So “Marxism is dead” yet the “leader” of BLM claims to be a “trained Marxist”. I guess I will need to think a little further about those two concepts.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then for practical purposes it’s a duck even if you want to draw some academic distinction and call it something else. As with roses and sweet fragrances, a totalitarian collectivist by any other name is just as ruthlessly genocidal. Was Pol Pot a Marxist as seen through the eyes of someone with a PhD in political economy? Mao? Mussolini? Hitler? Stalin? Quite likely not exactly. But it sounds like a distinction without a difference. The details of what’s “under the hood” in their thinking is akin to debating angels and heads of pins: it makes no real-world difference. Each killed millions in a quest for absolute power. There’s little more to say.
Whatever you want to call it, however you want to dress it up, whatever it says on the tag, teaching children that the color of their skin determines who they are — is the foundation of their humanity and casts their future — is unethical and immoral.
Marxism is alive and well. I agree with you on so much else, Toby, I wish you could see this. I think coming from the left it's your big blind spot....
Don't you have children in school? Critical race theory is the term being used to encompass the anti-racism programs that are called by their implementors such things as "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion" (DEI) task forces. So you've played a sleight-of-hand here. You've used the former and more technical origins of critical race theory to elide the fact that there is a derivative, modern formula being used in schools to horrific effect.
DEI / anti-racism is a quite nearly insane doctrine. It assigns collective racial guilt and social hierarchy based on race. It insists that any outcome difference is solely due to conscious or unconscious racial bias. Teachers at my children's (former as we homeschool now) charter school were assigned a task of monitoring their unconscious acts of racism and reporting back ala a communist self-accusation or struggle session.
Parents and teachers are told that anyone who is not actively engaging in whatever they define as anti-racist activities is a racist. As part of this the school sent out a video where preschoolers were having non-traditional gender roles 'scaffolded' (i.e. forced) into play sessions specifically designed for the pre-school teacher to impose the 'correct' views.
All of this occurs against a backdrop of fear as anyone accused is automatically guilty, much like you might find in any totalitarian society. No actual critical faculty may be exercised by the students about these broad social questions because the doctrine cleverly made anyone who doesn't openly, actively and aggressively perform acts of ablution a racist by default.
So go ahead, call it what you like. Call it anti-white racism maybe. But it has been dubbed critical race theory for a very clear reason: the alleged purpose of all this is to erase differences that are purported to be caused by implicit bias embedded into everything from reasoning to mathematics to gender.
Your argument here is akin to saying "everyone has been worried about vaccine side effects but mRNA gene therapy is not a vaccine so its okay to take it."
Playing semantics and doing so to deliberately miss the point is sophistry.
I think you raise good points here and I'm grateful for your thoughtful comment. I think it's important to make a distinction between critical theory and bad teaching and between critical theory and wokeism (polar opposites in both cases). But I see your point -- forget what we call it, what's actually happening on the ground in school classrooms, and is that the sort of instruction that we want? I'm focused on the intellectual history of a certain set of ideas that are almost never actually discussed these days and you are focused on real kids in real classrooms today. And I think your realist approach is important.
I've just been reading through this article and you might find it interesting. I don't draw a sharp dividing line between wokeism and intellectual critical theories. I would love to build a course that examines the roots of these modern ideas and study it all in detail in an academic environment but that seems like a quaint leisure activity from another dimension in which my daily existence isn't under constant threat.
Such a great post! Thank you! The irony of course of the Jacob Silverman tweet that serves as the writing prompt, "it's an empty signifier." Indeed, that's the critique, wokeism is a tribal movement untethered from intellectual foundations that would give it meaning. It's a Seinfelding movement that is an empty signifier at the end of the day. And that's what's troubling about it. The cosplay performance of social change is not actual social change (except perhaps in the metaverse where fictional identity is the only truth).
The particular form of rigid assertions as a core and the deployment of radical critique to attack any other idea -is- the intellectual basis of wokeism and it is not new. It goes back to things like this:
The explicit point was to achieve whatever goals the left defined at any particular moment by making them unassailable axioms and to cause all other speech to be forbidden.
The goals and core assumptions were flexible enough to be modified from marxist class struggle to American racial inequality, but the core goal is the same: power.
When I hear even the anodyne versions of critical theory that you cite in this article, I see how they are being used as part of this cycle. Once we accept the premise that racism is baked into the cake of every institution and, yea, even the minds of preschoolers (yes this was part of what my child's former school sent us as part of DEI initiative - psych experiments with colored paper as evidence of racism), then we ineluctably move towards the destruction of every part of society via the mechanism of post-modern destruction. That is why I cited the CA arts council's assertion in my other comment that they are part of a revolutionary, transformative movement.
So perhaps there is a constructive means of reflecting on racist institutions that is illuminated by the consideration that racism is not merely individual attitude and action but that is not what I and my family have experienced. Instead is is a central dogmatic tenet of a bulldozing, all-encompassing woke ideology that tolerates neither dissent nor critique.
Not sure anyone will see this, but here is a prime example of how this works straight from the horses mouth. My children's former school used this framework to adopt their 'anti-racism statement.'
Note this part, "At its zenith, Self-Determination seeks nothing less than wholesale societal and cultural transformation." So it is a revolutionary movement. Feel free to browse their definition of equity as well.
Note the source: a state arts agency. What is an arts bureau doing trying to redesign American culture?
I know, I know the left isnt' communist, sure. I know, I know I haven't exhaustively read all the antecedents of CRT from Gramsci to Foucault to Kendi. But maybe, just maybe I'm not an ignorant rube. Maybe, just maybe there is a continuity here even if big C Communism isn't the authoritian theory du jour.
This neo-liberal bullsh-t is just a cover, a feckless so-called agenda that stands in place of real equity and reform. Exhibit A: Biden with just executive orders could do much to share police data to spot multiple abusers of power, as was pointed out by the black advocates that met him. He was defensive. Whenever called upon to ACT, neo-liberals specifically do not and cover their rear-ends with nonsense or meaningless statements like those in the links above. Where is Biden and the woke neo-liberals on prison reform, on police reform, on 15.00 mininum wage, on a host of other ACTIONS that could create greater equity.... NOWHERE. Instead let's start a non-profit for poverty relief, get a website with lot of nice-sounding words and pay ourselves 250K to "advocate" those who are in poverty. You get the difference between this crap and real praxis?
