I think a lot more folks on the center-right would be open to discussion if the left and center-left would just acknowledge the enormous progress we as a country have made over the last thirty years in race relations. My wife and I just visited a beach popular with the working class a few weekends ago, and there were “rednecks,” African-Americans, and Hispanics swimming together in the same river, drinking together in the same dive bars, and listening to the same lousy Sublime cover band. If you get your information from Twitter or what passes for journalism these days, you’d expect Thunderdome, instead of blue-collar families of all races just having a good day at the beach.
I grew up in a time when there were still de facto black and white beaches in Virginia. I’ve seen amazing progress here in the Commonwealth during my lifetime. I take my dog to a park in a suburb of Richmond which was known for its overt racism when I was a kid. It appalled the “genteel” white establishment, who may have been racist but with a sense of noblesse oblige. Today, you see mixed race couples at the park with their dogs, practicing their swing on the baseball diamond, having picnics, etc, and everyone is friendly. Even fifteen, twenty years ago, you would have expected for the whites to give them the cold shoulder or whisper about it in concerned tones, if not overtly telling them they weren’t welcome. I’m not saying there isn’t racism today, or that the racism there is doesn’t need to be addressed, but just a few years ago things were so much worse. We should celebrate the progress we’ve made more, IMHO, instead of letting this CRT metastasize out of the social sciences into society as a whole.
By whom was the park known as overtly racist? How did you, as a kid, avail yourself of the knowledge? Can you provide some specific examples of the white establishment? Who were they? What made them genteel - heir skin color or their wealth?
The problem with anecdotal evidence is that it is indistinguishable from fan-fiction. It is weightless.
When did segregated beaches become illegal in VA? Is it your claim that happened in the last 30 years? Please so cite your source on this topic.
Are you familiar with Seaview Beach and Amusement Park? It was established in VA in the 40's as a 'coloreds only' resort. It featured a carousel, Ferris wheel and skeeball, along with fireworks, beauty pageants and performances by Louis Armstrong and Fats Domino Jr. In its heyday, it attracted 10,000 tourists on summer weekends.
Do you know when it went away? Do you know why? Does it have something to do with the laws that govern segregated beaches? What are the dates involved?
I moved out of VA in the 80's and the racist hellscape you describe wasn't present. What do you imagine might have changed since then to manifest the conditions you describe? It wasn't legislation.
It wasn’t the park that was overtly racist. It was the area it was in. The white working class moved out of the East End of Richmond during the ‘60’s and ‘70’s into Mechanicsville, and they brought a pile of race resentment with them because of it.
I grew up in the western end of Hanover County, the county in which Mechanicsville was located, and there was a palpable sense in the difference between how African-Americans were treated east and west of Interstate 95.
I grew up in the white middle class establishment circles of the County. I know how people talked about “coloreds” on either side of the divide. I’m sure there was a class aspect to the divide. Eastern Hanover and Mechanicsville were blue collar comeheres, whereas Western Hanover had more established, long-term families of both races who knew and had grown up together. It was a softer, more paternalistic racism, but it was racism nonetheless.
Blacks went to Buckroe Beach in Hampton, and whites went to Virginia Beach and Colonial Beach, which was the beach I’d mentioned in my first comment. Oceanview in Norfolk transitioned from white to black to white retirees in my lifetime. Under segregation, Buckroe had been designated a black beach, and that continued by custom long after Jim Crow had been repealed.
And don’t attack me for using anecdotal data when all you’ve offered is anecdotal data. I never said that Virginia in the ‘80’s was a hellscape; I’m saying it’s a helluva lot better now.
I have used my anecdotal evidence to counter your as an illustration of the uselessness of anecdotal evidence.
Anyone can say anything. This establishes nothing.
How can you demonstrate that anything you claimed to have happened actually did happen? Anecdotal evidence won't get you there.
If you cannot demonstrate it to others, it seems obvious that you have not demonstrated it to yourself. How can you ensure that you aren't taking one or two random events from a very specific place at a very specific time, enshrined them in memory, and discounted all other counter evidence?
Even if you could establish that this is not the case, upon what basis can you rationally extrapolate those incidents as representative of VA, or the US writ large?
You are free to use anecdotal data all you wish. You are in no way immune from scrutiny when doing so.
I would have worn a wire when I was in my teens if I knew that I’d be harangued like this by a fellow anti-critical race theorizer. I didn’t know I’d need anything more than my first person experience.
You are absolutely correct. I’ve lived in Central Virginia for forty-four years, and I have never observed anything going on around me. And my extensive study of Virginia history was all for naught. Good grief. This is a comments section, not an academic journal.
Are you lazily compositing a high school history quiz about one of your pet topics and feeling clever? I know the type. I've read all your comments and all I know is, you think you're smarter then everyone else. Your tone is so righteous and patronizing that I'm dying to put your in your place, but you didn't bother to stake one. I taught high school social studies to justice involved students in Philly. here's the quiz I would have given them, for you: 1) Give 3 definitions for CRT, a- reactionary, b- moderate, c- radical 2) Using the example of, Seaview Beach and Amusement Park, describe the relationship between socioeconomic pressure and 'ground level' racism?
3) Structural racism? You should ponder those questions, and then self reflect.
If you had read all of my comments, you wouldn't have to ask about CRT. It is covered in more depth elsewhere.
If you care to retreat on that claim and actually read all of my comments, you can respond there if you feel compelled to.
In what ways do you know that I think I am smarter than everyone else? That is a pretty bold claim for me to make through you, given the 8 billion others in competition. I must have some pretty compelling evidence for that claim. What is it? How did you come by it?
To what tone do you refer? Where is it expressed? How have you measured it? What if you are wrong?
What is my place? How have you determined it? By what authority would you put me in it? Through what coercive power?
Thank you for sharing your quiz. What are the answers they gave? How did you evaluate the answers? What did you learn in the process?
It seems a staggering coincidence that you are quizzing them on Seaview Beach and Amusement park. How fortunate that we found each other. I am interested in their answers to that one.
3): That isn't a question. That is two words and a question mark. If you are interested in knowing about structural racism - try defining your terms and testing your premises. It is a good exploratory exercise. Then seek out a primary source and evaluate the evidence at hand.
If you wish to ask a question, I would love to help, but I would need it in the form of a question.
As for self-reflection -- is it the appropriate model of learning in this case? All one can learn through self reflection is what one already has taken in. One is already at the level of cognition of the information. All one is doing is adding more at the same level, or changing the angle from which one considers it.
To break new ground, to provoke intellectual growth, and to surface novel insight, you might try seeking a higher order of thought. This is to say, thought that you are not capable of, but are capable, through struggle, of apprehending. The topic could be CRT, structural racism, or whatever, but it would work on anything. It is that struggle that will elevate your cognition, and cultivate a higher order of thought within yourself.
