Talk:Critical race theory/Archive1

Systemic Racism
Systemic racism component is often denied (not refuted, that implies it was actually defeated) by the right. They generally don't even accept the existence of systemic racism and strawman the issue. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 10:02, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Important topic, good start
Good start, this is especially important in places like America, where POC are still so disproportionately affected in so many ways, especially when it comes to prison sentencing. And this is all only being made worse by the current administration continuing to endorse drug laws, gun control laws, and others that disproportionately affect POC (still building that stupid wall too, why?).

It might be prudent to mention that some (not all) schools in America are beginning to teach students that all white people are racist.12.23.183.186 (talk) 18:39, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Uh, prison sentencing is only 9% longer for Black when compared to White, after adjusting for jurisdiction and criminal history. The issues are higher conviction rates and "false positives", more serious charges for the same crime, and of course whatever problems result in higher crime in the first place.  Not all of that is necessarily the result of systemic racism though.  18:50, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * That person is probably a concern troll. 18:55, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't know what a "concern troll" is, but no I'm not trolling, just trying to show how some people have taken this thing a little too far, weakening the movement as a whole. And I wouldn't say "only 9%", that's significant and terrible. All the other things you mentioned are terrible too of course.12.23.183.186 (talk) 19:15, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * "It might be prudent to mention that some (not all) schools in America are beginning to teach students that all white people are racist." (no citation) Sure you aren't trolling... Uh huh... 19:29, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Just because I didn't find a source does not mean that it's trolling. I find it rude that that is your automatic assumption.12.23.183.186 (talk) 19:33, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You are welcome to contribute here. How about a credible citation for your claim?  We could use more of those.  19:38, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Here is a source of one example. This was in Buffalo, NY. I have a friend (POC) at a university here in California who has told me they were also taught that all white people are racist. Again, I'm not trying to say that all CRT classes are teaching such nonsense, and I'm not trying to say that CRT is bad. It should be taught in American schools (probably should be taught elsewhere too, but with important differences). I'm just saying it's prudent to mention this. And if you want more people contributing here, maybe ease off calling something trolling when it's clearly not.12.23.183.186 (talk) 19:41, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * "Just because I didn't find a source does not mean that it's trolling." So you're a dumbass who spreads wild rumors without checking to see if they're true or not? Gotcha. 19:44, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * "This was in Buffalo, NY. I have a friend (POC) at a university here in California who has told me they were also taught that all white people are racist." 19:45, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! AND THE ARTICLE YOU CITED DOESN'T ACTUALLY BACK UP YOUR CLAIM!!!! AAHAHHHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHHAAHAH!!!!! 19:47, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * From what I can tell, the article isn't blaming all White people but rather "White Elites" 19:49, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * It's not even claiming that, really. It's saying that white people in positions of power are more able to unintentionally perpetuate systemic racism, likely through biases, poor information, or other blindspots. 19:53, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

I bet they just Googled it first then used that as evidence to their bullshit before reading it. Severe red flags. 19:52, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * What the hell is going on here? Why am I getting called a troll for pointing out another issue/perspective? How clear can I make it that I think that CRT is important and should be taught? The article I linked says "Fact Check: Are Buffalo Schools Teaching Students That All Whites Perpetuate Racism?" and then it says "The Ruling: True". How does it not back up my claim? Did you even read it? If you think I'm a troll, look at my contributions. You might disagree with everything I've said, but is any of it trolling?12.23.183.186 (talk) 20:10, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I read it. It's a bit more complicated than you're making it out to be. 20:56, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * "It might be prudent to mention that some (not all) schools in America are beginning to teach students that all white people are racist." Your claim.
 * "It's true that one of BPS' middle school teaching materials includes an article that states, "While all White people and even many POC play a part in perpetuating systemic racism, it is important to recognize the powerful role played by White elites in maintaining this system." What the article addresses.
 * I'm not sure if you need reading lessons but these two things are not the same. 21:00, 15 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Stop removing the header. You are very clearly concern trolling, removing the banner declaring it doesn't make it any less obvious. armed_roomba (she/her)What am I doing wrong this time? 16:45, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

I've got no real horse in this race but our IP editor stated: "It might be prudent to mention that some (not all) schools in America are beginning to teach students that all white people are racist"

He was called on it, and linked to an article which concluded: "While all White people and even many POC play a part in perpetuating systemic racism...."