I think what you're missing is that the vast majority of people (including me) do not have your academic background and have zero familiarity with academia's various theories. So what YOU are referring to as CRT--from academia's standpoint--has no real resemblance to that which has currently been branded as "CRT." I believe that in the current culture, "CRT" to most people, is simply the kind of woke-ism on steroids that most of us feel is being shoved down our throats.
Fair point. I think we should make a distinction though between critical theory (a method with a solid scholarly foundation that is almost never taught) and wokeism (which is just a toxic mimic of theories of social change). But you're right, the people on the ground enacting wokeism don't understand the difference so the distinction I'm making is fine but may be irrelevant to most people involved and affected.
Except that actual truth matters (or used to anyway), and actual CRT in inception and execution was a critical lens that would respond with utter disgust at the colonialist hijacking of the term to turn it against its active principles and commitments. Once again white intellectuals (mostly) on the let and angry whites reacting to a pseudo-controversy on the right, have colonized a potentially potent lens into injustice and an aid to correction, but we now live in a world where anti-woke-oppression and pharmo-fascist oppression go hand in hand with no apparent irony.
I usually love your posts but you’re off base by miles on this one. An ugly anti-American anti-man anti-white anti-logic anti-rights anti-small-business version of CRT has been plaguing our public schools for a decade or more. It hasn’t touched everyone yet but it’s growing, not receding. I’m glad you aren’t touched by it. But claiming it’s not a thing or it’s a thing caused by Republicans is off base.
Thank you for your comment. Critical theory is a method, it has a robust intellectual history, it's not really that controversial, most people have never read any of it.
Wokeism and political correctness run amok is sort of a toxic mimic of that, it's people who have not done the work, who are putting on a performance without understanding what they are doing nor anticipating the likely result.
It's unfortunate that the two have been conflated.
I can see why people are concerned by what is happening and I share many of those concerns. I was trying to make a smaller point (about the intellectual origins of certain ideas). But I take your point about the larger problem of what is actually happening in classrooms.
Your writings and oh so badly needed analysis and opinions on the COVID con eclipse any mild discomfort I have on your comments on CRT. Hey, our side WANTS open discourse and savors differences of opinion! And by “our side” I mean classical liberals and moderate conservatives and middle-grounders with open minds. Let the zealots burn their memes.
If you’re a parent or a teacher you KNOW. If not, ask any involved parent. Ask any honest teacher. Also, evidence abounds on local news channels and the internet. I cannot open your eyes. I cannot make you see. You can, if you want to.
Disagree with you here and also LOVE that you've put out what will likely be a dissenting view amongst your readers. I went to college starting in 1988 and was on the crest of the wave of critical theory taking over academia. It's not usually named as such, but it was and is everywhere. I was an Anthropology and Women's Studies major. The introduction of" identity group" majors was the birth of critical theory in academia. What you're calling postmodern cultural theory is critical theory. Or as some folks prefer, just "theory."
Critical race theory, critical gender theory, critical fat studies, critical ability theory etc aren't taught as legal frameworks they're taught as a totalizing framework for seeing and perceiving the world. They're taught de facto and might now be better understood as critical social justice. They are the lens through which many grade school teachers along with university professors now see the world. It's why my friend's 11 year old son was called a privileged, entitled, racist white boy by his Spanish teacher in front of his whole class when he was struggling with the subject and said he liked English better. It's why a black mom is suing her school board over her biracial son's experience of having to, in a classroom, repeatedly state his pronouns, sexual orientation and claim whether he is part of the oppressor or oppressed groups when it comes to race.
I am of the left as well. I've been involved in leftist grass roots social justice causes since I was a teen. I'm horrified by how this lens has obliterated liberal social justice and it wasn't until recently that I was able to understand the authoritarianism and illiberalism I saw increasing over decades when I read Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay's book, Cynical Theories. I recommend it if you want to understand how critical theory, not just critical race theory, is absolutely a product of the left and how Republicans are spot on to target it as the central source of what is terrifying about the left. The right, of course, has it's own authoritarian impulses, but they haven't had nearly as much success taking over our cultural and social institutions.
Pharma saw this and astroturfed wokeness (which is just the colloquial term for critical social justice) years ago. I see critical theory as integral for how the industry has broken the minds of those on the left. It first became really evident to me when fighting SB277 in California. People I had been allies with in so many different social justice causes turned rabid towards me for having the audacity to be critical of vaccines. The industry had done an excellent job of convincing them that vaccines=collective well-being and critical theory had done an excellent job of convincing them that the liberal notion of the primacy of the individual was dead and only identification with groups, the more oppressed the better, would somehow lead us all to liberation. Tying the term anti-vaxxer to privileged white women and our google degrees who won't step up and protect the black and brown children dying from measles was a brilliant manipulation of the critical-theory-ripened-minds-of-the-left on the part of Pharma.
My hat goes off to you, for wading into something that will force everyone out of their pattern of agreeing with one another, on what often becomes an echo-chamber, as we subscribe to those who we believe reflect our world view. It's been a while since my undergrad days. Back in the day, it was interesting to study society and culture from the perspective of different lived experiences. As someone who has been in education since 2006 (Canadian), however, I can assure you that the march toward what you are seeing now in the US, was on this trajectory long before now. I just looked up the term cultural marxism. Wikipedia now defines that at "a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory." Holy smack me over the head with that one. I guess the idea that some of the organization dividing nations have been funded to do just that, are over-target.
My experience has been, label it what you will, that In tripping over itself to be "inclusive," the ivory-tower academics who set curriculum, HAVE set us against one another, with their culture of victims and victimizers. I have European background (Scot, Swede) and Indigenous lineage. My ancestors were both colonizers and the colonized. I have sat through many trainings where I see my colleagues throwing themselves down to confess their guilt and wrongdoing as a person who is white-privileged. It is now labeled "racist" if you don't join in with the self-flagellation. It is painful to watch.
