Quote of the Week...

My favorite quote of this week is one I can't find but went something like this... It was a question asked of folks in wheelchairs about what they wish other people knew. One response...

"I would like for people to stop saying I'm 'confined to a wheelchair.'

My wheelchair is NOT a prison I'm confined in. My wheelchair is my LIBERTY. In my wheelchair, I can get out in the world and be free."

Word.

Learn about CRT Through What is Actually Being Said...

So much disinformation is being spread gleefully, wantonly by people who are hating the idea of Critical Race Theory (CRT) being discussed or taught. In article after article from right wing sources, I see people gossiping and slandering CRT as being Marxist, Anti-American and a whole slew of attack words - the same words that were being used by white people against Martin Luther King, Jr 60 years ago.

In article after article, I see these white people/white conservatives criticizing it, dismissing it, even trying to outlaw it! ...and the one common denominator I'm seeing is that they usually aren't citing the actual theory. They just use attack words like "Marxist" in their efforts to Cancel Culture CRT. Ironically. When they do cite the actual words used by CRT promoters, it's always out of context. But generally speaking, they just don't even cite the actual theory.

This is, of course, stupidly wrong and part of the problem that remains from modern Trump conservatism. 

[And I have to tell you that I am loathe to keep citing this miscreant, but he pretty perfectly sums up what has become of conservatism. Truth and facts don't matter. Attacks are good, repeated attacks are better... you repeat the attacks and the lies and name-calling enough times and some people will start believing the disinformation. At least, the useful idiots will. (Trump has gone on record as saying this deviant "positive thinking" strategy is part of what he embraces.) Just to be clear, Trump is not the cause of this cancer on modern conservatism - conservatives have brought it on themselves. But he is the epitome and poster boy for what has become of modern conservatism. /end rant.]

So, in an effort to battle this cancer on good, rational adult thinking, here is what CRT thinkers are actually saying. If you want to disagree with what they're saying, do it based on facts, not gossip and grade school attacks. Not the style of attacks and demonizations that white supremacists used against King and the Civil Rights movement.

++++++++

Principles of the CRT Practice

While recognizing the evolving and malleable nature of CRT, scholar Khiara Bridges outlines a few key tenets of CRT, including:

• Recognition that race is not biologically real but is socially constructed and socially significant. It recognizes that science (as demonstrated in the Human Genome Project) refutes the idea of biological racial differences. According to scholars Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, race is the product of social thought and is not connected to biological reality.
• Acknowledgement that racism is a normal feature of society and is embedded within systems and institutions, like the legal system, that replicate racial inequality. This dismisses the idea that racist incidents are aberrations but instead are manifestations of structural and systemic racism.
• Rejection of popular understandings about racism, such as arguments that confine racism to a few “bad apples.” CRT recognizes that racism is codified in law, embedded in structures, and woven into public policy. CRT rejects claims of meritocracy or “colorblindness.” CRT recognizes that it is the systemic nature of racism that bears primary responsibility for reproducing racial inequality.
• Recognition of the relevance of people’s everyday lives to scholarship. This includes embracing the lived experiences of people of color, including those preserved through storytelling, and rejecting deficit-informed research that excludes the epistemologies of people of color.

CRT does not define racism in the traditional manner as solely the consequence of discrete irrational bad acts perpetrated by individuals but is usually the unintended (but often foreseeable) consequence of choices. It exposes the ways that racism is often cloaked in terminology regarding “mainstream,” “normal,” or “traditional” values or “neutral” policies, principles, or practices. And, as scholar Tara Yosso asserts, CRT can be an approach used to theorize, examine, and challenge the ways which race and racism implicitly and explicitly impact social structures, practices, and discourses. CRT observes that scholarship that ignores race is not demonstrating “neutrality” but adherence to the existing racial hierarchy...

Foundational questions that underlie CRT and the law include: How does the law construct race?; How has the law protected racism and upheld racial hierarchies?; How does the law reproduce racial inequality?; and How can the law be used to dismantle race, racism, and racial inequality?

