What a dishonest article from Amanda Marcotte over at Salon:
Yet with so many white people across the country in a total freak out over "critical race theory," it appears few, if any, of them could even explain what it actually is. That's because, despite what Fox News is telling them, critical race theory — the actual academic framework that was developed in law schools to understand the historical reasons our legal system perpetuates racial inequalities — is not, in fact, being taught to 3rd graders or even 11th graders. Claims otherwise are a complete lie, ginned up by right-wing propagandists who are desperate to keep the GOP base whipped into a racist frenzy.
Firstly, CRT is generally understood by people. Of course, it would never be difficult finding a collection of people who have difficulty articulating it, as broad concepts become difficult to put into words when a proverbial microphone is shoved in front of one's face, but people know exactly what it is, and what it ties back into: cultural Marxism.
CRT can be understood by the narrow definition presented above - as purely legal theory that is certainly not being taught to third graders, or it can be understood with a broader definition as they are oft presented by the academics involved themselves:
"Critical race theory is a practice. It's an approach to grappling with a history of White supremacy that rejects the belief that what's in the past is in the past, and that the laws and systems that grow from that past are detached from it," said Kimberlé Crenshaw, a founding critical race theorist and a law professor who teaches at UCLA and Columbia University. (CNN)
Thus, what is meant by teaching CRT in schools? That the approach to history is of one that deals with white supremacy, and insists that it is an on-going fundamental reality in the US.
It would essentially be re-enforcing ideas like
Critical race theorists believe that racism is an everyday experience for most people of color, and that a large part of society has no interest in doing away with it because it benefits White elites. (CNN)
So, we can ask ourselves:
Is there a movement to bring these into schools? Yes.
Is there a movement for American history to be taught this way? Of course.
Now, why is it linked to Marxism? Because many of the players are Marxists - some of the founders of BLM are self-described Marxists.
CRT is also relatable to what can be more broadly understood as [i]Critical theory.[/i]
Max Horkheimer first defined critical theory (German: Kritische Theorie) in his 1937 essay "Traditional and Critical Theory", as a social theory oriented toward critiquing and changing society as a whole, in contrast to traditional theory oriented only toward understanding or explaining it. Wanting to distinguish critical theory as a radical, emancipatory form of Marxist philosophy, Horkheimer critiqued both the model of science put forward by logical positivism, and what he and his colleagues saw as the covert positivism and authoritarianism of orthodox Marxism and Communism. He described a theory as critical insofar as it seeks "to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them."[6] Critical theory involves a normative dimension, either by criticizing society in terms of some general theory of values or norms (oughts), or by criticizing society in terms of its own espoused values (i.e. immanent critique).[7] (Wikipedia)
And one cannot really understand critical theory as something that is apart from Marxism, even when Marx is being used in a relatively normal sense.
... and... What does Wikipedia say about Critical race theory?
Both critical race theory and critical legal studies are rooted in critical theory, which argues that social problems are influenced and created more by societal structures and cultural assumptions than by individual and psychological factors.[5] (Wikipedia)
Marcotte continues:
It is important to note that the fabricated fury over "critical race theory" is a cleverly constructed right-wing troll. Liberals who want to respond with a quick, easily digested rebuttal are instead boxed into a frustrating corner. Because pointing out that critical race theory is not being taught in public schools is a trap, as it could be construed to imply that there's something wrong with critical race theory. And any straightforward defense of critical race theory implies that schoolchildren are somehow expected to understand graduate school-level academic theories. But in fact, the real issue at hand is that conservatives don't want white kids to learn even the most basic truths about American history.
Marcotte essentially denies that CRT can exist beyond the very narrow definition and thus goes against academics that have brought it into more broad terms that are easily communicable to children, and, more interestingly, presents us with a false dichotomy: we're trapped because if we explain all this so-difficult, professional academic tier theory to the conservatives, we'll be inadvertently saying that schoolkids are able to understand this!
I also do not understand the final sentence: the real issue at hand is that conservatives don't want white kids to learn even the most basic truths about American history, as if we are now willing to accept that curricula are being changed to get in line with the current academic trends... excuse me, LEGAL academic trends.
Instead, as Sean Illing at Vox explains, "conservatives have appropriated critical race theory as a convenient catchall to describe basically any serious attempt to teach the history of race and racism."
This is completely dishonest as there were not conservative movements that existed to whitewash history in the 1990s and 2000s - none that are remotely similar to the backlash against CRT today. Yet, anyone who went to school in the US in the 90s & 2000s (and before) would be able to tell you that they were taught up & down the history of race and racism in the US, and even abroad.
So much so that it is patently absurd for Sean Illing to pretend that this is not the case.
The article eventually stumbles into incoherence:
And that's the crux of it: Schoolchildren aren't really being taught critical race theory, but critical race theory — the actual framework, not the right-wing scare term — is a legitimate academic pursuit that has turned up important facts that white supremacists of yore have covered up. And it's those facts — things like the practice of redlining, the truth about what the Confederacy stood for, what Martin Luther King Jr. really believed, and the history of lynching and events like the Tulsa race massacre — that conservatives want to silence.
Does anyone actually believe that debates about the values and stances of the Confederacy, MLK's beliefs, lynching, the Tulsa massacre, etc., are subjects that were not being understood or explored without this academic school?
These words can only be written by someone who is an academic, or who suckles upon their teets. Regular people are constantly digging into history, studying our past, and are interested in the philosophies of MLK and the Confederacy. Academics are welcome to join them, too, and are even welcome to create their own particular schools & circles that focus on it, regardless of how erroneous and far from the mark they come...
But crediting themselves with as the true & honest shapers of all korrect opinion about actualité is really a bit much to stomach.
Feel free to skip the rest of Marcotte's article - I did.
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