Critical Race Theory is controversial not because it promotes a falsehood.
It is controversial because it describes an unpleasant truth in an unpleasant, self-righteous way.
Yesterday's post described as "politically troublesome" that some people on the left are advocating Critical Race Theory and the idea that racism and patriarchy are thoroughly embedded in our culture. It is politically troublesome because it is objectively true and being true makes it harder to take. It is made worse yet by the group-think and self-righteousness of its proponents.
A majority of Americans respond to Critical Race Theory (CRT) attacks by denial and then turning tables to an accusation back on CRT. It is yet another self-inflicted wound for Democrats.
CRT is a national controversy because its suite of ideas escaped graduate schools and entered HR departments, the in-house counsels of businesses, newsrooms, and politics. Some of this is ideological. Some of this is a typical revolution that gets out of control and eats itself. Some of it is generational.
Millennial and Gen-X employees are different from Boomer employees like me. I was happy to have a job. I thought the business' primary responsibility to me was to pay me what we agreed. If I took its money, it got to determine the business culture and politics. If I didn't like it I could leave.
There is a new employee-empowerment idea out there among the younger professional class of employees. Knowledge workers in their 20s, 30s, and young-40s know how to make the technology work. The value-added in a knowledge-economy business is the people, not the facility. A factory, if there is one, can be rebuilt or sent offshore, but the smart people who build the app, write the code, provide the know-how, or do the service create the value. Getting paid is not enough for them; they want their company to represent values they share.
We see CRT evangelism in technology firms, in newsrooms, in academia, in medicine and law and the professions generally--high prestige, visible, culture-defining venues. Entitled employees are open to "calling out" culture crimes within their businesses. They consider it good and necessary.
My observation is that Americans hold racial, ethnic, and gender prejudices--some people more than others, some people more open about it than others--but that distinctions among identities are universal. I believe profiling is hard-wired into humans. To navigate the world, humans need to make snap decisions about what category to place people and things. We interpret a dog from a wolf instantly; our lives depend on it. The Captcha photographs we click on separate humans from robots because humans understand at a glance that certain horizontal stripes are crosswalks and others are stairs. (We are also providing for free the data that AI will use so self-driving cars will stop at crosswalks but will ignore people on staircases.)
I had an up-close learning experience about ethnic and racial prejudice by living in Boston in the early and middle 1970s, during the busing crisis. Boston was a segregated city, segregated not simply by race but by ethnicity. People of Irish heritage--who called themselves "Irish" and not "Americans of Irish heritage," expressed social and political hostility to "Italians," and vice-versa. People of Polish heritage--i.e. "Poles"--had their neighborhoods and churches, Jews theirs, Blacks theirs. White people feared Blacks. Christians simultaneously respected and distrusted Jews. Well-educated people looked down on, and were resented by, less-educated working people. It was a jungle.
There was coded language. Some things could be said aloud, but only within one's own group. There was the polite way to refer to Blacks or Jews or the Irish, and then a rougher way. Words like "urban," "tough neighborhood," "clever," and "sharp" had encoded meanings. Within the Irish, there were distinctions of "lace curtain" and "shanty."
CRT calls out both personal prejudice and the institutionalization that secures the power of White people, males, and gender-typical people--the majority culture. It is vulnerable to the denial-and-accusation response. Victims of prejudice are perpetrators, too. There is plenty of evidence on the news to assure people of that. Blacks, Jews, Asians, Muslims, Christians, smart people and not-smart people are all prejudiced. What about them? Who are they to complain?
This blog's lens is politics and the powerful wordless communication of body language. Humans profile their politicians, and each other. At a glance we determine if someone is old or young, big or small, Black or White. Some people think they have Gay-dar, or Jew-dar. People look for signals of identity.
CRT is offensive to people because it asserts that the human mind's operation of categorization has been so profound that the supposedly neutral institutions of our culture imbed and perpetuate prejudice. That means our laws and culture are corrupt, and therefore the natural pride and security we get from identity in group, tribe, and country, plus our processes, skills, professions, and habits of mind are all somehow illegitimate. It is a profound attack.
CRT does not make a gentle accusation, nor a patient one. It defines good and bad. It is certain and intolerant. Democrats have a hard time openly moderating its tone because it comes from a core constituency group of Democrats, the young, university-educated professionals. It is also resented because it comes from that direction. Those over-educated, privileged, know-it-alls are the people Trump's base loves to hate.
It is a political loser because a majority of people dislike being told anything by people they consider to be self-righteous scolds--especially an embarrassing truth.
4 comments:
Race continues to be the pivotal issue in our polity. In the 1970s one of my friends was a union organizer in the coal fields of West Virginia. They have relayed to me that in the hollers, white and black coal miners and their families struggled together in the dangerous mines living in substandard housing.
When the miners went on strike, the mine operators brought in the KKK to bust up the solidarity of the miners. Crosses were burnt on the lawns of white miners whose daughters had black boyfriends. County sheriffs by day put on their white hoods at night.
Racial violence was threatened and used to bust the unionization attempts.
The mine owners knew that their best weapon against workers economic solidarity was an appeal to racial tribalism.
Trump knew this too. As do Senators Hawley and Cruz attacking red herring issues like CRT, as do the Republican state legislatures restricting voting rights (if black people are voting it’s a stolen election).
We have had a black President, but in so many ways things have not changed.
Enslaved Africans were first brought to what would become the U.S. over 400 years ago. Over 150 years ago, they were supposedly emancipated, but it wasn’t until about 100 years later that our apartheid era officially ended. Even today the disparities remain pervasive, for example:
• At $171,000, the net worth of a typical white family was nearly ten times greater than that of a Black family ($17,150) in 2016.
• Disparities between Blacks and Whites in 6 out of 15 health status indicators are widening instead of narrowing.
• Black Americans are incarcerated in state and federal prisons at five times the rate of White Americans.
You say, “CRT does not make a gentle accusation, nor a patient one.” Gee, I wonder why.
Actually, we had an African American president, things are changing. It's the changing that's making Regressive's heads explode.
It's not an accident that bodycams, cell phone cameras and social media are paralleling the increasing awareness of structural racism and police violence. It's not something happening in the dark any more. Rodney King's police beating was 20 years ago.
Sometimes labeling something "culture" is an attempt to lessen its value and importance Attributing CRT to academia is overlooking the grass roots activism that preceded the establishment of African American studies departments, much in the same way that "women's studies" were spoken of with a sneer.
Oh, so oppressed people are supposed to be “nice” when calling out systemic bias and disparate oppression? Perhaps the historian should look at how polite and well behaved those who changed history were perceived in their times. Schumer has apologized for using the outdated phrase “retarded” and he’s in the business of being politically correct. Even “mental” would be behind the times. Try “neurodivergent” or “behaviorally challenged.” And keep up, fcs...
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