SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3690

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

My dentist literally asks me what I want to watch. They give me the remote and already have Netflix, Disney +, and HBO Max queued up. I thought it was pretty cool.
The new dentist I went to had a cooking show on. I was watching teens compete for some kind of cooking prize. That is actually what reminded me of the Fox New dentist.

Last edited by SuperJail Warden (2021-05-13 07:48:27)

https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6742|PNW

Relevant to mac's interests? -

Bad teaching: Bans on critical race theory in schools narrow reality and sell out kids
https://news.yahoo.com/bad-teaching-ban … 10932.html

excerpt wrote:

Censoring K-12 teachers is nothing new, as I know from personal experience. I've never been accused of violating the oath I took 30 years ago, but the truth is it wouldn't have been difficult to build a case against me. Teaching kids to think for themselves – which I proudly do – is a threat to those with political and economic power, albeit a very small one from my small corner of the universe.

I have never explicitly advocated any political or economic ideology, but I certainly have not tried to hide from students any injustices, past or present, nor discouraged them from their own radical thinking. My job is to challenge everything they say. To show them multiple perspectives to anything and everything and demand evidence for any and all claims they make. If they are skeptical of popular or traditional beliefs and anyone in positions of power – including me – then I have done my job.

I do not "teach critical race theory" and I never will. I will teach them about it and help them understand its assertions and the evidence appropriate to support those assertions – but it must always be up to students to arrive at their own conclusions.

An educator’s job is to present ways of thinking. Not – ever – to "teach" children what to think or how to see the world or the history of it. If any teacher’s objective is to convince students of the validity of critical race theory or any other theory on race or anything else, they are not teaching; and those concerned parents are right. That is indoctrination.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3690
I haven't looked into what CRT is. I think I heard about it or something like it during undergrad in 2014. I haven't followed that stuff in about as long. IIRC, it is the idea that your race affects every other part or 'sphere' of your life. Duh. But I think taking the idea to heart is poisonous for the most people just trying to go about their day.

In any case, the complaints about CRT in schools looks much like accusations that everything is communism or Marxism. 90% of the people complaining about CRT thinks everything vaguely critical of America is CRT while 10% know better and are either trolling, trying to make money, or have some other strange agenda.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
DesertFox-
The very model of a modern major general
+794|6655|United States of America
In the last year, it really picked up as the go-to term for scaremongering. When I first heard it, I went to read about what it was. Unsurprisingly, I found it a very complicated subject I wouldn't be able to intelligently discuss.

When I heard people who hate-learned of it talking like they were seasoned experts, of course I questioned their understanding.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3690
It is this decade's "cultural Marxism". That was a popular scare phrase back in 2015.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
uziq
Member
+492|3422
and before that it was intersectionality. and before that post-structuralism. and before that critical theory.

the right-wing like to scaremonger about critical schools of thought. as if teaching unexamined, ignored or maligned history, considering power structures, or taking ideology as an object of analysis can be a bad thing.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3690

uziq wrote:

and before that it was intersectionality. and before that post-structuralism. and before that critical theory.

the right-wing like to scaremonger about critical schools of thought. as if teaching unexamined, ignored or maligned history, considering power structures, or taking ideology as an object of analysis can be a bad thing.
I think right wing hyperventilation about this sort of stuff is actually a big part of financing and promoting all of it. I am sure there are plenty of academics who are interested in talking about CRT/CM but college undergraduate history classes are still mostly white guys who are into warfare and military things. They really aren't going to be the ones to take this whole thing to heart and incorporate into blah blah. I am sure the Africa, black or whatever they call it studies are into this thing but that no one takes that major seriously anyway.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
uziq
Member
+492|3422
uziq
Member
+492|3422

SuperJail Warden wrote:

uziq wrote:

and before that it was intersectionality. and before that post-structuralism. and before that critical theory.

