Political Roundtable Part XXIX

[Benjammin]

A short treatise on CRT: https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-critical-race-theory/

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[Benjammin]

Ross Douthat writing about the SF school name change story as part of the radicalization of the left and right manifesting in different ways.


San Francisco's School Renaming and the Pandemic’s Gift to Radicalism https://nyti.ms/3j6giFF

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[Zonkerbl]

A short treatise on CRT: https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-critical-race-theory/

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Well, this is extraordinarily biased. I suppose if you strip away all the premature value judgements it presents some interesting ideas. In particular:

"claims to truth are assertions of power by specific means"

The lies spread by Fox News and gullibly believed by all their viewers makes this statement sadly true

Strip the word "cynical" from this paragraph and it seems very straightforward and true:

"As can be observed in the examples (above and below), critical race Theory begins with a cynical view that race is the predominant structural element of American (and other) societies, and that all analyses of race must incorporate systemic power, which is to say systemic racism. This, it insists, is everywhere, ordinary, permanent, and mostly (and badly) hidden, a kind of racism that is just beneath the surface (see also, code, mask, internalized dominance, internalized oppression, and internalized racism). Indeed, it tends to proceed from Derrick Bell’s assumption that racism has a permanence to it (or, sometimes, is permanent) and thus is not overcome and does not end but instead changes forms to something more subtle and harder to find. A consequence of this belief is that racism does not improve in society or stay the same but actually gets worse by virtue of staying roughly the same while becoming more insidious. One duty of the critical race Theorist is to expose this hidden racism wherever it can be found."

And yes, I suppose a truly authentic CRT should be anti-colonialist, which White Supremacists would interpret as "anti-Western."

[Zonkerbl]

Was watching the sea shanty tiktok stuff and had some thoughts. We live in a post scarcity economy where poverty exists only because of explicit policy choices made by our leaders. Our kids see that and are turning away from consumption as the primary motivator of their life and turning towards community. It's not socialism - socialism assumes you have the power to force policy makers to do something different. This is not that - it's just turning towards and valuing things that the plutocrats can't take away from you. Like community-authored sea shanties.

I suppose artists have been trying to say this for centuries. Just now getting it. What's different now is the post-scarcity-ness now. Before you could credibly tell an artist "yeah but we have to eat." Literally not true anymore - there's so much food now. The world is awash in food. We have so much food that we feed our excess food to animals and then eat them.

[Benjammin]

This is what CRT promotes.The The African-American History Museum had a page on whiteness which it quickly edited when they got pushback about its contents.

Aspects and Assumptions of Whiteness and White Culture in the United States:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/antiracism-training-white-fragility-robin-diangelo-ibram-kendi.html

There is no hope for redemption and reconciliation in CT. It espouses an atitude articulated by Lenin "Kto kovo/kogo?" Translated who-whom (who rules whom) it speaks to a zero sum understanding of politics.

[Zonkerbl]

It seems like the only articles you read about CRT are anti-CRT ones. Have you read any, you know, not-white-supremacist takes on CRT?

[Benjammin]

Actually I have. Quite a few. I believe that systemic racism is real. And by the way, these are not "white supremacist" takes. I guess this group must be considered white supremacists also? CT all too often espouses an illiberal cancel culture narrative.

https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/

A Letter on Justice and Open Debate
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July 7, 2020
The below letter will be appearing in the Letters section of the magazine’s October issue. We welcome responses at letters@harpers.org

Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts. But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity. As we applaud the first development, we also raise our voices against the second. The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy. But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion—which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting. The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides.

The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.

This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences. If we won’t defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn’t expect the public or the state to defend it for us.

