All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Username taken]

Since the argument seems to be about what the GOP is saying, it should be easy to back it up with statements by Republican officials that they're worried undergrad/ law school material is being taught to kids in elementary school, middle school and high school.

I don't understand what you mean here.

Are you asking me to provide clarification to the false definition of CRT used by the GOP? Or are you asking me to provide examples of the GOP never actually saying what CRT is but is using it as a catch-all to ban books that are written by minorities?

They made the claims around CRT and have used it to ban books.

It seems to me that in most right-wing commentary about CRT it is essentially used as a catch-all to describe dumb/ objectionable left-wing views on race especially in a DEI context that are sometimes incorporated into educational resources.

What are these dumb left-wing views?

[Ozymandias]

Trivia question for the day - what was the first nation to recognize the independence of Ukraine? That would be the USSR - their equivalent of a Constitution specifically recognized a right for member states to secede. Also, after the USSR dissolved itself, Russia also officially recognized Ukraine as an independent nation.

Whatever kinship had existed between Russia and Ukraine is almost certainly gone for a couple of generations, and Russia has only itself to blame. I'm willing to bet that Ukrainian schools will teach Russia by Catherine the Great's purge, by the Holodomor, and by Putin's many land grabs. Either that or the parents and overall national culture will.

What do you imagine the curriculum has been like, since 2014?

[Ozymandias]

I described how you shifted goalposts, responding to a claim with a high bar (one reason Russia invaded Ukraine is that they're worried about Nazis) with claims that have a lower bar and weren't what's being disputed.

Your description was as good as this explanation, but I still don't understand. If you want to explain clearly what is it I supposedly did wrong, please dispense with the convoluted exposition.

[Mister Mets]

I don't understand what you mean here.

Are you asking me to provide clarification to the false definition of CRT used by the GOP? They made the claims around CRT and have used to ban books.



What are these dumb left-wing views?

I'm asking for clarification that the GOP is using the same definition for CRT as you are.

As for dumb and/ or objectionable left-wing views on race, these would include the idea that married parents, delayed gratification, the emphasis on the scientific method, planning for the future, and valuing intent in legal matters are unique attributes of white culture, and to be treated with suspicion, that someone on an education committee is obligated to agree with Robin DiAngelo, that measurable results are a sign of white supremacy, or that toddlers should confess their racism.

Posting some earlier comments on the semantic question of what CRT is.

Critical Race Theory does inform education policy.

The NEA has called for defending Critical Race Theory.

https://reason.com/2021/07/06/critic...ht-in-schools/

The writer Andrew Sullivan phrases it well: kids are not taught CRT, they are taught in CRT.

https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/...-expose-it-2d9

And no, 6-year-olds are not being taught Derrick Bell — or forced to read Judith Butler, or God help them, Kimberlé Crenshaw. Of course they aren’t — and I don’t know anyone who says they are.

But they are being taught popularized terms, new words, and a whole new epistemology that is directly downstream of academic critical theory. Ibram X. Kendi even has an AntiRacist Baby Picture Book so you can indoctrinate your child into the evil of whiteness as soon as she or he can gurgle. It’s a little hard to argue that CRT is not interested in indoctrinating kids when its chief proponent in the US has a kiddy book on the market.

This is not teaching about critical race theory; it is teaching in critical race theory. And it is compulsory and often hidden from parents. It contradicts the core foundations of our liberal society; and is presented not as one truth to be contrasted with others, but as the truth, the basis on which all other truths are built. That’s why teaching based on CRT will make children see themselves racially from the get-go, why it will separate them into different racial groups, why it will compel white kids to internalize their complicity in evil, tell black kids that all their troubles are a function of white people, banish objective measurements of success to avoid stigmatizing failure, and treat children of different races differently in a classically racist hierarchy.

And this is why — crucially — it will suppress any other way of seeing the world — because any other way, by definition, is merely perpetuating oppression. As Kendi constantly reminds us, it is either/or. An antiracist cannot exist with a liberalism that perpetuates racism. And it’s always the liberalism that has to go.

The semantic argument about whether CRT is just a model of legal study sidesteps the more important question about whether parents are right to have concerns about how issues of race are framed in schools, whether it is CRT, informed by CRT or something else.


