largely East Asian).
We have a preference (extending beyond nepotism) for those like us--either in appearance and secondarily in belief. We socialize and marry with those like us--same socioeconomic status and background.
[Nepotism is wired in (why wife was talking bout it this morning in connection with her job--how the ranks of the institution she teaches at are now filled with people from India and the office workers are largely East Asian).]
A case could be made that this is an example of just what those who try to maintain privilege are worried about. "Once I stop cheating, someone else will start. Thus, I move from advantage not to equality, but to disadvantage."
We certainly are imperfect (especially in society as a whole) in understanding 'human nature', but any time we ignore, wish away, or try to legislate it out of existence we're going to be disappointed.
The idea of fairness of opportunity and education is a specifically American idea. I have know people from India and East Asia and they don't have a problem with hiring people of their nationality, race or social class.
Americans do the same thing but understand it is wrong culturally, which is why the idea of tokenism came about.
My mind goes to the cultural acceptability of bribes comparatively between the US / West and much of the rest of the world. I can't help but wonder if things like that and the viewing nepotism as wrong don't partially explain the west's economic success compared to much of the rest of the world. By no means the only factors, nor even saying major factors, but I'd think they are in the mix.
Having a relatively incorrupt system helps. One of the things people forget, however, is that we were pretty corrupt during most of the 19th century. Especially before the Civil Service Reform.
Many administrative posts in the federal government were part of the spoils system (political appointment). Same with a lot of local offices.
Then there were things like Credit Mobilier.
Open bribes were less socially acceptable.. but they still occurred and they occurred in other less visible forms.
I would argue that it wasn't freedom from corruption that accounts for the success. It was largely a combination of culture and less-autocratic forms of government.
I think you're right. Look at a lot of the kids of musicians, actors, artists, et al, who have all the doors open to them and yet don't have the fraction of the talent the parent has.
"Like seeks like." This is the core principle behind the concept of "assortative mating," and I would propose that it's the core principle behind tribalism, classism, and racism as well. Over-trust of in-groups and under-trust in out-groups breeds assortative mating, but the irony is that it's usually someone who is closest to you who leads you the furthest astray. You think it's some member of a racial or class out-group who will sexually violate your child some day, but then it really turns out to be your brother or a priest at your church. People who seek shelter in the comfort of their ingroups are often betrayed by the same people they thought had their back through common identity or class or ideology. Excessive assortative mating across a wealthy society leads to concentrating the wealth among the wealthy and class systems that persist generation to generation, which is basically where we are with a Gini Coefficient higher than Russia's (A country we consider to be an open oligarchy via this measurement).
Travis have you considered writing fiction? You have excellent macro views of all kinds of human tendencies. You could weave together really nifty motives & flawed characters. Seriously.
Okay, I should rephrase: "I understand how the right ignores and justifies the problem, I just don't understand how they live with themselves."
If they have to lie to themselves about how things got this way in the first place and then force the rest of society to acknowledge those lies so that they can live comfortably with things being the way they are, then what does that say about *humanity* more generally? Maybe this is how slavery went pleasantly by for so long too? The rich people who were able to afford slaves told themselves a story about "merit-based" success/failure in life, and that the slaveholders were the "successful" while the slaves were "failures", and so the playing field of merit left slave and slaveholder where they "ought to be." This false idea of "merit" existing on unequal playing fields is such a common thread in history that is oft-used to justify societal inequalities to sickening degrees. Until that part changes I really don't see the rest coming undone. The part where humans that had natural advantages over others never acknowledge those things and instead use their advantages to seat themselves atop society and declare themselves "merit winners" and then use their wealth and power to enforce societal inequalities so that their kids have a shot at doing the same thing they did. Until humanity stops gaslighting itself to make the rich feel better about themselves, we're going to be generationally-unequal until the extinction event comes, and when it does, only the rich will be allowed to board the escape rockets to newly-colonized Pandora.
Well said. But the slaveowners didn't use success/failure, per se, to explain how they were the slaveowners and not the slaves. They used white supremacism to argue that other human beings were inferior from birth and naturally suited to slavery. And we are still dealing with the aftereffects of those rationalizations and lies...like denying that systemic racism existed.
The can live with themselves because, like most people they are almost entirely self-focused and have little empathy for the Other. Especially the other who is a different color or sex or whatever.
Many people exist in a zero sum world where there are winners and losers--and if you are losing it is because someone took something from you... and if you are winning it is because you HAD to take things from the losers.
It is just the nature of things, eh? No real reason to feel too guilty about it, amiright.
Besides, if I don't do it they will do it to me.
There are "good" people, but in general people are not good--not without the existence of a cultural and economic system that basically forces them to be good (at least until they manage to corrupt it).
There is no substantive moral/ethical structure with a society to write and enforce it.
There is no arc of history bending towards a better world for all unless there is a continual effort to make that happen.
The question is not about making people better (because we can't) the question is about how do we build a system where people MUST be better--and how do we protect it from being co-opted and corrupted for as long as possible.
I think this gets to the heart of it. We're not remotely close to perfect, and any system designed by us isn't going to be perfect either. It will take constant updating and modification to keep it doing what it is supposed to do (forcing us to be good).
To me, the key is to get enough acknowledgement of this to be able to improve the system. Too bad that the truths that were self evident were all positive rather than having some negative in there.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people will seek their own and their children's advantage, almost invariably at the expense of others; that gaming the system and pulling the ladder up behind them is something most people will do if given the chance; that our tribal nature of in-group vs. out-group thinking isn't suited to societies of thousands let alone millions of people. That to guard against these tendencies Governments are instituted among people..."
