Ask Lemmy

CRT and DEI are misrepresented by both the left and right. They make more sense when you look at them without the point of view of 14 year old Redditors or 400 year old dinosaurs.

It's actually a bit ironic, because CRT is viewed by many White Americans as a theory which demonizes them; but CRT also defines how racism has harmed poor white people in the past and continues to do so today.

CRT defines the biggest winners of Racism in America as being wealthy white folks. According to CRT, Racism as we know it today, was created as a means to take advantage of poor whites. Rich plantation owners recognized slavery caused great economic harm to poorer whites who did not own slaves. So a solution to stop revolt was to create this system of Race so that poor whites would remain divided from black slaves, and not work together to retaliate.

CRT also claims that this is still occuring today. Racism continues to divide poor white people from poor people of color so that they don't work together to fight against Injustice.

This is a great question to ask in a .ml community as I think they will be able to contextualize this a bit better for you, and I would be interested in what they say too. Cause I agree, I think identity politics (which I think is what you're getting at here) is used especially by the ruling class as a way to look nominally progressive (or anti-progressive) and make people feel like they have a real choice in politics, but is ultimately damaging both to its own goals and to the overall political consciousness, in the ways you noted, by divorcing them from the material realities that create and perpetuate these divisions for all people in society. I think that in either direction, they are pushed as a means to distract from the root causes of those issues (which is all the better for a ruling class that benefits from this social order), which if addressed would be a much more equitable way of dealing with them and far more difficult for criticism to take hold.

I think people would see that we have far more in common than not if we weren't constantly pitted against each other to compete for resources that are only made scarce for the sake of profit and austerity.

CRT though, in actuality, is precisely what you are talking about. It is a school of thought that analyzes racial inequalities in the context of history and critiqueing the ways that they are perpetuated in our society. It became a buzzword because conservative media made it into one totally divorced from its original context.

The facts are that black Americans are worse off than other groups in almost every way we can measure. There are two competing theories to explain this.

1-the systems of our society are biased against black people. That's Systemic-Racism. 2-black people are inferior to everyone else. That's racism, original recipe.

How are these systems biased against black people? That's what the field of CRT seeks to answer.

Imagine a hundred runners entering an insanely long footrace. Before the race starts, the official says that due to his complexion, one runner will start running at the second gunshot, and the other runners will begin at the first gunshot. The darker skinned runner contests, but those are the rules and if he wants to race, he must follow them.

BLAM

The palest runners are off and running while the other one anticipates the second gunshot. He patiently waits, but it doesn't come. After ten minutes, the runner complains to the official, but he repeats that these are the rules, and if you just wait patiently, it'll be your turn. After an hour the crowd is outraged by the injustice and begin to protest.

BLAM

The official fires the second shot in order to deescalate the situation and prevent the stadium from being torn apart. The runner is off and he is determined to gain as much ground as possible as the other runners.

At the end of the day, the runners meet up at a checkpoint to rest before the next section of the race. When they announce the official times, the darker skinned man is 50 minutes behind the other runners. He mentions to the officials that he had to wait an hour to start, and that he would have had a better time than many of them if they had started at the same time.

Fine, they say, not wanting another scene like they had at the starting line, "from now on, all runners start at the same time." That's great! So, can I deduct an hour from my time?

WHAT!? WE ALREADY CHANGED THE RULES TO MAKE IT EQUAL. EVERYBODY STARTS AT THE SAME TIME! AND NOW YOU WANT MORE? THE OTHER RUNNERS DIDN'T NEED ANY TIME DEDUCTIONS!

I now see I went too heavy on the caps, but I'm not typing it again.

Anyway, DEI is the one hour time deduction. It's making up for holding them back for so long while everyone else was sprinting ahead. But, those other runners, they were so busy running that they don't know how long it took for that second gunshot to go off. All they see is a runner with a mediocre time getting a 1 hour deduction which moves him to the top 3. The guy getting bumped to fourth is REALLY going to feel cheated, and resent the system that gave that guy an hour just because of his skin color.

Good on OP for seeking challenges to their existing view points and being open to changing them upon compelling enough thoughts. In a genuine way no less.

proven multiple times and confirmed by multiple studies: communities that welcome immigrants have higher education rates, better incomes, higher productivity, and lower crime than communities based on exclusion/exclusivity/isolation/separation

conservatives use “CRT” and “DEI” to sow polarization because they know even they’d get blowback if they admitted they were just anti-empathy/pro-hatred/anti-equality

So like that environmental justice database musk just shut down, that analyzes things like pollution, asthma and other health impacts, death rates, etc? So environmental cleanup efforts can focus on those who are most affected? Apparent it’s crt or DEI or woke or something since those most affected tend to be disproportionately non-white. It can’t be the “merit” of being most impacted by pollution

You’re writing as if CRT were a set of policies instead of an academic discipline—that’s why everyone is asking you to clarify what you think it is before they reply. It’s like trying to respond to someone criticizing “quantum theory” who only talks about the economic effects of nuclear power plants.

I'm not sure what Cathode Ray Tubes have to do with any of this.

First off, CRT is a red herring. It's an extremely niche framework for historical analysis and egalitarianism which is irrelevant outside academic contexts and only gained ground due to a racist asshole.

When it comes to DEI I think that your heart is in the right place - this is all about economic justice and if there were better ways to account for that it'd be an excellent thing to correct for (though, imo, the better correction would be to ensure all children had a genuinely equal chance at success). Unfortunately, because America has a long history of racism, race and poverty are strongly correlated.

The other half of DEI is that people tend to hire like. It's a deep social flaw but we need to acknowledge it - white men will tend to hire white men, a company composed entirely of black women will tend to hire black women... we have studies. Most entrenched wealth is held by white men and so white men have an inherent advantage in employment.

The last thing I'd highlight is that a rising tide raises all ships - your assumption that immigration causes an expansion of poverty usually hasn't been born out. In capitalism more people means more labor means more innovation means more wealth - there are some limits around resources but we're not near any hard limits in that regard.

I'm not USAian enough to understand all this, but let me just say, the problem is the rich. Them stealing all the money leaves little for the rest, and due to the lack of education, the rest fights each other over what's left instead of uniting against rich fucks. Painting CRT, DEI, feminism, trans-rights, anti-immigration, etc. as the issue are just ways to divide the have-nots.

Divide and conquer.

Prof Wolff just released a great video about this yesterday, although it's more about debunking the myth of a meritocracy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILljYRz_G-I