People should read NYT/Ross Douhat to understand the anti-CRT stuff

[Sympthsical]

I've been trying to articulate this. That people simply perceive everything very differently from the partisan Left perspective. And the defenses have been terrible. "But we don't teach CRT in schools!" And that defense has more and more started to remind me of people who said (and many still say) "But Antifa doesn't exist." You're asking people to disbelieve their lying eyes. It's bad politics.

The meat of the Op-Ed:

The problem with the McAuliffe strategy is that it fell back on technicalities — as in, yes, fourth graders in the Commonwealth of Virginia are presumably not being assigned the academic works of Derrick Bell — while evading the context that has made this issue part of a polarizing national debate.

That context, obvious to any sentient person who lived through the past few years, is an ideological revolution in elite spaces in American culture, in which concepts heretofore associated with academic progressivism have permeated the language of many important institutions, from professional guilds and major foundations to elite private schools and corporate H.R. departments.

Critical race theory is an imperfect term for this movement, too narrow and specialized to capture its full complexity. But a new form of racecraft clearly lies close to the heart of the new progressivism, with the somewhat different, somewhat overlapping ideas of figures like Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo enjoying particular influence. And that influence extends into schools and public-education bureaucracies, where Kendi and DiAngelo and their epigones often show up on resources recommended to educators — like the racial-equity reading list sent around in 2019 by one state educational superintendent, for instance, which recommended both DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” and an academic treatise titled “Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education.”

That superintendent was responsible for Virginia’s public schools.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/03/opinion/virginia-democrats-republicans.html?smid=tw-share

This stuff plays in our Bubble. The voters we need to win elections, the ones who are responsible when things shift fluidly between Red and Blue, don't like it. And when they say they don't like it, the response is, "They're all white supremacist racist poopy heads."

Now there's blood in the water, and Republicans have gotten a strong whiff of it. They're going to nationalize the strategy in Virginia. They're going to start going into school districts all over the country (even more hard core than they already are), and if there's even a whiff of this stuff, parent groups are going to start rebelling.

We're going to have to have a better response than "They don't teach CRT to children." As Douhat says, technically they may not. But CRT has become a shorthand to many - including independents and moderates - for what is described above.

Our side is framing all this as "racists vs anti-racists". Their side is framing this as "elites vs. average citizens". And all they need to do, to kick in that primal fear and get people into voting booths is, "They're coming for your children."

Worked a treat in Virginia. We need good responses to it, and not ones tailored to online spaces populated by people who already think exactly like us.

[Voltaire2]

1. Douhat is one of the NYT rightwing commentators.

Anything he has to say about what the Democratic Party ought to do is massively suspect.

[Sympthsical]

3. I know he is

I'm saying people should read the other side to understand the thinking involved.

And if you don't like Douhat, Yascha Mounk also discussed this topic in the Atlantic today:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/virginia-election-wakeup-call-democrats/620595/

I read that article after making my OP, but it says more or less exactly what I did. He's not a right-winger.

[Freddie]

2. Sadly he has good points

All 4 open school board seats in my district went to Repugs. Purple Philly burbs. Wish I knew how to combat this.
Can’t respect Douthat after he published about 3000 words to justify why women shouldn’t have control over their bodies.

[Sympthsical]

5. Yascha Mounk has a good article in the Atlantic as well

Just came across it after I posted. It's worth the read if we want to get a handle on things before 2022.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/virginia-election-wakeup-call-democrats/620595/

[viva la]

4. Well, how about this? Better than pretending ignoring our racist past isn't racist.

Say this to Southern Whites:
"After four centuries of conflict over America's treatment of non-whites, and we finally made some progress, and YOU ALL WANT TO REVERSE THAT PROGRESS AND GO BACK TO THE 1950S?????"

We KNOW what's behind this, and yes, it's racism. It's the corrupt cynical racism of Republicans who have for decades exploited white fears and denial AND RACISM to win elections. They're doing it at a level (banning black authors writing about slavery?????) that really does go back a century.

I don't see it's even morally acceptable to close our eyes to the racism here.
We can frame it more softly, maybe. I don't know. But Ross Douthat like a lot of conservative "intellectuals" want to pretend that pointing racism out is actually worse than racism itself. That's their own consciousness of guilt manifesting.

Listen to progressive "framers" like the Lakoffs and Al Franken-- not bred-in-denial conservatives like Douthat.

[Sympthsical]

6. I'm not talking about appealing to the right-wingers

The dyed in the wool, never going to change their minds, irredeemably racist types.

But not everyone is that. Not everyone who disagrees with some of this stuff is measuring for a noose.

We need to stop talking about them as if they are.

[jcgoldie]

7. from the author of:

"Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream."

and...

"Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics"

His argument seems to be: "Well it makes white people uncomfortable to talk about our racist history." The "movement" he is referring to is exposing racism and bigotry in order to create a more egalitarian society... yes it ruffles some feathers as it should.

[Sympthsical]

8. I didn't ask anyone to agree with what he's saying. That's not the point.

I'm asking people to see what he's saying. To understand the perspective. To see what we're up against and is working against us.

I really don't expect anyone here of all places to agree with him.

But reading outside perspectives so that we can better formulate our messaging for 2022 would not be time misspent.

[jcgoldie]

9. republicans disguising racism as "elites vs average joes" is not such a revelation

...

[Jim__]

10. The real problem is how to respond.

For instance, this paragraph that you cited in the OP:

Critical race theory is an imperfect term for this movement, too narrow and specialized to capture its full complexity. But a new form of racecraft clearly lies close to the heart of the new progressivism, with the somewhat different, somewhat overlapping ideas of figures like Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo enjoying particular influence. And that influence extends into schools and public-education bureaucracies, where Kendi and DiAngelo and their epigones often show up on resources recommended to educators — like the racial-equity reading list sent around in 2019 by one state educational superintendent, for instance, which recommended both DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” and an academic treatise titled “Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education.”

So if one state educational superintendent, for instance recommends DiAngleo and Kendi, then all educations systems across the country are subject to attack as being anti-white (the claim is essentially that the schools are anti-white).

I don't know which state educational superintendent recommended Kendi and DiAngelo; but there's always going to be at least one person somewhere in the US educational system that recommends reading something radical. Of course, when we point out that the charges are based on extremely slim evidence Douthat can claim that we're being technical. And we are. But, any actual evidence is technical. The difficulty is communicating to the general public that republicans are mostly lying and fear-mongering.

Lying and fear-mongering works. We need to figure out how to counteract it.

[MadameButterfly]

11. the solution won't come from the people who created the problem

We have to remember that the Republicans aren't sincere. They aren't looking for real problems. They are inventing controversy wherever they can. It's impossible for Dems to go about their lives and not do anything the Republicans will distort for their purposes.
They are experts in propaganda, and we are trying to debate the issues. We are bringing knives to a gunfight. There needs to be serious research in anti-propaganda strategies. Yes, we must study how the propaganda is playing in the Republican bubble, but we shouldn't take a Republican "scholarly" article to seriously--they aren't dabbling in truth here. They just want to make the chaos they are creating our fault, when it is theirs.