rumitoid

Pocono Record
Dr. G. Christopher Hunt
Fri, February 4, 2022, 2:28 PM

Critical Race Theory (CRT) was the focus of my doctoral studies and, at it's core, the central idea of the theory is pretty simple: that r****m and it's effects are historic and embedded in our society, and often lead to the exclusion of People of Color and other marginalized groups. Why is this a point of controversy, even conflict?

I’m sure I rolled my eyes at wh**ever point I first observed that this idea had, indeed, become contentious. The primary thing that CRT does is it acknowledges inequities in society.

What does anyone have to lose by conceding that reality? Is it really controversial to recognize that an individual who comes from more financial means will, typically, have advantages over someone whose family had money problems?

This doesn’t mean that the more financially secure person should feel guilty. It should just help them understand their path may have not presented as many challenges as someone who did/does not have the same resources.

Additionally, what risk is there to individuals who do not live with a disability when we talk about the lived experiences of individuals who do live with a disability and how they navigate in society? And, if we understand that not every American practices Christianity, does that really impose on my ability to serve Jesus?

The thing about Critical Race Theory that most people don’t understand is the succinctness of theory itself. All we hear is, “We cannot allow this decisive concept to be taught in our schools.” The takeaway being that CRT is a dangerous, brainwashing curriculum that dishonors our nation’s history with slander and lies. In fact, CRT is merely a tool — a lens or perspective through which we can make sense of how people with different marginalized identities move throughout society.

An individual from a marginalized identity is easily defined as one who historically does not have as much societal power or authority. CRT simply provides an analysis for how race and other identities shape and influence our shared relationships. It asks that we consider and think about the questions posed earlier regarding socioeconomic status, religion, g****r, disability, and other characteristics including, yes, race and ethnicity. The theory also encourages us to be mindful about the contributions that historically underrepresented people have made in our society.

American historian, author, and journalist Dr. Carter G. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of African American Life and History in 1926 and shortly thereafter established Negro History Week. Fifty years later, a Republican president, Gerald Ford, advocated that the nation should "seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of B***k A******ns in every area of endeavor throughout our history.” February was selected for Black History Month to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln (Feb. 12) and Frederick Douglass (Feb. 20).

In his own way, Ford was articulating a principle of CRT, which is that we have tended not to focus on the experiences and realities of individuals in marginalized groups and that underprivileged groups may have perspectives exceedingly different than those with more societal power and influence.

President Ronald Reagan also seemed to understand the importance of honoring the history and legacy of People of Color and designated Hispanic Heritage Month as a month-long observance in 1988.

There is no reason for anyone to feel threatened by Black History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, or Critical Race Theory. These are not ploys to indoctrinate our citizenry, but rather an opportunity to make us more informed and aware. In fact, let’s move toward honoring and acknowledging the history and contributions of historically underrepresented people beyond cultural heritage months. Embed a more comprehensive history of our society in our curriculum so we have a better understanding about where we’ve been and where we should be going.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/critical-race-theory-theres-no-204657499.html

Liberty Tree

CRT is being used to indoctrinate our children into a Marxist philosophy.

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

I understand those who do not want CRT to be taught in schools. But, CRT is a law school subject, not grade school through high school and generally not even in an undergrad program.

CRT has simply become code for talking about anything to do with r****m in America, which they don’t want. What I find pretty amusing is that many relate with the bad guys in the story. They don’t want their kids to learn that r****m is bad because they know historical facts condemn them, too.

When I hear about the history of r****m in America, I don’t think they’re talking about me. I learn from it with a goal of understanding why things are how they are today and how we can continue to learn, grow, and improve. We’ve come a long way and we still have a long way to go, but trying to hide it or literally “white” wash it is propaganda.

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

By Tom Robinson (Has been a white person for all his life)

Can you explain why some think the main lesson taught by 'Critical Race Theory' is "all white people are evil"?
Because they have been lied to. Full stop.

The reason that a major swathe of the American public, many of whom are surely intelligent and capable people in many respects, believe something so ass-backwards is that they heard it said by people whom they trust and took the liars at their word.

In some cases, the people whose word they took might not themselves be the liars but might actually believe the falsehoods that they are repeating, having taken another liar at their word.