TJ would need to flower that up a bit, and certainly I don't want to go down the road of man as inherently bad, but we are inherently flawed, and while it may have gone without saying 250 years ago, it could use more saying these days.
Good and bad are contextual judgments. We can only say that something is good or bad by looking at the outcome and judging that outcome WRT some goal that we have.
People are not good or bad. People are people. They behave in accordance with how they were shaped by evolution and then constrained by culture.
If the goal is to create large, powerful, equitable, and harmonious societies, then there are obvious goods and bads. Obvious positive and negative behaviors... and so we judge good and bad on THAT basis.
If the goal is to concentrate power and wealth, then there are obvious goods and bads, and we judge on THAT basis.
But without the constant dedication and watchfulness towards particular ends, an effort towards the first thing is doomed to founder on the rocks and shoals of human nature as we tend towards the second thing.
Hi Charlie - Big Bulwark fan here, but I have to take issue with today's piece on CRT. Yes, the Right is distorting and weaponizing their notion of CRT, but the complicating factor is that the Left is weaponizing it as well. Take, for example, the NY Times' 1619 project, a key piece of what most Americans understand to be CRT. At least some material in 1619 is demonstrably false and - like the Marxism of your comparison - is certainly ideologically pointed. Yet unlike Das Kapital, 1619 is being used to create lesson plans for K-12 students. I suspect that using Das Kapital as the basis for K-12 lesson plans might be seen as an attempt at ideological 'influencing'. No less should 1619 be seen as such.
This is certainly not a call for a return of 'Gone With the Wind' style social studies education. But let's not fool ourselves that both Left and Right are deeply engaged in the 'weaponization' of their favorite hobby horses. And in this fight, as in all warfare, truth is the first casualty.
I am not a professional historian, merely a history buff, and I share your critique of the 1619 project. Former Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia got into trouble when he (correctly) pointed out that slavery did not begin in 1619 in Virginia. The first Africans who were involuntarily transported there became indentured servants, not slaves for life (and eternity). It took a few decades for the legal system to create permanent bondage. But the historical ignoramuses trashed Northam anyway.
One of the biggest falsehoods in the 1619 project is the claim that the American Revolution was about preserving slavery. There simply is no evidence in support of that claim -- no Founding Father seems to have suggested that. In fact it is very likely that independence led directly to the end of slavery in the North, as big slave trading ports like New York and Newport lost their ability to trade in human chattel because of mercantilist trade barriers.
There *were* some Founding Fathers who would today be classified as anti-Catholic bigots, though, and anti-Catholic bigotry is hinted at in the Declaration of Independence with its swipe at Quebec (although not by name). Religious intolerance would play a major role in American history and still does to this day; the 1619 Project does not address this.
Not sure I see the difference between a person involuntarily transported to work for a period of year to 'earn' their freedom and how slavery was often done in the Roman world. So while I see the difference between that and chattel slavery, the term: 'involuntary indentured servitude' sounds like a corpse flower by any other name still smelling as sweet.
If much of your moral outrage about the 1619 project is based on the fact that the Africans bought to America on slave ships were technically “indentured servants” and not “slaves” - well at least not until much later. I’m not sure why that matters at all to the larger points being made.
Have you actually read the essays? Did you have a problems when you read them? Or were all your issues with the project based on the fact that it seemed to be casting some doubt on the glorious myth of American exceptionalism and that made you uneasy so you sought out any criticism of it you could find so you could rationalize your feelings? Maybe that’s not true for you. But I wonder because it does seem to be the dominant pattern in people who are incensed about it.
The NYT has refused to address inaccuracies in the 1619 project. The fact that the likes of the Rufo Right may be morons or bigots does not preclude the same thing from being true of the Left. And if you think that average Americans are not going to support politicians who promise to prevent demonstrably false information from being taught to their kids, well, good luck with that.
The trouble, of course, is that we Americans generally seem incapable of perceiving and accepting the nuanced truth of our own history.
And yet even the NYPost and similar organs have articles about the NYT correcting the 1619 project. Since I refuse to click on links to NYP, heritage, pjmedia etc I can't actually tell you anything further. The only thing I was willing to click on was https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/16/magazine/criticism-1619-project.html.
But hey, feel free to both-sides with the 1619 and the 1776 projects.
Thanks for the link, Assad. Unless I missed it, the NYT editor failed to address anything regarding matters of factual error, including the claim that the American Revolution was waged to protect slavery.
As for rc4797's comment that local school districts should have the right to accept or decline 1619 teaching materials, I have to wonder why he considers citizens to be 'morons and bigots' when they decide to advocate for exactly that outcome.
This is them addressing that very issue. I'm not an expert on it, but they do present evidence that protection of slavery was likely on the minds of many southerners with regards to deciding for independence or not. Whether that raises to the level of a 'major cause' or not (or however it was presented in the project) is certainly up for debate, but the information presented does shed some light on the subject, and by extension onto the topic of Constitutional compromises around slavery.
CRT. I don;t know from legislation, but I believe that CRT as it has existed is structural analysis. Marxism is structural analysis, that one's relation to the means of production--or social class--determines one's lot in life For CRT, one's race does the same thing. White people wallow in privilege while Black people continue getting the shitty end of the stick. The White race has sinned against the black race, and now the White race owes the Black race.