Defining everything through the lens of race, is the most racist view that I can imagine. I have a brother that looks indigenous, as did my grandpa and uncle. I have cousins who are blonde haired and blue-eyed. I'm in between. The bottom line: do those propagating the divisiveness and hate, get to decide for me if I am victim or victimizer? Of course they don't, but that is where we are at. I was just notified by my college of teachers that I must complete anti-black-racism training in 2022 to keep my licence. I find the assumption that this implies off-putting. While there is merit in understanding what other identifiable groups are challenged by (like my 80s undergrad) the current approach commits the sin of stereotyping entire swaths of groups which is harmful, more so to our children.
By the way, many of my extended family remained on Indigenous lands and are fully status. They don't come across as obsessed with the issue as do those pushing the CRT. I was brought up to treat other people as I wanted to be treated. We called this "the Bambi school of thought," even though I think it was Thumper who said, "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." That's how I like to roll.
In my school district, you hear constantly about white privilege, racism, racist teachers/staff/students, micro aggressions, etc. Assigned books in English are often about race, with class discussion focusing on viewing and interpreting all events in the books through a lens of race and privilege. Same thing with social studies classes, and the newly popular Social Emotional Learning.
So no, critical race theory is not explicitly being taught, but students are still taught its principles implicitly.
Conservatives needed a name to describe what you just laid out and CRT is it. I think Dr. Rodgers is doing a little of what Don Lemon and Joy Reid are doing. Saying CRT isn’t taught, therefore conservatives have fake outrage.
So maybe CRT in colleges isn’t as dead as your experience may lead you to believe. My college freshman at a large public university in OH sent me this a few weeks back. “ 4 pages on CRT, Kendi, and Assimilationist Theory. My primary problem is we have to argue for Kendi’s book, which i disagree with because he had nearly 0 valid sources, like his concept? fine. but his method of argument? proper bull. My only problem with it is it’s in my Shakespeare class. you know, where i thought i’d be writing about SHAKESPEARE!”
Where are you located? I can tell you CRT is alive and well in Seattle Public Schools. Everything is filtered through race, oppression, intersectionality, and privilege. SPS's strategic plan is to help black boys succeed--it is that specific and everyone else is 2nd or 3rd or down the line. My white passing children (we are mixed race) are continually told they are oppressors and they should give up their educational opportunities for students of color. They are told to step back so POC can succeed. SPS is getting rid of the gifted program (HCC) because they say it is racist. They are on a mission to eliminate anything that will help white students. It is not enough to prop up POC, they are actively trying to hold back/harm privileged students.
Yes, the problem is that the mainstream has now hitched a ride and is implementing whatever they interpret this movement to be. In Los Angeles, it's pretty extreme. They are teaching our kids to literally see white people as evil and oppressive by nature and Blacks as helpless victims, perpetuating racism every step of the way. It may have started as a political maneuver, but it has taken on a life of it's own here.
Sounds exactly like Seattle Public Schools. My poor son! Being a boy and white (passing) he is told often he is an oppressor and the problem with society. He is 11!!!!
This has happened in California to no ones surprise. A great sci-fi short story and movie Harrison Bergeron by Vonnegut is a magnificent metaphor for it.
First off, I appreciate all your work on the vaccines, trials, mandates, etc. I think you missed the mark on this one. A simple google search will bring up an article that has links to the Dept of Ed website in Virginia going back to at least 2015, years before this became a mainstream talking point. Literally took me 20 seconds to find this, with LINKS to the DOE website. Keep up the good work on the vaccine front.
The phrase "Critical Race Theory" appears on the Virginia Department of Education website despite Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe’s repeated claims the curriculum is not taught in Virginia.
On the Virginia Department of Education website, several examples of the department promoting Critical Race Theory can be found, including a presentation from 2015, when Terry McAullife was governor, that encourages teachers to "embrace Critical Race Theory" in "order to re-engineer attitudes and belief systems."
Additionally, superintendent memo 050-19 can be found on the site from February 2019 promoting both Critical Race Theory and the idea of "white fragility."
Also in 2019, under Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, Superintendent of Public Instruction James Lane sent a memo to Virginia public schools endorsing "Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education," as an important "tool" that can "further spur developments in education."
Thank you for the link! As with all surveys it depends on how one phrases the question. I also think there is just a lot of bad teaching out there and wokeism run amok. But I take your point that there are dynamics I'm probably missing with this post.
Interesting take! I grew up near Seattle, and I remember learning from a young age that I should feel ashamed for being white as white people had caused a lot of harm in society. This would have been in the late 1980's. I'm not sure if that is called CRT, but it still seems to be a theme in Seattle-area schools. My 10-year-old niece recently told me she is taught in her Seattle school that she should feel guilty for being white.
There are also slide decks available from trainings given for employees of the City of Seattle, and people are taught things like, "objectivity" and "being on time" are white constructs.
I think these ideologies have existed for quite some time in this area. Again, not sure if that is how we would define CRT - but it also doesn't seem to be a philosophy that is improving anyone's lives.
