VHD on Anatomy of the Woke Madness
...wokeism has done a lot of damage to America, and will do even more if left unchecked. Here are its chief characteristics.
First, remember that wokeism is a top-down phenomenon. It started in academia with “critical race theory” and “critical legal theory.” These are $#@! offshoots of harebrained “critical theory,” which arose from a demoralized and adrift Europe after the cataclysms of two devastating European-spawned world wars.
...Second, given its elite origins and spread, it is no surprise that wokeism is a psychological mechanism that exempts the privileged by virtue signaling and performance grievance-mongering in lieu of meaningful real action. Wokeism is neither consistent nor logical. Its self-serving selectivity means Hunter Biden’s serial use of the N-word is not inconsistent with his father’s lectures that the deplorables pose an existential racist threat to the nation.
...Third, Wokeism destroys individualism. We cease being persons and instead become categorized peoples. What does it matter that Al Sharpton was a racist demagogue, that Jesse Jackson a skilled shakedown artist of corporate America, that Bayard Rustin, in contrast, a brilliant civil rights strategist, or that Martin Luther King, Jr. was an ecumenical believer in the inherent goodness of a flawed America of his times—once they are all to be reduced to being just black, and therefore just equally victims?
...Fourth, race is not unimportant, but it is not the only catalyst of history or arbiter of life in the present. Cancer couldn’t care less about the race of the cells it warps. COVID-19 is not a white or black pandemic, for all the efforts to make it so. Google “racism” and learn that everything from gluten allergies to robots are now products of racism.
...Fifth, wokeism’s existential enemy is merit. Critical Race Theory claims that meritocratic criteria are rigged or “constructed” in subtle ways to reflect the dominant hegemonies of the white male heterosexual hierarchy. Thus physics has no innate laws across time and space. There are no race-neutral skills or lack of the same in a United Airlines pilot.
...Do we revert to the norms of the civil rights movement where the content of our character alone matters, not the color of our skin?
Or have we sunk so deeply into the woke quicksands, that we cannot thrash our way up to the air, and thus suffocate from the ancient pressures of the bog that have always destroyed civilizations?
Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler
MMC (06-14-2021)
CRT is not the issue. It's become a boogeyman for any teaching of the history of racism and current racial problems in this country. Take, for example the recent Florida regulations that supposedly ban the teaching of CRT in Florida schools. CRT is not currently being taught in Florida schools, but that regulation is going to be used to go after any teacher that suggests the existence of systemic racism in this country.
Whoever criticizes capitalism, while approving immigration, whose working class is its first victim, had better shut up. Whoever criticizes immigration, while remaining silent about capitalism, should do the same.
~Alain de Benoist
Peter1469 (06-14-2021)
MMC (06-14-2021)
CRT was implied in your first post. CRT is not for teaching history but for teaching false narratives. The 1619 Project is partly based on fact, but leaves out many facts, presents some false facts, and argues a false narrative. CRT is being taught in schools. School boards have imposed it. What you're seeing is parents--of all colors--objecting to its racism.
Systemic racism is not a historical fact. How can teaching it be considered history?
You obviously haven't seen the post from CRT advocates yet.
BTW, I agree slavery and racism like the KKK and Jim Crow should be taught and should point out the historical fact that that was all the Democratic Party's doing.
Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler
So, I'm actually in an academic program that teaches what would be called "CRT" and my perspective on some issues has shifted, but primarily as a result of talking about issues related to race and culture with other students in my cohort. I should make a disclaimer that my doctoral program has a social justice concentration because each campus has a "theme" based on where they are, and I am in DC. The APA also requires that doctoral students have at least one lesson related to social justice in each class and it has to be considered in our dissertations (either in the research data or in the topic).
However, I cannot think of any circumstance in which I would relay this information to students outside of graduate programs in my field. I see the utility of it for my purposes, but I think the goal for secondary students should be unbiased/neutral history. I don't see any benefit to of discussing concepts well above their pay grade, so to speak. I think that there are advanced topics worth discussing in the social and behavioral sciences, but it's too much for anyone without the education to put it into perspective (and adults not in academia can get that education through their own research, but I do not expect high school students to have that knowledge, experience or maturity).
FYIWDWYTM
FindersKeepers (06-14-2021),MMC (06-14-2021),Peter1469 (06-14-2021)
There is no confusion.
No one is saying that kids should not be taught about the atrocities of slavery in proportion to the many historic events in our history. We all learned about from school. We all know it is a period that we do not want to repeat.
CRT is not history. It is teaching kids to be racist and bigoted. The 1619 Project wants to teach fake history.
There you have it @RichardMZhlubb. It is being taught, it is forced, it is a concept and not history.
@Adelaide, I agree, "students should be [taught] unbiased/neutral history." And sure, at the grad school-level, CRT could be a topic of, well, critical thinking.
Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler
carolina73 (06-14-2021),MMC (06-14-2021)