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Discussion » Statements » Rosie's Corner » So now it is CRITICAL RACE THEORY that is the current trumpicans' straw they are DESPERATELY clinging to to SAVE THEM? Will it?

So now it is CRITICAL RACE THEORY that is the current trumpicans' straw they are DESPERATELY clinging to to SAVE THEM? Will it?

Posted - June 24, 2021

Responses


  • 6023
    It doesn't seem to have done much for anybody, since it first began in 1989.
    Nor does it's direct precursor from the 1960's - Critical Legal Studies.

    For those who don't know, these are the “basic tenets” of CRT:

    (1) Race is socially constructed, not biologically natural.  (I will agree with this, for the most part.  Exceptions being other branches of hominids.)

    (2) Racism in the United States is normal, not aberrational: it is the common, ordinary experience of most people of colour.

    (3) Owing to what critical race theorists call “interest convergence” or “material determinism,” legal advances (or setbacks) for people of colour tend to serve the interests of dominant white groups. Thus, the racial hierarchy that characterizes American society may be unaffected or even reinforced by ostensible improvements in the legal status of oppressed or exploited people. (I don't agree with this.  The whites who supported the Civil Rights Movement were not doing so for self-interest.  They were not getting any personal benefit from doing so, and often put themselves in danger.)

    (4) Members of minority groups periodically undergo “differential racialization,” or the attribution to them of varying sets of negative stereotypes, again depending on the needs or interests of whites.

    (5) According to the thesis of “intersectionality” or “antiessentialism,” no individual can be adequately identified by membership in a single group. An African American person, for example, may also identify as a woman, a lesbian, a feminist, a Christian, and so on.

    (6) The “voice of colour” thesis holds that people of colour are uniquely qualified to speak on behalf of other members of their group (or groups) regarding the forms and effects of racism. (With #5, this would mean a black man is not qualified to speak on behalf of all black men - only those in his group.  EG: Black, male, Christian.  And can't speak for Black, male, Muslim because he isn't part of that group.)
      June 24, 2021 10:57 AM MDT
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  • 113301
    Thank you for fleshing out my question and giving it a spine Walt. Much appreciated that you took the time to do that. The more theories that are floated the more confused I get. Flowery rhetoric notwithstanding we try to complexify doing wrong to make it seem as if it were the right thing to do? Is it?  Think all of this will get weirder as we go along or less? :(
      June 25, 2021 7:07 AM MDT
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