I had believed that none of this was being taught to school kids. A commenter in my local paper proved to me that it is, at least sometimes in some places, by referring me to consulting contracts signed and syllabi in use.
I oppose teaching any kids that White is some kind of original sin. Human beings have rights and obligations, races do not.
Original sin is a religious concept and therefore incompatible with modern teaching on race. In the end, kids are smarter than we give them credit for and they're perfectly capable of looking at their neighborhoods and seeing how segregated they are, and make some guesses on their own as to why that might be. What conclusions do they reach on their own? Should we address these conclusions in school or pretend there's nothing to see? I think we do our children a grave disservice if we keep pretending that everybody has an equal chance to make a living. They can see the difference between good schools and bad schools, good jobs and crappy jobs, neighborhoods where police are friendly and neighborhoods where they have their guns drawn. They are the ones asking for change. The question is how we adults will respond.
And who says that is what they are taught in school? The fact that Critical Race Theory isn’t being taught in school should cause enough concern to find out what is actually being said in schools. You are being lied to by the ones who created CRT as an existential threat to white kids. Why do you believe it?
Reading a letter to my local paper regarding this, I took your tack in the comments, believing that simply teaching history in a clear eyed manner was being cast as teaching CRT. She replied in the comments. Her concern began when she attended a parents Equity, Inclusiveness session via Zoom, and was stunned at what she was hearing. She looked farther into it. The district hired consultants to teach teachers "Teaching History Through the Lens of CRT." I hate to be proven wrong, but in the is case I was. It i not true that no elementary schools are teaching CRT. That is not to say how many more are, if any.
Two thoughts - We need to know more, especially because there is a well-funded and coordinated campaign across the country to vilify any teaching about race in America. Is the letter writer known to you? Could she be making this up? Who organized this parents Equity, inclusiveness via Zoom? What district? Did you verify with the district? Who were the consultants and what were their qualifications? How many? Who chose that consultant? Is this part of the stated curriculum?
Secondly - There is a difference between teaching through the lens of a theory and teaching the theory. Not just a quibble especially in younger grades. What was taught? Was it used in actual classrooms?
A letter writer in a newspaper speaking vaguely about a parents Zoom meeting needs verification in these fraught times. I’m sure you have heard about Moms for Liberty, the Koch-funded group that has been targeting school board meetings and using dark money to campaign for election to the school boards - many successfully. They have made school boards political.
I looked into the letter writer. Not a crackpot; also not a hysterical letter. The district was Oak Grove, Santa Ross California. The consultancy, which apparently has other clients in in the county, is On the Margins, When all of this happened, I went to their website and found a resources pull-down menu, which, when I searched for "CRT," contained seven references to CRT and some pretty objectional (to me) language: White people have been "hoarding" the good jobs" was one example. When I went back today to get you a link, however, I couldn't find that particular page. It's possible that it was cleaned up a bit due to negative publicity. Looking at the rest of their web page, there is a lot that is just fine, and some available presentations that definitely would not be good for kids--though I don't know If they are presented to kids. As to what teachers actually taught, "through a CRT lens," I don't know.
Being white is not an original sin. But slavery might be America’s original sin since slavery was part of the foundation when the country was formed. Slavery was also a part of Great Britain and most of the other European countries. Great wealth was derived because of the advantage it gave to the white people who benefited from the free labour of slaves and subsequently benefited all white people.
In the US, the advantage of slavery was obviously experienced by all white people, not just slave owners and that privilege and benefit is still part of being a white person in America. That, I think, is the contention. Many white Americans, raised on the philosophy that all Americans are created equal, aren’t willing to truly examine that belief and admit that it is not true. Race is the great divide followed by wealth or the lack thereof. To acknowledge that means you must decide whether you believe that should change... or not.
It is foundational to Americanism, that the US is the land of opportunity and that anyone can work hard and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. To acknowledge that people of colour are at a disadvantage because of race is in direct conflict with the American “truism” that “all men are created equal”. That is what Ted Cruz et al are objecting to. It is so much easier to believe they have succeeded because they worked harder and not acknowledge that being white gave them an advantage. That is what those who oppose “CRT” are objecting to - that there is such a thing as white privileged and that they have benefited from it.
The fats cats have benefited from more than chattel slavery. There's feudalism, imperialism, indentured servitude, and shitty paying jobs--not all of which impacted only Black people. Let's talk about injustice and oppression, and helping the poor of any and all races, rather than obsessing about White people owing Black people.
What if we recall a time when people with names like Cruz, Rubio, and Fuentes, or any Catholics, did not merit membership in this alleged club? How do we explain the continuing degradation of Scots-Irish in America, or the successes of relatively recent immigrants from East and South Asia?
"one's relation to the means of production--or social class--determines one's lot in life "
What anti-Marxists do not want to admit is that Marx was basically right on that, at least as far as most of Europe was concerned. It was less so in America at that time, but the amount of true social mobility then and now has been and continues to be overstated.
This is good in that you have distilled much discussion down to free will and determinism. That is a hard nut to crack, but most matters here are derivative.
Societal structures vs individual agency is an age-old debate. I think it's usually better for individual people to think in terms of the latter and policy makers to think in terms of the former.
It's been estimated that fully half of Twitter traffic in Russia consists of bots talking to bots. Musk is a clever man. If he would commit to finding a way to purge the platform of bots and other inauthentic posters, all would be forgiven--at least for me.
