Responding to this here. But I had never heard of James Lindsay until this thread-- McWhorter I knew about and have known about for awhile.
But that's definitely not even close to what either of them are saying.

"You guys"
Do you realize how ignorant you are?
To lump me in with itshot, as if I agree 100% with itshot on this when in reality I've gone back and forth with him on various points and we only agree on some aspects of things.
Now please address my questions, and if not, you should consider taking your presence to another thread.

That was the question I asked.

I watched some of that podcast and I really don't see what he's up in arms about. The old 'so what ? you have to do your best' routine is fine. But that doesn't mean there's any harm being caused by CRT. At least no more harm than any other dumb college program that you're not going to get paid for when you're out.

The op is upset because there are Marxists in America (Marxists of color it would seem) and also because he can't distinguish between racism as an ideology and racial activism as a reaction to that ideology.

That makes for a pretty terrible discussion.

People with blue eyes earn twice as much and have 5x the household wealth of people with brown eyes. [/guess]

So suck up your fragility and acknowledge your blue-eyed privilege you blue-eyed devils.

I mean, I’m not asking you guys these questions because I already have the answers.

The podcast wasn't with McWhorter but James Linsday and John Ford Jr-- afaik no McWhorther youtube has been posted-- but that's really besides the point.
And I don't feel like the discussion as been bad. I'm learning things at least. Maybe no one else is idk.
I try to stay out of cultural related topics in general (preferring to stick with bigger picture questions like whether it's a plutocracy or oligarchy that we live in). But this one has "theory" in the name. And I think it's an interesting topic. Obviously your perspective is quite different but I do appreciate it.
If you are going to choose to view CRT as basically a college curriculum then obviously it's no big deal. And there's nothing really stopping you from viewing it that way if you want. Any sort of real world applications of it can be dismissed. And if you largely agree with those as in then you won't see any issue.

What are those answers?

16:30

[QUOTE=itshotinvegas;56972281]

I don't really agree with teaching anyone they're a victim.

I just don't see the big deal if a group of AA's want to study how racial bias has affected their progress in society given they're only a couple generation out of overt second class status.

Also, we're an oligarchy run by plutocrats.

[QUOTE=RFlushDiamonds;56972876]16:30

I didn't listen to that one. But to be fair to McWhorter, he's saying that not all disparities can be attributed to systemic racism, not that systemic racism doesn't exist or not it isn't the cause of some disparity. And I'll attempt to parse out his analysis further because it would seem to require it.

My citation said that but that's not conservative rhetoric, nor was it from a conservative, it was the person reciting actual critical race theory.

Here is one citation:



Opening Commentary: The Permanence of Racism, Critical Race Theory, and Expanding Analytic Sites

Can provide more, if you like. It's not conservative rhetoric.

I think that's fair enough. But I also don't really think acknowledging that people are in what amounts to a system that is/has been stacked against them(in various ways along with some that don't exclusively apply to minorities). That's just kinda pointing out reality What you do with that info is another thing.

Should people be taught on the basis of their skin color that they are oppressors?

I don't see a big deal there either.
I suppose that's fine. We can say that the oligarchy is pooled from existing plutocrats. Plutocrats who also happen to be almost entirely white (save their buddies the Saudis and Chinese).

This is mostly a bad faith reading trap that we should just avoid. If "whiteness" is understood as the ways in which dominant American society preserves the privilege and power of people traditionally understood as "white" over those classified as non-white, then what does "eliminating whiteness" mean? Eliminating the ways in which white people are privileged and have power over non-white people? That doesn't sound so bad as a goal.

But frame it as "eliminating whiteness" without specifying what is meant by "whiteness" and you get to use it in culture wars to suggest that CRT people want to eliminate white people. Pretty different.

You were right in an earlier attempt. To discuss this issue in a meaningful way requires talking about more foundational issues. Is the CRT understanding of "whiteness" correct? Is the identification of some aspect of culture as "white" mostly meant to assert power or superiority over non-white people? Or is a more morally neutral understanding of "whiteness" more accurate? Does colorblindness as a goal do more to disguise racial injustice than solve it? What is the relation between dominant American society and "whiteness" and "blackness"?

Want more?

I know this is supposed to point out the absurdity of thinking that minorities might be discriminated against because of the color of their skin. Something so outlandish no human being has ever considered doing *sarcasm*. But if blue eyed people were being paid much more than brown eyed people that seems like it would be something to investigate why.

Bro, I’m not reading walls of text or watching hour-long yootoobes.

I used "whiteness" there to refer to the full range of it has both an abstract concept or of white people themselves. But because I used parentheses around the "white people" part, it's clear that I mostly meant the former. So no bad faith at all.
But yeah...I agree that we can address those questions.
My conception of identity is that it's just an extra layer of bullshit that society puts on the tops of people's egos (which are themselves already mostly bullshit). So I'm not sure how equipped I am for addressing topics of identity.

I'm not really sure what point you are trying to make here. I'm not disagreeing with the claim that some CRT scholars believe that racism is likely a permanent feature of American society. My point is that this implies that we can't eliminate whiteness, and so it seems unlikely that these scholars at least would put that forward as a goal of CRT. In Marxist terms, if you don't think a classless society is possible because capital will always prevent it, then you are less likely to have the elimination of the capitalist class as a goal.

As for whether Lindsay is conservative, meh, whatever. I do think he is a reactionary, and he was open about his support for Trump. I have a somewhat non-standard understanding of "conservative" for 2p2ers, so I don't know if he is himself a conservative, but I think concerns about CRT is more a feature of conservative rhetoric in American politics than liberal rhetoric.

Fair enough,I respect that. Maybe I'll come back to it.

I posted a video where JW explicitly acknowledged systemic racism.

It's not critical theory, or nothing.

So is this an actual live question in CRT? I can't tell. AFAIK almost no one has heard of CRT or actually is very familiar with it, so who knows?

I mean it's an interesting question. With the assumption that racism is wider spread than mere racial utterances and has indeed "infected" the law, policy, etc. does that pervasiveness preclude any kind of resolution? The answer becomes important because the different answers can lead to radically different solutions.

It's possible to answer yes, it's impossible to overcome. If so, what's the solution?

Ta Nehisi Coates veered into that a little saying that racism is in every aspect and so really the job was to 'bear witness', but why? What does that do?

He has also veered in the opposite direction when under questioning about what should be done after reparations (if they happened) he talked about continuing to reduce inequalities, etc which would seem to imply that racism could be overcame or at least minimized to a degree of importance.

They can certainly be taught that the system is not a meritocracy as they are taught by default now.

Should white people feel guilty for being white ?
Of course not. But I'm pretty sure none of us do.

Right. That's why I'm a bit suspect about the motives of some of these people making a fuss over what amounts to nothing.