rumitoid

Explainer
July 1, 2021

[Though I know from a long history here, most on the Right do not read articles on subjects their Operatives use to drum up fear and h**e of Liberals. Those subjects are done deals that are not to be challenged or even questioned. Darkness is necessary. Lockstep is supreme.]

Republican lawmakers in more than 20 states have introduced or passed legislation that would directly target the principles underlying critical race theory by banning schools from teaching about structural r****m. These efforts to demonize critical race theory are gaining traction more than a year into a national reckoning with r****m, following the murders of G****e F***d and Breonna Taylor, and the ensuing protests.

Speaking at a conference held by the Faith and Freedom Coalition on June 18, former Vice President Mike Pence said that “critical race theory is r****m.” Senator Ted Cruz, at the same gathering, compared the theory to the Ku Klux Klan saying the curriculum is “every bit as r****t” as the w***e s*********t h**e group. “Critical race theory,” the senator said, “says every white person is a r****t.”

These campaigns are not just based on ignorance of how critical race theory developed and is now applied, but also represent an attempt to stoke a reactionary resistance, rather than a broader understanding.
Urgent and Necessary Work

“Critical race theory and the essential scholarship it has advanced may challenge many long-held views, but that is what makes this work so urgent and necessary,” said Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger (LAW’71). “I could not be more proud that it is taking place at Columbia. This is, after all, what makes universities such vital institutions in society.”

“In the finest tradition of Columbia Law School, our brilliant faculty were among the foundational thinkers and continue to lead the dialogue on this vital issue,” said Gillian Lester, Dean and Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law. “Their scholarship, teaching, and advocacy have illuminated the pervasive effects of structural r****m in our society and in the law. That they have persisted in the face of hostility and outright falsehoods is testament to their vision and determination."

Critical race theory was a movement that initially started at Harvard under Professor Derrick Bell in the 1980s. It evolved in reaction to critical legal studies, which came about in the 70s and dissected the idea that law was just and neutral. Over time, the movement grew among legal scholars, mostly of color, at law schools across the country, including at UCLA, where Crenshaw lectured on critical race theory, civil rights, and constitutional law, and later at Columbia, where she was appointed a full professor in 1995, alongside Williams, a former student, research assistant, and lifelong mentee of Bell’s, and who is now professor of law emerita.



Although the scholarship differs in emphasis and discipline, it is united by an interest in understanding and rectifying the ways in which a regime of w***e s*******y and its subordination of people of color in America has had an impact on the relationship between social structure and professed ideals such as “the rule of law” and “equal protection.”

Put simply, according to Crenshaw, who coined the term intersectionality, which refers to how different forms of discrimination (such as sexism and r****m) can overlap and compound each other, critical race theory is a way to talk openly about how America’s history has had an effect on our society and institutions today.

“We need to pay attention to what has happened in this country and how what has happened is continuing to create differential outcomes, so that we can become the democratic republic we say we are,” Crenshaw explained. “We believe in the promises of e******y, and we know we can get there if we confront and talk honestly about ine******y.”
Forcing Legal Scholars to Ask Questions

Critical race theory essentially forces legal scholars to ask questions, she continued. For instance, why does possession of less expensive drugs carry higher jail sentences than more expensive drugs? Could this have anything to do with the fact that more people of color are in prison?

“It is a way of looking at law’s role platforming, facilitating, producing, and even insulating racial ine******y in our country, ranging from health to wealth to segregation to policing,” said Crenshaw, who is also the co-founder and executive director of the African American Policy Forum.

For those, like Senator Cruz, who say that critical race theory assigns blame to white people, that’s wrong, said Thomas, who is the Nash Professor of Law and a member of the faculty at Columbia Law School since 1984. He teaches a critical race theory workshop, among other courses, and directs the Center for the Study of Law and Culture.

"Critical race theory views race law and policy as tools of power," Thomas said. "Its focus on the politics of race has helped break the stranglehold of 'racial moralism' by challenging the egocentric belief that r****m is always only about personal fault, private prejudice, and invidious individual intent. Critical race theory tells a story about institutionalized racial disadvantage and systemic racial ine******y. It highlights the structural harms of the ‘colorblind r****m’ we see at work in laws that don’t mention race per se."



For parents or educators who, according to G.O.P. lawmakers, say that white children are being made to feel guilty and being taught that white people are oppressors, Thomas replied, that this “is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an idea or tenet behind critical race theory. To the contrary, critical race theory recognizes that racial inequity and exclusion hurt all Americans, wh**ever our race or color. In the famous Brown decision, the Supreme Court emphasized that education is the 'very foundation of good citizenship.' The families and teachers who oppose the attacks on critical race theory know that we can't censor classroom discussions about the meaning of race if we want to prepare young Americans for the responsibilities of democratic citizenship in our increasingly diverse multicultural society."