The New Yorker has a thorough article on Rufo as well, which does get into his opposition with the entire field of Critical Race Theory.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/annal...al-race-theory

Through foia requests, Rufo turned up slideshows and curricula for the Seattle anti-racism seminars. Under the auspices of the city’s Office for Civil Rights, employees across many departments were being divided up by race for implicit-bias training. (“Welcome: Internalized Racial Superiority for White People,” read one introductory slide, over an image of the Seattle skyline.) “What do we do in white people space?” read a second slide. One bullet point suggested that the attendees would be “working through emotions that often come up for white people like sadness, shame, paralysis, confusion, denial.” Another bullet point emphasized “retraining,” learning new “ways of seeing that are hidden from us in white supremacy.” A different slide listed supposed expressions of internalized white supremacy, including perfectionism, objectivity, and individualism. Rufo summarized his findings in an article for the Web site of City Journal, the magazine of the center-right Manhattan Institute: “Under the banner of ‘antiracism,’ Seattle’s Office of Civil Rights is now explicitly endorsing principles of segregationism, group-based guilt, and race essentialism—ugly concepts that should have been left behind a century ago.”

The story was a phenomenon and helped to generate more leaks from across the country. Marooned at home, civil servants recorded and photographed their own anti-racism training sessions and sent the evidence to Rufo. Reading through these documents, and others, Rufo noticed that they tended to cite a small set of popular anti-racism books, by authors such as Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo. Rufo read the footnotes in those books, and found that they pointed to academic scholarship from the nineteen-nineties, by a group of legal scholars who referred to their work as critical race theory, in particular Kimberlé Crenshaw and Derrick Bell. These scholars argued that the white supremacy of the past lived on in the laws and societal rules of the present. As Crenshaw recently explained, critical race theory found that “the so-called American dilemma was not simply a matter of prejudice but a matter of structured disadvantages that stretched across American society.”

This inquiry, into the footnotes and citations in the documents he’d been sent, formed the basis for an idea that has organized cultural politics this spring: that the anti-racism seminars did not just represent a progressive view on race but that they were expressions of a distinct ideology—critical race theory—with radical roots. If people were upset about the seminars, Rufo wanted them also to notice “critical race theory” operating behind the curtain. Following the trail back through the citations in the legal scholars’ texts, Rufo thought that he could detect the seed of their ideas in radical, often explicitly Marxist, critical-theory texts from the generation of 1968. (Crenshaw said that this was a selective, “red-baiting” account of critical race theory’s origins, which overlooked less divisive influences such as Martin Luther King, Jr.) But Rufo believed that he could detect a single lineage, and that the same concepts and terms that organized discussions among white employees of the city of Seattle, or the anti-racism seminars at Sandia National Laboratories, were present a half century ago. “Look at Angela Davis—you see all of the key terms,” Rufo said. Davis had been Herbert Marcuse’s doctoral student, and Rufo had been reading her writing from the late sixties to the mid-seventies. He felt as if he had begun with a branch and discovered the root. If financial regulators in Washington were attending seminars in which they read Kendi’s writing that anti-racism was not possible without anti-capitalism, then maybe that was more than casual talk.

If you think CRT exclusively refers to a school of legal theory, I do not think that American high school students are taught material from law school textbooks. I would also say that's a misleading way of looking at it, as understandings from legal academia have moved to other fields, and research in CRT is often credited in work for education, while CRT texts have also called for activism in education.

Critical Race theory, as a method of considering the law, started out with some useful observations about systemic racism. It has come to inform policy discussions in other fields, including education. This informs both what teachers are taught and what students are taught, and it also influences work made for a popular audience. In this context, critical race theory is taught in American high schools, but it's a good thing. It's valid to consider the effects of redlining, or post-World War II financial support for white veterans.

In a discussion about Critical Race Theory for the New York Times Argument podcast, linguist John McWhorter said that at some point Critical Race Theory had changed.

I usually don’t refer to all of this as critical race theory or CRT. I think that what’s happened today has evolved so far beyond those basic and interesting ideas that after a while, you have to start calling it something else, after a while what once was Latin has become French. The idea is that a movement now takes a page, maybe two pages from CRT, and instead has become a kind of punitive mob-like mentality that acquires disproportionate influence because most people are deeply afraid of being called a racist on social media.

