Critical Race Theory - Someone (liberal) please explain


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18 hours ago, Backroads said:

Which I find cool, but the ancient dungeon just likely wasn't made wheelchair accessible.

Right because inside the story the tryant/evil death wizard who wants to rule/enslave the world... Probably wouldn't be too worried about obeying the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Outside the story the reason I am playing is in part to be something I am not... I want to be a mightly wizard or a Conan-type warrior... Not some dweeby computer programmer..  I am all for supporting them being able to play, but they need to join in the shared fantasy of larger then life heroes (Or villains if your group goes that way)

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The woke crowd is sucking the fun out of the game.  Thankfully my group consists of one of my BF's from Jr High/HS who is still a close friend, our kids and their neighborhood friends and another adult from our ward.  Hijinks may abound, but stupidity is not present.  Well, except that one PC who has single digit Intelligence and Wisdom scores...

 

BTW @estradling75 which version are you playing?  We still primarily play AD&D.

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14 hours ago, mirkwood said:

BTW @estradling75 which version are you playing?  We still primarily play AD&D.

I started in AD&D but didn't really have a group.

Most my experience is in 3.5.

However given that my kids want to play with there friends we are in 5

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

Hey guys! I thought I'd start with by steelmanning it: It's like strawmanning, but taking the absolute strongest stance on this so that we can come to a better understanding of it. Full disclosure: I'm not a fan of CRT, but I do understand it.

Currently, there are three major theories of social interactions that are given traction in the media: Critical Marxist Theory, Critical Race Theory and Critical Feminist Theory. The fourth theory, that I ascribe to, is called Habitus and was originally conceived by a guy named Bourdieu. I'll discuss that at a later date if people are interested. However, dealing exclusively with CRT, here is the following:

 

CRT - A man named Derrick Bell, considered the father of Critical Race Theory (Or Godfather by some) was the strongest proponent of it. He grew up in an era where Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot on national television. He lived during a time when Redlining occurred (The process by which banks would deny loans to black Americans), where black protesters were attacked by police dogs, where black individuals couldn't go to the same places white individuals could and where inconsistency was rife. To Derrick Bell, discrepancies between the races were rife and a Black American was at a demonstrably worse state than someone born white. At the time, he could point to numerous systemic (That's a word you're going to hear a lot if you hear about CRT) problems that led to black Americans having worse life outcomes. Derrick Bell was a Harvard Professor, a man who had Teaching Assistants who disagreed with him, who debated the more conservative voices on his campus and openly discussed his thoughts while allowing them their views. To Derrick Bell, because he lived through the Civil Rights period and the tumultuous times before, it was painfully clear that the problems Black Americans were facing were a result of the laws (Jim Crow among them), the processes (Redlining, White Flights, Sallie Mae's education loans processes) and the prejudices around him. And to be fair to him, the evidence from when he grew up was pretty compelling.

 

The counter-argument is, of course, that the discrepancies should have lessened and disappeared as those systemic problems were removed. They have not. They have exacerbated. To the CRT, this is evidence that the systemic problems have become more nefarious and invasive rather than obvious.

 

It gets a lot more in-depth than that, but there are many volumes written on this and it's already starting to be a wall of text. Let me know if you're interested in learning more about the counter-arguments to CRT, or Bourdieu's Habitus theory, which I think more neatly encapsulates the world now rather than the media darlings' big three.

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6 hours ago, FunkyTown said:

Hey guys! I thought I'd start with by steelmanning it: It's like strawmanning, but taking the absolute strongest stance on this so that we can come to a better understanding of it. Full disclosure: I'm not a fan of CRT, but I do understand it.

Currently, there are three major theories of social interactions that are given traction in the media: Critical Marxist Theory, Critical Race Theory and Critical Feminist Theory. The fourth theory, that I ascribe to, is called Habitus and was originally conceived by a guy named Bourdieu. I'll discuss that at a later date if people are interested. However, dealing exclusively with CRT, here is the following:

 

CRT - A man named Derrick Bell, considered the father of Critical Race Theory (Or Godfather by some) was the strongest proponent of it. He grew up in an era where Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot on national television. He lived during a time when Redlining occurred (The process by which banks would deny loans to black Americans), where black protesters were attacked by police dogs, where black individuals couldn't go to the same places white individuals could and where inconsistency was rife. To Derrick Bell, discrepancies between the races were rife and a Black American was at a demonstrably worse state than someone born white. At the time, he could point to numerous systemic (That's a word you're going to hear a lot if you hear about CRT) problems that led to black Americans having worse life outcomes. Derrick Bell was a Harvard Professor, a man who had Teaching Assistants who disagreed with him, who debated the more conservative voices on his campus and openly discussed his thoughts while allowing them their views. To Derrick Bell, because he lived through the Civil Rights period and the tumultuous times before, it was painfully clear that the problems Black Americans were facing were a result of the laws (Jim Crow among them), the processes (Redlining, White Flights, Sallie Mae's education loans processes) and the prejudices around him. And to be fair to him, the evidence from when he grew up was pretty compelling.

