Look I'm tired of the topic but the country's biggest teacher's union just explicitly proposed that CRT be taught in all K-12 schools. You can't hide behind "they're not teaching it in K-12" anymore.
Hahaha I really need to use "Argle Bargle" more often.
But yeah I really do think there's a lot of liberals out there who, deep down inside, really think something has gone horribly wrong in our discourse. They're just afraid to say so for fear of being labeled a bigot or a Republican. They're pissing their pants constantly about it. And yes, I count myself in that group, but I'm slowly getting better at letting the fear go.
So, but then what to do about using terms in bad faith? Like I read a right wing news outlets piece describing a lesson I taught last year in my reading curriculum as crt and it literally was the most inane thing ever. It was teaching the prefix in using the word injustice and reading the text ruby bridges goes to school containing such divisive statements as black kids and white kids can be friends.
And this bad faith problem is made worse by it actually being the law that teaching crt is banned. If we don’t have clear definitions at the very least it seems like that creates a lot of ground for baseless complaints and frivolous lawsuits.
If someone is narrowly or strictly defining a term to suit *any* argument, be it left or right wing, it is to be rejected. The comeback isn't to define CRT in extremely narrow terms, but to say, for example - the idea that people of different races can get along isn't part of some arcane legal theory, nor the product of wild-eyed dorm bull sessions, but rather the basic elents of a diverse society.
My concern is more defining it so broadly to use it as a cudgel especially when that definition comes with legal teeth.
I don’t want to end up in court because someone read on AmericanGreatness that crt is teaching students the word injustice in a text about de jure segregation is crt.
Argue on the merits, and if the other party won't, then say they're engaging in bad faith. Explain the lesson plan and let others judge. Tell people how your students responded, and what discussions they had when they read the book.
The point is that there's a pattern of dialogue that is incredibly unhelpful that goes like this:
"We want to ban CRT in K-12 schools."
"That's silly, nobody is teaching CRT except in graduate legal studies."
"Okay cool, so it shouldn't matter if we ban it, since nobody's actually doing it."
"HOW DARE YOU. Why don't you want to talk about racism and slavery? Are you a white supremacist?"
Like, a lot of the anti-CRT bills are over-broad and poorly written, and will have chilling effects beyond their purported intended target. I don't know the legislators behind them, so I can't say whether it's an intentional overreach or whether they just suck at writing legislature (although I'm generally inclined toward the latter...). But Dems cannot simultaneously hold the position that "nobody's doing it" and also that "banning it means that teachers can't teach important lessons". The criticism of the bills put forward should be criticisms on the merits of those bills: that they're too broad and their language is too imprecise. The criticism can't be "how dare you even _try_", because everyone reads that as deceptive, and then everyone starts wondering why they're being deceived.
"But Dems cannot simultaneously hold the position that "nobody's doing it" and also that "banning it means that teachers can't teach important lessons".
They can. That's precisely what power is. It's the same way that the 1965 immigration act wasn't supposed to change the country's ethnic balance... but when it did, you were a bigot if you noticed, much less objected. It's also how patrolling the border is a huge waste of time because people are going to get in anyway and you're Elmer Fudd if you do it, but you're also a horrible Nazi stormtrooper literally killing people if you do it. Like, this is the definition of power, being able to define one thing in two ways, often in the same sentence.
But isn’t that arguing about definitions? If we let people define critical race Theory as whatever they want they’ll define it so broadly that it will waste a lot of time and resources.
I feel like a clear definition would be a good starting point for a policy compromise where people could say making white kids bear collective guilt is impermissible, but teaching accurate racial histories are allowed but it seems people want the definition to fit their policy outcomes not the inverse.
At a certain point, yes: laws require precise definitions in order to work as intended. But your second point is what I'm getting at: it doesn't matter whether we call it "collective guilt" or "critical race theory" or "skittle boogers", what people are objecting to is the behavior itself, not the label, and playing word games about how "real CRT has never been tried" is not going to convince anyone of anything. It's going to muddy the waters and lead people to thinking they're being tricked, and thus distrusting their opponent.
Let's take it out real life.
Imagine Senator Greg wants to ban pineapple on pizza. He has enough supporters than he thinks he can get legislation passed, despite the objections of the pro-pineapple faction. Senator Greg calls his position "anti-fruit". He writes a bill that says "anyone who places any item of fruit on a pizza will go to prison forever".
The "sane" pro-fruit criticism of this bill might be: "hey, aren't tomatoes and peppers also technically fruits? You might be banning the creation of any pizza whatsoever with this bill, and obviously nobody wants that. Also, I'm not sure how this is in the public's interest: surely people ought to be able to choose to make pizza however they want. Some people find the sweetness of fruit combined with the savoriness of cheese and ham very appealing, and there's no reason to privilege those who don't find it appealing over those who do."
The "less sane" pro-fruit criticism of the bill might be: "Why are you doing this? Nobody's putting fruit on pizza. I mean, maybe there's a few people in fringe culinary schools doing weird crap, but that's not worth making a law over. Also, pineapples have a hard outer layer, and thus are better classified as nuts than fruit."
The "less sane" approach is weaker, because it's already ceding ground to the anti-fruit position. Instead of arguing strongly for why its position is more correct, it pretends its position is so weak it's not worth worrying about, while implicitly agreeing with the premise that yes, if fruit _was_ being put on pizza, then maybe we would have to do something about it. It tries to play language games, as if people who hated pineapple on pizza would suddenly be okay with it if pineapples were actually nuts and not fruit. It's middle school debate-level arguing: it's not getting into the meat of the conflict, but instead dancing around and taking potshots at the perimeter.
I basically agree with you except we already have a ban on the books that critical race theory is illegal but the bounds of that are somewhat unclear.
Like In your analogy we’ve already passed the fruit ban and I’m trying to figure out if I can make anything but white pizza when we open tommorrow.