Not only does CRT not “say” that all White people are evil, but such a statement is fundamentally incompatible with the CRT model of understanding.

CRT is based on the firm understanding that racial classifications—all racial classifications—are constructs of the human mind and that any attempt to assign any kind of inner valuative quality to a single socially-constructed classification is not only fallacious, but the definition of r****m.

Anyone who says that all White people are evil firmly rejects CRT in doing so.

What I find most interesting, however, is that the recent educational trends that people tend to be talking about when they complain about CRT in schools are often found to be objectionable specifically because they reject the premise of all White people being r****t.

If that sounds unbelievable or you aren’t following me, then allow me to explain.

[For the sake of clarity, in the following paragraphs I am going to be using the term CRT to refer to recent trends toward Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in American schools. While these are not themselves CRT, they are not entirely unrelated to critical thought and philosophy, and they are generally what people mean when they talk about CRT being taught in schools so, rather than waste time explaining how that’s not what CRT means, I’m going to misuse the term for the sake of argument.]

To put it simply, for most of the history of American education (including when I was a student), the dominant narrative concerning the founding fathers went something like this:

While today we recognize that s***ery was bad, figures like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington should be excused for having owned s***es because back then all White people supported s***ery.
This is where the scholar of what we are calling CRT steps in to object:
Actually, that’s not true. In fact, throughout American history—dating all the way back to well before the revolution—there have been White people opposed to s***ery and actively engaged in the fight against it. The Quakers, a largely-White religious group, not only banned s***ery among their ranks but actually insisted on the payment of r********ns as well, even before the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Furthermore, when George Washington was president he resided in the nation’s capital, which was then Philadelphia, in the Quaker-founded state of Pennsylvania. At the time, not only had Pennsylvania banned the s***e trade, but they had passed legislation giving any ens***ed person who spent six months in the state the right to claim their freedom. As such, in order to keep his s***es in spite of the laws that governed the capitol in which he lived, George Washington was constantly forced to rotate his ens***ed workers back to Mount Vernon so that none of them spent six months continuously in Pennsylvania and could consequently claim manumission.

Not only is it historically inaccurate to say that “all White people supported s***ery,” but it fosters a sense in White students that s***ery and r****m are somehow part of their cultural heritage. The t***h is that there have always been White people fighting for freedom, and we ought to celebrate them and their efforts—even if those efforts were too politically fringe to be successful—rather than pretending that they didn’t exist. Furthermore, we should be teaching all White children that nothing about being White makes r****m or oppression part of your heritage or culture, and that—since r****m is not a necessary part of White identity—there is no reason for any White child to feel the need to defend it in order to maintain their personhood or dignity.

To which the h**ers generally respond:

So you’re saying George Washington was an evil r****t?

To which I need to say yet-again:

What I would say is that I think that we should understand him in his full complexity, and I am not willing to tell White children that all the people who looked like them were all r****ts and s***ers in order to avoid needing to talk about George Washington being a flawed and imperfect person even by the standards of his day.

And this is what gets me about the whole dialogue. Both DEI educators like myself and CRT scholars firmly reject broad racial characterizations and tend to promote recognition of the fight against r****m as a long and enduring one with many unsung heroes, some of whom were White.

If anyone, it’s the people objecting to us pointing out that there were in fact White people fighting for racial justice even during the days of s***ery who are saying that all White people are—or at least were—r****t oppressors.

John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave, but his soul is marching on.

Thanks for reading, and don’t believe the lies.

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

On this past New Year’s Day, it’s a good bet that Rhode Island state Rep. Patricia Morgan and the one Black person she knows will not be sitting down to eat black-eyed peas and collard greens together. It’s an even safer bet that she and her fellow Republicans will spend zero mental energy on the history of the New Year as a terrifying moment for ens***ed people in America.

Rep. Morgan, as you might recall, tweeted a few days ago that she “had a black friend”—emphasis on the past tense—but this unnamed Black token had recently become “​​hostile and unpleasant,” which the Rhode Island lawmaker concluded must be because of critical race theory, because she herself hadn’t done “anything to her, except be white.”

CRT, according to Morgan, is the issue that’s really “divid[ing] us because of skin color.”