This thing that he believes to be different than Critical Race Theory, which is what right-wing and moderate critics of CRT in Education are referring to, is also taught in some high schools, and informs the training that teachers receive. That said, I can completely understand calling it something else.

[Username taken]

I'm asking for clarification that the GOP is using the same definition for CRT as you are.

As for dumb and/ or objectionable left-wing views on race, these would include the idea that married parents, delayed gratification, the emphasis on the scientific method, planning for the future, and valuing intent in legal matters are unique attributes of white culture, and to be treated with suspicion, that someone on an education committee is obligated to agree with Robin DiAngelo, that measurable results are a sign of white supremacy, or that toddlers should confess their racism.

Posting some earlier comments on the semantic question of what CRT is.

Critical Race Theory does inform education policy.

The NEA has called for defending Critical Race Theory.

https://reason.com/2021/07/06/critic...ht-in-schools/

The writer Andrew Sullivan phrases it well: kids are not taught CRT, they are taught in CRT.

https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/...-expose-it-2d9





The semantic argument about whether CRT is just a model of legal study sidesteps the more important question about whether parents are right to have concerns about how issues of race are framed in schools, whether it is CRT, informed by CRT or something else.


The New Yorker has a thorough article on Rufo as well, which does get into his opposition with the entire field of Critical Race Theory.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/annal...al-race-theory




If you think CRT exclusively refers to a school of legal theory, I do not think that American high school students are taught material from law school textbooks. I would also say that's a misleading way of looking at it, as understandings from legal academia have moved to other fields, and research in CRT is often credited in work for education, while CRT texts have also called for activism in education.

Critical Race theory, as a method of considering the law, started out with some useful observations about systemic racism. It has come to inform policy discussions in other fields, including education. This informs both what teachers are taught and what students are taught, and it also influences work made for a popular audience. In this context, critical race theory is taught in American high schools, but it's a good thing. It's valid to consider the effects of redlining, or post-World War II financial support for white veterans.

In a discussion about Critical Race Theory for the New York Times Argument podcast, linguist John McWhorter said that at some point Critical Race Theory had changed.



This thing that he believes to be different than Critical Race Theory, which is what right-wing and moderate critics of CRT in Education are referring to, is also taught in some high schools, and informs the training that teachers receive. That said, I can completely understand calling it something else.

I actually really appreciate this response.

I agree that there's a debate to be had on how racism should be taught in schools and how antiracism is distilled down to young children. Make no mistake, as a minority, I believe that these discussions have to happen in schools because even amongst toddlers you'd be surprised at some of the language that comes out from them (it's most likely from their homes).

Where the disagreement comes in is the scope of what is being described as CRT and then being used to ban books. Worse still it's being used as a campaign issue and in states like Florida there were proposals to monitor teachers in the classrooms or some nonsense like that. That's going off the deep end.

[Dalak]

I think some of the claims against Dave Chapelle are over the top. This shouldn't be a proxy for whether someone agrees with him on other issues, although it does make his critics less credible if the things they critique don't hold up to scrutiny. If people are saying he obviously meant to frame trans people, or that he should have realized immediately after his attack that a comment might be misinterpreted, that makes their other views less credible.

You may be responding to points I haven't made on masks. At this point, we have to recognize policy tradeoffs. What type of actions will encourage people to take the most effective step against Covid (vaccination)? What restrictions are ordinary Americans willing to tolerate? People with the same facts may come to different conclusions, so the things you declare to be misinformation might not fit the category.

The links you have don't define CRT as college-level/ law school level material.



I do think the arguments about gerrymandering and restrictive voting laws are ultimately about a difference of 1-2 percent. I'll note you guys aren't willing to say what the net gains would be for Democrats if you had your preferred election policies. This can be meaningful in a close election, but given the stupidity of elected Republicans, a normie Democratic party should be able to dominate.