I appreciate reading your posts. If I may I would like to comment as a parent from Canada. As I have been involved in my kids schools for over 10 years now I notice a huge shift to teaching CRT in school as of the last couple of years. It actually weirdly done. Never directly in a class called CRT but constantly telling your kids they should be ashamed of who they are and about white colonialism. The lessons are very prevalent throughout the different subjects and activities and signage posted at the school. It’s in their art class, class discussions and even which historical topics the teacher focuses on and telling them how they should feel bad about past wrongs. It’s very odd in our area as we have a very small % of Africans, of which most directly moved to Canada from Africa so they do not want this stuff taught to their kids, and a large Acadian population in a French school by the way, so weird that only white English colonial oppression on black slaves is being taught lately in my kids classes. In our part of the world the England had Irish children as slaves and the Acadians and Natives obviously suffered greatly under England’s rules. So I noticed something was up. I do not think the Davos group’s global agenda is USA focused or Democrat or republican but rather an effort to divide and demoralize our children. Klaus Swab of WEF has made it pretty clear in 2030 you will own nothing if he has his way, so I think teaching CRT is about telling the young generation you don’t deserve to own anything. You are worthless and should have no culture to be proud of. I note all Cultural celebrations were canceled during COVID except we were encouraged during the height of the pandemic to go to BLM protests. Catherine Austin Fitts explains the global elite plans really well in her planet lock down video. As does David Martin at the red pill expo. I think in short the goal is to get as many youth to be demoralized and divided and have no culture. No religion. No tribe. Only government will be the god of the future if the Davos set wins. Which is why it’s so important we win. Humanity and loves wins. Thank you for your amazing work exposing Pharma.
You are using an old definition of critical race theory. The new CRT goes WAY beyond that and includes intersectionality and a lot of other belief systems, among which include the idea that "whiteness" itself is a core problem that must be addressed and stopped.
The new CRT includes ideas such as "you cannot be racist against white people" (because racism is inherently about "power" in the new definition). Racism is also *assumed* among white people, and if you are not actively "anti-racist" then you are now considered to be doubly racist.
I've been on the receiving end of the extremes of this ideology. I tried to delicately make the point to some folks last year that we should not assume racist intent in white cops prior to having all the information come out - my saying that got me labeled an "emotionally violent white supremacist" by two different people in two different adult education settings...and these were supposed to be fluffy "woo-woo" type people who suddenly turned vicious, judgmental and hateful in the name of not being hateful.
It's a bit strange and scary to see the transformation in people over this ideology.
Thus...giving people the benefit of the doubt and NOT instantly judging them by their skin color, which is how I look at the world (and would be the original definition of anti-racist), is now labeled "racist," because to now be anti-racist, you must assume white racism at all levels. If you can't see where this potentially could lead (think Nazis blaming Jews for everything) then you aren't fully understanding the depth of the ideology.
Anyone who tries to pass what is happening off should read your comment carefully. This all-or-nothing racist/anti-racist doctrine is hardly isolated to schools either. Corporations hire consultant groups that create retreats where people are belittled for their skin color and even ostracized and later lose their job over failing to confess their privilege or provide examples of their racism. These sessions are modelled explicitly after struggle or self-accusation sessions. They are designed to train social reflexes of condemnation and ostracism in the willing and fear and submission in those who show the slightest hesitation. It is part of the process of dehumanization. I shudder to think what such a process would be preparation for.
Thank you. It is very dangerous because a) most people promoting it are good people with *really* good intentions b) it is hard for a lot of people to see the inherent dangers in it. The denial of how insidious this ideology is, not just in the original post but in a few of the comments here, shows how difficult it is to combat.
And Toby has his thesis backwards: Because a lot of the people most vocal against it are conservatives, this automatically validates CRT in the minds of many. The knee-jerk and often less-than-PC response by many conservatives thus ends up being "proof" that more CRT is needed, and thus, the response to the ideology fuels and solidifies the ideology. In other words, the more you fight it, the stronger it become.
The worst is how it is creating white identitarianism because poor white people in particular are getting the crap end of the stick here and human nature means a lot of them will bristle about words like "white privilege" (and for good reason...there's a huge difference between a poor white person and a privileged white in a tony suburb).
So CRT creates resistance to CRT, which proves to the people pushing for CRT that we need more CRT.
It is, in essence, like one of those, excuse the un-PC terminology, old "Chinese finger puzzle" toys where the more you pull away the tighter the grip comes.
I can totally see how Nazi Germany happened now. A lot of German people resisting the Nazis were probably also labeled regressive people who were against progress, trying to keep the working class down by fighting change. Then you'd have the people writing misguided articles like this one, explaining why it's really OK to criticize the Jews since, well, they really do run all the banks and we need some reform.
Dehumanizing and blaming one race of people for all a nation's problems cannot end well. It never has and never will.
Nope. Sorry, but you’re wrong on this one. Whatever the true definition, CRT has come to mean the indoctrination of especially our youth in public schools that being white is bad. Republicans didn’t have to “go looking” for it, it became an issue after the George Floyd riots when the fever pitch from the left about racism rose to an all time high. The left’s main talking point is racism, and they keep going to extremes on everything, including this. Once parents started seeing over Zoom how much indoctrination was happening in public schools, that’s what has “rallied the base”. When you have white kids coming to their parents crying over their white skin color, or school administrators separating students by race - parents get worked up. The outrage over CRT is merely a reaction to what the radical left is doing. This one was not invented by Republican operatives, lol.
I do think this is true. Republican candidates are capitalizing on it, but I do think there's just a reflexive sense that shame-based education on race is not helpful and may actually be harmful and counter-productive. Racism, esp long-standing, systemic racism is wrong, and we need to keep challenging ourselves to right these wrongs, but making young kids feel ashamed (and encouraging them to think of themselves as complicit by virtue of their skin color) about something they did not create strikes many parents as immoral and unfair. As the VA election just showed, add to that the left's post-modern/relativistic approach to other moral issues, highlighted by moms reading to school boards from fiction found in their children's school libraries, and then add lockdowns, masking, and school closures informed by teachers unions, and you have a potent case that schools have departed radically from the values and views held by a good chunk of the citizenry.
So “Marxism is dead” yet the “leader” of BLM claims to be a “trained Marxist”. I guess I will need to think a little further about those two concepts.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then for practical purposes it’s a duck even if you want to draw some academic distinction and call it something else. As with roses and sweet fragrances, a totalitarian collectivist by any other name is just as ruthlessly genocidal. Was Pol Pot a Marxist as seen through the eyes of someone with a PhD in political economy? Mao? Mussolini? Hitler? Stalin? Quite likely not exactly. But it sounds like a distinction without a difference. The details of what’s “under the hood” in their thinking is akin to debating angels and heads of pins: it makes no real-world difference. Each killed millions in a quest for absolute power. There’s little more to say.
