[conspire] (OT) propaganda du jour (was: geopolitics)

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):

> On the subject of micro-targeted propaganda, a few years ago, there
> was a lot of chatter about something called "critical race theory".  
> The phrase caught my attention. I wondered what exactly is critical
> race theory? 

There's the actual thing (discussed in some advanced college or graduate
school courses), and there's the symbolic hate thing (allegedly but not
actually taught in elementary school and/or high school).  They are of
course wildly different.  

You can predict that they are wildly different through a very simple
step:  Ask various right-wing critics what the thing they decry _is_.
Each critic will outline a different thing -- and not one of those
things will credibly qualify as a "theory" in any academic sense.

The right-wing critics invent a thing they hate, purport to find it in
this-or-that public school materials, and object to it, calling it
"critical race theory" even though the term means something else
entirely.

An academic named Prof. Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw invented the term in
the 1980s, as the name for an academic discipline trying to solve a
puzzling problem:  Racism remains a prominent problem in US society,
perpetuating disparities along racial grounds, despite decades of civil
rights reforms -- so, _why is that the case_?  Why does the problem
obviously persist, and why are there still racist heirarchies that
continue to mess up lives, despite good intentions and a lot of good
work over many decades?

To try to understand how and why racism nonetheless persists, theorists
look closely at how racism operates at a lived-experience level in
American law and culture, to better understand it.  As such, it was a
challenge to academic orthodoxy of the day, which wasn't otherwise able
to really explain that.

The field has critics within academia who ding it for putting excessive
faith in personal narrative and thereby sacrificing rigour, but still
it's a real and honest effort to address a question otherwise not easy
to answer.

What do the right-wing critics, 50+ years later, think the term means?
It (probably) differs depending on whom you ask, what they purport to be
fighting, and, dunno, maybe the phase of the moon -- but none of the
things they refer to by that name bares the slightest resemblance to the
actual academic school of thought bearing that name.

In general, the running theme among their objections is their bizarre
notion that any discussion that acknowledges racism having been real 
is, itself, racist, and must be banned as such.  

Which is, y'know, quite the hat trick.  "You are not allowed to talk
about a burglary, because in doing so you are implicitly committing
burglary and would need to be arrested."  Make about as much sense.


Now, Paul, you happen to have asked about something that is used as
theoretical and emotionally symbolic red meat to whip up the passions of
emotionally labile people unwilling or unable to stop and think.  If
someone attempts to do that here, I am going to come down like the wrath
of God on that entire discussion, as listadmin, and I ask you to please
in future be careful about what ideological shibboleths you raise on
this mailing list.

This forum ought to not become "Please explain to me $CURRENT_THING
hotheads are angry about; I'm sure nothing bad will happen."  Yeah, 
please don't.  I really don't need that sort of headache.