The reason I think you agree with Dave's transphobia is due to your repeated defenses of it in him and others. I think that his jump to make an Anti-Trans joke was because he doesn't like them and wanted to make them pay for reacting to his anti-trans jokes, just like many pointed about for his Netflix special, so it's not like this is new behavior.

I read you telling us how mandating that airlines cannot require masks wasn't a big deal (Paraphrased) because "everyone who wanted to be vaccinated has been". There was a extended argument where you argued against the effectiveness of masks in school. Gaslighting is pretending you've not done things you have in order to make the other doubt their perceptions, and I'm not letting you do that to me anymore.

Demanding that we hold the GoP to the textbook definition of CRT when it's clear that's not what they believe it is from your own reposted links (Biased Newyorker Story Again?) is disingenuous at best and you making up limits to excuse your support of it at worst.

Finally, you also think that inflating a number from .3% to 4.2% then to 5% isn't a blatant lie, so I'm not going to sweat going through multiple elections worth of data trying to solve for the unprecise effect of gerrymandering alone just to convince you I'm serious when it's clear you aren't. Just stop pretending Mets.

[CSTowle]

No offense, but this attitude feels a bit insulting, like you are disregarding our (central/eastern european countries that wanted to join NATO) own agency it the question.
Is USA interested in the expansion of NATO? Maybe, probably, I don't particularly care. I am glad they were, so they didn't veto us. The idea of being neutral sounds nice in theory, but since "neutral" obviously means to russia "available to be invaded when we feel like it", it's a naive and dangerous path to pursue. It's not impossible, Austria for example isn't in NATO, but since they are surrounded by NATO countries, it would be much more difficult to attack them if anyone chose to do so, so they can get away with it. Also, they weren't in russian sphere of influence and russia is the main threat to european countries, so that's a bit different.

For someone who is so openly critical of your own country, don't you think you might be overstating their influence on sovereign countries' decisions?

Also, russia doesn't have any reason to fear NATO expansion, as it is defensive alliance. Unless, of course, they want to attack one of its members.

You might take offense or insult if you feel that way, but none was intended. It's not denial of agency so much as an acceptance of the reality of the world that larger powers often dominate or influence smaller ones for their own ends. Whether that was European Colonial powers in centuries past across the globe, or the US and USSR gobbling up allies and supporting enemies of the other in proxy wars this past century. Russia doesn't have the clout it once had to do so, but the US does still do this across the world. I don't think anyone can reasonably deny this, though if you feel that's not the case I'd be interested to hear why that is.

The US wanting something and a smaller nation wanting the same thing (whether for the same reason or different ones) doesn't mean that their alliances are illegitimate or that they were forced into them (though in many cases they might be, or at least heavily influenced). As to overestimating my country's influence and power projection, or meddling in the affairs of other countries (not just Russia/Eastern Europe, but literally all over the world) I wish I was. But you don't have to be a student of history to have seen what we do and are doing. As to NATO not being a threat to Russia and their waning influence in the region, and being merely a "defensive alliance", I would say that's very much wishful thinking and borders on willful ignorance (mayhap harder not to take as insult, but again if you see it that way I'd love to hear an explanation).

I will repeat, I point these things out not to excuse Russia's invasion and war against Ukraine but because I believe it's helpful to discuss motivations (even false, exaggerated, or outdated ones) in any given situation. Russia is right to be concerned with the West's growing influence. It is wrong to react to that with violence and war. And it has hurt itself beyond measure by doing so in this particular instance. I will also repeat that it's not helpful to reflexively attack anyone who points out that the situation isn't completely cut & dry, good vs evil. We saw what happened when my country invaded another country under false pretenses and the propaganda machine was on the other side. It wasn't a good thing.

Exactly. To be fair, it is not unanimous, for example here in Slovakia we have quite large percentage of people who think that the government should only care about our own people and shouldn't provide any help to Ukraine during the inflation. Also, they think that NATO is largely responsible for the war and we should just stay out of it altogether, that it doesn not concern us (basically the Hungarian way).
But these are the same people who were protesting against all covid restrictions and vaccination, who thought that russia is not a threat and we should have as much cooperation with them as we have with the West, who think that minorities and human rights activists are responsible for all their problems and who think that George Soros is secretely running all of this region's politics. So, one can either argue with them usually to no effect, or just ignore them and hope that some of them might change their mind over time, maybe even as a result of the current situation.