It seems as though the law may still allow tomato sauce but it’s unclear because everyone staked out their fruit ideas ahead of time trying to maximize their advantages rather than listening.
Sure they can hold those two positions simultaneously. This is about getting ever more racialization into the public sphere, whether it be in schooling, workplaces or (worst of all) houses of worship. Doesn't matter how its accomplished or what needs to be said to accomplish it. By hook or by crook.
"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it."
I've seen it used stupidly on both sides. I can't tell you how many liberals I see saying that banning CRT means banning all talks of racism and the ugly parts of US history. I've seen a thread where (apparent) teachers state they will require readings of Fredrick Douglas no matter what the state tries to do to stop them. This flies in the face of the fact that proposed legislation will require it.
Clear definitions are important from a legal standpoint, but most of the proposed legislation doesn't even refer to CRT specifically.
If you can't agree on a definition, you should set the terms of what is good and bad and stop using the words that are causing the argle bargle to set in, providing you're not a legislator.
For fuck's sake, Freddie. I'm tired of these discussions, and I thought you were above them. "CRT" means "Cathode Ray Tube". It's meant that since 1890, and you don't get to change 130 years of usage just to gore that ox you seem to hate so much. And why DO you hate that ox, Freddie? You've no concern for animals whatsoever. I remember you mentioning eating meatloaf once a few years ago. I REMEMBER IT. You don't get to wiggle out from under your psychotic murderous impulses. Goring oxen and eating meatloaf is the same thing as murdering babies, just like Hitler did. Your support for the Nazi party has been noted.
I really don't think this is a twitter phenomenon - there's an incredibly long history of arguments where everyone agrees that a category of things is bad or good and the whole debate is settled on whether something fits in that category. As a socialist in a red state, I am incredibly tired of democrats conceding to conservative values and limiting their arguments to fighting over whether policies fit those values (e.g. family values or equality of opportunity).
Although it was overly complicated in the way of most rationalist literature, I really do find "How An Algorithm Feels From Inside" and the "A Human's Guide to Words" sequence useful on this front. (I'm sure someone could tell me that Yudkowsky was cribbing from someone who had made the point better and more concisely).
Speaking of definitions: you once published a list of short definitions for a few different concepts - capitalism, socialism, communism, etc - that I found it very useful, primarily for its succinctness. I showed it to some friends once during a political debate and they really liked it too. Any chance you could repost it? It was on your old blog.
And while I'm asking for things: you once wrote an excellent response to a NY Times article on the proliferation of seminars on identity politics taught at elite schools. It was sort of a line-by-line refutation of the article. THAT one isn't even available on Waybackmachine.org. I'd love to read it again, if you're interested in reposting it.
CRT is a weird one, because it does seem to me like a lot of people are just sort of uncritically buying into the conservative framing that all recent thinking on race issues can be lumped together as one thing (CRT) and debated as this sort of all-or-nothing intellectual monolith.
Within my friend group, I've seen the following (IMO unfortunate) line of thinking play out:
1) CRT is clearly an extremely important area of academic study (otherwise why would everyone be fighting about it?)
2) My own HS and college education never explicitly mentioned CRT by name
3) Therefore, I guess my education was woefully inadequate and racist
I've been sort of trying to explain where I can that really CRT is just one of many ways of looking at race, and we really shouldn't be lumping together all modern racial thinking as one big CRT blob, and that actually it's probably fine that your teachers never name-dropped CRT.
I'm completely on board with teaching history with honesty about the ugly stuff, about expanding literature study in schools to be more diverse (and by that I don't just mean racially), etc. That being said, the notion that racism has never been taught, that the literary canon being taught to kids is all white, etc., just isn't true. I went to LA public schools for 8 years and suburban Chicago public schools for 5 years--all in the 90s, and I was taught about Native Americans and their culture; introductory Spanish and Korean; Spanish missions in California; the African folktale of Anansi; multiple award-winning children's books like Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry; Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad; James Baldwin; Toni Morrison; Maya Angelou; Ralph Ellison; Frederick Douglas; Chinua Achebe; and so many others. Those are just off the tip-top of my head.
The point being, yeah there were gaps in my education (for instance I didn't know about the Black Wall Street Massacre) but I was never taught that as a white child, I was myself an oppressor whether I meant to be or not. I imagine if I HAD been taught that, my friendships with Black, Asian, Hispanic, and Indian classmates (of which I had very very many) would have been tainted and strained. CRT proponents (and SJWs? I imagine the overlap is strong) would say that those relationships already were tainted and strained, I was just blind to it because I'm white.
To me, that is the concern about teaching elements of CRT to youngsters. It would be about as helpful as teaching "the basics of Foucault" to elementary schoolers: confusing at best, if not unsettling to their very sense of self.
I think this is more or less how I feel about it. We read lots of black authors in HS, learned about colonialism, slavery, and some of the more brutal parts of US history. (And I actually DID learn about the Tulsa Race Riots, which makes me die inside every time I see someone go "this is what they DIDN'T teach you in school").
I think though, for a lot of people, as they have matured and learned more about the world, they cringe at their own youthful attitudes towards things. What I remember is that, as a nerdy white boy, reading about black experiences was... mostly very boring. It just had very little to do with any of my own experiences or interests. Heck, I was bored by stories that were trying really hard to pander to my school experience (if it didn't have swords or spaceships I probably was going to find it pretty boring).
I look back and realize that as I have matured as a person and broadened my horizons, I have become better able to understand and empathize with experiences quite different from my own. But this sort of emotional maturity only comes with time. I think a lot of people look back on those school years though and blame their failure to grasp the depth of racism on the education they received, failing to realize that no number of black authors were going to make them care about something that didn't seem very relevant to their life or idiosyncratic interests. I think though that their education did give them the tools they needed to figure it out once they were emotionally mature enough to get a handle on it, and that is about the best you can ask for.
