The Campaign to Cancel Wokeness: Critical Race Theory Version

    How the right is trying to censor critical race theory.

    Kimberlé Crenshaw, a pioneering legal scholar who teaches at both U.C.L.A. and Columbia, has watched with alarm the attempts to suppress an entire intellectual movement. It was Crenshaw who came up with the name “critical race theory” when organizing a workshop in 1989. (She also coined the term “intersectionality.”) “The commitment to free speech seems to dissipate when the people who are being gagged are folks who are demanding racial justice,” she told me.

    Many of the intellectual currents that would become critical race theory emerged in the 1970s out of disappointment with the incomplete work of the civil rights movement, and cohered among radical law professors in the 1980s.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/26/opinion/speech-racism-academia.html

    Critical Race Theory is more of a threat to the country than white supremacists.

    Critical Race Theory stifles dissent

    Critical Race Theory will be defeated by canceling it.

    Comments

    What did you expect, they were just going to lay down and let screeching liberals attack their culture and not take advantage when some of those liberals act and talk like Mao Red Guards and turn civilians in the middle off and frighten academics into silence? If you don't want culture wars, don't invite them. Learn the way hearts and minds really are changed, through learning not cancelling. And if the learning's not fun, figure out how to make it fun. And I said fun. Be nice, not angry and mean censors, show the way. Frustrates the hell out of passionate harridans when you do that. I.E., they haven't canceled "Hollywood" yet and they've been trying for decades, people like it too much.


    Just an example, the way slavery has been taught is a complete whitewashing of events. It is only recently that the myth of the Lost Cause and the supposed Black Confederate troops has been challenged.

    The culture war is all about state's rights


    Huh? It was certainly challenged when I was in 3rd grade - in the deep South, mind you - I'm sure long before. (The Lost Cause - we didn't think there were any black confederate soldiers. The only place where "The Lost Cause" existed was The Band's sentimental "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" - more about the depression of not being able to accept change and defeat - and the crazy bugle-blowing loon Sen. Claghorn from Tennessee.)


    I don't know how common those ideas were in the culture or the schools but neither of those ideas were taught in my schools. The superficial study of most things I received in elementary school and high school never presented them as existing or controversies. I learned nothing about the lost cause myth and was never taught that there were black confederate troops. I didn't come across the idea until I was an adult. Based on my pre-college school education I was surprised and doubtful when I encountered the idea that some blacks fought for the confederacy. And I was a straight A student in school and learned the material as taught and tested.


    Annals of Populism: Who Is in Charge of Cancel Culture?

    Liberals increasingly embrace the progressive critique of structural racism, but they are far less certain of what to do about it.

    By Benjamin Wallace-Wells @ NewYorker.com, March 11

    Dr. Seuss Enterprises is not a political entity.  [.....]

    [....]

    When politicians or commentators talk about “cancel culture,” they are typically speaking of a fear that even ordinary people who express ideas that are politically incorrect will be publicly shamed—that social media has enabled a universal speech surveillance, and that people and institutions are now self-policing, out of fear of it [....]

    I covered the 2020 Democratic Presidential primary and found that its signal characteristic was that the candidates spoke as few others had, on many topics but especially on racial ones. Even milquetoast candidates like Pete Buttigieg spoke earnestly (if in his case also defensively, having failed to connect with Black voters) about the necessity of dismantling systemic racism. Bernie Sanders’s rallies sometimes began with a blessing from indigenous people. Nearly all the candidates spoke of “Black and brown communities”—the “brown” was new in a context like this, and it defined Mexican-American or Filipino-American communities not by their own heritage or experience but by their relationship to whiteness. Democratic Presidential candidates often adopted activist language in even more casual ways: Elizabeth Warren described her intention to “lift up the voices” of marginalized communities. This was striking coming from a powerful senator. Activists “lift up the voices” of the marginalized. Senators (and Presidents) are usually in a different business, the allocation of power. They don’t lift up voices; they decide whether to fund wars, and whether a line cook at McDonald’s should make eleven or fifteen dollars per hour. Democratic politicians’ connection with the cause of racial justice strengthened throughout the Trump era—an expression of their horror at a President they openly described as white supremacist or racist. It strengthened further during the spring protests over the police murder of George Floyd. In June, Nancy Pelosi knelt in the Capitol wearing a kente-cloth stole, an idea that had come from the Congressional Black Caucus. Still, the choice made you wonder how closely she was listening, and how much of this was for show.

