Nothing gets Bayou.
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Except for these guys.
Conflict theory, and its intellectual relatives, reduces us to no more and no less than the identity groups to which we belong—which are bizarrely held to be immutable yet in fact are socially constructed and always changing. And it then tells us that all of our interactions are derivations of that basic fact.
We’re left with the second unintended side effect of conflict theory and its derivatives: When every interaction is about power and the privilege that comes with it, conflict theory tells us that words—as our primary mechanism of communication—are the instrument of enforcing and maintaining the status quo. So, under critical race theory and intersectionality, we’re in a coiled position where our alertness to power dynamics is turned up as high as it can possibly go. We’re ready to spring.
This is the space where expressions like “blind spot,” “on the one hand,” “peanut gallery,” and “savage” cease to be acceptable. Once again, what started out as a useful tool for understanding the world—thinking seriously about the role of language in society and knowledge along with a serious consideration of the words we use—expands in a way that becomes unreasonable to many. Once these terms are deemed unacceptable, the people who continue to use them, especially after they’ve had their oppressive etymology explained to them, are symbolically flagged as noncompliant. Worse still, excising these words from our vernacular somehow gets passed off for real change or real progress. Yet when every interaction about power and language is the instrument to maintain that power, these outcomes are preordained.
The most damaging effect of conflict theory may be the way it flattens the human experience and promotes an unrelenting view of interactions and inequality as being the inevitable outcome of individuals and groups vying for power in the context of scarce resources. Close behind this flattening is the damage done by the overinflated focus on the minutiae of the slightest verbal noncompliance, which magnifies misunderstandings and hurts and elevates extreme forms of hypersensitivity as an engine of progress.
So, Imma noncompliant savage? OK
I don’t think it makes sense, but if it works at all, it works both ways; that’s why I stand by this:
It’s amazing to me how these sociological theories have so easily infected other departments on campus.
Critical theory is HUGE. I was at a talk by Etiene Wenger and a medical prof spoke up to say communities of practice wasn’t relevant because in his field (not saying which one) everything is about power; during an interview with a social sciences prof I was told everyone in his department (not saying which) was a critical theorist, that was probably true for many of the departments in the social sciences faculty (obviously gender studies). My faculty of education was predominantly po-mo (myself and one Arabic student the exceptions in my cohort). Obviously a lot in literature, law, etc.; and now it is cropping up in STEM as well as disseminating into the wider world.
And shall no criticism be brooked, lest ye be a despicable being.
I saw it in its infancy in 90s. It was laughable. Professor’s color coding their papers, gay, trans, woman, man, POC…
If these alternative explanations sound farfetched, that’s the point.
The range of experiences that make up the human condition—like the number of “groups” into which humans can divide themselves or be divided by others—is functionally infinite.
Yeah, Hitler might have been stuffing those Jews into the Warsaw Ghetto and later Auschwitz and Treblinka because he wanted them to experience group bonding. A possibility to consider.
In the same edition
Two Israeli researchers uncover Nazi crimes that targeted their victims because of their gender, and the postwar narrative of suspicion that ensured their continuing silence.
Jewish and women? Intersectionality- the horror!
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I think it’s more because he was insane.
Is this an attack the source post?
This is correct, it is a keystone for Democrats.
Two somewhat separate beasts, critical theory and the offshoot of critical race theory (I guess that makes Marx a grandfather?)
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No, an attack on this particular piece. I am wondering how an article in a magazine that advertises itself as a “a hub of Jewish life” and regularly runs articles on anti-Semitism (and is generally very good and worth reading) can justify such a critique of CRC and intersectionalism.
Critical race theory asserts that race and racism are always linked. Moreover, it holds that race will always be about inequality between groups and the domination of one group by another. The correct response, in this line of thinking, is to always view the world of social problems in general, and racial disparities in particular, through the prism of race and racism. In fact, the theory proposes that solutions that aren’t explicitly race-conscious are themselves little more than a tool to maintain the dominance of whites over people of color.
And gentiles over Jews. I would think that the experience of anti-Semitism would result in a more sympathetic approach to both CEC and intersectionality.