Your expectations for teaching history sound sensible, as does your observation that racism already wasn't whitewashed in your curriculum, which overlaps in time and space with my own (mostly 90s, Chicago suburbs). I actually did get some "you're pale, so you oppress even if you don't intend to" scolding in school and church, which seemed like such balderdash at the time, and still mostly does. Dunno if it needlessly strained relationships, since I had my own unrecognized stuff straining them anyhow. At the same time, the curriculum I got managed to whitewash some pretty important things, including info vital to how school districts teaching a curriculum like that, with their high-stakes homevoter politics, actually work.
I still live nearby, but don't live in my old school district because of its expense and crazy homevoter politics, politics which so easily split into "anti-CRT", anti-masking, we're-not-getting-our-money's-worth populist resentment among those worried their property taxes can't be justified (a legitimate worry!) against "SJW elites" presumed too comfortable to worry about taxes.
I don't know how racial dynamics are in my old district now, but when I grew up, race was sadly part of property-tax resentment, in that precarious homevoters worried that both "overachievers" (most visibly Asians) suspected of squeezing into "too little house" and suspected "underachievers" (non-Asian minorities) were net drains on district resources, exploiting "the rest of us". Whatever racialized resentment simmered in our district was likely due to homevoter-type anxieties, not the inherent oppression of the pale — and imagine the outcry if someone at school had gotten honest about these anxieties!
If I hadn't gotten an eyeful of what goes on inside "anti-CRT" movements, I could be pretty happily "anti-CRT" myself. But I have. I still get emails forwarded to me on how to "crack" the "secret code" of IL education standards. Apparently, any mention of "balanced" is euphemism for "inclusive", which it itself euphemism for "equitable", which is euphemism for racially and politically "progressive" brainwashing of innocent children. The tale told in the forwarded email is that, as drafts of curriculum standards were proposed, instances of "progressive" were then revised (in order) to "equitable", "inclusive", and finally "balanced". Perhaps the tale is true, but the only substantiated revision is from "inclusive" to "balanced". Furthermore, revising a draft to better it is not inherently deceptive. Yet local "anti-CRT" leaders wish me to believe it could only be deception, and "balanced" educational standards are therefore the enemy.
"Social-emotional learning" is also apparently code for "CRT", according to our local, and some national, "anti-CRT" leaders. Which is a pity, since I can see with my own eyes how intentional teaching of social-emotional skills has benefited my kid.
"Anti-CRT" leadership admits it wants to keep the "CRT" brand elastic, so that "the CRT brand gives activists and policymakers a basis to sniff out not just CRT, but CRT in its clever disguises, such as words like 'social justice', 'equity', 'diversity', or 'restorative justice'" — or "balanced", or "social-emotional learning".
I don't consider connections to power and money inherently nefarious — what, are people supposed to overlook the leverage that happens to work? But they don't match the beleaguered populist image of disempowered taxpayers robbed blind to pay for their own children's brainwashing. And I just end up feeling used by a movement selling "social-emotional learning", something which is really helping my kid, as "CRT".
I'm a right-winger and I agree with you, this is a rare case where the Right has framed an issue semi-successfully and the Left is on the back foot. Normally it's the other way around. There is a general reluctance from the Left to properly own this issue and frame it positively, and they are necessarily reactive and defensive, which is a poor position for argument.
Was the "definition of communism" debate the "socialism is when the government gives me free stuff; communism is when the government gives me a lot of free stuff" definition?
I think of the "no true Scotsman" argument, as in, "Well, no *true* Scotsman would abuse a child." Communism failed in the USSR? That wasn't *true* communism.
Gonna be teacher's pet for a minute and post one of my favorites from a previous blog of Freddie's:
"But if I say “cancel culture” in front of a bunch of politics-obsessed professional-class shitlibs they will pretend to not know what I’m talking about. They’ll put on a rich fucking show. They do an impression of Cletus from The Simpsons and go “cancel culture?!? Hyuck hyuck what’re that? I’m not knowing cancel culture, I’m just a simple country lad!” These are people who have read more about cancel culture in thinkpieces than I read about any topic in a year. But pretending you don’t know what cancel culture is happens to be a key part of the performance, a naked in-group signifier, so they pretend. The “I don’t know what cancel culture is” bullshit performance is kayfabe at its most infuriating. I know you know what cancel culture is because you’re currently using it to demonstrate your culture positioning by pretending you don’t know what it is. You fucking simpleton."
This is a lot like that. "Defund the police?! Where'd you hear a crazy idea like that? I just want a modest boost to the budget of the social workers! Never heard nothin' 'bout no defundin'! And I reckon if anyone were fool enough to say 'Defund the police' - not that I ever heard tell of it - they'd mean exactly what's convenient to me at this exact moment, consarn it!"
"Elects commonly insist that critics of CRT would feel differently if they read actual foundational articles about it. But the issue is what is being done in CRT's name, not what some articles contained decades ago."
"I do love, for the record, the ones who claim people like me are making this up because it isn't happening in their school district – just imagine: 'There's no problem between black men and the cops. Nobody has gotten killed like Philando Castile or Tamir Rice where I live!'"
Maybe it's my legal background, but I'm a big fan of definitions. I've heard plenty of people use "defund the police" to mean "abolish the police," and also plenty to mean "mildly redistribute funds earmarked for policing into other municipal uses." So it's important to rigidly define the term before having a big conversation about it, even if just for purposes of the conversation itself otherwise we'll just be talking ourselves into circles. Or like you note, get everyone to agree that what "defund the police" precisely means is mostly irrelevant compared to simply describing what policies you think will minimize human suffering. But that's easier said than done.
I play Scrabble a lot - one thing you learn is to have a paper dictionary available that, before the game starts, everyone agrees will be the only source to determine whether something is a word or not. Otherwise everyone will be on their phones searching for and probably finding some obscure website to support their proposition that "kwyjibo" is a word. Language is weird like that so it's helpful to get everyone to agree to a definition, even temporarily.
"I've heard plenty of people use 'defund the police' to mean 'abolish the police,' and also plenty to mean 'mildly redistribute funds earmarked for policing into other municipal uses.'"