It isn't easy, but again, that is the point. If it were easy, it wouldn't work.
This is a particularly trenchant article for me personally. I ran for Mayor of Pittsburgh in 2001 and my entire platform was based on the notorious de facto racism of the public school system in Pittsburgh. I ran as a Republican; so of course I lost, but I nevertheless had the bull horn to stand up to the silent racism of the teacher unions who supported that racism. And, with the help of an African American School Board member, I created Take Your Father To School Day, because father absence is fundamentally destructive to student success. I was also the founding board member of a Charter School in Penn Hills Pa, with a primarily African American student population. I sent my own kids there, and they were the only white kids in their classes. The idea of the charter school was to provide gifted education to children whose families simply were not aware of the options for their bright children. Yes, I see institutional racism in education very clearly, and I am an old white guy college professor. And now with college prices sky-rocketing college is simply unaffordable to the VAST majority of African American kids. Critical Race Theory is a white game. It is itself malicious and racist fraud that demonstrably harms black children, while helping white academics pad their vitae to get tenure. CRT? Phooey! Making college affordable to Black families is the authentic place where our culture needs to demonstrate that Black Lives Really Matter. Increase African American SAT scores by spending the money necessary to improve poor city schools. Affordable high quality Education is the doorway to success, Critical Race Theory is not. When I completed my PhD, I told people I was a radical feminist because I really wanted women to like me and to publish feminist articles for my own vita. I had convinced myself that to change who I was would help women. Then I read Christina Hoff Summers and I saw the light. And I was embarrassed too. You do not need to hit yourself in the head with a hammer to prove that you are a good white man. Do what is right; be a mensch, and be who you are authentically. Yes lots of people will not like you. CRT is fraud and it must end.
I like this article quite a bit, but again it does not necessary lead us to conclude that stress felt by students is predominantly race based. Rural, predominantly white, communities suffer tremendous amount of stress from all sorts of awful causes.
significant difference in the prevalence and expression of PTSD." p 30. This study also does not at all demonstrate that race is the key factor in the negative effects of stress in college. And familial involvement is a positive factor. So I am not convinced that it is race that causes the stress that is correlated with low performance but poverty and familial exposure and understanding of formal education. My own qualitative and therefore not generalizable experience, is kids work much harder when they work for their parents than when they work for anyone else. My kids' teachers would not lose sleep if they gave my kids D's. I would be besides myself, and my children's entire lives would change if that is what it took to rectify that sort of performance.
I have no particular disagreement with any of your critiques/observations and I completely agree with you about sample sizes and quantitative research. And, I agree, of course, that poverty and familial exposure play a big, big part in educational outcomes. I have thoughts, and longitudinal research to contribute to our convo, but I'm exhausted. I'll finish whatever the hell I'm talking about later this week.
As a public high school teacher in Philly for over a decade, I also spent some years believing that a good education and a degree could solve many of our most entrenched social ills. But neither my experience, or the research, bares that out. Instead, as usual, the picture is much more complicated. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1135335.pdf
I am sorry to disagree, but I found qualitative research to highly misleading unless there is quantitative research along with it. As in this case the sample sizes are too small and not nearly enough care has been taken to control for all sorts of extraneous variables, not to mention simple sampling bias. The key problem with CRT is it begins with a hermeneutics of suspicion and finds exactly what it hopes to find. It many ways CRT is itself a conspiracy theory with the most dangerous oddity that the conspirators do not even know they are conspirators. Yes absolutely there is pervasive racism in America, but it is not baked into the cake. It is not systemic. It is systematic in many institutions, educational funding is the most dramatic example. When public education is paid for by real estate taxes, that guarantees that communities with inexpensive homes pay much higher tax rates and still do not raise enough money to pay for adequate education. Zip codes now determine the quality of public school education. 10 mils on a $1.5 million dollar home pays for a much nicer school and much higher paid teachers than 20 mils on a $50,000 home. Systemic racism? No. Pervasive racism? Yes, absolutely. Public education should be paid for by the state or even the federal government not the local school districts.
Thank you for laying out so clearly the perils of sacrificing thought for allegiance to a cause. I taught African American Political Thought at a small liberal arts college for over twenty years. I would love to see more attention given to the deep thinking of W. E. B. DuBois and James Baldwin who understood the perils of simplistic reasoning.
James Baldwin often espoused a lot of the same tenants as CRT in interviews. It would be interesting to map out the timeline of his commentary vs the establishment of CT and CRT.
Good piece. Bernstein especially deserves credit for acknowledging that CRT does contain a grain of truth that, no matter how much it gets exaggerated into a lie, is still true. It ought to be possible to say at the same time that they deserve a seat at the table and they do not deserve the sort of totalitarian power they're demanding.
Of course, politics these days would see that as a weak-ass compromise by someone who doesn't have the balls to (as Colbert's old character would say) "Pick a side! We're at war!" Which is what's wrong with politics these days.
Oh, and since he does touch on Israeli-Palestinian matters, I do have a question for him. Is he willing to concede that a reasonable person might conclude that "It's ours because we live here" and "It's ours because our ancestors lived here thousands of years ago" are really not two equally legitimate claims?
Hi David Bernstein: thank you for your essay and especially for the way you carefully lay out the problems with the "demand for deference." I'm with you! As an academic who's worked in a radical "studies" field for what feels like way too long, I just want to suggest one correction: there's more to "standpoint epistemology" than you suggest in this admittedly brief essay. The problem sometimes is that what starts out as a complex intellectual undertaking with curious people working out the costs and benefits of a particular concept or perspective ends with ideologues prescribing one strand as the right answer to which all must adhere. Aside from having at one time taught students about standpoint theory, I have no dog in the standpoint fight. But I will say that the literature on standpoint is much more interesting than you suggest here and includes smart critiques of the positions the ideologues have settled on as those to which we all must give obeisance.
You could not be more wrong in suggesting that “mass incarceration” in its modern incarnation is only discoverable as a concept through people of color. Totally absurd proposition. Completely without standing.
I don't think I can to your satisfaction as there ain't data but common sense and art should be enough for sensible people. A man does not know what it's like to be a women and vicey versa, gentiles and Jews, , Egyptian's and American's and on and on. It doesn't discount anyone's thinking, doing, or analysis, it's just true.
It is enough for you to concede the place evidence does not have within your epistemology.
By your admission, you cannot therefore declare a man does not know what it is like to be a woman, that a gentile has no appreciation for what it is like to be a Jew, etc. etc.
It may or may not be true. Your own admittedly absent evidence that it may not be true, certainly cannot overwhelm the evidence to the contrary.