...Like any other approach, CRT can be misunderstood and misapplied. It has been distorted and attacked. And it continues to change and evolve. The hope in CRT is in its recognition that the same policies, structures, and scholarship that can function to disenfranchise and oppress so many also holds the potential to emancipate and empower many. It provides a lens through which the civil rights lawyer can imagine a more just nation.

From the ABA...

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/civil-rights-reimagining-policing/a-lesson-on-critical-race-theory/

+++++

"Critical race theory is a practice.
It's an approach to grappling with a history of White supremacy that
rejects the belief that what's in the past is in the past, and that
the laws and systems that grow from that past are detached from it,"

said Kimberlé Crenshaw, a founding critical race theorist and a law professor who teaches at UCLA and Columbia University...

Crenshaw notes that merely acknowledging the nation's history of racism has long been vilified as unpatriotic and anti-American.

"It bears acknowledging that we've been here before: For his non-violent agitation for civil rights, MLK was targeted by the FBI as the most dangerous man in America," she said.

"The civil rights and Black freedom movements were targeted, surveilled and disrupted by the FBI. Black Lives Matter has been framed by some in law enforcement as a terrorist organization. So racial justice work ... has always had an uneasy relationship with the federal government."

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/01/us/critical-race-theory-explainer-trnd/index.html

+++++

If people want to talk about CRT, I'm fine with talking about it. But we should begin with discussions based on what the advocates of it are actually saying. If you're only citing sources that white supremacists would applaud, you're not doing your part as a responsible moral adult.

Strike a blow to tyranny. Let us reason like adults.

On This Indepedence Day...

As we move into this Fourth of July weekend, let's remember and be grateful for those who fought so hard to secure and protect our liberties...

The Protesters.

The agitators, the rabble rousers, those who cared enough to fight for justice and lay their lives on the line for the liberty of all of us.

Thanks to the Boston Tea Party vandals who took a chance and even destroyed property in the fight for liberty.

Thanks to the Abolitionists who broke laws to save lives.

Thanks to our Suffragists who reminded us that we don't have freedom until ALL of us have a voice.

Thanks to the Civil Rights heroes, who struggled so hard for so long to finally make sure that everyone could vote and to fight for justice in so many ways against such vicious opposition.

Thanks to the Stonewall rioters and those who've fought so hard for the rights of historically oppressed people.

Thanks to those who've marched to protest unjust wars that cause such rampant death and destruction around the world.

Thanks to those who've struggled to protect our shared planet, our air, our water, our flora and fauna.

Thanks to those who crawled up steps and agitated for the rights of those with disabilities.

Thanks to BLM and others who continue the fight for the rights of all and to stand against the very real problem of systemic racism.

Thanks to the teachers, the historians, the organizers, the planners, those who learn about and lead us in Non-Violent Civil Disobedience, the allies, the leaders, the followers, the letter writers, the ones who work to improve policies.

Thanks to the creative types and the wonks. The poets, the artists, the singers, the writers, the policy writers, the program writers... We needed you to remind us that we SHALL overcome someday.

Thanks to those who show up.

Thanks to the weirdos and the cranks, the outsiders and those just fighting to get by.

Thanks to Jesus, who led one of the first acts of Civil Disobedience, when he destroyed property and chased the oppressive money changers out of the temple.

Thanks to all who've fought for justice and liberty in one way or another over the millennia. Thanks for making the US, and the world, a better place.

My Self

 My Self
does not end
at my skin
I take in
the World all around
and I
am taken in

And when
a wall is built
my friend
a barrier to block
and cage
I'll tear down
that wall
in righteous rage
I'll shout
I'll fight
I will delight
in tearing out
that page

from that accursed accounting book
that inventory of ruined slaves

for I am free
oh, yes, you see
I will never be contained

For
My Self
does not end
at my skin
I take in
the World all around
and I
am taken in.