So, organically, the term has come to mean different things to different people on the same side of the political aisle based on their relative positions in the liberal political spectrum. If leftists cannot agree on a common definition then why would conservatives and liberals, or the general public, be able to settle on one?
This is spot on. I think what FdB is really describing here is people playing games with definitions - which is bad and dumb and happens both on the left and the right.
But having concrete, agreed upon definitions is an important basis for real communication. Words are just vessels for meaning - if we want to use your definition for "communism" instead of mine in this conversation, I don't care that much, let's just agree to the rules of the game. Nobody should ever be sucked into an argument about the meaning of "communism" - you're just having an even less fun version of the "is a hot dog a sandwich?" debate.
I think we're all engaging in a categorization error. Defund the Police and Ban CRT are not action statements. They are slogans. They aren't meant to have definitions. They are meant to signal what side you are on and to identify your enemies. They are meant to get votes.
The more controversial or nonsensical the slogan is, the less thinking and more blind adherence required. This is a pro, not a con. The most extravagant example was probably #KillAllMen. Saying it was a very strong signal of your allegiance. There wasn't a definition in sight.
After years of successful use by the Left, the Right has finally caught on to how effective this can be. So I think we'll be seeing a lot more Ban CRT and the like in the future.
I dig this. It reminds me of how in the sciences, we're taught to avoid using the word 'proof' when we argue something. Things like logical proofs and in fact rigid definite definitions only live in formal systems (logic, math, games like chess). But outside formal systems, we can at best 'provide evidence for' not 'prove' and similarly we can only have a rough mutual understanding of what words mean (maybe in a Wittgenstein-y way)
I think it's an empirical question of how large a group can be before rough mutual understanding breaks down. One thing that seems pretty true is that ~300 million people spread over a *literal continent* is probably way to big to ever hope of having shared word-meanings (still an empirical question, but probably not something we evolved to deal with).
Even within more manageable sized groups, I suspect that shared, non-formal definitions are only really possible when the group is actually a cohesive, uncoerced group, which is especially rare in the US with its communities and relationship obliterated by capitalism and other forms of authority
“….literally all of our communicative and political problems come from Twitter.”
Hope you’re being serious. I 100% agree. When I’m elected President my first executive order will be to abolish Twitter.
Seriously, almost every bad thing since about 2014 was helped by Twitter. ISIS, Trump, Q Anon, Pizza Gate, Defund The Police, Chaz, January 6. None of these insane ideas get as widespread without Twitter.
Yes, you can have good conversations on Twitter. But the bad outweighs the good. Bigly. (Sorry. Had too).
You could make the argument that the problem is social media in general, but Twitter with its idiotic character limit seems to be designed to wash away nuance and subtlety. I always felt it was designed to be used by illiterate rock musicians and rappers who never got their GED.
Add to this that there are 7.4 Billion people alive who have never used Twitter. It's fucking insane how we've let it take our dialogue and politics hostage.
2. It cuts both ways because everyone who wants more equitable schooling is now "a Robin Diangelo acolyte" or some such. Poor performance all around!
3. I think CRT is going to quickly devolve into the "no true Scotsman" problem (or already has?) as people try to put the ideas into practice but somehow fail to end racial inequality. They even have a built-in mechanism to explain it called "interest convergence".
To zoom out and analyze the larger pattern, I think this annoying style of discourse is a (probably ill-advised) attempt to counter classic conservative wedge-issue politics.
The central problem is that any progressive coalition is necessarily a diverse coalition with lots of different views. Success is highly dependent on the coalition being able to hang together in solidarity with each other.
Conservatives recognize though that progressive coalitions can be unstable, and so deploy wedge issues to try and break them up. The tactic is fairly straightforward: find an unpopular opinion that is held by some chunk of the coalition and make a big deal over it. You try and get them to say unpopular things in defense of the position, with the hope that this will alienate other parts of the coalition and cause it to break apart.
For a long time, the basic defense against this was to exercise some discipline and play down the unpopular idea. This might alienate some section of the "base," but realistically they're the easiest people to keep in the coalition.
The problem with this, though, is that sometimes unpopular ideas are good. Also, sometimes unpopular ideas can become popular ideas if you're willing to just come out swinging and make your case. So now it has become very unfashionable to deny the unpopular idea - the new thing is to just lean into it and hope you can make a case for it.
The new style of "aha the thing we are all debating is not really the thing we are debating" seems to me like a way to try and have it both ways - play down the unpopular idea without having to do the thing where you explicitly reject the unpopular idea. You activate this sort of linguistic neutral zone where the activists can do whatever they want and the elites can agree with it, but mean totally different things (or often, the elites don't really mean anything at all and are just playing games to get along with activists). This doesn't seem very successful to me, though maybe(?) it can do its job of holding together some approximation of a progressive coalition without needing to completely stomp on activist enthusiasm.
The population of the US is 320+ million and its political system is designed, probably inadvertently, to favor two and only two political parties. All modern political parties/movements are big tents that conceal vastly different constituencies within them.
That said, when you have a country this diverse you can have small populations that hold views that are anathema to a larger majority. On the Republican side politicians who hold that pregnancy cannot result from rape, for example, while on the left you have defund the police and CRT. Maybe those fringe views will find mainstream acceptance but I doubt it could happen in any time span shorter than decades. And until then the other side will exploit the unpopularity of those ideas to the maximum extent possible.
Look I'm tired of the topic but the country's biggest teacher's union just explicitly proposed that CRT be taught in all K-12 schools. You can't hide behind "they're not teaching it in K-12" anymore.
Hahaha I really need to use "Argle Bargle" more often.
But yeah I really do think there's a lot of liberals out there who, deep down inside, really think something has gone horribly wrong in our discourse. They're just afraid to say so for fear of being labeled a bigot or a Republican. They're pissing their pants constantly about it. And yes, I count myself in that group, but I'm slowly getting better at letting the fear go.