This is really quite the take during an era in which Confederate f**g-waving i**********nists have overtaken the U.S. Capitol building, the FBI identified white terrorists as the greatest threat to national security, members of Congress openly aligned with self-identified white nationalists and promoted their ideologies, h**e crimes against Black folks rose precipitiously, and Rep. Morgan herself proposed one anti-CRT bill and stonewalled another that would incorporate the teaching of Black history in Rhode Island schools.

It’s tempting to think that Morgan is just misinformed about CRT—an esoteric legal concept for examining s******c r****m that no Rhode Island school is teaching, and that the far right has become obsessed with over the last year. But in a later appearance, Morgan unwittingly admitted that her issue isn’t with CRT, but with the idea that history might be taught in a way that fully acknowledges how anti-Black r****m has defined every aspect of America, taking full stock of the devastation caused by w***e A******n supremacy. That would be too much of a bummer, according to Morgan, who claims that “with CRT, there’s no redemption,” because it does not focus on the “good part of our history.”

That’s really just a way of saying that she opposes a history that isn’t filled with s*********t fables and other ahistorical nonsense. Not to mention that she also isn’t a fan of white folks—after centuries of omitting Black folks from the historical record—having to share the historical spotlight.

“I’m genuinely concerned that critical race theory—this centering of the Black experience, this making race the center of everything in our society—is really dangerous,” Morgan said in an interview. “And it’s chipping away at the things that bind us together as Americans.”

A land of contradictions from the outset, the United States was founded by s***e owners who spoke passionately and eloquently about liberty, freedom, and justice for all. In the beginning, “all” was limited to men of European ancestry who were wealthy enough to own land. The Constitution’s protections did not apply to most of the people living in America for most of America’s history—at least not in full.

Women—about 50% of the population—were not included in the country’s concept of “all,” likewise millions of s***es—and for a long time, their offspring. The descendants of the original inhabitants of the United States were commonly excluded from the promise of America, as were many immigrants, ethnic groups, and religious minorities.

Despite all the work that remains to be done, all of those groups and many others now enjoy freedoms that had to be won—won through the courts, through the court of public opinion, through mass demonstrations, through legislation, through boycotts, and in many cases, through martyrdom.

Fighting to expand the definition of “all” requires powerless people to challenge the power structures that benefit from their status as second-class citizens. They often do it at great risk to their jobs, their reputations, their homes, and in many cases, their lives. Even so, brave advocates and activists fought the good fight in every state in America. Each state has a unique story to tell about the epic struggles for civil rights that were waged there, as well as those that continue to be waged. The following is a tiny sliver of their collective efforts.

Using a variety of sources, Stacker identified a defining moment for civil rights in all 50 states. They stand out for different reasons and led to changes that lifted different groups, but they all prove how much can be achieved—and how much still remains to be accomplished.

Click through to find out your state’s contribution to civil rights.

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This is what CRT opponents truly fear, summed up by Morgan. Perhaps because she would prefer that Rhode Island schoolkids not know that their home state’s “General Court of E******n”—meaning Morgan’s own legislative predecessors—passed a law in 1652 that ended lifelong Black ens***ement in two cities, and would pass another law proscribing Native s***ery in 1676, only to completely ignore that legislation in favor of racial capitalism.

Laws curtailing s***ery would also be passed in the state in 1774, 1784, and 1787, though those didn’t end the barbaric system either. In fact, “almost half of all of Rhode Island’s s***e voyages occurred after trading was outlawed,” as USA Today reported. When the American Revolution began in 1775, “Rhode Island was the largest s***e trading colony in British America,” according to Leonardo Marques, author of The United States and the T***satlantic S***e Trade to the Americas. Newport, and then Bristol, were major ports in the t***s-Atlantic importation of human beings trafficked from Africa to the colonies in the 18th century, and had more ens***ed Black folks per capita than any New England state of the colonial era.

The state would finally constitutionally abolish s***ery in 1843.

While it’s now considered a celebratory moment across the U.S., the end of the year was filled with trauma and trepidation for Black folks living under the yoke of s***ery. Ens***ers would settle their accounts as the year came to a close, and that meant those they ens***ed might be hired out to other ens***ers, or sold on the first day of the year. Among ens***ed Black folks, New Year’s Eve was spent worrying that they might be ripped from family and loved ones, auctioned off to the highest bidder to erase an ens***er’s debt.