Elliot Ackerman
Saladin Ambar, Rutgers University
Martin Amis
Anne Applebaum
Marie Arana, author
Margaret Atwood
John Banville
Mia Bay, historian
Louis Begley, writer
Roger Berkowitz, Bard College
Paul Berman, writer
Sheri Berman, Barnard College
Reginald Dwayne Betts, poet
Neil Blair, agent
David W. Blight, Yale University
Jennifer Finney Boylan, author
David Bromwich
David Brooks, columnist
Ian Buruma, Bard College
Lea Carpenter
Noam Chomsky, MIT (emeritus)
Nicholas A. Christakis, Yale University
Roger Cohen, writer
Ambassador Frances D. Cook, ret.
Drucilla Cornell, Founder, uBuntu Project
Kamel Daoud
Meghan Daum, writer
Gerald Early, Washington University-St. Louis
Jeffrey Eugenides, writer
Dexter Filkins
Federico Finchelstein, The New School
Caitlin Flanagan
Richard T. Ford, Stanford Law School
Kmele Foster
David Frum, journalist
Francis Fukuyama, Stanford University
Atul Gawande, Harvard University
Todd Gitlin, Columbia University
Kim Ghattas
Malcolm Gladwell
Michelle Goldberg, columnist
Rebecca Goldstein, writer
Anthony Grafton, Princeton University
David Greenberg, Rutgers University
Linda Greenhouse
Rinne B. Groff, playwright
Sarah Haider, activist
Jonathan Haidt, NYU-Stern
Roya Hakakian, writer
Shadi Hamid, Brookings Institution
Jeet Heer, The Nation
Katie Herzog, podcast host
Susannah Heschel, Dartmouth College
Adam Hochschild, author
Arlie Russell Hochschild, author
Eva Hoffman, writer
Coleman Hughes, writer/Manhattan Institute
Hussein Ibish, Arab Gulf States Institute
Michael Ignatieff
Zaid Jilani, journalist
Bill T. Jones, New York Live Arts
Wendy Kaminer, writer
Matthew Karp, Princeton University
Garry Kasparov, Renew Democracy Initiative
Daniel Kehlmann, writer
Randall Kennedy
Khaled Khalifa, writer
Parag Khanna, author
Laura Kipnis, Northwestern University
Frances Kissling, Center for Health, Ethics, Social Policy
Enrique Krauze, historian
Anthony Kronman, Yale University
Joy Ladin, Yeshiva University
Nicholas Lemann, Columbia University
Mark Lilla, Columbia University
Susie Linfield, New York University
Damon Linker, writer
Dahlia Lithwick, Slate
Steven Lukes, New York University
John R. MacArthur, publisher, writer
Susan Madrak, writer
Phoebe Maltz Bovy, writer
Greil Marcus
Wynton Marsalis, Jazz at Lincoln Center
Kati Marton, author
Debra Mashek, scholar
Deirdre McCloskey, University of Illinois at Chicago
John McWhorter, Columbia University
Uday Mehta, City University of New York
Andrew Moravcsik, Princeton University
Yascha Mounk, Persuasion
Samuel Moyn, Yale University
Meera Nanda, writer and teacher
Cary Nelson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Olivia Nuzzi, New York Magazine
Mark Oppenheimer, Yale University
Dael Orlandersmith, writer/performer
George Packer
Nell Irvin Painter, Princeton University (emerita)
Greg Pardlo, Rutgers University – Camden
Orlando Patterson, Harvard University
Steven Pinker, Harvard University
Letty Cottin Pogrebin
Katha Pollitt, writer
Claire Bond Potter, The New School
Taufiq Rahim
Zia Haider Rahman, writer
Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, University of Wisconsin
Jonathan Rauch, Brookings Institution/The Atlantic
Neil Roberts, political theorist
Melvin Rogers, Brown University
Kat Rosenfield, writer
Loretta J. Ross, Smith College
J.K. Rowling
Salman Rushdie, New York University
Karim Sadjadpour, Carnegie Endowment
Daryl Michael Scott, Howard University
Diana Senechal, teacher and writer
Jennifer Senior, columnist
Judith Shulevitz, writer
Jesse Singal, journalist
Anne-Marie Slaughter
Andrew Solomon, writer
Deborah Solomon, critic and biographer
Allison Stanger, Middlebury College
Paul Starr, American Prospect/Princeton University
Wendell Steavenson, writer
Gloria Steinem, writer and activist
Nadine Strossen, New York Law School
Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., Harvard Law School
Kian Tajbakhsh, Columbia University
Zephyr Teachout, Fordham University
Cynthia Tucker, University of South Alabama
Adaner Usmani, Harvard University
Chloe Valdary
Helen Vendler, Harvard University
Judy B. Walzer
Michael Walzer
Eric K. Washington, historian
Caroline Weber, historian
Randi Weingarten, American Federation of Teachers
Bari Weiss
Cornel West
Sean Wilentz, Princeton University
Garry Wills
Thomas Chatterton Williams, writer
Robert F. Worth, journalist and author
Molly Worthen, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Matthew Yglesias
Emily Yoffe, journalist
Cathy Young, journalist
Fareed Zakaria

[Zonkerbl]

Ok but what does that have to do with CRT? This is a bunch of conservatives clutching their pearls over "cancel culture." Other than you blithely stating so I don't see the connection.

[Fairview4Life]

White supremacists running rampant, 3500 people dying everyday due to Covid, wealth inequality spiraling out of control, millions of people unemployed. Sure, let's whine about cancel culture and critical race theory. What the **** lol?

[pancakes3]

i don't even know what cancel culture means. it's just society reacting to people acting outside of its norms, and it happens all the time to everybody.

lgbtq+ kids are afraid to come out or else they'll be cancelled.
black and brown votes are being cancelled through gerrymandering.
kaep was cancelled.

and these consequences are more impactful, and more prevalent than say... "professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class" (assuming this is in reference to incidents of profs creating entire lectures around the use of the n-word, mein kampf, and other *edgy* topics that more often than not are not relevant to the course, or could be presented in a more thoughtful, critical manner)

i/we criticize these profs (the alleged "cancelling") not because they were speaking truth to power and i want to crush them under the bootheel of liberalism but because they're lazy idiots, and because there has been a severe lack of criticism of these behaviors in the past.

like, chill JK. you wrote a nice story about a boy wizard that draws upon deep wish fulfillment fantasies that captured an entire generation. doesn't mean you get to publicize transphobia without repercussions.

