#critical race theory

[liberalsarecool]

Context is education AND knowledge AND empathy. It's how you recognize and strengthen humanity.

[catboybiologist]

I'm going to do a cursory reading and screenshot what I think are the most alarming parts in a bit.

AS ALWAYS, I am not a journalist, a legal scholar, or anything like that. I'm an average trans woman with an unrelated science background trying to parse this

[blondebrainpowered]

Artist Jonathan Harris and his painting titled “Critical Race Theory"

It’s a hauntingly effective image. A blonde figure stands, back to the viewer and paint roller in hand, covering up the images of Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman, and Malcolm X with strokes of white paint. Critical Race Theory (2021) has been embraced as a powerful reminder of the importance of teaching and preserving Black history.

The canvas is the work of Detroit artist Jonathan Harris, who, since taking up painting full time nearly four years ago, has dedicated himself to making work expressing his lived experience as a Black man in the U.S. Critical race theory, which examines the ways in which racism is embedded in our nation’s legal systems and policies, has been circulating in academic circles since the 1970s. But it began making headlines, especially in conservative media, in 2022 as some local lawmakers sought to proactively ban its teaching.

[mysharona1987]

Literally the dude is pulling a Bond villain and explaining the evil plan beforehand.

And the press will still fall for it.

[makingdonalddrumpfagain]

[whatevergreen]

Black Studies - Emory Douglas, from The Black Panther (newspaper), c1970

"We Want Education for Our People That Exposes The True Nature Of This Decadent American Society. We Want Education That Teaches Us Our True History And Our Role in the Present-Day Society. We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world then he has little chance to relate to anything else."

(No5 from The Black Panther Party Ten-Point Program of October 15, 1966)

PDF archive of The Black Panther news:

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Lois Beckett at The Guardian:

Attacks targeting American public schools over LGBTQ+ rights and education about race and racism cost those schools an estimated $3.2bn in the 2023-24 school year, according to a new report by education professors from four major American universities. The study is believed to be the first attempt to quantify the financial impact of rightwing political campaigns targeting school districts and school boards across the US. In the wake of the pandemic, these campaigns first attempted to restrict how American schools educate students about racism, and then increasingly shifted to spreading fear among parents about schools’ policies about transgender students and LGBTQ+ rights.

Researchers from UCLA, UT Austin, UC Riverside and American University surveyed 467 public school superintendents across 46 US states, asking them about the direct and indirect costs of dealing with these volatile campaigns. Those costs included everything from out-of-pocket payments to hire to lawyers or additional security, to the staff member hours devoted to responding to disinformation on social media, addressing parent concerns and replying to voluminous public records requests focused on the district’s teachings on racism, gender and sexuality. The campaigns that focused on public schools’ policies about transgender students often included lurid false claims about schools trying to change students’ gender or “indoctrinating” them into becoming gay. This disinformation sparked harassment and threats against individual teachers, school board members and administrators, with some of the fury coming from within local communities, and even more angry calls, emails and social media posts flooding in from conservative media viewers across the country.

In addition to the financial costs of responding to these targeted campaigns, the study revealed other dynamics, the researchers said. “The attack on public officials as pedophiles was one I heard again and again, from people across extremely different parts of the country: rural, urban, suburban. It speaks to the way that this really is a nationalized conflict campaign,” said John Rogers, an education professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the lead author of the study. The frequency with which both school board members and school superintendents were “being called out as sexual predators – it was really frightening”, Rogers said. Superintendents from across the country told the researchers how these culture battles had affected their schools, and cut into resources they would have preferred to spend on education.

[...] While disagreement, debate and dealing with angry parents are a normal part of local public school administration, the researchers noted, the political campaigns that schools have faced in recent years have been anything but normal. Many of them have been driven by “a small number of active individuals on social media or at school board meetings”, and fueled by misinformation. The school-focused campaigns, which started with claims that elementary and middle schools were harming white students by teaching critical race theory and later shifted to attacks on schools’ policies for transgender students, were nationally organized, with “common talking points” that could be traced back to conservative foundations and rightwing legal organizations, and were intensely amplified by rightwing media coverage, Rogers said.

Public schools across the US burned up nearly $3.2BN worth of money fending off right-wing culture war items such as book bans, anti-LGBTQ+ extremism, anti-student inclusion, and anti-racial equity policies.