    Among those politicians who thought it imperative to dismantle white supremacy quickly, a natural question was how to do it. One approach, explored by the Minneapolis city council, was to allow racial-justice advocates a more direct role in defining public policy. Within two weeks of Floyd’s killing, following a week of intense lobbying by activists, a majority of the city-council members appeared at a protest and announced that they intended to “end policing as we know it.” I reported on that initiative, and found that the city councillors had well-grounded criticisms of the old police system but only a vague sense of what would replace it. I kept asking whose idea it had been to pursue defunding. Cam Gordon, a city councillor, named the activist groups: “It was Reclaim the Block and Black Visions Collective’s baby.” By September, the proposal, which would have first sought ballot approval to amend the city charter’s definition of policing, was functionally dead, after the charter commission voted against approving the necessary ballot initiative. Several of the councillors acknowledged then that they had never really agreed on what it would mean to defund the police, and the initiative lost steam when it encountered what a Times report described as “public opposition.”

    Another approach, in San Francisco, was to aim at symbolic targets, in this case the names of schools. As in many other places, the education board had formed a committee to review school names in 2018, after the previous year’s white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, and, like the city council in Minneapolis, the committee proceeded deliberately. While schools in San Francisco were closed for the pandemic, the board of education voted, 6–1, to rename forty-four schools in order to “dismantle symbols of racism and white supremacy culture,” including schools named after Abraham Lincoln (for his role in the killing and persecution of Native Americans), James Russell Lowell (an abolitionist who the Committee alleged did not want Black people to be allowed to vote), and the nineteenth-century tycoon James Lick (whose estate funded an offensive statue). By then, the school board had a new president, Gabriela López, a thirty-year-old activist schoolteacher who had moved to San Francisco after receiving her master’s, and it was never clear how much support this broad renaming enjoyed from San Franciscans. The renaming project was botched, probably in part because the committee charged with renaming the schools did not consult any historians. “What would be the point?” the chair of the renaming committee and first-grade teacher named Jeremiah Jeffries wondered, insisting that the history of oppression was plain to see. In pursuit of dramatic change, the committee made basic errors: assuming, for example, that Paul Revere’s Penobscot Expedition had been a colonizing raid against indigenous communities in Maine, when it was actually an effort to capture a British fort. A month after the school board’s plan was announced, it was shelved indefinitely.

    In cities like San Francisco and Minneapolis, these kinds of progressive ideas are often associated with the political opposition to gentrification. But they may actually share some of the ethos of gentrification, in that they aspire to wash away a complicated past and replace it with one that is beyond rebuke. Such ideas may also be held, in large part, by gentrifiers: college-educated white Democrats are now more progressive on many racial issues than Black or Hispanic voters, as Matthew Yglesias and other commentators have pointed out. (There’s an echo of this progressive desire to wipe the slate clean in a proposal by Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president and a New York City mayoral contender, and a Black Brooklyn native himself, to revive the borough’s “agrarian economy.” Brooklyn!)

    No one deserves to have their name on a school in perpetuity, and little violence is done by erasing it, but when I went through the full list of forty-four names it seemed to me to be dominated by historical figures who had done many admirable things and some objectionable ones. The stumbling efforts in Minneapolis and San Francisco suggest that even the people who most sincerely believe in dismantling white supremacy do not really know how to do so. At least not yet.

    Senators and Cabinet officials, at least, have the power to attempt broad social remedies: to raise the minimum wage, to address the racial wealth gap by issuing “baby bonds,” as Senator Cory Booker has long proposed. Change is harder for the many others—not “élites,” but just people with responsibilities—who might run a church, or a school, or a business. You have to balance the budget, and plan the retreat, and fire the person who won’t show up on time, and then you have to work to dismantle white supremacy. How, exactly? Most liberals can agree on the ends of a movement for racial justice. But what are the means—what would be sufficient? The uncertainty characterizes much of progressivism right now, at the outset of the Biden Administration. Plenty of people are stuck in it.

    Last month, the Times columnist Michael Powell published a story that quickly entered the cancel culture canon, about an incident at Smith College in the summer of 2018 [.....]

    [....]

    Each of these incidents, up close, turned not on the intervention of activists, or the mechanisms of mass protest, but on the anxieties and misjudgments of élites. That held true in cases in which the activist was outspoken (as at Smith) or perhaps hypothetical (as with Seuss). The college president, the city-council subcommittee, the panel of experts: these figures are often described by their political opponents as if they were as coherent and determined as a closed fist—that there is something cohesive that could be called cancel culture. My own sense is that something close to the opposite is true. The claims of racial justice have upended liberal élites in interesting and profound ways, and left them deeply uncertain: about how much history should be revised, about what kinds of retributive steps should be taken, and, above all, about how many people, really, want radical change.