That particular claim struck me as an overreach as well; if reformulated as something like "The victims of racism will indeed have insights that others find more difficult to glean on their own," I would find it less objectionable.
I'm not into taking any position on "CRT", just to get that out of the way. For me, the older I get (55 now), the more I think I understand "insights" to mean something that's much more subtle, and quiet than what I've hereto considered. I hate to be patronized, always have. But from my 'standpoint epistemology', the patronizing attitudes directed at middle aged white women, increases by 85% compared to life time averages. Maybe that's why I started thinking about how much Black people must deal with that, even if I'd heard the sentiment before. So that was a new insight for me. Also, I've been reflecting on how 'generational trauma' showed up in my students 15 years ago, or my clients since. Black people don't need any particular insight to know that. It's life. I feel pretty confident in that insight. I don't think you know what it's like to be a woman either. Or that I know what it's like to be a Jew. Etc. But basically, I'm with ya.
To me, standpoint epistemology is one of two things:
1) The idea that one's experience can make it easier or more difficult to understand certain perspectives. Your "standpoint" is your experience. Your identity -- and, critically, your experience of that identity -- feed into that experience. This notion is so obvious and broad that it has no significance as an observation. The only response can be "well duh."
2) The idea that certain things can only be learned or understood by a person with the correct identity. When I say "identity" in this context, I mean categorical identity (typically innate categorical identity, such as race, gender, etc.) rather than actual experience.
I have problems with 2. Epistemologically, it rejects the idea of understanding moving across categories and experiences. The "lived experience" of every human shows that to be false (unless you'd like to contend that no one understands anyone else...a contention that requires extraordinary demonstration).
Operationally, it tends to identify the most important categories as those which are most contentious in the culture war, a practice which makes me immediately skeptical about the way it is being both constructed and used. It privileges the politically-relevant differences as supremely important while ignoring far more relevant but not politically vital differences. For example, let's take your status as a middle-aged white woman (MAWW): how much does the New York PhD MAWW really share in terms of experience with the Nebraska farmer MAWW or the Florida electrician MAWW or the California computer programmer MAWW or the Pennsylvania Walmart greeter MAWW? Which of these distinctions matter more to a person's "lived experience"? Will the Pennsylvania Walmart greeter MAWW understand the New York PhD MAWW as well as or better than she understands the 30-year-old black male Walmart cashier? There will certainly be some things the two MAWW share that the younger black man will not, and some of that will be significant, but in terms of true understanding, there's so much more going on, and "standpoint epistemology" does not appear to be very interested in defining standpoints outside of its political ends.
As for "generational trauma"...I'm not familiar with it, and the brief reading I did prior to writing this post was not encouraging. Like standpoint epistemology, it seems to be either a "well duh" example of how what impacts a set of parents can have downstream effects on next generation or otherwise some way to offer analysis friendly to a particular political end. Also, one article I read made the point that trauma suffered by the parents causes genetic changes. Either I'm not understanding that point, or whoever wrote it doesn't understand genetics.
The upshot is that particularly for males (if not exclusively so) trauma incurred by a father, in a subset of cases, appears to have a non-zero effect on a son.
This qualifying language encapsulates the idea in that it has nothing whatever to do with inheritance, which from a genetic perspective relates to changes in DNA.
Epigenetic concerns itself with gene expression. This is to say some forms of trauma are visible as chemical tags on this gene or that gene. There is speculation that these tags may be causally linked to changes in a male child born after the trauma.
The interesting thing is, the expression in the son is not always, or even usually, related to the allegedly causal trauma.
If it happens at all, it is not known how it could happen. It is known that the chemical tags in the father are not transmitted.
Humans tend to start fresh from this perspective.
Even if it were shown to be true, its presence, once detected, can be eliminated through desensitization therapy. This is only interesting in the degree to which society is has recently become fixated on avoidance tactics which have been shown to have no effect or a worsening effect upon trauma.
I'm a 1 and from this 1 perspective, I'll say this about inter generational trauma / epigenetics and it has nothing to do with 'proving' anything. I live in Philly and taught high school social studies at one of our miserably failing public schools for almost a decade. We had about 300 students, 20-30% in any given year were justice involved, and most of the body had an incarcerated loved one. And were poor and Black so all the daily shit that comes along with that. Our students were funny, smart, strategic, and as empathetic and we all loved them and did our best to be good teachers. Having said that, every single one of my colleagues, from administration to the lunch ladies, and regardless of age, gender or ethnicity, blamed our students or their families for their poor academic performance. And I contend that, thinking this way, makes it impossible to address and solve the social ills that plague us. Drug counselors blame users for using and social service workers blame poor people for being poor. If we could start to locate problem X, further away from the people that problem X effects, we would, I think, do a better job of contending with it. I totally get that, from your point of view, it's political fodder but from mine, it's much more pragmatic. Plus, it's probably true. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5977074/
I wasn't talking to you. It's not the sort of response I would address your way. "85% compared to life time averages" was a jokey joke kind of way of expressing the common experience among many middle aged, white women, to which I referred. I do not know to what 'both sides' you refer, but if you think there are two sides to any thing, that's your silly ass problem. As far as I know, I haven't made a case for anything on this thread. And I don't know what 'objectively shareable' or' gender essentialist' means.
Along those lines it was the party of he marginalised (aka the Democrats) who wrote the mass incarnation laws and the “white supremacy party, aka the Koch brothers and other Conservatives who are pushing back against mass incarnation.
Incorrect. The Democratic Party as of Clinton, was converted to neoliberalism. This represents a complete break with representation for the marginalized, and has left very little daylight between the GOP and the Dems, political theater to the contrary notwithstanding.
Biden was a neoliberal that preceded Clinton’s ascendency, and it was he that was the thought leader behind the Omnibus Crime bill, which didn’t begin the modern era of MI, but certainly amplified it.
David has left out an important point. Who exactly determines who belongs to an "oppressed" group? Where is the dividing line? Is the son of a white Cuban-American doctor as equally "oppressed" as the brown-skinned "Indio" son of a Mexican-American farm worker? Why are black immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean given all the benefits of affirmative action and considered as equally oppressed as the descendants of American slaves? Even though the political Left has now started talking about "races" as if they were different species, racial intermarriage is a reality. Is a white ginger like Archie Mountbatten-Windsor "oppressed" just because he has one "black" grandparent? How far back should we go?
I think a lot of what DiAngelo writes about is mindfulness: if you feel defensive against someone else’s articulation of racism, you don’t have to be carried away in that defensiveness and counter it in the moment. You can choose to withstand that discomfort for a while and try to consider if you are the one who might be wrong. I think it speaks to the *immediacy of the interaction*, not a wholesale requirement of agreeing with the other person or internalizing their viewpoint.