See Also:

The Advocate: U.S. public schools lost $3.2 billion fighting conservative culture wars: report

[typhlonectes]

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/specious

1 : having a false look of truth or genuineness : sophistic specious reasoning 2 : having deceptive attraction or allure 3 obsolete : showy

--

Noam Chomsky: If you look at what's happening, I think it's pretty easy to figure out what's going on. I mean, suppose you are a literary scholar at some elite university. Or, you know, anthropologist or whatever. I mean, if you do your work seriously, that’s fine, you know. But you don’t get any big prizes for it.

On the other hand, you take a look over in the rest of the university and you’ve got these guys in the physics department and the math department and they have all kinds of complicated theories, which of course we can’t understand, but they seem to understand them. And they have, you know, principles and they deduce complicated things from the principles and they do experiments and they find either they work or they don’t work. And that’s really, you know, impressive stuff.

So I want to be like that too. I want to have a theory. In the humanities, you know, literary criticism, anthropology and so on, there’s a field called theory. We’re just like the physicists. They talk incomprehensibly, we can talk incomprehensibly. They have big words, we’ll have big words. They draw, you know, far-reaching conclusions, we’ll draw far-reaching conclusions. We’re just as prestigious as they are.

Now if they say, well look, we’re doing real science and you guys aren’t, that’s white male, sexist, you know, bourgeois or whatever the answer is. How are we any different from them?

==

I worry that when I describe this idiocy as "fraud," people think I'm exaggerating, being hyperbolic or otherwise overstating it.

I'm not. If anything, I'm understating it.

All of this postmodern crap we're dealing with is completely fake. All this ridiculous intersectional jargon is a big grift. All of these domains producing this ridiculous nonsense are bogus and corrupt. All the scholarship they produce is fraudulent. It's fake from top to bottom.

All of it.

These people are cloaking asinine retardation in fancy words to cover up how asinine and retarded this asinine retardation is.

The people producing it are shallow and stupid. Not to mention, envious and spiteful about the status and authority of science. They just use absurd jargon to hide that fact and trick you into thinking it's too deep and profound for you to understand. But when it's decoded into simple English, à la the Tweet summaries above, the retarded, moronic nature becomes obvious.

The response to this kind of ridiculous shit needs to be laughter and derision, not tenure or a tertiary qualification.

We have to get rid of it because it's destroying our societies.

[spacenoirdetective]

I'm unimpressed

Whenever any leftist interacts with me, it's always the same. They posture and laugh at me for being a conservative. They look down on me. They cite false statistics or allegations fed to them by propaganda networks. They exhibit arrogance, smug superiority and overwhelming condescension without any knowledge, understanding or moral fortitude to back it up. When everything else fails, they resort to the New Communist slogan of "racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic".

To which I respond: My best friends include a black man from Trinidad, a Latina woman who immigrated to the US at the age of five, a man with Aspergers and severe anxiety disorder, a black lesbian, an Indian South African, a Chinese American woman, an octogenarian gay man, a Cameroonian man and a Saudi Arabian man who describes himself as pansexual. And a whole bunch of really awesome white people who are not racist, sexist, homophobic or transphobic.

I'm gay. I voted for Trump because i don't believe the Democrats love me. I don't need them to love me. I don't want their love. They love sin and the embrace of dark triad behavior as their paragon for leadership skills, totalitarian thought control, the destruction of society, and they seek to make atheism the norm. They love the denigration of any individual that defies them, disagrees with their tactics, calls out their lies...they hate truthtellers. They hate anyone that places God as an imperative and sacred texts as crucial to their ethical conduct. They hate anyone that threatens their power and they believe in encouraging public vitriol to meet their needs. They believe in the destruction of the nuclear family. They encourage the worship of and dependence on the state to replace the family. They believe in a direct pipeline between the White House and newly established propaganda networks that cater only to the Democrat Party and the CIA. They believe in reputation destruction using those propaganda networks. They believe they have the right to assassinate Trump and anyone else who they deem a threat to their power. They have initiated the single worst attack on children in the history of our country via human trafficking and institutionalized rape ordered by the CIA. They normalized embezzlement, money laundering and inflationary tax on an unheard of scale to further demoralize the populace and inflate their own bank accounts. They conduct constant psychological war against their own people, which extends to perverting the minds of their children without their knowledge via the trans cult, the gender theory cult, and the DEI/Critical Race Theory cult.