    History should not be revised, obviously. But I don't think that's what liberals actually want. Critical theory has always been a tool of the Right. But if the Left uses it, and makes it into a boondoggle for censorship from the Right, then the Right will end up censoring themselves (or else get across-the-board rebuke and a foot in their mouth).


    Approving this, even though I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say?


    Critical Theory is not Critical Race Theory

    Critical Race Theory is not being taught in K-12

    The fact that Critical Race Theory may have played a role in a Democratic loss in Virginia is disgraceful 

    Telling the truth about voter suppression today and during Jim Crow makes some uncomfortable.

     



    On the contrary, my black father taught me to see it as a pillar of self-empowerment. Doing well on the tests gave me the confidence to disregard whatever micro aggressions and racism I encountered. Children are strong enough to rise to challenges when encouraged. https://t.co/FCOsu1zdXA

    — Thomas Chatterton Williams (@thomaschattwill) March 3, 2021

    “The real knot is where blackness and poverty intersect. It’s going to require more than anti-racism, but talking about class” - @ThomasChattWill in conversation with @HenryLouisGates #kmf12 Now at https://t.co/cD04TaACCl pic.twitter.com/XvFBtgbKj2

    — Knight Foundation (@knightfdn) March 3, 2021

    Appreciated a point @thomaschattwill made that there are minorities within minorities. No race or ethnics group is a monolith. Stop checking off your minority boxes and thinking you're suddenly diverse.

    This was an amazing conversation. #KMF21 https://t.co/FHDkklZBo9

    — Ellen (Hwang) Kwon (@ellen_hwang_phl) March 3, 2021


    One of the "racist" things that got Donald McNeil Jr. fired was that he didn't accept the notion that standardized testing was racist and argued against the idea when one of the students on the trip brought it up.


    oh and I am reminded of The Woke trying to cancel Bruce Springsteen for his Super Bowl ad because it was supposedly a message trying to extol white supremacy. Now that really backfired big time, didn't it. Barack Obama saw what the ad was actually trying to do, liked it, and basically said shoo you idiots, me and Bruce wiIl handle this

    In Episode 3 of Renegades: Born in the USA, Bruce and @BarackObama talk about identity, grace, and some of the songs that have made a difference throughout their lives... including some new performances by Bruce! Take a listen to it all on @Spotify: https://t.co/FoetjI1qnK pic.twitter.com/cGA8N77LDK

    — Bruce Springsteen (@springsteen) March 1, 2021

     

    Music has always been an important part of my life, and I think it’s safe to say that the same is true for @Springsteen. In this episode, we talked about the songs that’ve made a difference for us—and Bruce even brought out the guitar. Listen on @Spotify: https://t.co/pUlY5kGQnZ pic.twitter.com/vhMRZMgpnE

    — Barack Obama (@BarackObama) March 1, 2021

    If The Woke had their way they would have pushed the right wingers to defend Bruce, especially his white blue collar working class fans, neither would be accurate, but we'd still be reading about fighting over it to this day. Just bullshit.


    Oct. 2019


    I'm not a huge Bruce fan, but I can still see myself reading his Time cover by the school library fireplace and the huge effect of Born to Run at the time, and then later having Born in the USA/Dancing in the Dark as part of an inescapable soundtrack to my Eurotrash getaway, as well as my amazement that Patti Smith would cover one of his songs as some kind of punk validation.


    From the "Renegades" podcast 

    Obama and Springsteen also discussed the Black Lives Matter protests that swept across America in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in 2020, agreeing that the late Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) ― who Obama said “embodied [a] very particular brand of courage” ― had influenced an entire generation with his history of protesting for racial equality.

    Finally, the pair touched upon reparations, which Obama said were justified in his mind due to the fact that “the wealth of this country, the power of this country ... not exclusively, maybe not even the majority of it ... but a large portion of it, was built on the backs of slaves.”

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/barack-obama-racial-slurs-race-relations-reparations_n_60355136c5b6c0f82b48f324

    Obama and Lewis said BLM were the children of John Lewis.

    Obama was describing the difference between tweeting an insult and activism


    The right knows exactly what it is doing and why, they can destroy Dem majorities by showing how Dems will not denounce ridiculous ideas from "The Woke". They will play it up every chance they get now.

     50% of voters in this country have become independents mostly because they can't stand the extremes of culture warring on each side.They don't even want to hear it anymore.

    Unfortunately the crazy heights "wokeness" has reached in education and the ivy tower makes right wing culture wars arguments sound more rational to normal centered people if they had to chose between the two (though most probably would rather not have to chose either!)

    Who would have thought back in the 90's that the left would have taken culture warring to more ridiculous heights than that of campaigns against Hollywood and art shows that dissed conservative religious views?