So, but then what to do about using terms in bad faith? Like I read a right wing news outlets piece describing a lesson I taught last year in my reading curriculum as crt and it literally was the most inane thing ever. It was teaching the prefix in using the word injustice and reading the text ruby bridges goes to school containing such divisive statements as black kids and white kids can be friends.
And this bad faith problem is made worse by it actually being the law that teaching crt is banned. If we don’t have clear definitions at the very least it seems like that creates a lot of ground for baseless complaints and frivolous lawsuits.
If someone is narrowly or strictly defining a term to suit *any* argument, be it left or right wing, it is to be rejected. The comeback isn't to define CRT in extremely narrow terms, but to say, for example - the idea that people of different races can get along isn't part of some arcane legal theory, nor the product of wild-eyed dorm bull sessions, but rather the basic elents of a diverse society.
My concern is more defining it so broadly to use it as a cudgel especially when that definition comes with legal teeth.
I don’t want to end up in court because someone read on AmericanGreatness that crt is teaching students the word injustice in a text about de jure segregation is crt.
There are worse places to be than court. That's generally where racial issues end up.
Argue on the merits, and if the other party won't, then say they're engaging in bad faith. Explain the lesson plan and let others judge. Tell people how your students responded, and what discussions they had when they read the book.
The point is that there's a pattern of dialogue that is incredibly unhelpful that goes like this:
"We want to ban CRT in K-12 schools."
"That's silly, nobody is teaching CRT except in graduate legal studies."
"Okay cool, so it shouldn't matter if we ban it, since nobody's actually doing it."
"HOW DARE YOU. Why don't you want to talk about racism and slavery? Are you a white supremacist?"
Like, a lot of the anti-CRT bills are over-broad and poorly written, and will have chilling effects beyond their purported intended target. I don't know the legislators behind them, so I can't say whether it's an intentional overreach or whether they just suck at writing legislature (although I'm generally inclined toward the latter...). But Dems cannot simultaneously hold the position that "nobody's doing it" and also that "banning it means that teachers can't teach important lessons". The criticism of the bills put forward should be criticisms on the merits of those bills: that they're too broad and their language is too imprecise. The criticism can't be "how dare you even _try_", because everyone reads that as deceptive, and then everyone starts wondering why they're being deceived.
"But Dems cannot simultaneously hold the position that "nobody's doing it" and also that "banning it means that teachers can't teach important lessons".
They can. That's precisely what power is. It's the same way that the 1965 immigration act wasn't supposed to change the country's ethnic balance... but when it did, you were a bigot if you noticed, much less objected. It's also how patrolling the border is a huge waste of time because people are going to get in anyway and you're Elmer Fudd if you do it, but you're also a horrible Nazi stormtrooper literally killing people if you do it. Like, this is the definition of power, being able to define one thing in two ways, often in the same sentence.
But isn’t that arguing about definitions? If we let people define critical race Theory as whatever they want they’ll define it so broadly that it will waste a lot of time and resources.
I feel like a clear definition would be a good starting point for a policy compromise where people could say making white kids bear collective guilt is impermissible, but teaching accurate racial histories are allowed but it seems people want the definition to fit their policy outcomes not the inverse.
At a certain point, yes: laws require precise definitions in order to work as intended. But your second point is what I'm getting at: it doesn't matter whether we call it "collective guilt" or "critical race theory" or "skittle boogers", what people are objecting to is the behavior itself, not the label, and playing word games about how "real CRT has never been tried" is not going to convince anyone of anything. It's going to muddy the waters and lead people to thinking they're being tricked, and thus distrusting their opponent.
Let's take it out real life.
Imagine Senator Greg wants to ban pineapple on pizza. He has enough supporters than he thinks he can get legislation passed, despite the objections of the pro-pineapple faction. Senator Greg calls his position "anti-fruit". He writes a bill that says "anyone who places any item of fruit on a pizza will go to prison forever".
The "sane" pro-fruit criticism of this bill might be: "hey, aren't tomatoes and peppers also technically fruits? You might be banning the creation of any pizza whatsoever with this bill, and obviously nobody wants that. Also, I'm not sure how this is in the public's interest: surely people ought to be able to choose to make pizza however they want. Some people find the sweetness of fruit combined with the savoriness of cheese and ham very appealing, and there's no reason to privilege those who don't find it appealing over those who do."
The "less sane" pro-fruit criticism of the bill might be: "Why are you doing this? Nobody's putting fruit on pizza. I mean, maybe there's a few people in fringe culinary schools doing weird crap, but that's not worth making a law over. Also, pineapples have a hard outer layer, and thus are better classified as nuts than fruit."
The "less sane" approach is weaker, because it's already ceding ground to the anti-fruit position. Instead of arguing strongly for why its position is more correct, it pretends its position is so weak it's not worth worrying about, while implicitly agreeing with the premise that yes, if fruit _was_ being put on pizza, then maybe we would have to do something about it. It tries to play language games, as if people who hated pineapple on pizza would suddenly be okay with it if pineapples were actually nuts and not fruit. It's middle school debate-level arguing: it's not getting into the meat of the conflict, but instead dancing around and taking potshots at the perimeter.
I basically agree with you except we already have a ban on the books that critical race theory is illegal but the bounds of that are somewhat unclear.
Like In your analogy we’ve already passed the fruit ban and I’m trying to figure out if I can make anything but white pizza when we open tommorrow.
It seems as though the law may still allow tomato sauce but it’s unclear because everyone staked out their fruit ideas ahead of time trying to maximize their advantages rather than listening.
Sure they can hold those two positions simultaneously. This is about getting ever more racialization into the public sphere, whether it be in schooling, workplaces or (worst of all) houses of worship. Doesn't matter how its accomplished or what needs to be said to accomplish it. By hook or by crook.
"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it."