I accept that "all white people are racist" and "all white people play a part in perpetuating systemic racism" is not exactly the same wording. But isn't it pretty close? What am I missing?Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 17:52, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The former describes something essential to the person or persons. For example, "Nazis are racist". Here we have stated an element essential to being a Nazi, i.e. racism. Whereas the latter describes to perpetuation of very abstract ideas in a manner similar to the concept of memes. Again, to the beauty standards example, the fact certain beauty standards may be rooted in racist history or be influenced by racism does not make them racist in the same way as Nazis are. To put it much more succinctly, the latter may have racist elements, but the former is defined, at least partly, by racism as a concept. Thusly, to say that "X is Y" is to say that X is defined by Y, to say that white people are defined by racism. 19:17, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * So the claim is: not all white people are racist - but all white people do, in fact, perpetuate racism? Whether either of these claims are true or not, it's a remarkably fine distinction.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 07:44, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The nuance is sufficiently subtle that a good-faith agent could overlook it. It seems like "all White people [...] play a part in perpetuating systemic racism" could be rephrased as "all White people are perpetuators of systemic racism", which has the ring of essentialism. 𝒮𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓃𝑒   talk  03:51, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I mean, if that one incident is representative of whatever the BoN was vaguely gesturing towards, then yeah, poor phrasing. The problem with stuff like racism is that it's a free floating memetic set of norms, biases, stereotypes, etc. Literally anyone can perpetuate it. This isn't to say it's some sort of daemon that we should be fearful of, but more that we do need to understand the rather fine distinction between it being essential to people and people perpetuating it. Also can Robin DiAgnelo please stop being fucking relevant!?!? 02:04, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Why should a strawman of CRT be included in the article on CRT? It is false claim that schools are teaching kids that white people are racist. Even if that was true, has nothing to do with CRT's examination of systemic racism. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 04:47, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

TBH, this guy has a good point. Just cause you/we don't agree with him doesn't mean we should discredit him. 11:04 30 November 2021 (UTC)

It's always still 1949 for those people
What I find most irksome about the 'theory' is that in its insistence that 'systemic' racism is ubiquitous and taints every white person, it refuses to acknowledge that progress has been made against Jim Crow and other actually racist systems. This seems a basic disconnect from reality.

'Systemic' in this sense is one of the vague words like 'power' that means whatever its user wants it to mean in this context. If 'systemic' racism is indeed omnipresent after the civil rights movement, it seems to be part of the human condition, something no politics and no activism can do sweet FA about. If you're looking for an excuse to stop caring, here it is.

Now, at the start BLM was a breath of fresh air: a movement that aimed at changing the behavior of police departments and judicial systems, things that politics can actually do. If the problem being addressed is vaguer sorts of spiritual malaise like 'white fragility', may as well go home. The fact that white people don't want to be called racists is evidence of the real progress these evangelists ignore. If racism is a 'systemic' cloud hanging over the entire nation, it sounds like something that is just going to have to be lived with. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 14:52, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * 1) The main problem with CRT (using the broader term rather than the legal studies definition) is that it's on the "softer" side of the soft sciences. The soft sciences simply can't be as rigorous as they are subjective rather than objective, whereas the hard sciences are almost completely objective; a ball dropped from a certain height in a vacuum will hit the ground exactly when the math says it should it hit every single time, but at best you can only guess at trends in the soft sciences.  This actually makes the softer sciences more difficult, and requires more story telling and interpretation than cold math.  However, CRT often goes further than normal, and relies even less on math, regression analysis, etc, than other portions of Sociology.  There shouldn't be any need to do this, racism should be easily verifiable through mathematics and logic.  If the CRT proponents are less reliant on the math, it raises suspicions as to whether the math contradicts their message or perhaps they can't do the math in the first place.
 * 2) BLM was a breath of fresh air for 5 minutes. As with all movements, every fringe group tried to hijack the movement for their own purposes, but BLM didn't do enough to keep out the crazies.  Whereas "don't let the police brutalize people with impunity" is a message only a psychopath would oppose, the calls for "defund the police" or even "abolish the police" is something opposed by literally 80% of the population.  Allowing itself to get involved with anything to do with I-P was a mistake through and through.  When some protests turned into riots, arson and looting, the BLM didn't just try to ignore but often tried to justify it, some even arguing that theft and arson weren't even a form of violence to begin with.  15:53, 16 November 2021 (UTC)