To go from saying that CRT grants victims of racism a presumed competence to speak about racism —> CRT contends that only minorities have standing to articulate a view on racism seems like a really big logical leap to me. It also seems to paint with a broad brush people who use CRT to understand the world.
I think it is useful to imagine Kimberlé Crenshaw’s prism metaphor when she introduced intersectionality. Like the way a prism separates the colors that make up white light, CRT may help us separate and see things we might not otherwise see.
I agree that what you describe is mindfulness, but I disagree that it is DiAneglo. The 'critical' piece of CRT, as DiAngelo has described it is staring at a person, interaction, or institution until you can see racism under the premise that it is everywhere, even when it is unseeable, unmeasurable, and unknowable.
She also bases her anti-racism methodology on cultivating self-contempt and resentment in the targets of the training, which is even more interesting given that some studies have show these feelings as the basis upon which racism is relies.
This goes to offering an explanation for the deterioration of office morale and the rise in racist sentiment after those workers are put through her training...
Does she explicitly invoke self-contempt as her desired outcome or is there an understanding that self-contempt is an inevitable and unavoidable reaction in people who hear her message?
1) She doesn't invoke it but she does evoke it, and yes it is explicit.
2) There is an understanding that it is inevitable and unavoidable reaction. If a target doesn't have the reaction they are targeted for amplified training, or written off as irredeemably racist.
It sounds like you are saying DiAngelo’s message does NOT inevitably evoke self-contempt in people who hear it (and I know I certainly didn’t have that after reading White Fragility) and also that she does not even say that her goal is to do so.
I think in concept you are right. It is all too easy to imagine you see and feel what someone else feels without even realizing the degree of your own error. A few years ago I brought one of my youngest daughter's African American friends home from a party for the first time. The girl was so happy to be home, so happy to show us where she lived. What I saw was a dangerous, impoverished rundown apartment in one of Pittsburgh's poorest inner city neighborhoods. I honestly was nervous. For my daughter's friend it was home, and she beamed showing us where she lived.
Hi Unset: James says here that intersectionality is "fully reliant on postmodern thought." That's not accurate. Critics of the radical left academy--of which I am one--often misunderstand "intersectionality" or allow it to stand in for whatever they disagree with about radical left scholarship, and I suspect that may be because radical leftie scholars now use the term as a catch-all for whatever it is they're doing. At its most mundane, intersectionality is nothing more than the call to take into account the various salient identity categories that might influence experience and the aspiration to take those categories into account in research. But its emergence in the US academy had nothing at all to do with postmodernism/poststructuralism except possibly timing.
At its most mundane, intersectionality is nothing more than the call to take into account the various salient identity categories that might influence experience--but always with respect to the power dynamics purportedly embedded into those identity categories. Therein lies the reliance on postmodern thought to which Lindsay refers.
Nope, I'm sorry, Unset, that just aint' necessarily so. I'm as happy to criticize these theories and practices as the next curmudgeon. But I also care about precision and honesty because I believe those are core scholarly duties. And merging intersectionality with postmodernism doesn't cut it even if some scholars/activists are adherents of both and merge them for their own purposes. BTW, I get the project of New Discourses and translating wokeishness, but if it's wrong, it's wrong.
Yup, Chui--well aware of who coined the term. Critical theory doesn't rely on postmodernism. For one thing, critical theory is much older than postmodernism (or poststructuralism) as it's practiced in the academy, so can't descend from it.
If i had asserted that critical theory descended from postmodernism, you might have a point. I also made no claims as to whatever it is that you mean to not say by referring to how it is practiced in the academy. You are certainly free to make a point along those lines, but you are not free to conflate that point with mine.
No one is merging them. Lindsay says the ideas of intersectionality that have purchase in academia now rely on postmodern thought--particularly power as undertood by Foucault. That is accurate. You say you care about precision, but my responses to you are specific and precise and your retort is "no you're wrong." Not very persuasive.
Ah. Ok, the claim has already evolved. Originally, You said that Lindsay (whom I now suspect may be you) provides "the definitive explanation" of standpoint and related ideas. Lindsay says that intersectionality is "fully reliant on postmodern thought." Now you've interpreted Lindsay as saying that "the ideas of intersectionality that have purchase in academia now rely on postmodern thought." Many empirical scholars do work that's legitimately described as "intersectional" that would and could never be described as postmodern (or poststructuralist). Lots of these scholars loathe poststructuralism, and they're not somehow misunderstanding the foundations of their own work. As it stands, the generalization is false.
I've said that one reason why many critics of the radical left-wing academy wrongly ascribe their adversaries' errors to intersectionality is because bad left-wing scholars often explain what they're doing as intersectionality, and critics take them at their word. Not saying intersectionality is utterly harmless in the radical goings on in the academy. Still saying that Lindsay's claim is in bad faith, and I prefer that we be better than the people we're criticizing.
My claim has not evolved at all. Yours has, with this "merging" characterization that is not accurate. I said Lindsay provides the definitive explanation of "standpoint epistemology." I stand by that claim. With regard to "intersectionality" as defined by Lindsay, he allows that people using the term can and do reject aspects of postmodern thought or may resist adopting the term wholesale. That has no bearing on the fact that the concept of of intersectionality as generally developed and understood in academia has been "fully reliant" on postmodern understandings of oppression and power dynamics.
Finally, I am not James Lindsay and resent your suggestion otherwise.
I think a lot more folks on the center-right would be open to discussion if the left and center-left would just acknowledge the enormous progress we as a country have made over the last thirty years in race relations. My wife and I just visited a beach popular with the working class a few weekends ago, and there were “rednecks,” African-Americans, and Hispanics swimming together in the same river, drinking together in the same dive bars, and listening to the same lousy Sublime cover band. If you get your information from Twitter or what passes for journalism these days, you’d expect Thunderdome, instead of blue-collar families of all races just having a good day at the beach.
That experience has been consistent for decades before 30 years ago. CRT seeks to regress and make that experience impossible, not more ubiquitous.
I grew up in a time when there were still de facto black and white beaches in Virginia. I’ve seen amazing progress here in the Commonwealth during my lifetime. I take my dog to a park in a suburb of Richmond which was known for its overt racism when I was a kid. It appalled the “genteel” white establishment, who may have been racist but with a sense of noblesse oblige. Today, you see mixed race couples at the park with their dogs, practicing their swing on the baseball diamond, having picnics, etc, and everyone is friendly. Even fifteen, twenty years ago, you would have expected for the whites to give them the cold shoulder or whisper about it in concerned tones, if not overtly telling them they weren’t welcome. I’m not saying there isn’t racism today, or that the racism there is doesn’t need to be addressed, but just a few years ago things were so much worse. We should celebrate the progress we’ve made more, IMHO, instead of letting this CRT metastasize out of the social sciences into society as a whole.