And as such, New Year’s Day was known as “Hiring Day” or—in words that more precisely named the cruelty they experienced—“Heartbreak Day.”

https://www.bing.com/search?q=heartbreakday&cvid=3d6a5d7861f0492a83feb6e8dc6b19a7&aqs=edge..69i57j0l2.5910j0j4&FORM=ANAB01&PC=HCTS

“Of all the days in the year, the s***es dread New Year’s Day the worst of any,” Lewis Clarke, who fled ens***ement and became an outspoken abolitionist, stated in 1842, one year before Rhode Island banned legalized racial bondage. “For folks come for their debts then; and if anybody is going to sell a s***e, that’s the time they do it; and if anybody’s going to give away a s***e, that’s the time they do it; and the s***e never knows where he’ll be sent to. Oh, New Year’s a heart-breaking time in Kentucky!”

Clarke’s account is an American t***h, as historically relevant as those stories that Morgan and many other Republicans might prefer we continue to center on this and every day. It’s a history that Morgan wants to be whitewashed until it fades from collective American memory. But it’s critical that these stories—which tell us how we arrived at the present moment, and why we can’t seem to ever get beyond the residual impact of a past Morgan would like to forget—be told.

There’s an old Black saying, borne of Hiring Day, that states New Year’s will define your coming year.

“S***es went to a place [on Hiring Day] called the hiring grounds to hire their labors out for the next year,” Sister Harrison, a formerly ens***ed freeperson told an interviewer in 1937. “That’s where that sayin’ comes from that what you do on New Year’s Day you’ll be doing for the rest of the year.”

That likely means that Morgan and other white conservatives, who’ve been using CRT as a boogeyman for the last year, will continue to do so straight through 2022. But it’s all more white-s*********t propaganda. Here’s hoping in the new year there will be more pushback against the r****t campaign to legally ban the teaching of verifiable history. And that Morgan’s absurd efforts to block those t***hs loses her yet more “friends” who were just barely tolerating her anyway.

American Vet

Then keep CRT in law school.

The issue is that some schools are teaching CRT (and similar 'subjects') in elementary and high schools.

CRT is 'code' for talking about 'white privilege' and things associated with that.

Nobody is trying to 'whitewash' anything - except the proponents of CRT.

Justice101

These r****rs have not inexplicably gone nuts. They have been cultivated in ignorance and hatred by largely taxpayer-funded education institutions as well as media institutions also populated by mal-educated university graduates. The history taught to American young people centers on the same false and bigoted oppression narratives we see spilling into the streets in signs like “Cops and Klan go hand in hand.” The civics education programs from elementary through college levels are imbued with factually false anti-American indoctrination.

American taxpayers are paying for our children to be taught to h**e America, plain and simple. It is long past time for lawmakers to stop enabling this situation as, for example, Texas did last week by dropping yet another school choice bill. School choice that does not extend ideological control through overregulation undercuts the progressive monopoly that has deformed U.S. education for decades.

Lastly, of course young people need to know, in age-appropriate ways, the t***h about history — the whole t***h. Thomas Jefferson held s***es and due to his financial profligacy could not free them, but also wrote the words that ultimately not only ended s***ery in America but also made the United States ensure e******y before the law to all citizens in a signal development for humankind that many nations have still not made. Christopher Columbus’s celebrity went to his head and after discovering the American continent he became a s***e trader. In fact, because of his inability to restrain his men’s brutality he lost his governorship of the West Indies and was recalled to Spain by its Catholic monarchs. His Caribbean discoveries also ultimately led to ending the widespread human sacrifice practices of Central America natives.

This is the t***h, and it is sobering. It is sobering to think that even our most prominent and deserving leaders are capable of such great evils. It ought to give us humility about what we can expect from ourselves, and to beware both leadership positions and good intentions, for history teaches where they often lead.

But telling the t***h about our ancestors should not mean discounting everything they ever did, for if we do that for any person, including ourselves, we all have nothing to do but go home and weep. If we discount achievements because those who perform them are imperfect, there will be no achievements, only darkness. That creates a world of always tearing down and never building up, and the end of it is annihilation. In life is both great joy and great sorrow, and both deserve their due. That is what monuments are for.

https://thefederalist.com/2017/08/22/vandals-destroying-monuments-theyve-taught-h**e-america/