the right-wing like to scaremonger about critical schools of thought. as if teaching unexamined, ignored or maligned history, considering power structures, or taking ideology as an object of analysis can be a bad thing.
I think right wing hyperventilation about this sort of stuff is actually a big part of financing and promoting all of it. I am sure there are plenty of academics who are interested in talking about CRT/CM but college undergraduate history classes are still mostly white guys who are into warfare and military things. They really aren't going to be the ones to take this whole thing to heart and incorporate into blah blah. I am sure the Africa, black or whatever they call it studies are into this thing but that no one takes that major seriously anyway.
the right-wing, who constitute the real elites of any country, viz. the financial 0.5%, the political class, the business leaders, love to talk about the 'liberal elite' or the 'left-wing' in the media, academia, publishing, education, etc, despite the fact that most of the latter possess barely any capital or actual political leverage. it's a great big distraction technique. as if a professor teaching an 18-year-old about feminism or black history month is having an affect on society like a koch bro. riiiight.

at the end of the day the 'problem' with intersectionality is that middle-class, educated people are acquiring a better understanding of their position within society and said society's history. that's what the right-wing don't like.

Last edited by uziq (2021-05-18 08:25:48)

Larssen
Member
+99|1858

SuperJail Warden wrote:

uziq wrote:

and before that it was intersectionality. and before that post-structuralism. and before that critical theory.

the right-wing like to scaremonger about critical schools of thought. as if teaching unexamined, ignored or maligned history, considering power structures, or taking ideology as an object of analysis can be a bad thing.
I think right wing hyperventilation about this sort of stuff is actually a big part of financing and promoting all of it. I am sure there are plenty of academics who are interested in talking about CRT/CM but college undergraduate history classes are still mostly white guys who are into warfare and military things. They really aren't going to be the ones to take this whole thing to heart and incorporate into blah blah. I am sure the Africa, black or whatever they call it studies are into this thing but that no one takes that major seriously anyway.
Conflict studies courses have a strong focus on analysing identity formation and it could certainly be incorporated there to help shed light on rioting and civil strife.

In general I don't think it's a good idea to have a cordoned off section of 'studies for/of minorities'. Most of the discourse is relevant to wider discussions on identity and national/regional politics and should be included there.

Last edited by Larssen (2021-05-18 09:12:22)

uziq
Member
+492|3422
well if you consider that 'the school of african and oriental studies' in the UK is part of the federal university of london, historically the centre of imperial learning and civil service training ... of course these courses make sense and are justified. you have an entire (previously) subaltern population who never had educational institutions to cater to their experience or history. i don't really see that it's a bad thing to have 1 institution out of 150 specializing in african history tbh.

would you have decried the widespread push for 'working people's institutions' in the late-19th century? ruskin college? fabian society? birkbeck, another institution of the university of london (some 500 m away from SOAS, and not far from the british museum, where entire troves of african, oriental and asian artefacts are kept), was historically set-up for evening classes and people who couldn't fit in to the normal demands of higher education. is that also 'cordoning' off people perniciously by class? what's wrong with centring institutions in the centre of imperial power that cater to the modern, post-imperial constitution of said centre? is it a 'cordoning off' or 'opening up'? the afro-caribbean, third-generation graduate students of SOAS who are researching caribbean history, with fresh access to the full archives of the british library and british museum, spaces traditionally reserved for a tiny elite, might disagree with you ...

i wonder just why you're quite so reactionary and simplifying about these things. as if an institution or course teaching african history is going to be exclusionary of all other considerations. never mind the fact that higher-education and elite-status education has been by default the education of a majority white elite for, er, centuries -- why aren't you alarmed about the effects that 'cordoning' has had on discourse, objective analysis, research? as if you need to tell these disciplines, which all stem ultimately from marxist historiography, that a wider material analysis or historical perspective is important. they know, larssen. the way you traduce these subjects, having read probably none of them, as 'not getting the big picture', is patronising beyond all belief. frankly the majority of 'black history' or whatever subject has already been researched and taught through the perspective of majority white history, not to say outwardly hostile or reconstructionist white history. like 100 years of historiography on slavery, for instance. let them have their deconstructionists, in turn.