I've seen it used stupidly on both sides. I can't tell you how many liberals I see saying that banning CRT means banning all talks of racism and the ugly parts of US history. I've seen a thread where (apparent) teachers state they will require readings of Fredrick Douglas no matter what the state tries to do to stop them. This flies in the face of the fact that proposed legislation will require it.
Clear definitions are important from a legal standpoint, but most of the proposed legislation doesn't even refer to CRT specifically.
If you can't agree on a definition, you should set the terms of what is good and bad and stop using the words that are causing the argle bargle to set in, providing you're not a legislator.
For fuck's sake, Freddie. I'm tired of these discussions, and I thought you were above them. "CRT" means "Cathode Ray Tube". It's meant that since 1890, and you don't get to change 130 years of usage just to gore that ox you seem to hate so much. And why DO you hate that ox, Freddie? You've no concern for animals whatsoever. I remember you mentioning eating meatloaf once a few years ago. I REMEMBER IT. You don't get to wiggle out from under your psychotic murderous impulses. Goring oxen and eating meatloaf is the same thing as murdering babies, just like Hitler did. Your support for the Nazi party has been noted.
I miss my old Sony Trinitron.
FYI, I'm still laughing, hours later.
I really don't think this is a twitter phenomenon - there's an incredibly long history of arguments where everyone agrees that a category of things is bad or good and the whole debate is settled on whether something fits in that category. As a socialist in a red state, I am incredibly tired of democrats conceding to conservative values and limiting their arguments to fighting over whether policies fit those values (e.g. family values or equality of opportunity).
Although it was overly complicated in the way of most rationalist literature, I really do find "How An Algorithm Feels From Inside" and the "A Human's Guide to Words" sequence useful on this front. (I'm sure someone could tell me that Yudkowsky was cribbing from someone who had made the point better and more concisely).
Yes but blaming Twitter suits my priors!
Can we at least call Twitter lighter fluid? Maybe Twitter didn’t start the fire any more than Billy Joel did, but it sure keeps it burning.
Speaking of definitions: you once published a list of short definitions for a few different concepts - capitalism, socialism, communism, etc - that I found it very useful, primarily for its succinctness. I showed it to some friends once during a political debate and they really liked it too. Any chance you could repost it? It was on your old blog.
And while I'm asking for things: you once wrote an excellent response to a NY Times article on the proliferation of seminars on identity politics taught at elite schools. It was sort of a line-by-line refutation of the article. THAT one isn't even available on Waybackmachine.org. I'd love to read it again, if you're interested in reposting it.
Both of those things sound very interesting
Yes, I want to see them!
CRT is a weird one, because it does seem to me like a lot of people are just sort of uncritically buying into the conservative framing that all recent thinking on race issues can be lumped together as one thing (CRT) and debated as this sort of all-or-nothing intellectual monolith.
Within my friend group, I've seen the following (IMO unfortunate) line of thinking play out:
1) CRT is clearly an extremely important area of academic study (otherwise why would everyone be fighting about it?)
2) My own HS and college education never explicitly mentioned CRT by name
3) Therefore, I guess my education was woefully inadequate and racist
I've been sort of trying to explain where I can that really CRT is just one of many ways of looking at race, and we really shouldn't be lumping together all modern racial thinking as one big CRT blob, and that actually it's probably fine that your teachers never name-dropped CRT.
I'm completely on board with teaching history with honesty about the ugly stuff, about expanding literature study in schools to be more diverse (and by that I don't just mean racially), etc. That being said, the notion that racism has never been taught, that the literary canon being taught to kids is all white, etc., just isn't true. I went to LA public schools for 8 years and suburban Chicago public schools for 5 years--all in the 90s, and I was taught about Native Americans and their culture; introductory Spanish and Korean; Spanish missions in California; the African folktale of Anansi; multiple award-winning children's books like Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry; Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad; James Baldwin; Toni Morrison; Maya Angelou; Ralph Ellison; Frederick Douglas; Chinua Achebe; and so many others. Those are just off the tip-top of my head.
The point being, yeah there were gaps in my education (for instance I didn't know about the Black Wall Street Massacre) but I was never taught that as a white child, I was myself an oppressor whether I meant to be or not. I imagine if I HAD been taught that, my friendships with Black, Asian, Hispanic, and Indian classmates (of which I had very very many) would have been tainted and strained. CRT proponents (and SJWs? I imagine the overlap is strong) would say that those relationships already were tainted and strained, I was just blind to it because I'm white.
To me, that is the concern about teaching elements of CRT to youngsters. It would be about as helpful as teaching "the basics of Foucault" to elementary schoolers: confusing at best, if not unsettling to their very sense of self.
I think this is more or less how I feel about it. We read lots of black authors in HS, learned about colonialism, slavery, and some of the more brutal parts of US history. (And I actually DID learn about the Tulsa Race Riots, which makes me die inside every time I see someone go "this is what they DIDN'T teach you in school").
I think though, for a lot of people, as they have matured and learned more about the world, they cringe at their own youthful attitudes towards things. What I remember is that, as a nerdy white boy, reading about black experiences was... mostly very boring. It just had very little to do with any of my own experiences or interests. Heck, I was bored by stories that were trying really hard to pander to my school experience (if it didn't have swords or spaceships I probably was going to find it pretty boring).
I look back and realize that as I have matured as a person and broadened my horizons, I have become better able to understand and empathize with experiences quite different from my own. But this sort of emotional maturity only comes with time. I think a lot of people look back on those school years though and blame their failure to grasp the depth of racism on the education they received, failing to realize that no number of black authors were going to make them care about something that didn't seem very relevant to their life or idiosyncratic interests. I think though that their education did give them the tools they needed to figure it out once they were emotionally mature enough to get a handle on it, and that is about the best you can ask for.