Whatever you want to call it, however you want to dress it up, whatever it says on the tag, teaching children that the color of their skin determines who they are — is the foundation of their humanity and casts their future — is unethical and immoral.
I thought we all knew that.
Marxism is alive and well. I agree with you on so much else, Toby, I wish you could see this. I think coming from the left it's your big blind spot....
Don't you have children in school? Critical race theory is the term being used to encompass the anti-racism programs that are called by their implementors such things as "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion" (DEI) task forces. So you've played a sleight-of-hand here. You've used the former and more technical origins of critical race theory to elide the fact that there is a derivative, modern formula being used in schools to horrific effect.
DEI / anti-racism is a quite nearly insane doctrine. It assigns collective racial guilt and social hierarchy based on race. It insists that any outcome difference is solely due to conscious or unconscious racial bias. Teachers at my children's (former as we homeschool now) charter school were assigned a task of monitoring their unconscious acts of racism and reporting back ala a communist self-accusation or struggle session.
Parents and teachers are told that anyone who is not actively engaging in whatever they define as anti-racist activities is a racist. As part of this the school sent out a video where preschoolers were having non-traditional gender roles 'scaffolded' (i.e. forced) into play sessions specifically designed for the pre-school teacher to impose the 'correct' views.
All of this occurs against a backdrop of fear as anyone accused is automatically guilty, much like you might find in any totalitarian society. No actual critical faculty may be exercised by the students about these broad social questions because the doctrine cleverly made anyone who doesn't openly, actively and aggressively perform acts of ablution a racist by default.
So go ahead, call it what you like. Call it anti-white racism maybe. But it has been dubbed critical race theory for a very clear reason: the alleged purpose of all this is to erase differences that are purported to be caused by implicit bias embedded into everything from reasoning to mathematics to gender.
Your argument here is akin to saying "everyone has been worried about vaccine side effects but mRNA gene therapy is not a vaccine so its okay to take it."
Playing semantics and doing so to deliberately miss the point is sophistry.
I think you raise good points here and I'm grateful for your thoughtful comment. I think it's important to make a distinction between critical theory and bad teaching and between critical theory and wokeism (polar opposites in both cases). But I see your point -- forget what we call it, what's actually happening on the ground in school classrooms, and is that the sort of instruction that we want? I'm focused on the intellectual history of a certain set of ideas that are almost never actually discussed these days and you are focused on real kids in real classrooms today. And I think your realist approach is important.
I've just been reading through this article and you might find it interesting. I don't draw a sharp dividing line between wokeism and intellectual critical theories. I would love to build a course that examines the roots of these modern ideas and study it all in detail in an academic environment but that seems like a quaint leisure activity from another dimension in which my daily existence isn't under constant threat.
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/defining-woke
Such a great post! Thank you! The irony of course of the Jacob Silverman tweet that serves as the writing prompt, "it's an empty signifier." Indeed, that's the critique, wokeism is a tribal movement untethered from intellectual foundations that would give it meaning. It's a Seinfelding movement that is an empty signifier at the end of the day. And that's what's troubling about it. The cosplay performance of social change is not actual social change (except perhaps in the metaverse where fictional identity is the only truth).
The particular form of rigid assertions as a core and the deployment of radical critique to attack any other idea -is- the intellectual basis of wokeism and it is not new. It goes back to things like this:
https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/publications/1960s/1965-repressive-tolerance-fulltext.html
The explicit point was to achieve whatever goals the left defined at any particular moment by making them unassailable axioms and to cause all other speech to be forbidden.
The goals and core assumptions were flexible enough to be modified from marxist class struggle to American racial inequality, but the core goal is the same: power.
When I hear even the anodyne versions of critical theory that you cite in this article, I see how they are being used as part of this cycle. Once we accept the premise that racism is baked into the cake of every institution and, yea, even the minds of preschoolers (yes this was part of what my child's former school sent us as part of DEI initiative - psych experiments with colored paper as evidence of racism), then we ineluctably move towards the destruction of every part of society via the mechanism of post-modern destruction. That is why I cited the CA arts council's assertion in my other comment that they are part of a revolutionary, transformative movement.
So perhaps there is a constructive means of reflecting on racist institutions that is illuminated by the consideration that racism is not merely individual attitude and action but that is not what I and my family have experienced. Instead is is a central dogmatic tenet of a bulldozing, all-encompassing woke ideology that tolerates neither dissent nor critique.
Not sure anyone will see this, but here is a prime example of how this works straight from the horses mouth. My children's former school used this framework to adopt their 'anti-racism statement.'
https://arts.ca.gov/learning-center/racial-equity-learning-resources/
Note this part, "At its zenith, Self-Determination seeks nothing less than wholesale societal and cultural transformation." So it is a revolutionary movement. Feel free to browse their definition of equity as well.
Note the source: a state arts agency. What is an arts bureau doing trying to redesign American culture?
For answers to the historical roots of that see:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-3/mswv3_08.htm
Mao's Yenan Forum on Literature and Art.
I know, I know the left isnt' communist, sure. I know, I know I haven't exhaustively read all the antecedents of CRT from Gramsci to Foucault to Kendi. But maybe, just maybe I'm not an ignorant rube. Maybe, just maybe there is a continuity here even if big C Communism isn't the authoritian theory du jour.
This neo-liberal bullsh-t is just a cover, a feckless so-called agenda that stands in place of real equity and reform. Exhibit A: Biden with just executive orders could do much to share police data to spot multiple abusers of power, as was pointed out by the black advocates that met him. He was defensive. Whenever called upon to ACT, neo-liberals specifically do not and cover their rear-ends with nonsense or meaningless statements like those in the links above. Where is Biden and the woke neo-liberals on prison reform, on police reform, on 15.00 mininum wage, on a host of other ACTIONS that could create greater equity.... NOWHERE. Instead let's start a non-profit for poverty relief, get a website with lot of nice-sounding words and pay ourselves 250K to "advocate" those who are in poverty. You get the difference between this crap and real praxis?