[Ruzious]

It reminds me of "politically correct" - a negative sounding term used to take shots at certain groups of people; it eventually was used as an excuse to act like a bleep. Cancel culture is also a negative sounding term. Is it being used to take shots at groups of people? Yes. I don't think it's gone as far as emboldening people to act like arses, but maybe that comes later.

[pancakes3]

I just reread that Harpers' letter and good god is it insipid. It boils down to:

1) cancelling trump is good, but don't cancel me.
2) people used to be able to say whatever they want and now there are consequences for what they say
3) if we can't say what we want, we won't be able to have a dialogue

when
1) so the premise of cancel culture is acceptable, just the execution is flawed?
2) - being able to say whatever you want is bad, which you just admitted in saying there's no place for trump's speech
- and for most ppl there were consequences to what they said. if you are part of the group that previously were able to speak consequence free, and now have to be held accountable for what you say? well sh*t, that's what the woke called having your privilege set aside.
3) - the value of dialogues isn't for dialogue's sake. the value is that dialogues create solutions. if everyone is able to bluntly say "well that's my opinion" and not concede points, we will never reach a conclusion. so criticism is crucial, and if you've lost the argument, then you need to stfu.
- when they say stuff like this: "As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes" it's meaningless. That is unless of course these "writers" seek out to say controversial things because controversy generates clicks, and that's how they get paid; the controversy is the point. And what exactly is needed to be experimented with here? A prof needs to experiment as to whether he/she can get away with saying the n-word? David Brooks needs to experiment with another op/ed defending zionism? Gladwell needs to experiment with another pseudo-intellectual piece book where he can freely conflate correlation with causation, shifting cultural paradigms based off nonexistent social science? no. you say things because you believe in it. you have a reason for saying it. saying cancellable things to "experiment" is trolling. that's it. nothing more to it. there's nothing noble, or intellectual about it.

so yeah. idiots.

i am sad to see Chomsky on the list though. at 92, i doubt he fully recognizes the implications of attaching his name to something like this. not just basic faculties, but i don't think he understands the cultural landscape of 2020 to fully grasp what the letter is advocating. But then again, maybe he does, and we should never meet our heroes. i have read some things saying how Chomsky is a reductionist who trusts his instincts over the research of his fellow social scientists, and is essentially a hack. a very quotable and media-friendly hack but still a hack and not a polyglot.

[Benjammin]

Did you know that the use of acronyms is a symptom of white supremacy culture? That does not apply to BLM, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ or others though.

https://abc7news.com/amp/sfusd-renaming-schools-board-meeting-san-francisco-school-sf/10229093/

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[Benjammin]

Some excellent examples of the law of merited impossibility being shared so thanks for that. "It will never happen, and when it does, you bigots will deserve it."

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[Fairview4Life]

Read on Twitter

[verbal8]

Lauren Boebert is cut from that same slime mold - as if a modern day Dr. Frankenstein is shooting out these absurd clones in various sizes and shapes - blonds and brunettes. Dumberer and Dumbererer.

There is definitely a lineage from Sarah Palin to these RWNJs.

[verbal8]

You know how when we criticize Yasser Arafat because we know he could say one word and end all terrorism in the Gaza strip? Same thing going on here - just one word from any of the current batch of traitors - Trump, Hawley, Cruz, Bobo the clown, WMD the clown - and all this silliness would end. But they would immediately be eaten alive by their insane followers. It's kind of a hostage situation. They can't say what they want to say even if they wanted to. I don't think they would die but they would effectively be ending the career path of their choice.

Is there much difference from the GOP and the IRA or Hamas at this point?

Maybe the terrorist arms were more blatant with Hamas and the IRA, but it is getting hard to tell if it is a political party with a terrorist arm or the reverse.

[dobrojim]

I had a little help from my academically minded daughter on this one.

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/07/harpers-letter-free-speech/614080/

The Harper’s letter’s ostensible message championing the “free exchange of information and ideas” is easy enough to agree with, especially at a time when the president of the United States has made himself an enemy of the First Amendment and a free press. And yet the letter has led to a charged debate in the current fraught media climate. In recent years, defenses of “free speech” have often been wielded by people in positions of power in response to critics who want to hold them accountable for the real-life harm their words might cause. Many of these public figures frame any such consequences for their ideas as “cancel culture,” a phrase both hazy and incendiary that is broadly applied and often used defensively, the way someone might describe an article they don’t like as “clickbait,” simply to dismiss it.


RECOMMENDED READING

Who's Afraid of Free Speech?
THOMAS HEALY

What a Direct Attack on Free Speech Looks Like
DAVID A. GRAHAM

Sometimes There Are More Important Goals Than Civility
VANN R. NEWKIRK II

[Benjammin]

CRT in action in California. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/california-ethnic-studies-curriculum#authornote

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[dobrojim]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/01/pepper-spraying-children/?fbclid=IwAR2oW3Ag9pdS7Q3hr6ZX70FzFEse_cJMyi_kpYlAQCOt84jRoUCwEmwjtbM

No words. Some might say it's unbelievable when in fact, it's very believable.