Because it's not really a critique on race relations; it's critical of the institutionalized societal structures or superstructures they believe are causing/maintaining disparate racial outcomes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_and_superstructure

There are lots of issues with that model that relate to problems with Marxist theory in general, as it assumes a level of 'organicness' to the system that does not exist in reality.

How about debating an actual example of race theory in action? Here goes.

At one time, most states outlawed miscegenation -- race mixing between the sexes. In order to prove a couple violated the law, the legal system had to have clear, solid definitions of race. Otherwise, someone could evade the law by arguing that they were really the same race as their sexual partner.

Take Florida and Virginia. One defined Negro as anyone with 1/8 African ancestry or more (a great grand parent). The other state said it was 1/16.

This means a person could literally change their race by crossing a state line.

Ergo, race is an arbitrary human construct. It changes in time and geography. The races are produced in history, and are not biological constants. Skin tone is biological, but what we think about it is historical.

Please demonstrate the awfulness of this facet of critical race theory.

Hmm

I think the concept of biological race is best left out of this thread. Nobody wants me talking about song sparrows and ornithology. Although I'm not too sure about the logic of state laws regarding race to discredit the concept entirely. It's a tricky subject. Clinal variation obviously exists, but oftentimes (in ornithology as well as with people) the demarcations into categories can be difficult. And this is something you see even at the species level in ring species like some gulls of the genus larus. Still though, with island populations like the Sentinelese you can have enough genetic drift to easily say that race does exist.

Is that observation at odds with CRT ?

From Wiki :

Does it matter how races are defined or only that they are ?

I don't see how what you quoted supports the notion that CRT doesn't claim that race is arbitrary. Just saying that white supremisism exists isn't enough. Acknowledging that the ruling class doesn't view it that way isn't the same as saying that it isn't that way. Perhaps there is something else that could lead a person to think that, but I don't think that's it.

From the little I've read on the subject I haven't seen anything other than skin color mentioned with the term race serving more as a placeholder for skin color. And while skin color is obviously biological I don't think crt proponents are implying that the supremacy/privilege outcome is a unique property of white skin. In other words, had things played out differently in a historic sense, crt proponents in that world would be talking about black supremacy/privilege, the problem of blackness and to abolish the black race (assuming counterfactual people are as prone to hyperbole and making click-bait headlines as actual people).

CRT in action is the reeducation according to the tenets of CRT, as condition of employment, and as a condition of gaining a public education.

It's actually worse. They're saying a person's racial identity is part of their consciousness, and unconsciousness.

That can be true though, even if it gets a little Jungian.
I mean I don't believe in "racial memory" or anything of that nature. But Jungian ideas of a collective unconscious are pretty fun.*
But there's still a more grounded way this can be true and not be saying anything too bad, assuming that they're theorizing that some form of racial consciousness is socially conditioned-- which seems fine.
It's still not anything close to race essentialism, even if the overall import of the ideology is just that.
*In Jungian parlance "racial memories" don't actually have anything to do with race but rather make up the collective unconscious, so I mispoke a bit there.

Again, which identity are you using? Probably a person's self-awareness which can take on any number of definitions, as determined by the individual, based on any number of variables and experiences.


CRT says what that identity is, not the individual.

This is all fair.
Here's one of the bigger hurdles though in social science that trips up a lot of people: what applies to groups of people does not necessarily apply to individuals within that group. People can still be individuals while group level processes are still at work. So society can still impose some form of racial consciousness on people who have the potential to still break out of some forms of thinking.
And perhaps the CRT theorist here would add that because race is so pervasive, that that is literally impossible. Which might be true.

CRT goes way beyond that. I'm convinced a core component of racism is based on external definitions of a particular race. I also don't see any altruistic reasons to define racial identities, to include motives and other attributes and characteristics.

You want to study the impact of people embracing the idea of racial identities and it's social impact, including how it's used to oppress, that would be fair game. CRT does this to an extent, but it's goes much further and essentially builds an ideology for itself.

This does not completely encapsulates what I mean, but it's close.

lol wat

CRT isn't "defining races" though. As arbitrary as they are-- they are already defined and CRT is just working with preexisting definitions and conditions.

I wouldn't know because I never think about being white. Nor can I say I'd be all that concerned with the outcome if blacks started a race war aside from my general reluctance to commit black genocide. Sometimes the absence of things (identity and fear) says more about the content of our minds than their presence. Thus endth the sermon.

Where the ideology comes from I'm going to guess, stems from some of the basic issues with Marxist conceptions-- which is that there isn't really any form of power that Marxism recognizes save the 'mechanisms of capital'. There is a bourgeoisie under Marxism of course, but they themselves are slaves to capital. And so in lieu of a well-defined villain, race, racism and racists take that place. It could just as easily be corporations or the elite, but it's not Critical Corporate Theory it's Critical Race Theory and it's born out of studying racism.

I disagree, that's what they use to establish the oppressor/oppressed narratives.

Another example:

https://nypost.com/2021/02/16/nyc-pu...whiteness/amp/

You should probably try and find good faith descriptions when someone asks you to define something. If you can't find one it makes you look like someone who isn't interested in discussing in good faith. Just summarize the wiki page if you have to.

Describe a spider web. That's kinda hard for alot of people, including me (this an analogy). I'm willing to bet many other people can do a better job than I, Lindsay being one of them.

I was wondering when someone was going to attack Lindsay's creditability. I'm not sure if that's what you are doing, though.

It's whiteness as a sociological concept, not whiteness as an intrinsic racial characteristic that they're defining.

Not that Trolly's original question was asked by someone with any interest in good faith discussion, although your point is reasonable enough.

I haven't had cable for years--but the stuff they're putting out seems to have a wider reach than just the confines of the dummy box.

Right, they are describing what white people are, and telling white individuals they need to grapple with that. They are forcing an identity on them. That's exactly what white people did to black people that perpetuated racism to begin with.