That’s naive. Lots of people can see that a social focus on dividing people into racial groups instead of treating people as primarily members of the larger society can lead to issues such as anti-Semitism and the Holocaust.
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Maybe they’re on to something.
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Ibram Kendi is an advocate of the idea that precision, and being able to demonstrate it, is to ask black kids to perform “inauthentically.” That there are ways of “knowing” beyond the kind that require rigorous training to master is behind passages such as his venturing in the Elect Biblical testament How to Be an Antiracist :
“What if we measured intelligence by how knowledgeable individuals are about their own environments? What if we measured intellect by an individual’s desire to know?”
Anyone who sings of this book as prophecy is saying that a passage like that makes sense, despite it being a savage smack in the face on any black person in America. Translation: we should elevate that which students take in subconsciously without effort – e.g. street smarts, emotional empathy, and “spunk.” If a white man smilingly encouraged black people to be satisfied with this he would look like a bigot in a daguerrotype. Kendi thinks we should redefine braininess as just being “swell.” As opposed to the oh-so-benighted idea of helping black kids do better on tests – but no: to him that’s giving in to “whiteness.” But the world of decentered “whiteness” – i.e. that spunky, funky, holistic, intuitive world where everybody dances to hiphop and does what they feel like and, if they do science, focus on telling the older folks that they need to pay more attention to spunky, funky, holistic, intuitive, hip-hoppyness – would be one without electricity.
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I haven’t had a chance to read this one through, but will when I get the time.
Interesting is that I’ve been watching a few documentaries recently and “Critical Theory Professor” has come up more than once. Fascinating.
Also, completely unrelated but hilarious, I watched a mockumentary with Captain Kirk about the suicide forest in Japan and they had on a white guy who was a PhD in East Asian summin, and he was like, “Can a place have evil attached to it…well yeah.”
I’m not equating the two degrees…or am I? 
Critical race theory is an academic discipline, formulated in the 1990s and built on the intellectual framework of identity-based Marxism. Relegated for many years to universities and obscure academic journals, it has increasingly become the default ideology in our public institutions over the past decade. It has been injected into government agencies, public school systems, teacher training programs, and corporate human-resources departments, in the form of diversity-training programs, human-resources modules, public-policy frameworks, and school curricula.
Its supporters deploy a series of euphemisms to describe critical race theory, including “equity,” “social justice,” “diversity and inclusion,” and “culturally responsive teaching.” Critical race theorists, masters of language construction, realize that “neo-Marxism” would be a hard sell. Equity , on the other hand, sounds non-threatening and is easily confused with the American principle of equality . But the distinction is vast and important. Indeed, critical race theorists explicitly reject equality—the principle proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, defended in the Civil War, and codified into law with the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. To them, equality represents “mere nondiscrimination” and provides “camouflage” for white supremacy, patriarchy, and oppression.
In contrast to equality, equity as defined and promoted by critical race theorists is little more than reformulated Marxism.
And this one. This seems to be the new headfake, a la, BORDER CRISIS 
Schools are day care and signaling devices for employers. If it ain’t STEM and literacy then who, ten years down the road, cares honestly about what happened back when then?
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National polls, by the way, may be understating opposition. The Cook Report’s Amy Walter reports that Republican voters may be especially unwilling to be polled, and a retrospective study of 2020 by five top Democratic pollsters reached a similar conclusion.
As “The Emerging Democratic Majority” co-author Ruy Teixeira points out, Americans’ belief that “discrimination and racism are bad but they are not the cause of all disparities in American society” is “clearly at odds with causes” and views embraced by Democratic activists and “intellectual supporters.”
The ebbing of their view that the America that elected and reelected Obama is just as racist as ever, and maybe more so, may be coinciding with (or caused by?) the emergence from lockdown made possible by America’s vaccination success, just as the spread of the Black Lives Matter view after the death of George Floyd coincided with (or was caused by?) lockdown fatigue.
All of this is a sense that it’s time to emerge, into reality.
Mmmm.