By whom was the park known as overtly racist? How did you, as a kid, avail yourself of the knowledge? Can you provide some specific examples of the white establishment? Who were they? What made them genteel - heir skin color or their wealth?
The problem with anecdotal evidence is that it is indistinguishable from fan-fiction. It is weightless.
When did segregated beaches become illegal in VA? Is it your claim that happened in the last 30 years? Please so cite your source on this topic.
Are you familiar with Seaview Beach and Amusement Park? It was established in VA in the 40's as a 'coloreds only' resort. It featured a carousel, Ferris wheel and skeeball, along with fireworks, beauty pageants and performances by Louis Armstrong and Fats Domino Jr. In its heyday, it attracted 10,000 tourists on summer weekends.
Do you know when it went away? Do you know why? Does it have something to do with the laws that govern segregated beaches? What are the dates involved?
I moved out of VA in the 80's and the racist hellscape you describe wasn't present. What do you imagine might have changed since then to manifest the conditions you describe? It wasn't legislation.
It wasn’t the park that was overtly racist. It was the area it was in. The white working class moved out of the East End of Richmond during the ‘60’s and ‘70’s into Mechanicsville, and they brought a pile of race resentment with them because of it.
I grew up in the western end of Hanover County, the county in which Mechanicsville was located, and there was a palpable sense in the difference between how African-Americans were treated east and west of Interstate 95.
I grew up in the white middle class establishment circles of the County. I know how people talked about “coloreds” on either side of the divide. I’m sure there was a class aspect to the divide. Eastern Hanover and Mechanicsville were blue collar comeheres, whereas Western Hanover had more established, long-term families of both races who knew and had grown up together. It was a softer, more paternalistic racism, but it was racism nonetheless.
Blacks went to Buckroe Beach in Hampton, and whites went to Virginia Beach and Colonial Beach, which was the beach I’d mentioned in my first comment. Oceanview in Norfolk transitioned from white to black to white retirees in my lifetime. Under segregation, Buckroe had been designated a black beach, and that continued by custom long after Jim Crow had been repealed.
And don’t attack me for using anecdotal data when all you’ve offered is anecdotal data. I never said that Virginia in the ‘80’s was a hellscape; I’m saying it’s a helluva lot better now.
I have used my anecdotal evidence to counter your as an illustration of the uselessness of anecdotal evidence.
Anyone can say anything. This establishes nothing.
How can you demonstrate that anything you claimed to have happened actually did happen? Anecdotal evidence won't get you there.
If you cannot demonstrate it to others, it seems obvious that you have not demonstrated it to yourself. How can you ensure that you aren't taking one or two random events from a very specific place at a very specific time, enshrined them in memory, and discounted all other counter evidence?
Even if you could establish that this is not the case, upon what basis can you rationally extrapolate those incidents as representative of VA, or the US writ large?
You are free to use anecdotal data all you wish. You are in no way immune from scrutiny when doing so.
I would have worn a wire when I was in my teens if I knew that I’d be harangued like this by a fellow anti-critical race theorizer. I didn’t know I’d need anything more than my first person experience.
You are absolutely correct. I’ve lived in Central Virginia for forty-four years, and I have never observed anything going on around me. And my extensive study of Virginia history was all for naught. Good grief. This is a comments section, not an academic journal.
He’s a man who’s live a well observed life. Or not. But he’s hardly making big claims. He is communicating. You are why a President Trump exists.
Are you lazily compositing a high school history quiz about one of your pet topics and feeling clever? I know the type. I've read all your comments and all I know is, you think you're smarter then everyone else. Your tone is so righteous and patronizing that I'm dying to put your in your place, but you didn't bother to stake one. I taught high school social studies to justice involved students in Philly. here's the quiz I would have given them, for you: 1) Give 3 definitions for CRT, a- reactionary, b- moderate, c- radical 2) Using the example of, Seaview Beach and Amusement Park, describe the relationship between socioeconomic pressure and 'ground level' racism?
3) Structural racism? You should ponder those questions, and then self reflect.
If you had read all of my comments, you wouldn't have to ask about CRT. It is covered in more depth elsewhere.
If you care to retreat on that claim and actually read all of my comments, you can respond there if you feel compelled to.
In what ways do you know that I think I am smarter than everyone else? That is a pretty bold claim for me to make through you, given the 8 billion others in competition. I must have some pretty compelling evidence for that claim. What is it? How did you come by it?
To what tone do you refer? Where is it expressed? How have you measured it? What if you are wrong?
What is my place? How have you determined it? By what authority would you put me in it? Through what coercive power?
Thank you for sharing your quiz. What are the answers they gave? How did you evaluate the answers? What did you learn in the process?
It seems a staggering coincidence that you are quizzing them on Seaview Beach and Amusement park. How fortunate that we found each other. I am interested in their answers to that one.
3): That isn't a question. That is two words and a question mark. If you are interested in knowing about structural racism - try defining your terms and testing your premises. It is a good exploratory exercise. Then seek out a primary source and evaluate the evidence at hand.
If you wish to ask a question, I would love to help, but I would need it in the form of a question.
As for self-reflection -- is it the appropriate model of learning in this case? All one can learn through self reflection is what one already has taken in. One is already at the level of cognition of the information. All one is doing is adding more at the same level, or changing the angle from which one considers it.
To break new ground, to provoke intellectual growth, and to surface novel insight, you might try seeking a higher order of thought. This is to say, thought that you are not capable of, but are capable, through struggle, of apprehending. The topic could be CRT, structural racism, or whatever, but it would work on anything. It is that struggle that will elevate your cognition, and cultivate a higher order of thought within yourself.
It isn't easy, but again, that is the point. If it were easy, it wouldn't work.
Umm. Huh. Hmmm. Nope. Not now. Maybe never.
Yes. Deep thinkers seem to often bypass life and end up in a discursive flush.
I think they'd be more open to discussion if we stopped calling them racists.
I don't know that "we" call them racists, or that there is a "we" at all. You speak for yourself.