Obfuscation seems to be a necessary condition for a French philosophical work to exist--at least for the last century or so. Sartre, Foucault, Derrida...yeesh.
The co-opting (or "decodification") of CRT is one in a line of terms for which meanings have been changed in order to weaponize them in teh culture wars.
"Fake news" used to mean social media posts disguised as news articles but now means anything we disagree with (or as Charlie says..."I'm old enough to remember when..."). "RINO" was once used to describe Republicans who do not subscribe to traditional conservative values but now means any Republican who do not kiss the ring. We are seeing it in real time on Twitter with "doxxing" which apparently now means any location information about a person (or other information they do not want shared) instead of revealing their personal information for purposes of harassment.
Recently got sent a series of anti-woke cartoons around Christmas. Most weren't super offensive, just tired (Reindeer renamed as distribution specialists, elves renamed something about height, etc.).
The thought that went through my head as a response: "Did you get equally offended when they took the signs off of drinking fountains when you were a kid?"
I heard "sanitation engineers" back in the day. The renaming game has been going on a long time. It usually has a very short shelf-life of effectiveness, because inevitably the stigma comes back once enough people see through the euphemism. For instance, how long 'differently abled' is going to serve the purpose?
quick comment on the Big Lie supporters (believer?) - I do try to think of the other person's view. If I were convinced that there were actors illegally rigging a presidential election, and all the normal challenges were depleted, what would I want to happen? And did any Big Lie supporters take action to see it done?
Did any members of Congress try to form a committee for secure election guidelines? Did anyone talk to election experts learn what direction a state should be encouraged to go to ensure secure elections? All I saw was GOP legislatures shaving days from early voting, shaving days off mail ballot request & return deadlines, etc.
For example in Ohio, Republicans have no doubts about mail in voting. They do not purge voter registrations until like 2 elections have passed without voting. We even have a mix of paper ballots and touchscreen voting.
So where is the big push for national guidelines of no mail-in/absentee voting, hand marked paper ballots, and a std for voter ID requirements? Where is the recommendation to keep rolls accurate? And of course we all know the answer - these things only matter in "swing" states, and only matter when Republicans lose.
I really hate hearing complaints, with no accompanying ideas for solutions or requests for help with solutions.
On Tim’s question about content moderation and who decides: the government and sports worlds came up with the all-purpose response decades ago. All they said is, ``The decision was made.’’
Not sure if I quiiiiiite agree with Sully about the legislation being 'well intentioned'.
And if parents in an individual school district conclude that the 1619 project is 'CRT' and is inappropriate for their kids, you will climb up on your high horse and declare them all bigots and morons.
Isn't that kind of where we're at in our national conversation?
It is a curious thing. When it comes to education about American racial issues, the Right refers to anything it doesn't like as 'CRT' --- often erroneously. In response, the Left uses any such error to prove its case that the Right doesn't know what it's talking about.
In the process of this simplistic back and forth, clear headed reasoning is not advanced.
For purposes of discussion, then, it seems like all should agree that while CRT may mean a very specific thing, the common understanding of it has ---- rightly or wrongly --- evolved as something very different. In this respect it would not be unlike the understanding of the term 'states rights' in the Civil War period.
All that said, it seems to me that the very real concerns of fair minded citizens (of both perspectives) are being sullied in the rhetorical mud slinging.
Sigh
I can't see how to teach an honest, painful history of the United States that assumes people act solely as individuals and not as part of a system. Slavery and Jim Crow and Indian removals and lesser rights for women were most certainly systemic.
In Jim Crow states there wasn't a single honest cop, prosecutor, judge or jury member. There wasn't a single business that was allowed to practice unfettered capitalism and accept all customers. The system was written down in laws.
There’s no arguing with the right about CRT. I learned this when I was accused of falling into the trap of believing that critical race theory is exactly what it says it is as opposed to--as near as I can tell--a Trojan horse designed to bring down western civilization as we know it.
I find Charlie's critique of Sen Cruz a bit jejune. Not to defend Ted Cruz, but I also don't think Marxism should be taught to elementary school students who are developmentally unprepared for dealing with the material dialectic or ideology critique (they'll just end up assuming anything their teacher tells them is a mask for class oppression). Far better to start them off with Hegel and make sure they understand the intersection of freedom and the Absolute before letting them loose on the inherent contradictions of surplus value.
Tell them the one about the battle of Stalingrad being the battle of the Left and the Right Hegelians.
We're all Rechtshegelianer now.
I don't believe it is taught in elementary schools. It is usually taught in a HS Political Science course when comparing different economic theories. You may not like it, but it is a legitimate economic theory.
You got me.
I will never understand the right's issues with failing to acknowledge things like systemic racism, systemic classism, and the way that both of these things plus inherited wealth poison the concept of "meritocracy" that this country is supposedly so proud of. If people are excluded from equality of opportunity at universities via a systemic paywall that excludes everyone below a certain class, then you don't have a true meritocracy, you have a faux-meritocracy derived from a skewed sampling pool that excluded a lot of people who aren't there simply because they don't have enough familial wealth to compete.