Excellent.
This, 100%.
I think what you're missing is that the vast majority of people (including me) do not have your academic background and have zero familiarity with academia's various theories. So what YOU are referring to as CRT--from academia's standpoint--has no real resemblance to that which has currently been branded as "CRT." I believe that in the current culture, "CRT" to most people, is simply the kind of woke-ism on steroids that most of us feel is being shoved down our throats.
Fair point. I think we should make a distinction though between critical theory (a method with a solid scholarly foundation that is almost never taught) and wokeism (which is just a toxic mimic of theories of social change). But you're right, the people on the ground enacting wokeism don't understand the difference so the distinction I'm making is fine but may be irrelevant to most people involved and affected.
Except that actual truth matters (or used to anyway), and actual CRT in inception and execution was a critical lens that would respond with utter disgust at the colonialist hijacking of the term to turn it against its active principles and commitments. Once again white intellectuals (mostly) on the let and angry whites reacting to a pseudo-controversy on the right, have colonized a potentially potent lens into injustice and an aid to correction, but we now live in a world where anti-woke-oppression and pharmo-fascist oppression go hand in hand with no apparent irony.
I usually love your posts but you’re off base by miles on this one. An ugly anti-American anti-man anti-white anti-logic anti-rights anti-small-business version of CRT has been plaguing our public schools for a decade or more. It hasn’t touched everyone yet but it’s growing, not receding. I’m glad you aren’t touched by it. But claiming it’s not a thing or it’s a thing caused by Republicans is off base.
Thank you for your comment. Critical theory is a method, it has a robust intellectual history, it's not really that controversial, most people have never read any of it.
Wokeism and political correctness run amok is sort of a toxic mimic of that, it's people who have not done the work, who are putting on a performance without understanding what they are doing nor anticipating the likely result.
It's unfortunate that the two have been conflated.
I can see why people are concerned by what is happening and I share many of those concerns. I was trying to make a smaller point (about the intellectual origins of certain ideas). But I take your point about the larger problem of what is actually happening in classrooms.
Your writings and oh so badly needed analysis and opinions on the COVID con eclipse any mild discomfort I have on your comments on CRT. Hey, our side WANTS open discourse and savors differences of opinion! And by “our side” I mean classical liberals and moderate conservatives and middle-grounders with open minds. Let the zealots burn their memes.
Peace.
Oh I see. Thanks
Exactly. He’s been out of school for awhile. Come to Oregon , CRT has been in okay for awhile
Ummm.... Evidence?
If you’re a parent or a teacher you KNOW. If not, ask any involved parent. Ask any honest teacher. Also, evidence abounds on local news channels and the internet. I cannot open your eyes. I cannot make you see. You can, if you want to.
Disagree with you here and also LOVE that you've put out what will likely be a dissenting view amongst your readers. I went to college starting in 1988 and was on the crest of the wave of critical theory taking over academia. It's not usually named as such, but it was and is everywhere. I was an Anthropology and Women's Studies major. The introduction of" identity group" majors was the birth of critical theory in academia. What you're calling postmodern cultural theory is critical theory. Or as some folks prefer, just "theory."
Critical race theory, critical gender theory, critical fat studies, critical ability theory etc aren't taught as legal frameworks they're taught as a totalizing framework for seeing and perceiving the world. They're taught de facto and might now be better understood as critical social justice. They are the lens through which many grade school teachers along with university professors now see the world. It's why my friend's 11 year old son was called a privileged, entitled, racist white boy by his Spanish teacher in front of his whole class when he was struggling with the subject and said he liked English better. It's why a black mom is suing her school board over her biracial son's experience of having to, in a classroom, repeatedly state his pronouns, sexual orientation and claim whether he is part of the oppressor or oppressed groups when it comes to race.
I am of the left as well. I've been involved in leftist grass roots social justice causes since I was a teen. I'm horrified by how this lens has obliterated liberal social justice and it wasn't until recently that I was able to understand the authoritarianism and illiberalism I saw increasing over decades when I read Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay's book, Cynical Theories. I recommend it if you want to understand how critical theory, not just critical race theory, is absolutely a product of the left and how Republicans are spot on to target it as the central source of what is terrifying about the left. The right, of course, has it's own authoritarian impulses, but they haven't had nearly as much success taking over our cultural and social institutions.
Pharma saw this and astroturfed wokeness (which is just the colloquial term for critical social justice) years ago. I see critical theory as integral for how the industry has broken the minds of those on the left. It first became really evident to me when fighting SB277 in California. People I had been allies with in so many different social justice causes turned rabid towards me for having the audacity to be critical of vaccines. The industry had done an excellent job of convincing them that vaccines=collective well-being and critical theory had done an excellent job of convincing them that the liberal notion of the primacy of the individual was dead and only identification with groups, the more oppressed the better, would somehow lead us all to liberation. Tying the term anti-vaxxer to privileged white women and our google degrees who won't step up and protect the black and brown children dying from measles was a brilliant manipulation of the critical-theory-ripened-minds-of-the-left on the part of Pharma.
My hat goes off to you, for wading into something that will force everyone out of their pattern of agreeing with one another, on what often becomes an echo-chamber, as we subscribe to those who we believe reflect our world view. It's been a while since my undergrad days. Back in the day, it was interesting to study society and culture from the perspective of different lived experiences. As someone who has been in education since 2006 (Canadian), however, I can assure you that the march toward what you are seeing now in the US, was on this trajectory long before now. I just looked up the term cultural marxism. Wikipedia now defines that at "a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory." Holy smack me over the head with that one. I guess the idea that some of the organization dividing nations have been funded to do just that, are over-target.
My experience has been, label it what you will, that In tripping over itself to be "inclusive," the ivory-tower academics who set curriculum, HAVE set us against one another, with their culture of victims and victimizers. I have European background (Scot, Swede) and Indigenous lineage. My ancestors were both colonizers and the colonized. I have sat through many trainings where I see my colleagues throwing themselves down to confess their guilt and wrongdoing as a person who is white-privileged. It is now labeled "racist" if you don't join in with the self-flagellation. It is painful to watch.