This is a particularly trenchant article for me personally. I ran for Mayor of Pittsburgh in 2001 and my entire platform was based on the notorious de facto racism of the public school system in Pittsburgh. I ran as a Republican; so of course I lost, but I nevertheless had the bull horn to stand up to the silent racism of the teacher unions who supported that racism. And, with the help of an African American School Board member, I created Take Your Father To School Day, because father absence is fundamentally destructive to student success. I was also the founding board member of a Charter School in Penn Hills Pa, with a primarily African American student population. I sent my own kids there, and they were the only white kids in their classes. The idea of the charter school was to provide gifted education to children whose families simply were not aware of the options for their bright children. Yes, I see institutional racism in education very clearly, and I am an old white guy college professor. And now with college prices sky-rocketing college is simply unaffordable to the VAST majority of African American kids. Critical Race Theory is a white game. It is itself malicious and racist fraud that demonstrably harms black children, while helping white academics pad their vitae to get tenure. CRT? Phooey! Making college affordable to Black families is the authentic place where our culture needs to demonstrate that Black Lives Really Matter. Increase African American SAT scores by spending the money necessary to improve poor city schools. Affordable high quality Education is the doorway to success, Critical Race Theory is not. When I completed my PhD, I told people I was a radical feminist because I really wanted women to like me and to publish feminist articles for my own vita. I had convinced myself that to change who I was would help women. Then I read Christina Hoff Summers and I saw the light. And I was embarrassed too. You do not need to hit yourself in the head with a hammer to prove that you are a good white man. Do what is right; be a mensch, and be who you are authentically. Yes lots of people will not like you. CRT is fraud and it must end.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02673843.2019.1596823?needAccess=true
I like this article quite a bit, but again it does not necessary lead us to conclude that stress felt by students is predominantly race based. Rural, predominantly white, communities suffer tremendous amount of stress from all sorts of awful causes.
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1009&context=chs_etds
"[regarding race] however, there was not a
significant difference in the prevalence and expression of PTSD." p 30. This study also does not at all demonstrate that race is the key factor in the negative effects of stress in college. And familial involvement is a positive factor. So I am not convinced that it is race that causes the stress that is correlated with low performance but poverty and familial exposure and understanding of formal education. My own qualitative and therefore not generalizable experience, is kids work much harder when they work for their parents than when they work for anyone else. My kids' teachers would not lose sleep if they gave my kids D's. I would be besides myself, and my children's entire lives would change if that is what it took to rectify that sort of performance.
I have no particular disagreement with any of your critiques/observations and I completely agree with you about sample sizes and quantitative research. And, I agree, of course, that poverty and familial exposure play a big, big part in educational outcomes. I have thoughts, and longitudinal research to contribute to our convo, but I'm exhausted. I'll finish whatever the hell I'm talking about later this week.
As a public high school teacher in Philly for over a decade, I also spent some years believing that a good education and a degree could solve many of our most entrenched social ills. But neither my experience, or the research, bares that out. Instead, as usual, the picture is much more complicated. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1135335.pdf
I am sorry to disagree, but I found qualitative research to highly misleading unless there is quantitative research along with it. As in this case the sample sizes are too small and not nearly enough care has been taken to control for all sorts of extraneous variables, not to mention simple sampling bias. The key problem with CRT is it begins with a hermeneutics of suspicion and finds exactly what it hopes to find. It many ways CRT is itself a conspiracy theory with the most dangerous oddity that the conspirators do not even know they are conspirators. Yes absolutely there is pervasive racism in America, but it is not baked into the cake. It is not systemic. It is systematic in many institutions, educational funding is the most dramatic example. When public education is paid for by real estate taxes, that guarantees that communities with inexpensive homes pay much higher tax rates and still do not raise enough money to pay for adequate education. Zip codes now determine the quality of public school education. 10 mils on a $1.5 million dollar home pays for a much nicer school and much higher paid teachers than 20 mils on a $50,000 home. Systemic racism? No. Pervasive racism? Yes, absolutely. Public education should be paid for by the state or even the federal government not the local school districts.
I go a lot further and think that there should be no private education.
Thank you for laying out so clearly the perils of sacrificing thought for allegiance to a cause. I taught African American Political Thought at a small liberal arts college for over twenty years. I would love to see more attention given to the deep thinking of W. E. B. DuBois and James Baldwin who understood the perils of simplistic reasoning.
Infuc*ingdeed. Me too.
James Baldwin often espoused a lot of the same tenants as CRT in interviews. It would be interesting to map out the timeline of his commentary vs the establishment of CT and CRT.
It would?
Yes
It wouldn't and it would be a meaningless exercise that indicates nothing at all. But have at it.
It would, it wouldn't.
Make me.
Plus, ya mom.
Good piece. Bernstein especially deserves credit for acknowledging that CRT does contain a grain of truth that, no matter how much it gets exaggerated into a lie, is still true. It ought to be possible to say at the same time that they deserve a seat at the table and they do not deserve the sort of totalitarian power they're demanding.
Of course, politics these days would see that as a weak-ass compromise by someone who doesn't have the balls to (as Colbert's old character would say) "Pick a side! We're at war!" Which is what's wrong with politics these days.
Oh, and since he does touch on Israeli-Palestinian matters, I do have a question for him. Is he willing to concede that a reasonable person might conclude that "It's ours because we live here" and "It's ours because our ancestors lived here thousands of years ago" are really not two equally legitimate claims?
I wonder if the issue isn't that they deserve a seat at the table, but upon what basis seats at the table are apportioned.
All schools should have to read and discuss this arguments as part of anti-racist training.
And sorry for my typo--I don't think you can edit, so these arguments or this argument!
Hi David Bernstein: thank you for your essay and especially for the way you carefully lay out the problems with the "demand for deference." I'm with you! As an academic who's worked in a radical "studies" field for what feels like way too long, I just want to suggest one correction: there's more to "standpoint epistemology" than you suggest in this admittedly brief essay. The problem sometimes is that what starts out as a complex intellectual undertaking with curious people working out the costs and benefits of a particular concept or perspective ends with ideologues prescribing one strand as the right answer to which all must adhere. Aside from having at one time taught students about standpoint theory, I have no dog in the standpoint fight. But I will say that the literature on standpoint is much more interesting than you suggest here and includes smart critiques of the positions the ideologues have settled on as those to which we all must give obeisance.
You could not be more wrong in suggesting that “mass incarceration” in its modern incarnation is only discoverable as a concept through people of color. Totally absurd proposition. Completely without standing.
I did not say that. I said *I* learned about it from speaking to POC
You said that as an example of the preceding claim: “The victims of racism will indeed have insights that others cannot possibly glean on their own. “
Which is true.
Excellent to hear. Prove it.
I don't think I can to your satisfaction as there ain't data but common sense and art should be enough for sensible people. A man does not know what it's like to be a women and vicey versa, gentiles and Jews, , Egyptian's and American's and on and on. It doesn't discount anyone's thinking, doing, or analysis, it's just true.
It is enough for you to concede the place evidence does not have within your epistemology.
By your admission, you cannot therefore declare a man does not know what it is like to be a woman, that a gentile has no appreciation for what it is like to be a Jew, etc. etc.
It may or may not be true. Your own admittedly absent evidence that it may not be true, certainly cannot overwhelm the evidence to the contrary.