Either way, once the best of our faux-meritocracy pool makes it in the new economy, they only ever marry across class at scale and concentrate their wealth into their kids so that their kids can grow up and do the same exact thing as their parents some day. Our country's best and brightest aren't doing shit to lift their fellow citizens up, they're just co-mingling with each other and "living their best lives" as they raise the cost of living on everyone else while pretending that racism and classism don't exist anymore. THAT is why systemic racism and systemic classism still exist to such a degree in this country: the rich don't want competition for their kids, they want to maintain their advantage *for* their kids. They would rather keep a sick system that their kids will benefit from in place rather than fixing the system while diminishing the advantage their kids have via familial wealth.
You nailed it
"They would rather keep a sick system that their kids will benefit from in place rather than fixing the system while diminishing the advantage their kids have via familial wealth. " This just seems like garden variety self-interest. It's a tough sell to ask people to deny their kids the best opportunities in the name of making a more equitable system under the best of circumstances. Harder when the criteria seem to be group-based rather than merit-based. This is why fewer people are sold on affirmative action than on dejure desegregation. And why getting rid of testing for magnet schools has caused problems in San Francisco.
Right. But patriotism is precisely what we have used to call on people to deny their self-interest for the good of the nation. Men and women in military, law enforcement, and medical services have done it. So have politicians, at least in the now, somewhat distant, past.
If patriotism can get poor kids from rural areas and ethnic minorities to risk their lives to protect the country, it should also be expected to get the wealthy to create a fair system.
This is a good point, and one I think that should be a lens to view the difference between cold war America and post cold war America. During the cold war we had a competing economic system as the bad guy that we had to make sure we kept our system better than. When the cold war was over, communism was fully discredited and thus less of a (perceived) need to sand off the rough edges of capitalism.
Yes, I have noticed that, too. Almost makes me nostalgic for the Cold War. There may have been the uneasy threat of nuclear annihilation, but at least the fear of godless Commies taking over the world kept our leaders more honest.
And then we wonder why congress is populated with people who can't spell "martial", our health care system was run by people who thought that a viral URI with asymptomatic transmission was going to "fade away", or how Elon Musk came to run three giant companies with large social ramifications.
If MTG had to *actually* compete with a Morehouse grad instead of inheriting a company her dad set up, we'd be spared her shenanigans. If the med school admissions process couldn't be gamed for thousands of dollars, maybe we wouldn't have had two terrible CDC directors under Trumps tenure. Maybe if Elon Musk had higher melanin content in his skin, the only headline he would make would start with the words "Florida Man..."
We've had these discussions before, so forgive me if I take a bit of wry amusement from your opening lines and your closing lines. You say you don't understand and then clearly lay out exactly why they wouldn't acknowledge it. And yeah, I know you do understand, just amusing is all.
The wealthy right denies the problem exists and the wealthy left loudly laments about it and then doesn't do much to fix it.
Personally I think what is needed is a focus on the inequality that doesn't lose sight of the fact that human nature seems hard-wired to marry for advantage. We aren't going to legislate that out of existence. What we can do is cut down on the factors that encourage it. Increased wealth transfer taxes, higher marginal tax rates, etc. Then use the money to help lift up those who need it (inner city and rural schools come to mind).
"Not understanding" is a rhetorical device used to ask particular questions and make particular statements. I do that al the time. Another entry into that path is "did you ever wonder..."
As you point out, it usually (not always) become pretty apparent that the person that didn't understand or wondered actually has a clue ;)
Nepotism is wired in (why wife was talking bout it this morning in connection with her job--how the ranks of the institution she teaches at are now filled with people from India and the office workers are largely East Asian).
We have a preference (extending beyond nepotism) for those like us--either in appearance and secondarily in belief. We socialize and marry with those like us--same socioeconomic status and background.
It is how you build and maintain a noble class.
[Nepotism is wired in (why wife was talking bout it this morning in connection with her job--how the ranks of the institution she teaches at are now filled with people from India and the office workers are largely East Asian).]
A case could be made that this is an example of just what those who try to maintain privilege are worried about. "Once I stop cheating, someone else will start. Thus, I move from advantage not to equality, but to disadvantage."
We certainly are imperfect (especially in society as a whole) in understanding 'human nature', but any time we ignore, wish away, or try to legislate it out of existence we're going to be disappointed.
The idea of fairness of opportunity and education is a specifically American idea. I have know people from India and East Asia and they don't have a problem with hiring people of their nationality, race or social class.
Americans do the same thing but understand it is wrong culturally, which is why the idea of tokenism came about.
My mind goes to the cultural acceptability of bribes comparatively between the US / West and much of the rest of the world. I can't help but wonder if things like that and the viewing nepotism as wrong don't partially explain the west's economic success compared to much of the rest of the world. By no means the only factors, nor even saying major factors, but I'd think they are in the mix.
Having a relatively incorrupt system helps. One of the things people forget, however, is that we were pretty corrupt during most of the 19th century. Especially before the Civil Service Reform.
Many administrative posts in the federal government were part of the spoils system (political appointment). Same with a lot of local offices.
Then there were things like Credit Mobilier.
Open bribes were less socially acceptable.. but they still occurred and they occurred in other less visible forms.
I would argue that it wasn't freedom from corruption that accounts for the success. It was largely a combination of culture and less-autocratic forms of government.
I think you're right. Look at a lot of the kids of musicians, actors, artists, et al, who have all the doors open to them and yet don't have the fraction of the talent the parent has.