 

The counter-argument is, of course, that the discrepancies should have lessened and disappeared as those systemic problems were removed. They have not. They have exacerbated. To the CRT, this is evidence that the systemic problems have become more nefarious and invasive rather than obvious.

 

It gets a lot more in-depth than that, but there are many volumes written on this and it's already starting to be a wall of text. Let me know if you're interested in learning more about the counter-arguments to CRT, or Bourdieu's Habitus theory, which I think more neatly encapsulates the world now rather than the media darlings' big three.

MLK laid some of the groundwork for it as well, but people don't like to talk about that.

 

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On 9/1/2021 at 7:26 AM, FunkyTown said:

It gets a lot more in-depth than that, but there are many volumes written on this and it's already starting to be a wall of text. Let me know if you're interested in learning more about the counter-arguments to CRT, or Bourdieu's Habitus theory, which I think more neatly encapsulates the world now rather than the media darlings' big three.

I'd like to hear more!

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On 9/1/2021 at 3:35 PM, Godless said:

MLK laid some of the groundwork for it as well, but people don't like to talk about that.

 

So let’s talk about it. Where today is the segregation that’s cutting off bootstraps? How has the legacy of slavery so stigmatized skin color that interracial marriages are not uncommon and African immigrants perform so well in this country? 
 

Are the arguments for CRT stuck in the ‘60s? Shouldn’t they be updated since the governmental systems of systemic racism have been removed?

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7 hours ago, mordorbund said:

So let’s talk about it. Where today is the segregation that’s cutting off bootstraps? How has the legacy of slavery so stigmatized skin color that interracial marriages are not uncommon and African immigrants perform so well in this country? 
 

Are the arguments for CRT stuck in the ‘60s? Shouldn’t they be updated since the governmental systems of systemic racism have been removed?

2 specific areas I would be interested in is K-12 education (since that's the context for this thread) and the legal system (since that's the origin of the theory). But if a more general setting is more manageable, I'm up for hearing that too.

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On 9/7/2021 at 7:37 PM, mordorbund said:

So let’s talk about it. Where today is the segregation that’s cutting off bootstraps? How has the legacy of slavery so stigmatized skin color that interracial marriages are not uncommon and African immigrants perform so well in this country? 
 

Are the arguments for CRT stuck in the ‘60s? Shouldn’t they be updated since the governmental systems of systemic racism have been removed?

 

And herein lies the real problem with CRT. If racism were the source of discrepancies, then when those laws and discrepancies were removed we should have seen an improvement in the life of those who suffered under it. We did not. Discrepancies have shown:

 

Discrepancies in wealth: (White families have, on average, 8 times the wealth of black families and 5 times the wealth of hispanic families)

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/disparities-in-wealth-by-race-and-ethnicity-in-the-2019-survey-of-consumer-finances-20200928.htm

The counterargument is that averaging wealth isn't appropriate in this case. If a tiny proportion of white individuals have absurd wealth, or are more likely to enter in to absurd wealth territory industries such as banking, then we aren't showing real proportionate examples.

The problem with CRT is that it has no falsifiability. Falsifiability is just having a test by which a hypothesis can be proven false. Without it, you can prove anything. I could say, for instance, "Human brains are actually just swiss cheese." to which people could say, "But FunkyTown - We've cut open people and found that brains actually contain brain matter and not cheese." to which the Swiss Cheese hypothesist would say, "That's because our brains are made of swiss cheese. Do you really expect legitimate answers to tests from something whose brain was just swiss cheese?"

Science-based knowledges, like chemistry or physics or even maths, have falsifiability. Asking most Sociologists what the falsifiability is for their theory will get furrowed brows and confusion, followed by statements like "If you want to prove that racism isn't behind racial disparities, just prove there are no racial disparities at all."(Or something similar). This is not falsifiability. That's just a circular argument. Proving there are disparities does not prove the causation, which is just a fancy way of saying "What caused this to happen?".