That particular claim struck me as an overreach as well; if reformulated as something like "The victims of racism will indeed have insights that others find more difficult to glean on their own," I would find it less objectionable.
I'm not into taking any position on "CRT", just to get that out of the way. For me, the older I get (55 now), the more I think I understand "insights" to mean something that's much more subtle, and quiet than what I've hereto considered. I hate to be patronized, always have. But from my 'standpoint epistemology', the patronizing attitudes directed at middle aged white women, increases by 85% compared to life time averages. Maybe that's why I started thinking about how much Black people must deal with that, even if I'd heard the sentiment before. So that was a new insight for me. Also, I've been reflecting on how 'generational trauma' showed up in my students 15 years ago, or my clients since. Black people don't need any particular insight to know that. It's life. I feel pretty confident in that insight. I don't think you know what it's like to be a woman either. Or that I know what it's like to be a Jew. Etc. But basically, I'm with ya.
To me, standpoint epistemology is one of two things:
1) The idea that one's experience can make it easier or more difficult to understand certain perspectives. Your "standpoint" is your experience. Your identity -- and, critically, your experience of that identity -- feed into that experience. This notion is so obvious and broad that it has no significance as an observation. The only response can be "well duh."
2) The idea that certain things can only be learned or understood by a person with the correct identity. When I say "identity" in this context, I mean categorical identity (typically innate categorical identity, such as race, gender, etc.) rather than actual experience.
I have problems with 2. Epistemologically, it rejects the idea of understanding moving across categories and experiences. The "lived experience" of every human shows that to be false (unless you'd like to contend that no one understands anyone else...a contention that requires extraordinary demonstration).
Operationally, it tends to identify the most important categories as those which are most contentious in the culture war, a practice which makes me immediately skeptical about the way it is being both constructed and used. It privileges the politically-relevant differences as supremely important while ignoring far more relevant but not politically vital differences. For example, let's take your status as a middle-aged white woman (MAWW): how much does the New York PhD MAWW really share in terms of experience with the Nebraska farmer MAWW or the Florida electrician MAWW or the California computer programmer MAWW or the Pennsylvania Walmart greeter MAWW? Which of these distinctions matter more to a person's "lived experience"? Will the Pennsylvania Walmart greeter MAWW understand the New York PhD MAWW as well as or better than she understands the 30-year-old black male Walmart cashier? There will certainly be some things the two MAWW share that the younger black man will not, and some of that will be significant, but in terms of true understanding, there's so much more going on, and "standpoint epistemology" does not appear to be very interested in defining standpoints outside of its political ends.
As for "generational trauma"...I'm not familiar with it, and the brief reading I did prior to writing this post was not encouraging. Like standpoint epistemology, it seems to be either a "well duh" example of how what impacts a set of parents can have downstream effects on next generation or otherwise some way to offer analysis friendly to a particular political end. Also, one article I read made the point that trauma suffered by the parents causes genetic changes. Either I'm not understanding that point, or whoever wrote it doesn't understand genetics.
On your last paragraph, check this article out:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190326-what-is-epigenetics
The upshot is that particularly for males (if not exclusively so) trauma incurred by a father, in a subset of cases, appears to have a non-zero effect on a son.
This qualifying language encapsulates the idea in that it has nothing whatever to do with inheritance, which from a genetic perspective relates to changes in DNA.
Epigenetic concerns itself with gene expression. This is to say some forms of trauma are visible as chemical tags on this gene or that gene. There is speculation that these tags may be causally linked to changes in a male child born after the trauma.
The interesting thing is, the expression in the son is not always, or even usually, related to the allegedly causal trauma.
If it happens at all, it is not known how it could happen. It is known that the chemical tags in the father are not transmitted.
Humans tend to start fresh from this perspective.
Even if it were shown to be true, its presence, once detected, can be eliminated through desensitization therapy. This is only interesting in the degree to which society is has recently become fixated on avoidance tactics which have been shown to have no effect or a worsening effect upon trauma.
I'm a 1 and from this 1 perspective, I'll say this about inter generational trauma / epigenetics and it has nothing to do with 'proving' anything. I live in Philly and taught high school social studies at one of our miserably failing public schools for almost a decade. We had about 300 students, 20-30% in any given year were justice involved, and most of the body had an incarcerated loved one. And were poor and Black so all the daily shit that comes along with that. Our students were funny, smart, strategic, and as empathetic and we all loved them and did our best to be good teachers. Having said that, every single one of my colleagues, from administration to the lunch ladies, and regardless of age, gender or ethnicity, blamed our students or their families for their poor academic performance. And I contend that, thinking this way, makes it impossible to address and solve the social ills that plague us. Drug counselors blame users for using and social service workers blame poor people for being poor. If we could start to locate problem X, further away from the people that problem X effects, we would, I think, do a better job of contending with it. I totally get that, from your point of view, it's political fodder but from mine, it's much more pragmatic. Plus, it's probably true. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5977074/
You argue both sides of the position like a champ!
By what math did you arrive at the 85%? By what data the lifetime averages?
Is it objectively shareable, or does one have to be a gender essentialist to access it?
Blow me.
I wasn't talking to you. It's not the sort of response I would address your way. "85% compared to life time averages" was a jokey joke kind of way of expressing the common experience among many middle aged, white women, to which I referred. I do not know to what 'both sides' you refer, but if you think there are two sides to any thing, that's your silly ass problem. As far as I know, I haven't made a case for anything on this thread. And I don't know what 'objectively shareable' or' gender essentialist' means.
He's a lazy ready.
Vs a lazy writey?
Yuppy duppy.
Asked and answered.
Along those lines it was the party of he marginalised (aka the Democrats) who wrote the mass incarnation laws and the “white supremacy party, aka the Koch brothers and other Conservatives who are pushing back against mass incarnation.
Incorrect. The Democratic Party as of Clinton, was converted to neoliberalism. This represents a complete break with representation for the marginalized, and has left very little daylight between the GOP and the Dems, political theater to the contrary notwithstanding.
Biden was a neoliberal that preceded Clinton’s ascendency, and it was he that was the thought leader behind the Omnibus Crime bill, which didn’t begin the modern era of MI, but certainly amplified it.
Yeah I was thinking of that when I wrote the comment but it was more the perception than anything
There's not one right answer, obvi.
How do you know? How is that obvious to you?
In my opinion, the decline of the US, which is considered outside of the US to be only a 'partial democracy' is the absence of an opposition party.