"Like seeks like." This is the core principle behind the concept of "assortative mating," and I would propose that it's the core principle behind tribalism, classism, and racism as well. Over-trust of in-groups and under-trust in out-groups breeds assortative mating, but the irony is that it's usually someone who is closest to you who leads you the furthest astray. You think it's some member of a racial or class out-group who will sexually violate your child some day, but then it really turns out to be your brother or a priest at your church. People who seek shelter in the comfort of their ingroups are often betrayed by the same people they thought had their back through common identity or class or ideology. Excessive assortative mating across a wealthy society leads to concentrating the wealth among the wealthy and class systems that persist generation to generation, which is basically where we are with a Gini Coefficient higher than Russia's (A country we consider to be an open oligarchy via this measurement).
Travis have you considered writing fiction? You have excellent macro views of all kinds of human tendencies. You could weave together really nifty motives & flawed characters. Seriously.
You can only be betrayed by someone you trust.
It all comes down to who do you trust--and we often trust very poorly--for the reasons you note and with the results that you note.
Okay, I should rephrase: "I understand how the right ignores and justifies the problem, I just don't understand how they live with themselves."
If they have to lie to themselves about how things got this way in the first place and then force the rest of society to acknowledge those lies so that they can live comfortably with things being the way they are, then what does that say about *humanity* more generally? Maybe this is how slavery went pleasantly by for so long too? The rich people who were able to afford slaves told themselves a story about "merit-based" success/failure in life, and that the slaveholders were the "successful" while the slaves were "failures", and so the playing field of merit left slave and slaveholder where they "ought to be." This false idea of "merit" existing on unequal playing fields is such a common thread in history that is oft-used to justify societal inequalities to sickening degrees. Until that part changes I really don't see the rest coming undone. The part where humans that had natural advantages over others never acknowledge those things and instead use their advantages to seat themselves atop society and declare themselves "merit winners" and then use their wealth and power to enforce societal inequalities so that their kids have a shot at doing the same thing they did. Until humanity stops gaslighting itself to make the rich feel better about themselves, we're going to be generationally-unequal until the extinction event comes, and when it does, only the rich will be allowed to board the escape rockets to newly-colonized Pandora.
Well said. But the slaveowners didn't use success/failure, per se, to explain how they were the slaveowners and not the slaves. They used white supremacism to argue that other human beings were inferior from birth and naturally suited to slavery. And we are still dealing with the aftereffects of those rationalizations and lies...like denying that systemic racism existed.
The can live with themselves because, like most people they are almost entirely self-focused and have little empathy for the Other. Especially the other who is a different color or sex or whatever.
Many people exist in a zero sum world where there are winners and losers--and if you are losing it is because someone took something from you... and if you are winning it is because you HAD to take things from the losers.
It is just the nature of things, eh? No real reason to feel too guilty about it, amiright.
Besides, if I don't do it they will do it to me.
There are "good" people, but in general people are not good--not without the existence of a cultural and economic system that basically forces them to be good (at least until they manage to corrupt it).
There is no substantive moral/ethical structure with a society to write and enforce it.
There is no arc of history bending towards a better world for all unless there is a continual effort to make that happen.
The question is not about making people better (because we can't) the question is about how do we build a system where people MUST be better--and how do we protect it from being co-opted and corrupted for as long as possible.
I think this gets to the heart of it. We're not remotely close to perfect, and any system designed by us isn't going to be perfect either. It will take constant updating and modification to keep it doing what it is supposed to do (forcing us to be good).
To me, the key is to get enough acknowledgement of this to be able to improve the system. Too bad that the truths that were self evident were all positive rather than having some negative in there.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people will seek their own and their children's advantage, almost invariably at the expense of others; that gaming the system and pulling the ladder up behind them is something most people will do if given the chance; that our tribal nature of in-group vs. out-group thinking isn't suited to societies of thousands let alone millions of people. That to guard against these tendencies Governments are instituted among people..."
TJ would need to flower that up a bit, and certainly I don't want to go down the road of man as inherently bad, but we are inherently flawed, and while it may have gone without saying 250 years ago, it could use more saying these days.
Good and bad are contextual judgments. We can only say that something is good or bad by looking at the outcome and judging that outcome WRT some goal that we have.
People are not good or bad. People are people. They behave in accordance with how they were shaped by evolution and then constrained by culture.
If the goal is to create large, powerful, equitable, and harmonious societies, then there are obvious goods and bads. Obvious positive and negative behaviors... and so we judge good and bad on THAT basis.
If the goal is to concentrate power and wealth, then there are obvious goods and bads, and we judge on THAT basis.
But without the constant dedication and watchfulness towards particular ends, an effort towards the first thing is doomed to founder on the rocks and shoals of human nature as we tend towards the second thing.
Hi Charlie - Big Bulwark fan here, but I have to take issue with today's piece on CRT. Yes, the Right is distorting and weaponizing their notion of CRT, but the complicating factor is that the Left is weaponizing it as well. Take, for example, the NY Times' 1619 project, a key piece of what most Americans understand to be CRT. At least some material in 1619 is demonstrably false and - like the Marxism of your comparison - is certainly ideologically pointed. Yet unlike Das Kapital, 1619 is being used to create lesson plans for K-12 students. I suspect that using Das Kapital as the basis for K-12 lesson plans might be seen as an attempt at ideological 'influencing'. No less should 1619 be seen as such.
This is certainly not a call for a return of 'Gone With the Wind' style social studies education. But let's not fool ourselves that both Left and Right are deeply engaged in the 'weaponization' of their favorite hobby horses. And in this fight, as in all warfare, truth is the first casualty.