There's a large percentage of people in every country who have an "us first" attitude, and don't want to get involved in other people's problems. Can't say they're always wrong, either. Our country famously was slow to get involved in the European Wars last century, and two of the main complaints right-wing voters in the US have every election cycle is immigration/refugees and foreign aid, despite the good both do and the extremely exaggerated problems involved with them. Also, on the Soros point, there's sadly an anti-semitic streak in most countries as well. You'll often hear talk about "international banking interests" and "secret cabals", and some will venture out further and mention the Rothschilds. Soros is still a socially acceptable dogwhistle for them.

[babyblob]

Just saw on the News that 60 civilians are feared dead as Russia bombed a school that was being used for shelter.

I guess thats less of those terrorist Ukraine Neo Nazis right?

[Tami]

NEW: Republican candidate for Michigan Governor, Ryan Kelley, just came out against democracy: “Socialism—it starts with democracy. That’s the ticket for the left. They want to push this idea of democracy, which turns into socialism, which turns into communism in every instance.”

Twitter Link

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Twitter Link

Well, of course an idiot Qpublican would say something that moronic.

[Mister Mets]

The reason I think you agree with Dave's transphobia is due to your repeated defenses of it in him and others. I think that his jump to make an Anti-Trans joke was because he doesn't like them and wanted to make them pay for reacting to his anti-trans jokes, just like many pointed about for his Netflix special, so it's not like this is new behavior.

I read you telling us how mandating that airlines cannot require masks wasn't a big deal (Paraphrased) because "everyone who wanted to be vaccinated has been". There was a extended argument where you argued against the effectiveness of masks in school. Gaslighting is pretending you've not done things you have in order to make the other doubt their perceptions, and I'm not letting you do that to me anymore.

Demanding that we hold the GoP to the textbook definition of CRT when it's clear that's not what they believe it is from your own reposted links (Biased Newyorker Story Again?) is disingenuous at best and you making up limits to excuse your support of it at worst.

Finally, you also think that inflating a number from .3% to 4.2% then to 5% isn't a blatant lie, so I'm not going to sweat going through multiple elections worth of data trying to solve for the unprecise effect of gerrymandering alone just to convince you I'm serious when it's clear you aren't. Just stop pretending Mets.

On Chapelle, I was responding to specific points about whether he was trying to frame trans people, or whether he should have assumed immediately after he was attacked that his comments should be interpreted a particular way. I understand that someone who is critical of him in these specific circumstances is going to be critical of him in general, so that it can be seen as a proxy for how he is in general but that's a bad attitude, encouraging people to be wrong on specific questions in order to signal support on a larger topic.

When there's a question about what people secretly believe, it's always worth noting that a possible answer is that they don't know enough about a question to offer an opinion either way. That's mostly where I am on the question of whether Dave Chapelle is a transphobe. I am confident he wasn't trying to frame trans people.

On masks on airplanes, the argument is mostly not about facts. When it comes to masks in schools, I did post the understanding of the facts at the time (mainly late August/ early September 2021) and that's the relevant context.

It seems to me that some people on the left are coming up with their own definition of CRT and then insisting that Republicans agree to it. This seems to be what you're doing if your view is that we shouldn't even go with textbook definitions, while being vague about where your definitions come from.

We had a big argument about the numbers, and you seem to contradict yourself.

I posted an interesting statistic from a respected periodical The Week.

You accuse the writer of lying, and me of lying as well. That seems like a stretch. If a writer gets it wrong, and someone else posts it, it's possible that the writer wasn't lying and made some miscalculation, but it's certainly possible that someone posting what a journalist wrote isn't familiar with a potential flaw. I get that someone posting Infowars or Seth Abramson should know better, but that's a nasty response to someone posting from The Week.

I still think your understanding of the exchange is incorrect.

Here was the article. https://theweek.com/life/1006253/the...er-trans-teens

Here's the section I quote.

But in recent years, vastly more young people are seeking treatment for gender dysphoria, teen girls in particular. In surveys by the American College Health Association, the number of students brought up as girls identifying as transgender soared from 1 in 2,000 in 2008 to 1 in 20.