    Well here we are--amazing--a new more vehement "religious" war with lefties trying to censor everything under the sun that might hurt someone's sensibilities and at the same time rewriting history (and even math and science.)  To show the white people's ways are the enemy's ways and they must now lie prostrate, humiliate themselves and listen to how horrible everything they ever did was.Some elite educated white liberals are amazingly willing to do this, to the chagrin of more conservative blacks,hispanics, asians and assorted immigrant types, crazy but true.


    It's more important than it ever was for politicians on the left side of the aisle to just say no to culture wars. It will destroy them if they persist. Just stay out of it. The Woke have set up a terrible trap and the right wing is going to take advantage every frigging time to distract with it whenever they can now that they are out of majority power nationally. 

    Nate Silver confirms that when he says here that moderates mostly win elections but progressives can win if they avoid fighting too many "culture war" battles.

    .@mattyglesias talked about this in his (paywalled, I think) newsletter today, but the most empirically robust electoral finding that most consistently gets ignored is that moderates DO in fact win elections more often, holding other factors constant.

    — Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) March 3, 2021

    Of course, what constitutes a moderate is somewhat in the eyes of the beholder. In 538's models, we measure it by partisanship, i.e. how often a member of Congress dissents from her party, and we see robust effects. It's not surprising that Collins or Manchin won re-election.

    — Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) March 3, 2021

    As Biden and Obama show, you can probably get away with being quite progressive on economic policies (many of which like the minimum wage are in fact popular) via some combination of moderation in tone/temperament and avoiding fighting too many "culture war" battles.

    — Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) March 3, 2021

    Again, a crucial 50% now call themselves independents and are mostly silent but that doesn't meant they approve of the ridiculous culture warring now instigated by The Woke.

    The culture warring only works for those with idiot right wing constituencies who have had long practice humiliating themselves with it, like for example Ted Cruz. (and it's not at all certain that will last as Trumpism mutates.)

    For so long I heard the arguments that if if if Dems just got out all the vote, they would have a clean blue sweep like you've never seen before. Well guess what, all that vote came out this last time and surprise surprise surprise, they are not all true blue liberals and they don't like culture warring, they like the e pluribus unum vision, or as Rodney King said "people, can't we all get along?"

     


    It's real easy for right wingers to make fun of The Woke, and turn off centrists to the left for entertaining them,

    with exaggerations like this:

    BECAUSE IT'S NOT ALWAYS AN EXAGGERATION, like, this one is real story:

    Lots of normal people really aren't into living in a recreation of Mao's cultural revolution. Even some white liberals with corporate jobs seem pretty well sick of the Zoom sensitivity training sessions by now, enough already with the childish agitprop training sessions. If you work for Coca Cola, it's kind of a sham to pretend you are anti-colonialist anyways

     

     


    I would think that the Republican Party supporting insurrection would turn off many people.

    D.C. is on high alert because of expected white supremacist terrorist activity.

    Edit to add:
     

    Some are deciding to vote against their economic interests 

    As the election returns rolled in showing President Donald J. Trump winning strong support from blue-collar voters in November while suffering historic losses in suburbs across the country, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, a Republican, declaredon Twitter: “We are a working class party now. That’s the future.”

    And with further results revealing that Mr. Trump had carried 40 percent of union households and made unexpected inroads with Latinos, other Republican leaders, including Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, trumpeted a political realignment. Republicans, they said, were accelerating their transformation into the party of Sam’s Club rather than the country club.

    But since then, Republicans have offered very little to advance the economic interests of blue-collar workers. Two major opportunities for party leaders to showcase their priorities have unfolded recently without a nod to working Americans.

    In Washington, as Democrats advance a nearly $2 trillion economic stimulus bill, they are facing universal opposition from congressional Republicans to the package, which is chock-full of measures to benefit struggling workers a full year into the coronavirus pandemic. The bill includes $1,400 checks to middle-income Americans and extended unemployment benefits, which are set to lapse on March 14.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/us/politics/republicans-workers-covid-bill.html


    The Right is fighting a Lost Cause battle over culture

    The American right is consumed with its cultural Lost Cause. They want racist imagery to remain in books.

    In case you missed the emergence of this vital national issue, Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced that it will allow six of the author’s lesser-known books to go out of print, because they contain imagery and language that just about everyone should acknowledge is disturbingly racist.

    To be clear: There have been no anti-Seuss laws passed, no public campaigns to denounce Dr. Seuss, no boycotts, no books burned or banned, no “canceling,” and no one saying that everyone should stop reading the many Dr. Seuss books that don’tcontain racist imagery. It was the decision of a publisher to no longer publish a few books that most people had never heard of, the kind of decision publishers make every day.

