After looking at this for a while I would say that there are at least three beliefs that seem to be common to CRT writers:
Systemic/institutional racism is a thing.
The persistence of systemic/institutional racism is caused by vested interests in preserving it. That is, it isn’t just the nature of reality or something like that.
System/institutional racism can be ameliorated by policy and behavioral changes. That is, we don’t just have to accept it as a tragic fact of life that there is racism but we can and must actually do something about it.
To some degree I think that at least some of the current anti-CRT efforts actually agree that these beliefs constitute what they are fighting against. They are fighting against acknowledging systemic racism, or that anyone benefits from it or that anything can be done about it.
That’s been my lived experience, too. I’ve tried to get at the root of this in regular, workaday conversations for a while now. There seems to be this…fragility, around being able to admit that one is privileged. Like, me pointing out that the playing field isn’t level makes white guys feel like I’m saying they haven’t worked hard for what they have, or whatever. And, really, I’m just trying to point out that Someone of another gender or race in the same life situation they’re in might’ve had more hurdles than they do. I’m not saying you haven’t worked hard. I’m saying someone with a different skin tone would’ve had to work twice as hard (at least) to get where you are. I’m having a hard time expressing it here, but hope you get the gist. The “they” you talk about often don’t want to acknowledge the “it” bc it makes them feel diminished.
Which is fucked up. But it is the seeming state of affairs
Having had a good bit of experience with folks like you describe, I might have some insight on this. For poor white folks, it can seem like they are being told they have all these privileges and still can’t get anywhere. Like, they are playing the game on “easy” and still losing biggly This sounds like they are being insulted, and since they can’t blame the rich guys running the show (the idea of being “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” is part of the mindset), they turn on the PoC, folks who should be their natural allies. I suspect this had something to do with the creation of a “white” identity, to try to keep the poor white folks linking themselves to the rich white guys rather than to their black neighbors and coworkers. At least in WV, where i am from, there is also an element of insular bigotry at play. If they don’t know your grandparents, you will never be accepted as a local, and having “outsiders” telling them right and wrong tends to get fiery pretty fast. I dont know an answer to all this, and i truly love my home state. The people are big-hearted and generous, and the land is indescribably beautiful, but i cannot stand to go back there anymore because of the incendiary levels of ignorance, which include some extended family members, sadly.
That’s been my general impression, too. It’s frustrating, because it means they can’t look at broader situations without making it all about themselves.
And I also agree that WV is a beautiful gem of nature. Sorry it bums you out to go back.
Reading the recent comments on the division between poor white Americans and black Americans, it reminded me that I actually had gotten some exposure to what is now called Critical Race Theory in the 1990s by dent of reading Ronald Takaki who did a lot of work on the history of the creation of whiteness in the US as being oppositional to black Americans, as a conscious act to divide the two groups.
Other CRT or CRT adjacent people that I am remembering that I have had some exposure to are Skip Gates and Cornel West.
I’m not really sure about what the logical dividing line is here in including these though. Are the people who are trying to ban CRT including things like Maya Angelou in their rubrik?
The Founding Fathers, to nobody’s surprise, disagreed with these Texas idiots.
Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen (Muslims); and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan (Mohammedan) nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
Do you know how many Xian dominionists would absolutely lose their shit if this was widely known? No wonder they want to limit and control historical education!
it seems possible that the same sort of psychological framing about stuff like gambling to win money vs gambling to lose money - and how people respond differently to equivalent situations depending on how it’s phrased - is at play
for some people maybe more ground would be covered if it were like: look how much the banks and government, whatever, screw you over, now realize that people of color get even more screwed over
maybe the privilege conversation has been too corrupted by right wing media to be useful as a starting point
At least one important factor in overcoming systemic racism is educating the dominant race about their racial biases.
Any statistical disparities of outcome between races are the result of systemic racism.
His argument against point 1 seems to be that it seems like it is blaming systemic racism on individual racism. That is to say he thinks that the only reason we would need to educate people about their racial biases would be because we think that systemic racism is caused by individual racism. In other words, he thinks that because DiAngelo argues for anti-racist training for white people, that she must look at a situation such as the disparate medical outcomes of black people and conclude that doctors are individually racist.
His argument against the second point seems to be that because Asian Americans score better on the SATs than white people it can’t be the case that the SATs reflect systemic racism in favor of white people and thus there does indeed exist a case of measuring with disparate outcomes that is not the result of racism.
Having recapitulated both of these arguments it should be clear that they are both bullshit. It is quite obvious that even a slight unconscious racial bias in say an HR person could lead to wildly differing outcomes in hiring without the HR person actively believing that white people are superior to black people. It is also very obvious that systemic racism can be achieved that favors white people even with some metrics that seem to favor other races.
It is typical of the kind of conservative that Douthat is to move the goal posts like this. “Okay, I believe that there is global warming but it isn’t man-made. Okay, I believe that there is man-made global warming but there isn’t anything we can do about it and it will fix itself.” Here instead we have, “Okay I believe that there is systemic racism, but there isn’t anything we can do about it.” He concedes the point about systemic racism in order to seem reasonable but then wildly misinterprets the efforts to fight systemic racism as a means to obfuscate and maintain the status quo.
I worry that others may make similar statements as a similar kind of concern driving trollies in the first point that Douthat is making about DiAngelo. “You can’t tell people that they have unconscious biases because that will make them feel bad.” vs. “You can’t tell people that at least part of their success stems from the fact that they were not disadvantaged by systemic racism the way other people were, because that will make them feel bad.” It seems to me clear that there is a large segment of people who are going to be resentful and in denial about both of these points no matter what. To simply tell them that they have biases or that they are playing the game on easy mode may entrench them in their animosity but won’t make the situation worse on the whole and for those people it does reach, it seems to me to make the situation much better. We don’t have to worry about the feelings of racists.
While that is true, the constitution also says that ratified treaties are “the law of the land.” Not to mention that this treaty was negotiated by the very Founding Fathers they seem to venerate so much. Hard to blow off as immaterial, but they do seem to have a remarkable skill for that.
I am reminded of when someone here once cited the Cornerstone Speech as proof the American civil war was just about tariffs and not slavery. If people are dedicated to a conclusion, they can blow off anything they want, no matter how plainly it is written in front of them.
Wow, that is some nuclear-level avoidance of obvious facts. Nothing to do but shake your head and back away slowly while trying not to make eye contact.
The next time you see angry white mobs storming school board meetings, and legislators banning the teaching of Critical Race Theory, just picture people jabbing their own eyes out so they can feel better about what they have made themselves unable to see.