Last edited by uziq (2021-05-18 09:35:28)

SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3690
I rather there be black studies programs than having black history shoehorned into the rest of history education. I mean for much of U.S. history, there were no significant black Americans outside of the area of black history. (15ish% of the population). Black American's contributions to the U.S. winning the world wars is tiny. I rather there be a history class "Black Americans in the World Wars" than time being taken away from the Battle of the Bulge in order to talk about segregation in the army 🪖.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
uziq
Member
+492|3422
it sounds a little bit like you're impugning them for their lack of contribution to 'US history'. er, the group who were systematically excluded from, er, basic freedom, suffrage, labour rights, representation in elite education and professions. lol. 'blacks contributed little to american history'. apart from that part where they literally enabled your economic global pre-eminence, i guess.

their seeming 'invisibility' in the history of the states is precisely why historiography needs some redress. a country can achieve a lot on a slave workforce or plantation economy, it turns out. maybe there's more to history than all those term papers on 'great white male x' or 'tremendous achiever y'? isn't the actual achievements of, say, the pilgrim founders or the early puritans totally overstated in comparison to the huge economic engine that powered the colonies? but american history likes to talk about quaint new england preachers, or salem witch-trials, or something. that's country-fayre america, not bondage and lashes.

uncle tom's cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century. frederick douglass toured europe as one of the earliest global celebrities. their impact on american society and civic life was far greater than a narrowly defined 'black history'.

Last edited by uziq (2021-05-18 10:28:22)

SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3690
For the stretch of history from the end of reconstruction in 1877 to the start of the civil rights movement in the 1950's, black Americans are nearly irrelevant. That's not their fault or even anything to be ashamed of. The issues and status of blacks dominate the discourse of domestic U.S. politics from the 50's to the early 80's and came into its full with Obama.

If we are dealing with colonial history to post-civil war then blacks certainly should get a big acknowledgment for their labor and contributions to the economic foundations of the country.

Anyway, it's a matter of 'how much is enough?' Blacks people get to be the center of attention for the American civil war and civil rights movement. They also get a big acknowledgment in colonial history. Do we also need to retcon them into being big parts of the World Wars? White people should have at least some history of their own to look back fondly on in this country. Let them have the World Wars and the Black Studies majors get a class about black soldiers in World War 2.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
uziq
Member
+492|3422
i don't know that anyone is trying to 'retcon' them into the world wars, beyond giving them their dues where they were previously denied. it seems kind of execrable that black people were being called up to die for the country up to and including the vietnam war, whilst still being segregated at home, no?

i'm going to have to be a little bit dialectical here and say that something close, or closer, to truth emerges in a synthesis of opposing theses. if there's been 100 years of a white/dominant/victor-based mainstream history, it requires its occasional nudges and correctives, fashions and counter-movements, as antitheses. only through such a progression are we going to get something closer to a universal picture.

Last edited by uziq (2021-05-18 10:51:43)

Larssen
Member
+99|1858
I did not mean to imply that african or oriental studies do not or should not have a separate place in learning environments. Obviously these topics encompass many different subjects, look across borders and also deserve their own schools of thought. What I mean to say however is that as far as  critical race theory goes I believe the subject matter is perfectly well suited to be incorporated in more generalist undergraduate degrees than to be condemned to a corner of minorities/race studies. I don't see why in this case a sociology or history student or even a war studies major should not in some way be made familiar with this stuff in courses that deal with cultural/political identity.

That said I am somewhat unfamiliar with specifically CRT, but reading up on it, it seems to pertain strongly to more fundamental stuff I learned way back when with regards to identity formation. I don't see why you couldn't/shouldn't segway into it as a possibly interesting way of thinking about social divisions.

Last edited by Larssen (2021-05-18 11:03:25)

uziq
Member
+492|3422
okay, understood. no disagreements there.

critical theory, like intersectionality and other -isms, is pretty neatly folded into most undergraduate curricula, so far as i can see. hence english literature students like myself reading the frankfurt school and people as various as edward said and malcolm x, as well as 17th century restoration poets and norse sagas.
Larssen
Member
+99|1858

uziq wrote:

SuperJail Warden wrote:

uziq wrote:

and before that it was intersectionality. and before that post-structuralism. and before that critical theory.

the right-wing like to scaremonger about critical schools of thought. as if teaching unexamined, ignored or maligned history, considering power structures, or taking ideology as an object of analysis can be a bad thing.
I think right wing hyperventilation about this sort of stuff is actually a big part of financing and promoting all of it. I am sure there are plenty of academics who are interested in talking about CRT/CM but college undergraduate history classes are still mostly white guys who are into warfare and military things. They really aren't going to be the ones to take this whole thing to heart and incorporate into blah blah. I am sure the Africa, black or whatever they call it studies are into this thing but that no one takes that major seriously anyway.
the right-wing, who constitute the real elites of any country, viz. the financial 0.5%, the political class, the business leaders, love to talk about the 'liberal elite' or the 'left-wing' in the media, academia, publishing, education, etc, despite the fact that most of the latter possess barely any capital or actual political leverage. it's a great big distraction technique. as if a professor teaching an 18-year-old about feminism or black history month is having an affect on society like a koch bro. riiiight.