Defining everything through the lens of race, is the most racist view that I can imagine. I have a brother that looks indigenous, as did my grandpa and uncle. I have cousins who are blonde haired and blue-eyed. I'm in between. The bottom line: do those propagating the divisiveness and hate, get to decide for me if I am victim or victimizer? Of course they don't, but that is where we are at. I was just notified by my college of teachers that I must complete anti-black-racism training in 2022 to keep my licence. I find the assumption that this implies off-putting. While there is merit in understanding what other identifiable groups are challenged by (like my 80s undergrad) the current approach commits the sin of stereotyping entire swaths of groups which is harmful, more so to our children.
By the way, many of my extended family remained on Indigenous lands and are fully status. They don't come across as obsessed with the issue as do those pushing the CRT. I was brought up to treat other people as I wanted to be treated. We called this "the Bambi school of thought," even though I think it was Thumper who said, "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." That's how I like to roll.
In my school district, you hear constantly about white privilege, racism, racist teachers/staff/students, micro aggressions, etc. Assigned books in English are often about race, with class discussion focusing on viewing and interpreting all events in the books through a lens of race and privilege. Same thing with social studies classes, and the newly popular Social Emotional Learning.
So no, critical race theory is not explicitly being taught, but students are still taught its principles implicitly.
Conservatives needed a name to describe what you just laid out and CRT is it. I think Dr. Rodgers is doing a little of what Don Lemon and Joy Reid are doing. Saying CRT isn’t taught, therefore conservatives have fake outrage.
So maybe CRT in colleges isn’t as dead as your experience may lead you to believe. My college freshman at a large public university in OH sent me this a few weeks back. “ 4 pages on CRT, Kendi, and Assimilationist Theory. My primary problem is we have to argue for Kendi’s book, which i disagree with because he had nearly 0 valid sources, like his concept? fine. but his method of argument? proper bull. My only problem with it is it’s in my Shakespeare class. you know, where i thought i’d be writing about SHAKESPEARE!”
Where are you located? I can tell you CRT is alive and well in Seattle Public Schools. Everything is filtered through race, oppression, intersectionality, and privilege. SPS's strategic plan is to help black boys succeed--it is that specific and everyone else is 2nd or 3rd or down the line. My white passing children (we are mixed race) are continually told they are oppressors and they should give up their educational opportunities for students of color. They are told to step back so POC can succeed. SPS is getting rid of the gifted program (HCC) because they say it is racist. They are on a mission to eliminate anything that will help white students. It is not enough to prop up POC, they are actively trying to hold back/harm privileged students.
Yes, the problem is that the mainstream has now hitched a ride and is implementing whatever they interpret this movement to be. In Los Angeles, it's pretty extreme. They are teaching our kids to literally see white people as evil and oppressive by nature and Blacks as helpless victims, perpetuating racism every step of the way. It may have started as a political maneuver, but it has taken on a life of it's own here.
Sounds exactly like Seattle Public Schools. My poor son! Being a boy and white (passing) he is told often he is an oppressor and the problem with society. He is 11!!!!
This is heartbreaking. I rampant in public schools right now. Teverse racism is never going to get us anywhere.
This has happened in California to no ones surprise. A great sci-fi short story and movie Harrison Bergeron by Vonnegut is a magnificent metaphor for it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBcpuBRUdNs
First off, I appreciate all your work on the vaccines, trials, mandates, etc. I think you missed the mark on this one. A simple google search will bring up an article that has links to the Dept of Ed website in Virginia going back to at least 2015, years before this became a mainstream talking point. Literally took me 20 seconds to find this, with LINKS to the DOE website. Keep up the good work on the vaccine front.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/virginia-dept-of-education-website-promotes-crt-despite-mcauliffe-claims-its-never-been-taught-there
The phrase "Critical Race Theory" appears on the Virginia Department of Education website despite Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe’s repeated claims the curriculum is not taught in Virginia.
On the Virginia Department of Education website, several examples of the department promoting Critical Race Theory can be found, including a presentation from 2015, when Terry McAullife was governor, that encourages teachers to "embrace Critical Race Theory" in "order to re-engineer attitudes and belief systems."
Additionally, superintendent memo 050-19 can be found on the site from February 2019 promoting both Critical Race Theory and the idea of "white fragility."
Also in 2019, under Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, Superintendent of Public Instruction James Lane sent a memo to Virginia public schools endorsing "Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education," as an important "tool" that can "further spur developments in education."
"...56 percent of undergraduates have learned critical race theory either in college or high school."
https://freebeacon.com/campus/most-undergrads-have-encountered-crt-in-the-classroom-survey-finds/
Thank you for the link! As with all surveys it depends on how one phrases the question. I also think there is just a lot of bad teaching out there and wokeism run amok. But I take your point that there are dynamics I'm probably missing with this post.
Interesting take! I grew up near Seattle, and I remember learning from a young age that I should feel ashamed for being white as white people had caused a lot of harm in society. This would have been in the late 1980's. I'm not sure if that is called CRT, but it still seems to be a theme in Seattle-area schools. My 10-year-old niece recently told me she is taught in her Seattle school that she should feel guilty for being white.
There are also slide decks available from trainings given for employees of the City of Seattle, and people are taught things like, "objectivity" and "being on time" are white constructs.
I think these ideologies have existed for quite some time in this area. Again, not sure if that is how we would define CRT - but it also doesn't seem to be a philosophy that is improving anyone's lives.
Thank you for your comment. 🙌 What's you've described here sounds awful.
It really amounts to a form of child-abuse, doesn't it? I've been out of elementary for some time. I can't imagine doing this to a child.