 * "Refusing to acknowledge progress has been made." How loud does a scream need to be? Progress being made implies that systemic racism still exists, and it does, the system is still slanted in favour of whites, so I don't see a problem in just saying the job isn't finished. A lot of progress is nice, but let's not sit down and congratulate ourselves until it is over with. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 16:15, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * My problem is when people who couldn't even pass Calc I are allowed to push statistics.
 * Whenever I see someone push some stat comparing the Median White to Median Black household, I always have to ask what adjustments/corrections have been made to the base data. If there's none, well, the stat is completely worthless.  Why?  Well, let's say you have a town with 100 White adults and 100 Black adults.  They don't have any hangups about interracial dating, and marriages are random.  So now you have 25 White couples, 50 Mixed couples, and 25 Black couples.  All have two kids.  How "Black" are those kids?  Genetically speaking, the population is still 50% Black, but according to how we define "Black", they are 75% African American.  Now let's repeat the process, you have 1/16 W-W, 4/16 W-M, 4/16 M-M and 2/16 B-W, 4/16 M-B and 1/16 B-B.  The third generation is still 50% genetically White but according to our definitions, 15/16 of people are "Black".  Assume that the first generation is 70 years old, second is 40 and third is 10.  The average age is 40, but White people are on average a bit over 60 and Black just under 20!  People get wealthier with age on average; what do you think this will do to the "median" Black vs White wealth?
 * But let's take this a step further. You have 2 couples, everyone is worth $30k, so the average net worth is $60k.  The second couple gets divorced, so the average household net worth drops to $40k.  In larger groups, people getting divorced shifts the median in that group down, especially if the poorer members in the group are the ones least likely to be married.  What this does to the stats should be obvious, the divorces amongst the "White" group might push the median down to what "should" be the 60th percentile, whereas divorces in the "Black" group push the median to the 70th percentile.  You aren't comparing the same percentiles to each other to begin with!  17:24, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Genetically speaking? BumblingBuffoon (talk) 17:39, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Ethnically, genetically, whatever. If someone has a Black grandma but all other grandparents are White, they are genetically 75% White and 25% Black.  On average anyway, because genes get... mathy.  This town in all generations remains 50% White genetically, but we as a society keep saying the Black population is growing when it really isn't.  That's why when you hear stats like "The next generation of Americans is now more than 50% non-White, Whites are a minority!!!", it's misleading.  If we had an evil society that killed every Black man to use the Black women as concubines/sex-slaves, and the Black women had just as many children as the White women, in a few generations the population would be pretty much just as genetically White as any other White town, yet still somehow considered to be 50% Black.  05:41, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Racialism Let's not talk about it like it is a biologically defined concept, because this is just bringing us back into arguments with white supremacists that know nothing about genetics wanting to argue for racial superiority and eugenics. Yes whites will be a minority, that's technically correct according to the census bureau, no it doesn't matter, and no it doesn't confirm any great white replacement theory. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 17:54, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * My understanding is that genes for skin color, hair texture, and features like flat broad noses are quite complicated as well; they aren't all controlled by one on-off switch. Then again 'Black' isn't a single genetic complex.  'White' may be closer, but still no.  Rather, Black and White are pigeonholes in US culture.  We basically got this from Spain, and their notion of blood purity. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 13:46, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Define white please. 15:40, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Comrade, don't stoop to the level of asking them to "define white." This is completely inane, honestly. Just let the whole thing sit and give everyone a chance to simmer down and stop getting heated about stuff like this. Jake Holmes''yell at me 17:24, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I honestly don't think that statements like "25% black" make a lot of sense. Skin colour is and always been a continuum and may be in the eye of the beholder. Some time ago there was amazement in Spain when Spanish actor Antonio Banderas was  apparently described as a POC by some American media scources.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 17:50, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Id jim crow lives on, than the buck breakers win 11:04 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Putting this article in the main space
This article has been edited well enough to be put in the main space. When can it be added and how? Rational Dude (talk) 05:09, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * It seems pretty green to me.  For example the first line reads: "intersects with systemics institution in America" I'm not sure I understand it.
 * I also would have thought that it should define how the word "race" is being used in the context of the concept. But I'm not from the US and I know little to nothing about the issue, what it is, or why it's so important in the US. I was hoping to learn some of these things but the article is not telling me a lot.
 * It would also be good if there were some reference to pseudoscience, logical facilities, critical thinking or whatever: as that is the purpose of the site.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 09:56, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * i agree that it's good enough for mainspace, and so I moved it. As Bob M pointed out, there needs to be a lot more work though. LongStylus (talk) 00:30, 1 December 2021 (UTC)