Your expectations for teaching history sound sensible, as does your observation that racism already wasn't whitewashed in your curriculum, which overlaps in time and space with my own (mostly 90s, Chicago suburbs). I actually did get some "you're pale, so you oppress even if you don't intend to" scolding in school and church, which seemed like such balderdash at the time, and still mostly does. Dunno if it needlessly strained relationships, since I had my own unrecognized stuff straining them anyhow. At the same time, the curriculum I got managed to whitewash some pretty important things, including info vital to how school districts teaching a curriculum like that, with their high-stakes homevoter politics, actually work.
I still live nearby, but don't live in my old school district because of its expense and crazy homevoter politics, politics which so easily split into "anti-CRT", anti-masking, we're-not-getting-our-money's-worth populist resentment among those worried their property taxes can't be justified (a legitimate worry!) against "SJW elites" presumed too comfortable to worry about taxes.
I don't know how racial dynamics are in my old district now, but when I grew up, race was sadly part of property-tax resentment, in that precarious homevoters worried that both "overachievers" (most visibly Asians) suspected of squeezing into "too little house" and suspected "underachievers" (non-Asian minorities) were net drains on district resources, exploiting "the rest of us". Whatever racialized resentment simmered in our district was likely due to homevoter-type anxieties, not the inherent oppression of the pale — and imagine the outcry if someone at school had gotten honest about these anxieties!
If I hadn't gotten an eyeful of what goes on inside "anti-CRT" movements, I could be pretty happily "anti-CRT" myself. But I have. I still get emails forwarded to me on how to "crack" the "secret code" of IL education standards. Apparently, any mention of "balanced" is euphemism for "inclusive", which it itself euphemism for "equitable", which is euphemism for racially and politically "progressive" brainwashing of innocent children. The tale told in the forwarded email is that, as drafts of curriculum standards were proposed, instances of "progressive" were then revised (in order) to "equitable", "inclusive", and finally "balanced". Perhaps the tale is true, but the only substantiated revision is from "inclusive" to "balanced". Furthermore, revising a draft to better it is not inherently deceptive. Yet local "anti-CRT" leaders wish me to believe it could only be deception, and "balanced" educational standards are therefore the enemy.
"Social-emotional learning" is also apparently code for "CRT", according to our local, and some national, "anti-CRT" leaders. Which is a pity, since I can see with my own eyes how intentional teaching of social-emotional skills has benefited my kid.
"Anti-CRT" leadership admits it wants to keep the "CRT" brand elastic, so that "the CRT brand gives activists and policymakers a basis to sniff out not just CRT, but CRT in its clever disguises, such as words like 'social justice', 'equity', 'diversity', or 'restorative justice'" — or "balanced", or "social-emotional learning".
https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/bullshit-branding-and-crt
The "anti-CRT" activists in my old district have pretty much the connections described here:
https://www.masspoliticsprofs.org/2021/09/03/the-corporate-critical-race-theory-attack-chaos-is-the-product/
I don't consider connections to power and money inherently nefarious — what, are people supposed to overlook the leverage that happens to work? But they don't match the beleaguered populist image of disempowered taxpayers robbed blind to pay for their own children's brainwashing. And I just end up feeling used by a movement selling "social-emotional learning", something which is really helping my kid, as "CRT".
Yes. Bad faith on top of bad faith. It’sa proxy for all manner of ressentiments.
I'm a right-winger and I agree with you, this is a rare case where the Right has framed an issue semi-successfully and the Left is on the back foot. Normally it's the other way around. There is a general reluctance from the Left to properly own this issue and frame it positively, and they are necessarily reactive and defensive, which is a poor position for argument.
Was the "definition of communism" debate the "socialism is when the government gives me free stuff; communism is when the government gives me a lot of free stuff" definition?
"Is the Communist Party of China communist"
I think of the "no true Scotsman" argument, as in, "Well, no *true* Scotsman would abuse a child." Communism failed in the USSR? That wasn't *true* communism.
Update: CNN is calling the NYC mayoral primary for Adams: https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/06/politics/nyc-mayoral-results/index.html
Gonna be teacher's pet for a minute and post one of my favorites from a previous blog of Freddie's:
"But if I say “cancel culture” in front of a bunch of politics-obsessed professional-class shitlibs they will pretend to not know what I’m talking about. They’ll put on a rich fucking show. They do an impression of Cletus from The Simpsons and go “cancel culture?!? Hyuck hyuck what’re that? I’m not knowing cancel culture, I’m just a simple country lad!” These are people who have read more about cancel culture in thinkpieces than I read about any topic in a year. But pretending you don’t know what cancel culture is happens to be a key part of the performance, a naked in-group signifier, so they pretend. The “I don’t know what cancel culture is” bullshit performance is kayfabe at its most infuriating. I know you know what cancel culture is because you’re currently using it to demonstrate your culture positioning by pretending you don’t know what it is. You fucking simpleton."
This is a lot like that. "Defund the police?! Where'd you hear a crazy idea like that? I just want a modest boost to the budget of the social workers! Never heard nothin' 'bout no defundin'! And I reckon if anyone were fool enough to say 'Defund the police' - not that I ever heard tell of it - they'd mean exactly what's convenient to me at this exact moment, consarn it!"
A+ comment.
"Elects commonly insist that critics of CRT would feel differently if they read actual foundational articles about it. But the issue is what is being done in CRT's name, not what some articles contained decades ago."
https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/you-are-not-a-racist-to-criticize
From the same article:
"I do love, for the record, the ones who claim people like me are making this up because it isn't happening in their school district – just imagine: 'There's no problem between black men and the cops. Nobody has gotten killed like Philando Castile or Tamir Rice where I live!'"
Maybe it's my legal background, but I'm a big fan of definitions. I've heard plenty of people use "defund the police" to mean "abolish the police," and also plenty to mean "mildly redistribute funds earmarked for policing into other municipal uses." So it's important to rigidly define the term before having a big conversation about it, even if just for purposes of the conversation itself otherwise we'll just be talking ourselves into circles. Or like you note, get everyone to agree that what "defund the police" precisely means is mostly irrelevant compared to simply describing what policies you think will minimize human suffering. But that's easier said than done.
