Inverse racism? I’ve seen that as a framing over many years. Let’s ignore the history of what has happened in this country, but we call it injustice when those that were repressed push back?
Or are you speaking to something else?
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it’s great to hear him say all that. and, he definitely could use to read more about american history and race.
“african americans were 3/4 of a human being when this country was formed”
no sir, no even. enslaved people were counted as 3/5ths of a person for purposes of taxation. in exchange, enslavers were given an equal increase in congress.
enslaved people were always full human beings. the founders simply valued profit more than rhetoric about freedom.
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Thanks for this, I’m glad I watched. I didn’t realize legislation had been proposed here. Looks like another letter to the editor is warranted.
I can only imagine how frustrating this is to people who actually DO study CRT and know what it means to see the term so co-opted.
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The right saw that Critical Race Theory shared Two words with Critical Theory, and leapt into action.
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It also shares a word with critical thinking.
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Surely,. there’s a cynical case to be made against critical thinking, but even the heritage foundation extolls it.
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The right uses words like “logic” and “reason” all the time but I’m pretty sure what they mean by this is “just do what your betters tell you.”. The heritage foundation doesn’t really want you to do any thinking.
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Right?!? And we already know what “they” think of that:
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The final letter and response in today’s Clapback Mailbag about CRT was a great example of the frustration felt by those who discovered why their school history classes/texts were full of errors, omissions, and glorification of controversial figures. As usual, Michael Harriot makes excellent points about the people who are fighting against changing that.
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To answer the question, “are white people okay,” it seems not.
I don’t know how I ended up on this mailing list, and I can’t usually get through more than a paragraph or two, but have been trying to kind of keep track of what they’re going on about (full disclosure, I’m white, but fuck those guys), but this last bit of screed about CRT is even more “throw-up-in-my-mouth” inducing than the usual fare (don’t click through if you’re in any threat of heartburn or rage induced apoplexy):
ETA: really, just don’t click through unless you need to get your blood pressure up.
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Yeah, don’t think I will click through to something that sounds like a tarted-up parallel to Weekly World News.
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I know his smackdowns are funny and all but even still it’s got to take a toll on him. I don’t think I could deal with that. People who can are beyond my comprehension.
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Not cynical at all. Texas has taken action to ban the teaching of critical thinking skills due to “possibly bringing children to question received wisdom.”
Texas GOP rejects ‘critical thinking’ skills. Really. - The Washington Post
In the you-can’t-make-up-this-stuff department, here’s what the Republican Party of Texas wrote into its 2012 platform as part of the section on education:
Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.
Yes, you read that right. The party opposes the teaching of “higher order thinking skills” because it believes the purpose is to challenge a student’s “fixed beliefs” and undermine “parental authority.”
It opposes, among other things, early childhood education, sex education, and multicultural education, but supports “school subjects with emphasis on the Judeo-Christian principles upon which America was founded.”
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I think having a supportive team around him makes all the difference. From what’s been in past clapbacks, all writers there (and the staff) get hateful responses to articles on a regular basis. What’s beyond me is how many people spend hours every day or week reading and rage posting on sites whose ideas (or existence) they find objectionable.
Their willingness to hurt themselves in an effort to hurt others is mind-boggling. Time, once it is spent, is something we cannot get back. Yet we see people wasting it raging against things that sometimes don’t even affect them on the say-so of others.
Those anti-CRT folks with school-age children would rather have them believe in a fantasy version of the world full of their “truths,” instead of facts about the US. The reality they want to keep hidden is that a lot of the country’s history was not great, it was inhumane and deplorable:
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And we’ve already spent good money trying to brainwash our flock into thinking that "
values clarificatiion" and “mastery learning” are somehow scary.
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This is an important point. The right-wing media hears “Race is a construct” or “Gender is a construct” and interpret this to mean “Race isn’t real.” or “Gender isn’t real.” They then have two contradictory rhetorical strategies that they use often simultaneously and without irony. The first is to deny it and say “Obviously race exists and for you to deny it is just denying reality.” or “hur dur X and Y chromosomes”. The second is to say something like “Well if race doesn’t exist it is impossible for me to be racist.”
The point about “Race is a construct” isn’t to say that race isn’t real, any more than saying “Money is a construct” means that money isn’t real. What it means to say that “Race is a construct” is that race is an accident of the socio-political dynamics of society and the situation with race as we have it could be otherwise. There is no reason to accept racial inequality simply because our social circumstances and history have dictated that there are certain races.
Our system of races is exactly parallel to the Hindu caste system in that someone looking from the outside might really say, “I don’t understand. Why is that person over there a Brahma and that one a Dalit? It seems pretty arbitrary.”
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Hey, look! My high school is in the news! Perfectly on point for the wealthiest, whitest school district in the state. I’m glad for the education I got at MBHS, but I’m soooooo glad I don’t live there anymore. Just think … if I’d stayed, I could be a Republican today! 
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