     

    But it set off an explosion in the conservative media, egged on by political leaders who have been consumed with the terrifying threat posed by “cancel culture.”

    So rather than seeing this as an interesting example of how the portrayal of racial minorities has changed for the better in recent decades, conservatives again rushed to proclaim themselves victims. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said that Democrats want to “outlaw Dr. Seuss” as part of a broader campaign to “tell us what to say.” Glenn Beck told his listeners that we’re seeing “the end of freedom in America.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/03/american-right-is-consumed-with-its-cultural-lost-cause/


    they like it that you think that


    Your proof to the contrary?


    just one of many examples


    And that's good, no? I mean, with Cuomo they'll remove a governor. With Dr Seuss they remove a barely read book. If they turned to the rescue act, they could screw things up even if they got mud all over their face 


    If the country is willing to overlook an insurrection and focuses on 6 books removed by the publisher, the country is over and done.


    You are very much part of "The Country" you seek to blame. You (and your Woke friends) are a significant part of promoting interest in the Seuss story.


    I think you need to watch how Fox et al. is playing this.

    Republicans have no agenda, so they go culture wars.

    The people who supported an insurrection and failed to certify the election are the real threat.

    The House canceled Thursday session 

    The was not because of a threat from the Woke.


    America, what a country, where there are a growing number if "professionals" that specialize in getting the canceled un-canceled

    Michael Eric Dyson will lay on hands and Harrison will rise like Lazarus https://t.co/J0whrwCyHl

    — Obaid Omer (@obaidomer) March 4, 2021

    Hasn't the show had repeated complaints about racism?

    Sill on the air.

    So much for Woke influence.


    If you step outside reading according to the dominant political tribal framing of the day, you can find all kinds of variants, it's kind of amazing how even people within certain political tribes see things different from their supposed fellow tribe members and can even sound like the other tribe

    The right always overcorrects, and that’s why they always lose.

    They react to virtue signals from the left rather than standing on principle regardless of what the left says/does.

    It’s no better than when they left opposed everything Trump did purely because it came from Trump.

    — Karlyn supports banning critical race theory in NH (@DrKarlynB) March 6, 2021

    "but mom, he started it"


    CANCEL CULTURE DOESN’T EXIST, BUT EVEN IF IT DID...MAAAAAAN, I KNOW CONSERVATIVES AIN’T TALKIN'

    From the Root

    In 2002, Rush Limbaugh’s puss-bucket, Bill O’Reilly, successfully used his platform on Fox News to pressure Pepsi to cancel their business relationship with legendary Atlanta rapper Ludacris and pull every single one of its ads that featured him from the airwaves. It took one day.

    “I’m calling for all responsible Americans to fight back and punish Pepsi for using a man who degrades women, who encourages substance abuse, and does all the things that hurt particularly the poor in our society,” he said on The O’Reilly Factor.

     

    And just like that, Bill O’Reilly invented cancel culture.

    I’m joking—it would be ridiculous for me to blame O’Reilly for the advent of cancel culture. I mean, it is true that he and every other conservative finger-wag enthusiasts in America who threatened boycotts or publicly protested in favor of banishing NWA and 2 Live Crew from TV, radio and the face of White Jesus’ red, white and blue Earth were engaged in the very practice of cancel culture that they now decry and condemn. It would be absolutely correct to say that they were the OG snowflakes who could’ve simply changed the channel if they were offended but instead decided that if they didn’t like a thing then no one else should be free to enjoy it. It might even be accurate to say that they wanted rap music canceled for reasons they thought were morally righteous and put them on the right side of history.

    But none of that makes Bill O’Reilly personally responsible for the creation of cancel culture—first, because he’s hardly a pioneer of conservative snowflake-dom, and second, because #@$&%$, FOR THE LAST TIME, CANCEL CULTURE ISN’T REAL!

    https://www.theroot.com/cancel-culture-doesn-t-exist-but-even-if-it-did-maaa-1846420753

    By rmrd0000 on Mon, 03/08/2021 - 12:16pm |

    My comment was cancelled. :P
    by Orion on Mon, 03/08/2021 - 12:24pm


    IBRAM X KENDI’S NEWSPAPER

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/21/business/media/boston-globe-ibram-kendi.html

    BOSTON — Ibram X. Kendi and Bina Venkataraman met last summer when their big Boston institutions, Boston University and The Boston Globe, were grappling with protests over racial justice.