Furthermore, said Thomas, “the people behind this legislation are trying to prevent the emergence of a broad movement for multiracial democracy to address the interconnected economic, social, and political ine******y that is devastating poor and working-class communities of all races in this country.”
This Is About Racial Justice

For Crenshaw, the legislative efforts are scapegoating. “The idea that anti-r****m is r****m against white people has got to be the oldest talking point in their playbook. There is not a thing happening today that we have not seen before, including the ascendance of racial demagoguery on the anti-democratic, authoritarian, and nationalist impulses of a population mobilized through the discourse of aggrievement,” she said.

“We saw this in the backlash against emancipation. We saw it in the successful effort to disenfranchise African Americans and purge them entirely from public life, and we saw aggressive and even violent actions justified as self-defense," she said.

What is going on today is about racial justice. “This hysteria is just that. It has nothing to do with a legal theory that has been around for decades, and that you may never have heard of until now,” Crenshaw said. “If you marched last year in the wake of G****e F***d’s murder, if you have a Black L***s M****r sign on your lawn or a bumper sticker on your car, if you had diversity training at your job and now you understand how you can do better, then you support racial justice.”
https://news.columbia.edu/news/what-critical-race-theory-and-why-everyone-talking-about-it-0

nwtk2007 Loc: Texas

For one thing, teachers don't know how to teach CRT. For another, I am not sure school is where race should be a part of anything at all. If schools would concentrate of basic education, the three R's, then by the time kids have all that mastered, race would probably not even be a thing. I know that kids don't even consider race as they grow unless they are taught to let rave be the forefront. Why taint the purity of their thinking early on in their lives????

Liberty Tree

NWR NWR

nwtk2007 Loc: Texas

You tawk'in to me??

Rose42

You will NEVER change anyone’s mind with your incessant needless insults. So why do you continue doing it?

microphor Loc: Home is TN

Bull, what's going on today is political division. That's what it is.

Liberty Tree

No, I meant Rumi. Sorry, my bad

Liberty Tree

NWR NWR

pegw

Nice debate about absolutely nothing. Crital Race theory is a law school topic that the right mistakenly thinks is taught on grade school. 5hey do6know how stupid they sound.

TommyRadd Loc: Midwest USA

Rose,

I recently came across this write up of the t***slation of Ephesians 2:2 in the NET Bible…

“in which you formerly lived according to this world’s present path, according to the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the ruler of the spirit that is now energizing the sons of disobedience”
“(Eph 2.2, NET Bible)
“In Ephesians 2.1-3, the apostle Paul describes the status of believers before they believed. He begins by painting a rather bleak picture, “you were dead in your sins”—that is, they were spiritually unresponsive to anything outside of sin. In v. 2, he goes on to speak of these pre-believers as living in such sins “according to the world’s present path.” That is, the unbeliever’s life is dictated more by culture and the age in which he lives than by any t***scultural principles. Then, Paul delivers a double whammy: our lives used to be “according to the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the ruler of the spirit that is now energizing the sons of disobedience.” In other words, our lives used to be run by the god of this world, the devil himself, who ruled over both our external environment (the kingdom of the air) and over the spirit that energizes the rest of the unbelieving world.” https://netbible.com/2019/07/08/ephesians-22-in-the-net-bible/

This t***slation is incredibly clear and explanatory to me where other t***slations comparatively seem to obscure the meaning.

Some people mistake “the spirit that is now energizing the sons of disobedience” as being a good or positive spirit. And in this way they allow themselves to be deceived into believing they are “spiritual” people, which is only half true.

We have to come out from under the influence of that evil spirit in the world and be born again of God’s Holy Spirit… in all areas of our life.

Obviously, Rumi is still infatuated with and therefore influenced by that worldly spirit that influences the sons of disobedience in “the world”, which is “run by…the devil himself”. Someone would have to be willingly ignorant to not discern l*****t ideology to be anything but the operations of a worldly spirit. And then also be godly (God-led) enough to recognize and admit that that worldly spirit is ruled over by the devil himself.

This is why the soundest of arguments won’t pierce his confirmation biases to the contrary. There is no shaking someone out of a deception who wants to be deceived, or who relates more with the deception than with the t***h. They assume that spirit that works in the children of disobedience is either “who” they are, or who their “god” wants them to be. Again, a half t***h, because that little g god isn’t the Creator God, our Father.

“For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world's rulers of the darkness of this age, and against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Ephesians 6:12

I know, I’m preaching to the choir here. I just thought you might find NET’s t***slation of Eph. 2:2 as enlightening, and appropriate in this situation, as I did.

Rose42

Thank you. That is interesting and I will read it again carefully. Definitely appropriate

nwtk2007 Loc: Texas

Liberty Tree

If you believe that you are either willfully ignorant or totally misinformed.

TommyRadd Loc: Midwest USA

He or she is apparently in the the “parents-speaking-out-against-CRT-being-taught-in-schools-should-be-considered terrorists” school of thought.

Perhaps we should just “give them enough rope” so to speak... This one “misjudgment” of character is, from what I hear, making more conservatives out of liberals or centrists (or at least awakening to action those otherwise passive and noncommittal) than a lot of other attempts have been able to do.

SGM B Loc: TEXAS but live in Alabama now

Nor do you. 🙂