Causation is an important thing to discover. If you walked in to a parking lot and saw your formerly pristine car suddenly had a dent in it, you could infer that another car hit it. That wouldn't mean it necessarily did, however - It could have been a shopping cart, or an angry thug kicking it, or a meteor from the sky smashing it in the side. Some of those are more likely than others, but the cause in this case isn't guaranteed. If you want to solve the problems of your car being dented, you need to figure out what caused it in the first place. CRT assumes the cause, and that cause has to assume motive on behalf of another person. Assuming motive is difficult to prove.

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Habitus - The theory that sticks.

 

So there was a guy named Bourdieu. French. Born in a small, rural, and desperately poor area of France where he gained an accent and linguistic attainment that placed him pretty low in the hierarchy. Imagine if Albert Einstein said things like, "HOO-EE! Ah'm'onna git me wunna them thar THEE-OH-RYES on Relatumivity, sho' nuff!'. Only, because France is more protective of its language, he was even more displaced.

He went on to become one of the most famous liberals of the 20th century, and he did it with his theories on something called Habitus.

Habitus is  the physical embodiment of cultural capital, the habits, skills and dispositions we acquire and it deeply affects who we are and how our life will play out.  It sounds complicated, but it's really something intuitive that we know.

Imagine someone born the son of an Oxford Professor. He grew up going to to Oxford formal dinners. He learned what topics you spoke about and what you avoided if you wanted to be part of the 'in' crowd. He learned the language and cultural norms of that group. He made friends with future Prime Ministers and heads of companies and knew who to go to for help and who to avoid if he wanted to get something done.

Now imagine someone who grew up in the South Side of Chicago. He knew what colours not to wear, which gangs control which territories. He knows how to be involved in the invisible economy of the area, and how to avoid entanglements that might get his butt kicked.

Now imagine you and the place you work: You know who you can ask for help. Who you can joke with and who will go straight to HR if you blink the wrong way. You know which managers will tow the company line and which will be willing to bend the rules for you. You know this because you've been a part of this for so long. Someone new to the area does not.

Now let's take both of those people, who developed skills and talents which benefited both of their lives in very specific circumstances. If you take the person who grew up in the South Side of Chicago and dumped him willy-nilly in to the Oxford Formal Dinners, he would be far more likely to fail and to make enemies and bad decisions because he doesn't have the skills to work well. Someone who followed CRT would call such a thing White Privilege because someone would be more likely to be white in order to grow up the son of an Oxford Professor. The truth is, however, that someone who grew up in the Appalachians is very unlikely to successfully navigate this area of power and privilege despite having similar skin colour.

The flip side of this, is that if you take the son of the Oxford Professor and dump him in the South Side of Chicago with no support, he is also unlikely to prosper. 

 

The real advantage of Habitus is that it requires the least amount of assumptions about other people. It requires the least amount of assumptions about situations as well and it also doesn't ignore a lot of counter-evidence.

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  • 2 months later...
On 6/22/2021 at 1:53 PM, Just_A_Guy said:

I can’t give the sort of answer the OP requests, but I will point out that the Utah legislature recently passed HR 901.  The resolution expresses concerns about CRT, but substantively limits its restriction against the adoption of CRT in schools (“recommendations”, really) to the following:

        NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the House of Representatives strongly recommends that the Utah State Board of Education review standards for curriculum and ensure that the following concepts are not included in the curriculum standards:
          ▸     that one race is inherently superior or inferior to another race;
          ▸     that an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of the individual's race; or
          ▸     that an individual's moral character is determined by the individual's race.

The weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth that this resolution elicited from the usual suspects, leads me to conclude that CRT is basically a pretext for impending Maoist-type “struggle sessions”—or worse.

You may not be interested in the race hustlers, but they are very interested in you.  

Speaking of this happy memory...

Remember that letter the National School Board Association sent to the White House, complaining about protesting parents, and suggesting they could be investigated by federal authorities through the Patriot Act?

Well, the number of states that have withdrawn from the NSBA is up to 17:
Alabama
Arkansas
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kentucky
Louisiana
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
New Hampshire
New Jersey
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
Virginia
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming.

Yay!

Edited by NeuroTypical
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It is my personal opinion that as long as there exist any educational department or bureaucracy at the federal level that receives federal moneys and that can distribute money in any amounts to state public educational facilities - that there will be efforts in opposition to our constitution to remove some or all control from states to oversee education.  The problem is not near what is attempted to be taught as it is a problem of limiting freedoms and liberties in order to consolidate power. 

 

The Traveler

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