    Ms. Venkataraman, the editor of The Globe’s editorial page, asked Dr. Kendi, the author of a book called “How to Be an Antiracist,” why he decided to found the Center for Antiracist Research in a city known for the backlash to busing and “where sports fans boo athletes of color,” she recalled in an interview. They started talking about their shared obsession with a different Boston history, 19th century abolitionist newspapers. Then they wondered what it would mean to found, in 2021, a newspaper in the spirit of William Lloyd Garrison’s legendary The Liberator.

    In particular, they wondered, what would it mean to bring to American racism the sense of urgency with which Garrison, in 1831, started the newspaper, abandoning a more gradualist approach to slavery. “On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation. No! no!” he famously began, saying that would be like telling “a man whose house is on fire, to give a moderate alarm.”

    Now, with the backing of their institutions and a seven-figure budget, they plan later this year to start an online publication that blends reportage, opinion and academic research, some of which will appear in The Globe. They hope to revive the tradition of a generation of media that predates the formal division of news and opinion in 20th-century American journalism. And they want to channel the energy that has produced a year of newsroom conversations and arguments about racism.

    “If you don’t have people agitating for urgent change, it becomes easy to just turn to other problems,” Ms. Venkataraman said in an interview. “And I think that’s sort of an inspiring framework for thinking about why you need a publication or platform like this now, because you need to keep it on people’s minds past the news cycle.”

    This is not, of course, a simple project. The politics of the two venerable institutions means that the new publication will be hiring two editors in chief, one with a more academic bent and one more journalistic, amid a national scramble for editorial talent. The founders said they’d had preliminary conversations with CBS’s Wesley Lowery and Errin Haines of The 19th, a new nonprofit group focused on gender and politics that is serving as a model for The Emancipator. The project has backing from the university and the newspaper but also is seeking to raise money from foundations and individuals.

    And then there’s the matter of the name. A Christian nonprofit organization best known for fighting against marriage equality, Liberty Counsel, has trademarked “The Liberator” for its newsletter. So Dr. Kendi and Ms. Venkataraman had to dig into somewhat more obscure corners of the past for an available historical publication: The Emancipator, which for a time during the 19th century was the newspaper of the American Anti-Slavery Society.


    NYT's Michelle Goldberg addresses the suppression of free speech that comes from critics of CRT.

    Last month, I wrote that right-wing legislatures trying to ban critical race theory from public schools and institutions were a far more direct threat to free speech than what’s often called cancel culture.

    Some opponents of critical race theory responded that these bans aren’t meant to prohibit teaching about critical race theory; that they are, rather, meant to protect individuals, especially children, from coerced speech and indoctrination.

    “C.R.T.’s critics aren’t arguing that no one has the right to talk and write about C.R.T. (particularly among adults on college campuses); they are resisting the implication that C.R.T. is a settled and acceptable dogma,” Christine Rosen wrote in Commentary. “They also take issue with the way this theory is being imposed on schoolchildren, many of whom have been forced to denounce immutable parts of themselves, such as their skin color and sex, in C.R.T. struggle sessions.”

    I’m willing to concede at least part of what Rosen is saying. I don’t like struggle sessions; I think critical race theory as it developed in the academy is intellectually rich, but some of the ways it’s been adapted by workplace diversity trainers and education consultants seem risible. Rosen referred to a Nevada lawsuit by a Black woman who accused a charter school of making life miserable for her mixed-race son because he rejected certain ideas about privilege and oppression; if the details in it are true, he was seriously mistreated.

    The right-wing caricature of progressive public schools as pampered re-education camps is extremely far from my own family’s experience, but if any kids are being bullied and shamed for refusing to espouse social justice principles, even principles I agree with, that’s wrong.

    However, the claim that the right’s war on critical race theory doesn’t threaten academic freedom is also wrong. Consider what just happened in Idaho, where last week Boise State University suspended dozens of classes, online and in person, dealing with different aspects of diversity. This week, they were reinstated, but online only and “asynchronously,” without any live discussions.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/26/opinion/free-speech-idaho.html

    Goldberg notes that the experience of her children at their schools CRT program is much different than the tales woven by CRT critics. The CRT critics are suppressing freedom of speech. The major goal of the critics seems to be sowing fear for political purposes. Funds are being diverted from university programs focused on diversity.

     


    Fox’s Laura Ingraham addresses the suppression of free speech that comes from critics of Creationism.

    Last month, I wrote that left-wing legislatures trying to ban Creationism from public schools and institutions were a far more direct threat to free speech than what’s often called rightwing absolutism.

    Some opponents of Creationism responded that these bans aren’t meant to prohibit teaching about Creationism; that they are, rather, meant to protect individuals, especially children, from coerced speech and indoctrination.