Hi Toby
I appreciate reading your posts. If I may I would like to comment as a parent from Canada. As I have been involved in my kids schools for over 10 years now I notice a huge shift to teaching CRT in school as of the last couple of years. It actually weirdly done. Never directly in a class called CRT but constantly telling your kids they should be ashamed of who they are and about white colonialism. The lessons are very prevalent throughout the different subjects and activities and signage posted at the school. It’s in their art class, class discussions and even which historical topics the teacher focuses on and telling them how they should feel bad about past wrongs. It’s very odd in our area as we have a very small % of Africans, of which most directly moved to Canada from Africa so they do not want this stuff taught to their kids, and a large Acadian population in a French school by the way, so weird that only white English colonial oppression on black slaves is being taught lately in my kids classes. In our part of the world the England had Irish children as slaves and the Acadians and Natives obviously suffered greatly under England’s rules. So I noticed something was up. I do not think the Davos group’s global agenda is USA focused or Democrat or republican but rather an effort to divide and demoralize our children. Klaus Swab of WEF has made it pretty clear in 2030 you will own nothing if he has his way, so I think teaching CRT is about telling the young generation you don’t deserve to own anything. You are worthless and should have no culture to be proud of. I note all Cultural celebrations were canceled during COVID except we were encouraged during the height of the pandemic to go to BLM protests. Catherine Austin Fitts explains the global elite plans really well in her planet lock down video. As does David Martin at the red pill expo. I think in short the goal is to get as many youth to be demoralized and divided and have no culture. No religion. No tribe. Only government will be the god of the future if the Davos set wins. Which is why it’s so important we win. Humanity and loves wins. Thank you for your amazing work exposing Pharma.
Hi Helen! Thank you for this thoughtful comment! 🙌
If in your "spare" time, you can write a high school curriculum for actual CRT, and I think it would be well-received.
You are using an old definition of critical race theory. The new CRT goes WAY beyond that and includes intersectionality and a lot of other belief systems, among which include the idea that "whiteness" itself is a core problem that must be addressed and stopped.
The new CRT includes ideas such as "you cannot be racist against white people" (because racism is inherently about "power" in the new definition). Racism is also *assumed* among white people, and if you are not actively "anti-racist" then you are now considered to be doubly racist.
I've been on the receiving end of the extremes of this ideology. I tried to delicately make the point to some folks last year that we should not assume racist intent in white cops prior to having all the information come out - my saying that got me labeled an "emotionally violent white supremacist" by two different people in two different adult education settings...and these were supposed to be fluffy "woo-woo" type people who suddenly turned vicious, judgmental and hateful in the name of not being hateful.
It's a bit strange and scary to see the transformation in people over this ideology.
Thus...giving people the benefit of the doubt and NOT instantly judging them by their skin color, which is how I look at the world (and would be the original definition of anti-racist), is now labeled "racist," because to now be anti-racist, you must assume white racism at all levels. If you can't see where this potentially could lead (think Nazis blaming Jews for everything) then you aren't fully understanding the depth of the ideology.
Anyone who tries to pass what is happening off should read your comment carefully. This all-or-nothing racist/anti-racist doctrine is hardly isolated to schools either. Corporations hire consultant groups that create retreats where people are belittled for their skin color and even ostracized and later lose their job over failing to confess their privilege or provide examples of their racism. These sessions are modelled explicitly after struggle or self-accusation sessions. They are designed to train social reflexes of condemnation and ostracism in the willing and fear and submission in those who show the slightest hesitation. It is part of the process of dehumanization. I shudder to think what such a process would be preparation for.
Thank you. It is very dangerous because a) most people promoting it are good people with *really* good intentions b) it is hard for a lot of people to see the inherent dangers in it. The denial of how insidious this ideology is, not just in the original post but in a few of the comments here, shows how difficult it is to combat.
And Toby has his thesis backwards: Because a lot of the people most vocal against it are conservatives, this automatically validates CRT in the minds of many. The knee-jerk and often less-than-PC response by many conservatives thus ends up being "proof" that more CRT is needed, and thus, the response to the ideology fuels and solidifies the ideology. In other words, the more you fight it, the stronger it become.
The worst is how it is creating white identitarianism because poor white people in particular are getting the crap end of the stick here and human nature means a lot of them will bristle about words like "white privilege" (and for good reason...there's a huge difference between a poor white person and a privileged white in a tony suburb).
So CRT creates resistance to CRT, which proves to the people pushing for CRT that we need more CRT.
It is, in essence, like one of those, excuse the un-PC terminology, old "Chinese finger puzzle" toys where the more you pull away the tighter the grip comes.
I can totally see how Nazi Germany happened now. A lot of German people resisting the Nazis were probably also labeled regressive people who were against progress, trying to keep the working class down by fighting change. Then you'd have the people writing misguided articles like this one, explaining why it's really OK to criticize the Jews since, well, they really do run all the banks and we need some reform.
Dehumanizing and blaming one race of people for all a nation's problems cannot end well. It never has and never will.
Nope. Sorry, but you’re wrong on this one. Whatever the true definition, CRT has come to mean the indoctrination of especially our youth in public schools that being white is bad. Republicans didn’t have to “go looking” for it, it became an issue after the George Floyd riots when the fever pitch from the left about racism rose to an all time high. The left’s main talking point is racism, and they keep going to extremes on everything, including this. Once parents started seeing over Zoom how much indoctrination was happening in public schools, that’s what has “rallied the base”. When you have white kids coming to their parents crying over their white skin color, or school administrators separating students by race - parents get worked up. The outrage over CRT is merely a reaction to what the radical left is doing. This one was not invented by Republican operatives, lol.
I do think this is true. Republican candidates are capitalizing on it, but I do think there's just a reflexive sense that shame-based education on race is not helpful and may actually be harmful and counter-productive. Racism, esp long-standing, systemic racism is wrong, and we need to keep challenging ourselves to right these wrongs, but making young kids feel ashamed (and encouraging them to think of themselves as complicit by virtue of their skin color) about something they did not create strikes many parents as immoral and unfair. As the VA election just showed, add to that the left's post-modern/relativistic approach to other moral issues, highlighted by moms reading to school boards from fiction found in their children's school libraries, and then add lockdowns, masking, and school closures informed by teachers unions, and you have a potent case that schools have departed radically from the values and views held by a good chunk of the citizenry.
Really great points, thank you!