David has left out an important point. Who exactly determines who belongs to an "oppressed" group? Where is the dividing line? Is the son of a white Cuban-American doctor as equally "oppressed" as the brown-skinned "Indio" son of a Mexican-American farm worker? Why are black immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean given all the benefits of affirmative action and considered as equally oppressed as the descendants of American slaves? Even though the political Left has now started talking about "races" as if they were different species, racial intermarriage is a reality. Is a white ginger like Archie Mountbatten-Windsor "oppressed" just because he has one "black" grandparent? How far back should we go?
https://medium.com/@mischling2nd/its-not-rachel-dolezal-who-s-crazy-but-the-ridiculous-racist-and-contradictory-definitions-of-7a1da0a404f0
Thus is demonstrated the deficits of post modernism, critical theory, and critical race theory.
I think a lot of what DiAngelo writes about is mindfulness: if you feel defensive against someone else’s articulation of racism, you don’t have to be carried away in that defensiveness and counter it in the moment. You can choose to withstand that discomfort for a while and try to consider if you are the one who might be wrong. I think it speaks to the *immediacy of the interaction*, not a wholesale requirement of agreeing with the other person or internalizing their viewpoint.
To go from saying that CRT grants victims of racism a presumed competence to speak about racism —> CRT contends that only minorities have standing to articulate a view on racism seems like a really big logical leap to me. It also seems to paint with a broad brush people who use CRT to understand the world.
I think it is useful to imagine Kimberlé Crenshaw’s prism metaphor when she introduced intersectionality. Like the way a prism separates the colors that make up white light, CRT may help us separate and see things we might not otherwise see.
I agree that what you describe is mindfulness, but I disagree that it is DiAneglo. The 'critical' piece of CRT, as DiAngelo has described it is staring at a person, interaction, or institution until you can see racism under the premise that it is everywhere, even when it is unseeable, unmeasurable, and unknowable.
She also bases her anti-racism methodology on cultivating self-contempt and resentment in the targets of the training, which is even more interesting given that some studies have show these feelings as the basis upon which racism is relies.
This goes to offering an explanation for the deterioration of office morale and the rise in racist sentiment after those workers are put through her training...
I'm unfamiliar with how her method cultivates self-contempt.
I believe you.
Does she explicitly invoke self-contempt as her desired outcome or is there an understanding that self-contempt is an inevitable and unavoidable reaction in people who hear her message?
1) She doesn't invoke it but she does evoke it, and yes it is explicit.
2) There is an understanding that it is inevitable and unavoidable reaction. If a target doesn't have the reaction they are targeted for amplified training, or written off as irredeemably racist.
It sounds like you are saying DiAngelo’s message does NOT inevitably evoke self-contempt in people who hear it (and I know I certainly didn’t have that after reading White Fragility) and also that she does not even say that her goal is to do so.
I think in concept you are right. It is all too easy to imagine you see and feel what someone else feels without even realizing the degree of your own error. A few years ago I brought one of my youngest daughter's African American friends home from a party for the first time. The girl was so happy to be home, so happy to show us where she lived. What I saw was a dangerous, impoverished rundown apartment in one of Pittsburgh's poorest inner city neighborhoods. I honestly was nervous. For my daughter's friend it was home, and she beamed showing us where she lived.
I'd recommend James Lindsay on "standpoint epistemology" - that is really the definitive explanation of what it is, how it evolved, and how the "rules" work. https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-standpoint-epistemology/
Hi Unset: James says here that intersectionality is "fully reliant on postmodern thought." That's not accurate. Critics of the radical left academy--of which I am one--often misunderstand "intersectionality" or allow it to stand in for whatever they disagree with about radical left scholarship, and I suspect that may be because radical leftie scholars now use the term as a catch-all for whatever it is they're doing. At its most mundane, intersectionality is nothing more than the call to take into account the various salient identity categories that might influence experience and the aspiration to take those categories into account in research. But its emergence in the US academy had nothing at all to do with postmodernism/poststructuralism except possibly timing.
At its most mundane, intersectionality is nothing more than the call to take into account the various salient identity categories that might influence experience--but always with respect to the power dynamics purportedly embedded into those identity categories. Therein lies the reliance on postmodern thought to which Lindsay refers.
Nope, I'm sorry, Unset, that just aint' necessarily so. I'm as happy to criticize these theories and practices as the next curmudgeon. But I also care about precision and honesty because I believe those are core scholarly duties. And merging intersectionality with postmodernism doesn't cut it even if some scholars/activists are adherents of both and merge them for their own purposes. BTW, I get the project of New Discourses and translating wokeishness, but if it's wrong, it's wrong.
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, a prominent critical race theorist, coined the term in 1989.
Critical Race Theory descends from Critical Theory. Critical Theory in turn relies on the radical relativism provided by Postmodernism.
Yup, Chui--well aware of who coined the term. Critical theory doesn't rely on postmodernism. For one thing, critical theory is much older than postmodernism (or poststructuralism) as it's practiced in the academy, so can't descend from it.
If i had asserted that critical theory descended from postmodernism, you might have a point. I also made no claims as to whatever it is that you mean to not say by referring to how it is practiced in the academy. You are certainly free to make a point along those lines, but you are not free to conflate that point with mine.
Reformulate your thoughts and try again?
No one is merging them. Lindsay says the ideas of intersectionality that have purchase in academia now rely on postmodern thought--particularly power as undertood by Foucault. That is accurate. You say you care about precision, but my responses to you are specific and precise and your retort is "no you're wrong." Not very persuasive.
Ah. Ok, the claim has already evolved. Originally, You said that Lindsay (whom I now suspect may be you) provides "the definitive explanation" of standpoint and related ideas. Lindsay says that intersectionality is "fully reliant on postmodern thought." Now you've interpreted Lindsay as saying that "the ideas of intersectionality that have purchase in academia now rely on postmodern thought." Many empirical scholars do work that's legitimately described as "intersectional" that would and could never be described as postmodern (or poststructuralist). Lots of these scholars loathe poststructuralism, and they're not somehow misunderstanding the foundations of their own work. As it stands, the generalization is false.
I've said that one reason why many critics of the radical left-wing academy wrongly ascribe their adversaries' errors to intersectionality is because bad left-wing scholars often explain what they're doing as intersectionality, and critics take them at their word. Not saying intersectionality is utterly harmless in the radical goings on in the academy. Still saying that Lindsay's claim is in bad faith, and I prefer that we be better than the people we're criticizing.
My claim has not evolved at all. Yours has, with this "merging" characterization that is not accurate. I said Lindsay provides the definitive explanation of "standpoint epistemology." I stand by that claim. With regard to "intersectionality" as defined by Lindsay, he allows that people using the term can and do reject aspects of postmodern thought or may resist adopting the term wholesale. That has no bearing on the fact that the concept of of intersectionality as generally developed and understood in academia has been "fully reliant" on postmodern understandings of oppression and power dynamics.
Finally, I am not James Lindsay and resent your suggestion otherwise.
Bingo.