at the end of the day the 'problem' with intersectionality is that middle-class, educated people are acquiring a better understanding of their position within society and said society's history. that's what the right-wing don't like.
I don't think the right wing constitutes a country's elites at all. The voting base certainly isn't generally part of the well-educated people who have good jobs, barring some people in the extreme top income brackets. In our institutions of power, be it universities, the government bureaucracy or the judiciary and even the media, most people working there are affluent, social-liberal and actually centre-left leaning politically. Some may be a little centre-right, though mostly more on economic issues than on what would be considered right talking points these days.

The right has transformed itself from a political ideology mostly concerned with economic liberalism into a bastion of (very) conservative identity politics which helps it appeal to the masses. Nobody voting right wing these days is doing it because they're convinced by the track record of privatisation or trickle down economics, but because of increased social strife and conservative identitarianism. All the working class people voting right wing here you'll only ever hear them speak about preservation of culture and sticking it to all those aformentioned affluent centre-left people occupying most of the societal positions of power.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
which is precisely what i said. the real elites and right-wing (read: old conservatives, establishment figures, latter-day aristocrats) have managed to twist the public discourse into concern about upper-middle-class professionals with centre-left views. as if journalists, high-school teachers and publishers are in control of society and not, er, the actual tabloid-owning media moguls and financial elites behind all this populism.

you just repeated exactly what i said but from the angle of populist voting.

the UK absolutely has a right-wing elite, i don't know what you're talking about there, and so does the USA too for that matter.
Larssen
Member
+99|1858
I would agree that in the UK/US and perhaps in the anglosaxon sphere in general those elites are far more visible and prominent. On the continent it's a little too politically varied to paint the whole field with broad strokes, but the (extreme) right wing is generally not nearly as comfortably established as in the UK/US/AUS. There are similarities in the identitarian appeal but I can't describe proponents of the AfD, Le Pen or the polish PiS as (also) representing the aristocrats of old or anything of the like.

Last edited by Larssen (2021-05-18 11:24:00)

uziq
Member
+492|3422
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6742|PNW

FWIW I do think black history should just be a part of the American history curriculum. You could still have a black history month in spirit where the school librarians get to recommend books and films on the topic or whatever, but teaching it as a segue I believe can sometimes diminish its connection with the rest of American history.

I could forward that propublica article to one of my angry-thinking Trump guys but there is no way they're going to read something that long that isn't talking about covid-etc. conspiracy theories about Chinese superweapons or the misdeeds of Democrats. He had a picture of Biden up on the dart board alongside the well-pocked Democrats there around the time he won the election. Not even a chance. Nixon and Reagan were great and the "partnership" between Clinton and Gingrich ushered the US into the golden age "because the Democrats finally started cooperating with Republican ideas?" A decade not without its dark foreshadowing anyway. I remember the political divide deepening even more during the 90s.

Speaking of covid conspiracies, got doused in that stuff on a steam group chat the other day. "You mean 'plandemic'" (with an L) and "chaos all going to Fauci's design" with Warhammer 40k references peppered in. Surreal divergence from a 2010 video game we were talking about before, and I elected not to put in my two cents. With no opposition, the topic changed again after a few lines back to video games. I wonder what they think of critical race theory.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1 … 9371997189

wild that there are living victims of the tulsa race massacre.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
If you survive a massacre you weren't really part of it though.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
uziq
Member
+492|3422
amazing that the guy who continually says 'blacks never had it so bad' and denies the systemic injustices of racism, when presented with a clear-cut example of it, can only respond with secondary-school level smarm and lame-shit quips.

there's a living example of a person whose life was cast down and determined to a substantial degree by inequality and racial discrimination. a woman who still did national service, contributed to the war effort, and tried to retain her dignity in the face of difficulty. and you've got nothing except a snide remark. odious twerp.

Board footer

Privacy Policy - © 2024 Jeff Minard