On the issue of transphobia, I certainly don't endorse violence. But it is not violence to state that all trans people are mentally ill and they must be stopped from mutilation of children and sterilizing minors with puberty blockers, from demanding forced speech regarding their delusions, from using public funds to procure trans surgeries and from public attaining positions of power such as the Secretary of Health where they may spread their perverse cult directives causing psychological and physiological arm to adults and children alike.

They believe in these things because they want to secure a future for an elite minority that takes everything for itself, enslaves the rest of the populace, and convinces the populace that their astronomical greed is justifiable and that their destructive policies that result in totalitarian hell should be embraced as godly, necessary, and protective measures. They mockingly wear a mask of sympathy, compassion and the moniker of "social justice" which is nothing more than a code for "thought police" whose sole purpose is to implant hatred for political opponents and self hatred amongst whites, any minorities with religious sensibilities, and the intelligentia at large.

The future that they desire is a constant hell of pervasive misery and support of a one party state, supported by thoughtless government worship, slogan repetition, dehumanization of political opposition, desensitization to violence to meet the ends of the party's plans, mentacide, hatred of the past and all the accomplishments of Western Civilization, physical degradation and obesity from technological addiction and slow chemical poisoning from tainted food and lastly lowering testosterone via pbthalates.

I'm a gay white male and that doesn't play into my vote. It shouldn't. The body you're born with shouldn't determine your vote. Your party has done absolutely nothing for me. You have never done anything to help me. I am happy to fight you to the bitter end in any way I can to stop you from the communist genocide you so lovingly long for.

[blackownersseekingsuccess]

Remembering Bayard Rustin: The Unsung Hero of the Civil Rights Movement

written by Levi Wise Kenneth Catoe Jr.

August 1, 2024 - Growing up as a Black boy in Paterson, NJ, and attending Roman and Irish Catholic Parochial schools, Black history was not very familiar to me. I grew up in a religious Southern Baptist family and participated in the church choir. In this context, Martin Luther King, Jr., was all that I knew about Black history until I became a teenage Madonna fanatic. Ironically, Madonna made me aware of Black activists and radicals such as Nina Simone, Jean-Michel Basquiat, James Baldwin, and Bayard Rustin. Bayard Rustin was an African American activist who believed in civil disobedience. Rustin felt that Black people should deliberately break unjust laws but do it non-violently to bring about change and this would play a key role in the Civil Rights movement. He also advocated for LGBTQ rights. Rustin moved to Harlem in 1937 and began studying at City College of New York. It’s interesting to note that at the time CCNY was an all-male college once regarded as ‘Jewish Harvard’ which did not accept Black men—Rustin was an unusual exception. While Rustin was at CCNY he became involved in efforts to defend and free the Scottsboro Boys, nine young black men in Alabama who were accused of raping two white women. Activism for Rustin was something that came naturally. He later became a mentor to Martin Luther King.

Rustin is one of my all-time idols. I have been enamored of him since I learned about him, so I was excited to attend an event dedicated to his life and legacy at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, “Between the Lines: Bayard Rustin, A Legacy of Protest and Politics.” The event was a conversation between Michael G. Long and Jafari Allen, who edited the book of the same name. Their exchange sparked many revelations and I left the event more aware than when I entered. I felt so much pity for the life that Rustin had to live, including the attack on his character that was rallied against him by other Black people and the distance that Martin Luther King placed between himself and Rustin out of fear of people assuming that he was also gay. I also learned that it was Coretta Scott King who introduced King to Rustin. Scott-King met Rustin during her college years as a fellow activist who practiced civil disobedience. She would ultimately introduce her husband King to civil disobedience tactics. Rustin recalled that his first time meeting King he was strapped with a handgun and that he never traveled without his gun. It was Rustin who told King that if he represented civil disobedience he would have to be willing to put away his firearm, which eventually he did. Nevertheless, this raises the question, who was King really? The “I Have A Dream” pacifist or the “Beyond Vietnam” radical? We will never truly know.

All in all what I did learn was that according to Rustin, King had no idea how to organize an event. Instead, it was Rustin who developed the blueprint for King’s early Civil Rights movement, at least until the day that King removed Rustin from his inner circle.