I am not a professional historian, merely a history buff, and I share your critique of the 1619 project. Former Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia got into trouble when he (correctly) pointed out that slavery did not begin in 1619 in Virginia. The first Africans who were involuntarily transported there became indentured servants, not slaves for life (and eternity). It took a few decades for the legal system to create permanent bondage. But the historical ignoramuses trashed Northam anyway.
One of the biggest falsehoods in the 1619 project is the claim that the American Revolution was about preserving slavery. There simply is no evidence in support of that claim -- no Founding Father seems to have suggested that. In fact it is very likely that independence led directly to the end of slavery in the North, as big slave trading ports like New York and Newport lost their ability to trade in human chattel because of mercantilist trade barriers.
There *were* some Founding Fathers who would today be classified as anti-Catholic bigots, though, and anti-Catholic bigotry is hinted at in the Declaration of Independence with its swipe at Quebec (although not by name). Religious intolerance would play a major role in American history and still does to this day; the 1619 Project does not address this.
Not sure I see the difference between a person involuntarily transported to work for a period of year to 'earn' their freedom and how slavery was often done in the Roman world. So while I see the difference between that and chattel slavery, the term: 'involuntary indentured servitude' sounds like a corpse flower by any other name still smelling as sweet.
If much of your moral outrage about the 1619 project is based on the fact that the Africans bought to America on slave ships were technically “indentured servants” and not “slaves” - well at least not until much later. I’m not sure why that matters at all to the larger points being made.
Have you actually read the essays? Did you have a problems when you read them? Or were all your issues with the project based on the fact that it seemed to be casting some doubt on the glorious myth of American exceptionalism and that made you uneasy so you sought out any criticism of it you could find so you could rationalize your feelings? Maybe that’s not true for you. But I wonder because it does seem to be the dominant pattern in people who are incensed about it.
The NYT has refused to address inaccuracies in the 1619 project. The fact that the likes of the Rufo Right may be morons or bigots does not preclude the same thing from being true of the Left. And if you think that average Americans are not going to support politicians who promise to prevent demonstrably false information from being taught to their kids, well, good luck with that.
The trouble, of course, is that we Americans generally seem incapable of perceiving and accepting the nuanced truth of our own history.
And yet even the NYPost and similar organs have articles about the NYT correcting the 1619 project. Since I refuse to click on links to NYP, heritage, pjmedia etc I can't actually tell you anything further. The only thing I was willing to click on was https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/16/magazine/criticism-1619-project.html.
But hey, feel free to both-sides with the 1619 and the 1776 projects.
Thanks for the link, Assad. Unless I missed it, the NYT editor failed to address anything regarding matters of factual error, including the claim that the American Revolution was waged to protect slavery.
As for rc4797's comment that local school districts should have the right to accept or decline 1619 teaching materials, I have to wonder why he considers citizens to be 'morons and bigots' when they decide to advocate for exactly that outcome.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/magazine/we-respond-to-the-historians-who-critiqued-the-1619-project.html
This is them addressing that very issue. I'm not an expert on it, but they do present evidence that protection of slavery was likely on the minds of many southerners with regards to deciding for independence or not. Whether that raises to the level of a 'major cause' or not (or however it was presented in the project) is certainly up for debate, but the information presented does shed some light on the subject, and by extension onto the topic of Constitutional compromises around slavery.
CRT. I don;t know from legislation, but I believe that CRT as it has existed is structural analysis. Marxism is structural analysis, that one's relation to the means of production--or social class--determines one's lot in life For CRT, one's race does the same thing. White people wallow in privilege while Black people continue getting the shitty end of the stick. The White race has sinned against the black race, and now the White race owes the Black race.
I had believed that none of this was being taught to school kids. A commenter in my local paper proved to me that it is, at least sometimes in some places, by referring me to consulting contracts signed and syllabi in use.
I oppose teaching any kids that White is some kind of original sin. Human beings have rights and obligations, races do not.
Original sin is a religious concept and therefore incompatible with modern teaching on race. In the end, kids are smarter than we give them credit for and they're perfectly capable of looking at their neighborhoods and seeing how segregated they are, and make some guesses on their own as to why that might be. What conclusions do they reach on their own? Should we address these conclusions in school or pretend there's nothing to see? I think we do our children a grave disservice if we keep pretending that everybody has an equal chance to make a living. They can see the difference between good schools and bad schools, good jobs and crappy jobs, neighborhoods where police are friendly and neighborhoods where they have their guns drawn. They are the ones asking for change. The question is how we adults will respond.
I don't oppose teaching history as it was. I oppose first graders being told there is a kind of evil lurking in them because of their color.
And who says that is what they are taught in school? The fact that Critical Race Theory isn’t being taught in school should cause enough concern to find out what is actually being said in schools. You are being lied to by the ones who created CRT as an existential threat to white kids. Why do you believe it?
Reading a letter to my local paper regarding this, I took your tack in the comments, believing that simply teaching history in a clear eyed manner was being cast as teaching CRT. She replied in the comments. Her concern began when she attended a parents Equity, Inclusiveness session via Zoom, and was stunned at what she was hearing. She looked farther into it. The district hired consultants to teach teachers "Teaching History Through the Lens of CRT." I hate to be proven wrong, but in the is case I was. It i not true that no elementary schools are teaching CRT. That is not to say how many more are, if any.