    “Creationism’s critics aren’t arguing that no one has the right to talk and write about Creationism (particularly among adults on college campuses); they are resisting the implication that Creationism is a settled and acceptable dogma,” Christine Rosen wrote in Commentary. “They also take issue with the way this theory is being imposed on schoolchildren, many of whom have been forced to denounce immutable parts of themselves, such as their sexuality and physiology, in Creationism struggle sessions.”

    I’m willing to concede at least part of what Rosen is saying. I don’t like struggle sessions; I think Creationism as it developed in the academy is intellectually rich, but some of the ways it’s been adapted by workplace diversity trainers and education consultants seem risible. Rosen referred to a Nevada lawsuit by a Church of Christ member who accused a charter school of making life miserable for her religiously trained son because he rejected certain ideas about fossils and archaeology; if the details in it are true, he was seriously mistreated.

    The left-wing caricature of religious schools as pampered re-education camps is extremely far from my own family’s experience, but if any kids are being bullied and shamed for refusing to espouse creationist principles, even principles I agree with, that’s wrong.

    However, the claim that the left’s war on Creationism doesn’t threaten academic freedom is also wrong. Consider what just happened in Idaho, where last week Boise State University suspended dozens of classes, online and in person, dealing with different aspects of immaculate conception. This week, they were reinstated, but online only and “asynchronously,” without any live discussions.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/26/opinion/free-speech-idaho.html

    Goldberg notes that the experience of her children at their schools’ Creationism program is much different than the tales woven by Creationism critics. The Creationism critics are suppressing freedom of speech. The major goal of the critics seems to be sowing fear for political purposes. Funds are being diverted from university programs focused on religious values.

     


    Above I posted about the GOP attack on the CRT, etc being the new Woke

    Are you posting this to say the Woke activists and those who whine about the Woke are the same?


    Cancel culture began as a joke

    The strange journey of ‘cancel,’ from a Black-culture punchline to a White-grievance watchword

    The term was first used by musician Niles Rogers forty years ago, after a bad date

    .He penned the words:

    Watchin' the late show

    I made up my mind, oh

    A love that is free like a love should be

    Fallin' behind, oh

    Don't you see you are the one

    I couldn't have begun

    No, your love is cancelled 

    The song, “Your Love Is Cancelled,” which appeared on Chic’s 1981 album, “Take It Off,” was not a hit. But the metaphor Rodgers had invented — the idea of “canceling” a person for unacceptable behavior, like a network executive pulling the plug on an unsuccessful TV show — has taken its own journey. Recently it turned up in Central Florida, in the mouth of a 57-year-old White Republican from Ohio.

    “All right, who’s next?” asked Rep. Jim Jordan. “Who’s the cancel culture going to attack next?”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/cancel-culture-background-black-culture-white-grievance/2021/04/01/2e42e4fe-8b24-11eb-aff6-4f720ca2d479_story.html#click=https://t.co/4IiyUdU8A0

    Cancel culture went from a joke line to a weapon used by Conservatives 

    Conservatives can go on national television and write opinion articles in major newspapers to whine about how they have been cancelled.


    Harvard Law Prof. Laurence Tribe was proud to assist a coalition of alumni make the woke bullies of the SF school board back down from a "insane" woke renaming of 44 schools:

    So proud to have been part of this effort to restore sanity, and so grateful to @PaulScott415 for letting me assist. He's exactly right about the schoolyard bully way the SF School Board tried to cover its abject defeat. Nobody was fooled but possibly the fools themselves. https://t.co/LUX9rBPX3W

    — Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) April 3, 2021

     


    Thomas Frank (who wrote the 2004 best seller "What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America") now advises Democrats on The Woke:


    Nov. 19 op-ed in the liberal Daily Cardinal, a non-profit newspaper published by and for the UW-Madison community since 1892:

    Woke culture destroyed the ‘blue wave’

    By Ian-Michael Griffin

    “The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.”

    - George Orwell

    If the political forecasters were right, this year’s election cycle would have marked a historic landslide victory for the Democratic Party as they gained the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Instead, the mythical “blue wave” fizzled out into a splash long before the first ballot was even cast. [....]



    MISSISSIPPI DOES NOT WANT WOKE VOTERS TO CAST BALLOTS

    By rmrd0000 on Wed, 04/07/2021 - 8:16pm |

    Gotta keep those woke voters down

    Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson expressed concern that an executive order signed by President Joe Biden will automatically register "woke" college students to vote. The order does not mention colleges or mandate automatic voter registration.