Nevertheless, Rustin returned to organize the March on Washington, despite everything leveled against him by Adam Clayton Powel and Roy Wilkins. Someone noted during the discussion that “it’s funny how karma works given the fact that nobody remembers Wilkins's legacy in comparison to the sudden interest in Rustin.'' If I remember correctly, the comment was made by the moderator, NYU professor Dr. Jarafi Allen, based on the fact that the venue was standing room only, or that the Hollywood lens is now fixated on Rustin’s story, with an Academy Award-nominated movie based upon his life currently in theaters. Wilkins has not received the same interest from Hollywood, perhaps indicating that he is less marketable in the mainstream. Meanwhile, Rustin’s role as an activist for the LGTBQ community is also important for newer generations. Until recently, this legacy and all that he accomplished was invisible, but he has since become a symbol of the “others” and most notably the “forgotten others”. While in his lifetime he was shunned, rallied against, and betrayed by those that he benefitted, history has allowed his legacy the final word.

[the-rad1o-demon]

Please do what you can to stop this bill from being passed, and please share this message where you can. It's going to be very bad for pretty much everyone on the Internet if this bill is passed. If you're skeptical: There are resources online with more information about the KOSA bill, including articles written by lawmakers explaining why this bill is a terrible idea. There is even a TechDirt article written by Mike Masnick titled "Marsha Blackburn Makes It Clear: KOSA Is Designed To Silence Trans People" where they write of and post a video in which Senator Marsha Blackburn (who co-wrote the bill) explicitly stated that this bill would be used to target the trans community. So please share this in your stories, with your family and friends, and call your Senators to tell them not to sign this bill. And if you know anyone in Massachusetts, tell them to call Senator Warren to ask her to withdraw her support of the bill. Thank you for your time and consideration.

EDIT - UPDATE:

Please read the post I linked below, it pertains to the status of the KOSA bill. Things are not looking good right now.

UPDATE #2:

Please look at this post!

[kemetbone]

Know Thy Self

[existennialmemes]

One side wants to give children information so they're more capable of navigating the world and making informed decisions about their lives.

While the other side wants to deprive children of information so they have no choice but to immediately accept whatever is told to them.

It's pretty clear which side is the cult.

[longreads]

“Hundreds of copies lined the shelves of the bookroom, hidden, mute. Nothing is more silent than an unread book.”

In her new Longreads essay, Anne P. Beatty revisits the Greensboro Massacre of 1979 and reflects on the power of speaking up and the things we do—and don’t—teach.

Read her thoughtful piece, “When We Are Afraid,” on Longreads.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Alex Cooper at The Advocate:

President Donald Trump signed a new executive order Wednesday, banning schools that receive federal funding from allowing students to identify with the name and pronouns that best match their gender identity. It also bars the use of bathrooms and lockers by trans kids that best fit their gender identity and bans them from playing on the most appropriate sports team. Advocates say the order forces schools to deny the existence of transgender people. The order specifically calls out social transitioning of transgender students in public schools. Social transitioning may include things like coming out as trans or nonbinary, going by a different name, dressing in a way that aligns better with a person's gender identity, using a different type of voice, and using pronouns that better reflect a person's identity. Trump's latest attack on transgender youth also targets the schools, teachers, counselors, and staff who support them. It requires parents of students to be notified if students request to use a different name or pronoun, potentially outing the student. Trans rights activists note this could put these students at risk of harm.

On Wednesday, anti-trans bully Tyrant 47 signs a hateful executive order attacking LGBTQ+ (esp. trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming) students, teachers, and staff, and LGBTQ+/trans-inclusive school policies by threatening to pull funding from schools that protect LGBTQ+ students.

The EO mandates student safety-harming forced outing policies, bars trans students from playing on sports teams and using bathrooms and locker rooms congruent with their gender identity, mandating nationwide don’t say gay or trans policies, and disallows social transition (by mandating arrests of trans-friendly teachers and school staff).

Getting less attention, but equally concerning, is the reinstation of the 1776 Commission that seeks to end racial equity programs on the false basis of "promoting ‘critical race theory’” as “anti-White.”

See Also:

HuffPost: Trump Signs Sweeping Executive Order Targeting ‘Gender Ideology’ In Schools

LGBTQ Nation: Donald Trump bans trans-inclusive school policies in executive order

Mother Jones: Trump Tells DOJ to Prosecute Teachers Who “Unlawfully” Support Trans or Nonbinary Students

Axios: Trump threatens funding for schools that accommodate transgender children