Two thoughts - We need to know more, especially because there is a well-funded and coordinated campaign across the country to vilify any teaching about race in America. Is the letter writer known to you? Could she be making this up? Who organized this parents Equity, inclusiveness via Zoom? What district? Did you verify with the district? Who were the consultants and what were their qualifications? How many? Who chose that consultant? Is this part of the stated curriculum?
Secondly - There is a difference between teaching through the lens of a theory and teaching the theory. Not just a quibble especially in younger grades. What was taught? Was it used in actual classrooms?
A letter writer in a newspaper speaking vaguely about a parents Zoom meeting needs verification in these fraught times. I’m sure you have heard about Moms for Liberty, the Koch-funded group that has been targeting school board meetings and using dark money to campaign for election to the school boards - many successfully. They have made school boards political.
I looked into the letter writer. Not a crackpot; also not a hysterical letter. The district was Oak Grove, Santa Ross California. The consultancy, which apparently has other clients in in the county, is On the Margins, When all of this happened, I went to their website and found a resources pull-down menu, which, when I searched for "CRT," contained seven references to CRT and some pretty objectional (to me) language: White people have been "hoarding" the good jobs" was one example. When I went back today to get you a link, however, I couldn't find that particular page. It's possible that it was cleaned up a bit due to negative publicity. Looking at the rest of their web page, there is a lot that is just fine, and some available presentations that definitely would not be good for kids--though I don't know If they are presented to kids. As to what teachers actually taught, "through a CRT lens," I don't know.
Being white is not an original sin. But slavery might be America’s original sin since slavery was part of the foundation when the country was formed. Slavery was also a part of Great Britain and most of the other European countries. Great wealth was derived because of the advantage it gave to the white people who benefited from the free labour of slaves and subsequently benefited all white people.
In the US, the advantage of slavery was obviously experienced by all white people, not just slave owners and that privilege and benefit is still part of being a white person in America. That, I think, is the contention. Many white Americans, raised on the philosophy that all Americans are created equal, aren’t willing to truly examine that belief and admit that it is not true. Race is the great divide followed by wealth or the lack thereof. To acknowledge that means you must decide whether you believe that should change... or not.
It is foundational to Americanism, that the US is the land of opportunity and that anyone can work hard and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. To acknowledge that people of colour are at a disadvantage because of race is in direct conflict with the American “truism” that “all men are created equal”. That is what Ted Cruz et al are objecting to. It is so much easier to believe they have succeeded because they worked harder and not acknowledge that being white gave them an advantage. That is what those who oppose “CRT” are objecting to - that there is such a thing as white privileged and that they have benefited from it.
The fats cats have benefited from more than chattel slavery. There's feudalism, imperialism, indentured servitude, and shitty paying jobs--not all of which impacted only Black people. Let's talk about injustice and oppression, and helping the poor of any and all races, rather than obsessing about White people owing Black people.
What if we recall a time when people with names like Cruz, Rubio, and Fuentes, or any Catholics, did not merit membership in this alleged club? How do we explain the continuing degradation of Scots-Irish in America, or the successes of relatively recent immigrants from East and South Asia?
"one's relation to the means of production--or social class--determines one's lot in life "
What anti-Marxists do not want to admit is that Marx was basically right on that, at least as far as most of Europe was concerned. It was less so in America at that time, but the amount of true social mobility then and now has been and continues to be overstated.
This is good in that you have distilled much discussion down to free will and determinism. That is a hard nut to crack, but most matters here are derivative.
I'm anti-structuralism. I think it's de-humanizing.
Societal structures vs individual agency is an age-old debate. I think it's usually better for individual people to think in terms of the latter and policy makers to think in terms of the former.
Yeah, to way oversimplify, the diagnosis of the problem isn't where Marx fell down; it is the suggested solutions that ignore human nature.
Re: Moderation.
It's been estimated that fully half of Twitter traffic in Russia consists of bots talking to bots. Musk is a clever man. If he would commit to finding a way to purge the platform of bots and other inauthentic posters, all would be forgiven--at least for me.
"and anything written by Jacques Derrida"
I have found it impossible to understand anything written by Jacques Derrida.
Obfuscation seems to be a necessary condition for a French philosophical work to exist--at least for the last century or so. Sartre, Foucault, Derrida...yeesh.
The co-opting (or "decodification") of CRT is one in a line of terms for which meanings have been changed in order to weaponize them in teh culture wars.
"Fake news" used to mean social media posts disguised as news articles but now means anything we disagree with (or as Charlie says..."I'm old enough to remember when..."). "RINO" was once used to describe Republicans who do not subscribe to traditional conservative values but now means any Republican who do not kiss the ring. We are seeing it in real time on Twitter with "doxxing" which apparently now means any location information about a person (or other information they do not want shared) instead of revealing their personal information for purposes of harassment.
Recently got sent a series of anti-woke cartoons around Christmas. Most weren't super offensive, just tired (Reindeer renamed as distribution specialists, elves renamed something about height, etc.).
The thought that went through my head as a response: "Did you get equally offended when they took the signs off of drinking fountains when you were a kid?"
It's funny because when I was a kid they made jokes about calling Garbage men sanitation managers.
I heard "sanitation engineers" back in the day. The renaming game has been going on a long time. It usually has a very short shelf-life of effectiveness, because inevitably the stigma comes back once enough people see through the euphemism. For instance, how long 'differently abled' is going to serve the purpose?
Are these the people who get upset at "happy holidays" greetings?
They used to. Donald Trump finally won the War on Christmas, so they've moved on.