It's worth noting that The Week summarizes major stories. It doesn't go into significant detail.

According to a survey of transgender youth from June 2017-June 2018 in the National Library of Medicine, two-thirds of those who identified as nonbinary were assigned female at birth. Incidentally, the percentage was higher for individuals who identified as having a binary gender (IE- male, female, trans male/ trans man/ trans masculine or trans female/ trans woman/ trans feminine.)

I posted a link to what appears to be the survey in question.
https://www.acha.org/documents/ncha/...ATA_REPORT.pdf

Trans men are 0.3% of the students. However, the percentage of afab (Assigned Female at Birth) students who are trans men will be higher than the percentage in a survey of all college students.

Other students are listed as genderqueer, non-binary, agender, or genderfluid. The total percentage is 3.7 percent, although this is of the larger student body and not limited to students who are afab.

The original context was also whether there had been an increase from 1 in 2,000. Even if we had a restrictive definition of trans limited to trans men and trans women, there would be a major increase in students identifying as trans men if 1 in 200 afab students are seeking services related to being trans men.

There is a view that people who identify as genderfluid or non-binary or agender do not count as trans, and I thought that was the dispute, but you said it wasn't.

https://community.cbr.com/showthread...=1#post6031977

I admit that it was possible, in the context of what had been posted, that a significant majority of individuals identifying as nonbinary, agender, etc were biological males/ raised as boys, and that this would skew the statistics. I looked up the data, and there's no indication of this.

According to a survey of transgender youth from June 2017-June 2018 in the National Library of Medicine, two-thirds of those who identified as nonbinary were assigned female at birth. Incidentally, the percentage was higher for individuals who identified as having a binary gender (IE- male, female, trans male/ trans man/ trans masculine or trans female/ trans woman/ trans feminine.) So that suggests that in a general survey of college students, afab students would likely be overrepresented in categories like genderfluid, genderqueer, agender and non-binary. The reporter rounding up a bit checks out.

[Mister Mets]

With JD Vance winning the Republican primary for Senate in Ohio, the Lincoln project promised to get involved.

The response from Democratic candidate Tim Ryan's Communication's Director was a simple "pls no."

https://twitter.com/chevytothe_levy/...10686620819456

Any progressives in Ohio looking for work might want to check into Tim Ryan's campaign, as well as any third party groups getting involved, as it's likely going that the race is going to get more attention in the general election.

[Kirby101]

Remember , this is the conservative answer to fossil fuels.

Georgia nuclear plant’s cost now forecast to top $30 billion

While every GOP Administration since Reagan has tried to get in the way of solar and wind.

[Tendrin]

OH WBE-EEEE....

https://www.***************.com/ariz...control-2022-5

Blake Masters, a GOP Senate candidate running on an anti-abortion platform in Arizona, is also taking aim at the case that established the right to access
birth control
on his campaign website.

"I am 100% pro-life. Roe v. Wade was a horrible decision. It was wrong the day it was decided in 1973, it's wrong today, and it must be reversed. But the fight doesn't stop there," Master's campaign website reads. It goes on to pledge the candidate will "vote only for federal judges who understand that Roe and Griswold and Casey were wrongly decided, and that there is no constitutional right to abortion."

Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey established and protected the right to an abortion in 1973 and 1992, respectively. But the Griswold case, decided in 1965, overturned a statewide ban on birth control and protected citizen's rights to privacy against state restrictions on contraceptives.

Masters identifies himself as a Catholic father of three on his campaign site. The Catholic Church has had an official ban on any "artificial" birth control methods, including condoms and diaphragms, since 1930. Since birth control pills were invented in 1960, the church has maintained its stance that the medication should only be used for non-contraceptive reasons.

But Reasonable Conservatives told us they had no interest in banning birth control and it totally wouldn't be next on their agenda.

Then again, with this being in your neck of the woods, you probably already have this. xD

[Zelena]

Just saw on the News that 60 civilians are feared dead as Russia bombed a school that was being used for shelter.

I guess thats less of those terrorist Ukraine Neo Nazis right?

And today the Russians are celebrating their victory over the Nazis…