I play Scrabble a lot - one thing you learn is to have a paper dictionary available that, before the game starts, everyone agrees will be the only source to determine whether something is a word or not. Otherwise everyone will be on their phones searching for and probably finding some obscure website to support their proposition that "kwyjibo" is a word. Language is weird like that so it's helpful to get everyone to agree to a definition, even temporarily.
"I've heard plenty of people use 'defund the police' to mean 'abolish the police,' and also plenty to mean 'mildly redistribute funds earmarked for policing into other municipal uses.'"
So, organically, the term has come to mean different things to different people on the same side of the political aisle based on their relative positions in the liberal political spectrum. If leftists cannot agree on a common definition then why would conservatives and liberals, or the general public, be able to settle on one?
Kwyjibo is a perfectly cromulent word
This is spot on. I think what FdB is really describing here is people playing games with definitions - which is bad and dumb and happens both on the left and the right.
But having concrete, agreed upon definitions is an important basis for real communication. Words are just vessels for meaning - if we want to use your definition for "communism" instead of mine in this conversation, I don't care that much, let's just agree to the rules of the game. Nobody should ever be sucked into an argument about the meaning of "communism" - you're just having an even less fun version of the "is a hot dog a sandwich?" debate.
I think we're all engaging in a categorization error. Defund the Police and Ban CRT are not action statements. They are slogans. They aren't meant to have definitions. They are meant to signal what side you are on and to identify your enemies. They are meant to get votes.
The more controversial or nonsensical the slogan is, the less thinking and more blind adherence required. This is a pro, not a con. The most extravagant example was probably #KillAllMen. Saying it was a very strong signal of your allegiance. There wasn't a definition in sight.
After years of successful use by the Left, the Right has finally caught on to how effective this can be. So I think we'll be seeing a lot more Ban CRT and the like in the future.
I dig this. It reminds me of how in the sciences, we're taught to avoid using the word 'proof' when we argue something. Things like logical proofs and in fact rigid definite definitions only live in formal systems (logic, math, games like chess). But outside formal systems, we can at best 'provide evidence for' not 'prove' and similarly we can only have a rough mutual understanding of what words mean (maybe in a Wittgenstein-y way)
I think it's an empirical question of how large a group can be before rough mutual understanding breaks down. One thing that seems pretty true is that ~300 million people spread over a *literal continent* is probably way to big to ever hope of having shared word-meanings (still an empirical question, but probably not something we evolved to deal with).
Even within more manageable sized groups, I suspect that shared, non-formal definitions are only really possible when the group is actually a cohesive, uncoerced group, which is especially rare in the US with its communities and relationship obliterated by capitalism and other forms of authority
“….literally all of our communicative and political problems come from Twitter.”
Hope you’re being serious. I 100% agree. When I’m elected President my first executive order will be to abolish Twitter.
Seriously, almost every bad thing since about 2014 was helped by Twitter. ISIS, Trump, Q Anon, Pizza Gate, Defund The Police, Chaz, January 6. None of these insane ideas get as widespread without Twitter.
Yes, you can have good conversations on Twitter. But the bad outweighs the good. Bigly. (Sorry. Had too).
You could make the argument that the problem is social media in general, but Twitter with its idiotic character limit seems to be designed to wash away nuance and subtlety. I always felt it was designed to be used by illiterate rock musicians and rappers who never got their GED.
Add to this that there are 7.4 Billion people alive who have never used Twitter. It's fucking insane how we've let it take our dialogue and politics hostage.
1. I agree
2. It cuts both ways because everyone who wants more equitable schooling is now "a Robin Diangelo acolyte" or some such. Poor performance all around!
3. I think CRT is going to quickly devolve into the "no true Scotsman" problem (or already has?) as people try to put the ideas into practice but somehow fail to end racial inequality. They even have a built-in mechanism to explain it called "interest convergence".
To zoom out and analyze the larger pattern, I think this annoying style of discourse is a (probably ill-advised) attempt to counter classic conservative wedge-issue politics.
The central problem is that any progressive coalition is necessarily a diverse coalition with lots of different views. Success is highly dependent on the coalition being able to hang together in solidarity with each other.
Conservatives recognize though that progressive coalitions can be unstable, and so deploy wedge issues to try and break them up. The tactic is fairly straightforward: find an unpopular opinion that is held by some chunk of the coalition and make a big deal over it. You try and get them to say unpopular things in defense of the position, with the hope that this will alienate other parts of the coalition and cause it to break apart.
For a long time, the basic defense against this was to exercise some discipline and play down the unpopular idea. This might alienate some section of the "base," but realistically they're the easiest people to keep in the coalition.
The problem with this, though, is that sometimes unpopular ideas are good. Also, sometimes unpopular ideas can become popular ideas if you're willing to just come out swinging and make your case. So now it has become very unfashionable to deny the unpopular idea - the new thing is to just lean into it and hope you can make a case for it.
The new style of "aha the thing we are all debating is not really the thing we are debating" seems to me like a way to try and have it both ways - play down the unpopular idea without having to do the thing where you explicitly reject the unpopular idea. You activate this sort of linguistic neutral zone where the activists can do whatever they want and the elites can agree with it, but mean totally different things (or often, the elites don't really mean anything at all and are just playing games to get along with activists). This doesn't seem very successful to me, though maybe(?) it can do its job of holding together some approximation of a progressive coalition without needing to completely stomp on activist enthusiasm.
The population of the US is 320+ million and its political system is designed, probably inadvertently, to favor two and only two political parties. All modern political parties/movements are big tents that conceal vastly different constituencies within them.
That said, when you have a country this diverse you can have small populations that hold views that are anathema to a larger majority. On the Republican side politicians who hold that pregnancy cannot result from rape, for example, while on the left you have defund the police and CRT. Maybe those fringe views will find mainstream acceptance but I doubt it could happen in any time span shorter than decades. And until then the other side will exploit the unpopularity of those ideas to the maximum extent possible.