    Watson said in a local TV interview last month that he was worried Biden's executive order to promote "access to voting" would somehow result in automatic voter registration of "uninformed" students and force them to cast ballots whether they want to or not. The order does not, and cannot, do any of those things. The comments went under the radar until they were flagged by the Mississippi Free Press on Tuesday.

    https://www.salon.com/2021/04/07/mississippi-gop-election-chief-worried-biden-may-register-uninformed-and-woke-students-to-vote/

    Link to the original article from Mississippi Free Press

    https://www.mississippifreepress.org/11009/mississippi-elections-chief-warns-biden-may-register-uninformed-woke-college-voters/

    [this isn't even news - PP]


    while the moderator says [this isn't even news - PP]

    I am going: how clueless are you that you think it is a benefit politically to Dems to point this tactic out? What exactly are you trying to say? That Dems should be happy and proud of Woke academia?

    He is saying this because it works, BECAUSE IT WINS OVER SWINGS!

    What don't you get about everything "woke" not being popular with the majority in this country, that well-caricatured wokeness is a leftist bug, not a feature for Dems? That every time there's a NYTimes columnist or lefty college course complaining about Looney Tunes or Dr. Seuss, that the far right GOP will grab that ball and run with it? And not just them, but Saturday Night Live as well? Wokeness is associated with the far left, DEAL WITH THAT REALITY, if you want it to be more acceptable and have a more positive meaning to more people, you could start with like winning over Matthew Yglesisas types. He's not exactly a raving right winger and he doesn't like 'Woke".

    Again, politically, "Woke" is a bug, not a saleable feature, at the current time. Ask Joe Biden or Jim Clyburn.


    Some southern redneck dumbfuck has a "feeling" *A MONTH AGO* about something that isn't true and DIDNT HAPPEN and wouldn't happen, but because some dumbfuck southern rag finally noticed a month later i have to hear about this dumbfuck brainfart redneck conjecture across the Atlantic? Give me a dumbfucking break.


    First, you have to know that there are at least, three different referents to "Critical Race Theory" that will be used as misdirection. 1) CRT is the legal theory in law schools,2) CRT is the idea of teaching the unwhitewashed version of history to kids, and 3) CRT is a method of teaching kids K-12 ridiculous, dangerous and false concepts and methods that undermine math and critical thinking skills and create divisiveness starting from 1st grade. For example, in order to ensure 1st grade kids who no concept of it, yet, that in order to ensure against them not becoming racist in the future, they convince the white kids they are inherently racist and oppressive and teach the black kids that they are victims of this oppression by white kids and must always stay vigilant of them.
    It has been aggressively rejected from over 20 school districts mostly by well-spoken black and non-white mothers of kids that have experienced racist and divisive treatment.

    Critical Theory was inspired by Traditional Theory which is the method of explaining the Theory of Gravity, for example based on rigorous analysis and objectivity.  Critical Theory, in contrast, utilizes these methods but with complete disregard for truth or objectivity of any kind. It suggests expressing, instead of truth as in Traditional Theory, whatever narrative furthers your political goals. Also, it advises adopting an intellectual rationalization for becoming an agent of political change, secretly, as you work your way thru academia spreading Marxist principles.

    Then, it adopted a framework of RACE to become CRITICAL RACE THEORY. 
    The same MARXIST PRINCIPLES and techniques that destroyed Russia 100 years ago are the same used in CRT. They position two classes against each other, tell one of them they are victims of the other, and goad them on until they revolt. In Russia, it was poor vs. wealthy. In this case, black kids are told they will always be oppressed by white kids.


    Really? The "same" Marxist principles? Got a reference to those racial economic principles that underpinned Soviet thought? BTW, did you know Marx admired Capitalism for wiping out feudalism? Presumably no ladder to climb in Russia *was* a bad thing worth revolting against, no? No Edisons or Henry Ford's, just (very few) Tsars & royalty, plus (lots of) peasants? Seems like you're complaining the Russian Revolution shouldn't have happened at all, not that it replaced the staunchy status quo poorly with planned economies and wiping out populations in terror campaigns (kak zavyt "lynching" po-Russki?) as part of a different but not dissimilar kind of total control? Thought of that way, blacks were largely serfs, so inevitably they *were* 2 classes, 1 submissive to and supporting the other's lifestyle, only the upper classes in the US were more diverse. Of course the Russians exiled the Ukrainian Jews to various parts of the Soviet Union, while helping to starve millions of non-Jewish Ukrainians in the Holodomor - whether that's racial or simply territorial "other" is up for debate, but as long as Ukrainians spike Russian, the Russians didn't seem to mind them so much, so maybe it's Critical Linguistic Theory you're looking for.

    Alright, your turn.


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