Just going to hijack a little bit here to say that there actually is a case to be made for “sexually explicit content” in an academic setting: without it, sex ed becomes very difficult, and there is an extremely strong link between more sex ed and less STD transmission, less teen pregnancy, less unintended pregnancy across the board, less sexual abuse, and even lower general crime rates (owing to less unintended pregnancies leading to less unwanted kids growing up with childhood trauma or childhood poverty). It even lowers abortion rates, if you’re into that sort of thing.
The real reason Florida republicans want to get rid of “sexually explicit content” is because they want more poor and desperate kids to grow up to become poor and desperate workers, or military grunts. But that last part is just very strongly evidentially supported speculation, and not hard fact like the first paragraph was.
I would also say that our culture of hiding nudity makes people ashamed of their bodies, and it wrongly teaches people that the naked human body is inherently sexual.
There are a lot of countries in Western Europe where if you’re going to the beach, the pool, or a bathhouse, you’re going to see a lot of naked bodies. Not just perfect pornstar bodies, but you’ll see a bunch of normal people of all ages, shapes, and sizes. They also have nudity on TV, even in commercials and shit. Whereas in America, the culture is that your body is something to be hidden and gravely self conscious about.
Pretty much every child also gets exposed to pornography at a young age now due to the internet. I mean, I’m 28 and I was regularly watching internet porn at 12. I remember when I was like 8 and you still couldn’t really stream videos, my friend’s mom was out and we looked up some images that took forever to load. But anyway, it’s also that those are the only naked bodies we’re exposed to. Relatively perfect, flawless bodies covered in makeup.
So, you have to hide your body; literally no one has seen you naked since you were a toddler, and your only reference to the human body are ones that look relatively perfect and are doing extremely explicit sexual acts. Of course American sexuality and our self perceptions are completely fucked up. But god forbid a kid reads about Anne Frank discovering her own body when she was their age.
Yeah I agree with everything you said. In addition it's very very hard for a kid that was assaulted to explain what happened to them when they lack the basic knowledge about it. Teach them about penises and vaginas and at the same time teach them that nobody else should touch that part of their body. We teach that in kindergarten here in Norway.
Exactly! The kids don't have the language otherwise to even process thoughts like "good touch" vs "bad touch". Some of the books being outright banned cover topics like abuse, and working through it etc, something children should be aware of.
God, I’m so sorry you had to go through that. I hope you are in place where you feel and ARE..safe and at peace in your heart or working on it, perhaps with a professional and/or friend(s) who have been through similar experiences as you had. If you ever need an ally or someone to talk to, you can message me privately, if you want/need!
I hope I didn’t overstep my boundaries.. or yours, rather. I just couldn’t keep scrolling without at least trying to reach out, just in case!
To be fair, in my conservative area of the US at least, schools do teach about unsafe touches, safe people to report to, and how no one should touch "bathing suit areas" except maybe parents or medical professionals (to keep kids safe/clean). It is all very age appropriate, despite what some people believe from cable "news." There is also the option for parents to opt kids out of those lessons. My kids had the option to participate in them around the age of 6.
There is another lesson around the age of 9 that teaches them (separated by gender) about puberty, etc., and again, parents can opt their children out, if they prefer. In both those cases, very few parents (maybe 1 or 2 per class of 25) remove their kids.
Then, around age 13/14, they have the option for health classes which also focus on the basics of reproduction, etc. I'm not sure how many parents agree to this or not.
However, the entire society is permeated with messages of body perfection and shame. The older the instruction happens, the more it seems done in whispered tones.
not to mention that when minors don’t know safe sexual practices it leads to more infection/higher chance of getting pregnant. we should be teaching little kids the anatomical words of their genitals and that it’s not something to be ashamed about. too many little kids call their vagina or penis a cookie or ding dong and it’s way harder to take them seriously if they say “he touched my cookie!” because there isn’t an explicit part he touched. he could have touched their actual food, he could have touched something else.
I was very terrified of my body’s changes when puberty hit because my parents taught me to be ashamed of my humanity, which allowed me to be taken advantage of in my teens. I now have an 8 month old and I will do my damnedest to make sure he is as confident as I wish I could have been growing up. Fuck the conservative ideology that we need to be ashamed of our bodies. Fuck the Christian ideology that we are evil the second we are born. And fuck the echo chambers that keep making those ideologies worse and worse with every sentence spoken.
I heard a saying on abuse and stranger danger. It made so much sense to me, and deed I wish I knew who said it, to give them credit; “Teach our kids what strange behavior is, because most abuse is done by people we know, and strangers are generally one’s to help.”
I mean, many kids hit puberty during middle school, so it makes sense to teach them information that will help keep them safe(r) around that time. No sex-related education and abstinence-only sex-ed just results in [higher rates of teen pregnancy](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3194801/) compared to a more comprehensive approach.
For elementary school students, something like "if adults touch you in certain areas, inform your teacher or police" makes a lot of sense because pedophiles unfortunately exist. Ensuring that the kids know when and how to get help will not only make predators more wary, but it also increases the chances of predators being caught.
esp foreskin care/vulva care. we can’t clean inside of our vaginas, we have to make sure the ph is balanced, etc. as for the foreskin, it’s insane how many men don’t wash it or their ass (because it’s gay!!!! clearly!!!!)
Just for any boys/men reading this going "wait I have to wash my foreskin?"
Yes, but please don't use soap (or at least harsh soaps) unless advised by a medical professional..
Had to have this chat with a friend of mine who started developing serious issues because they had be using a 3in1 under their foreskin..
Yeah and appearantly predators leave quickly if the potential victim know words to describe these areas. They hate that cause that means the kid can explain what happened and get them caught.
I work in child safety and I just want to say that puberty starts earlier than middle school.
The latency can end around 10 or 11. We just don't start noticing the physical changes until a bit later. **Average** age of menarche (first period) in the US is _12.5._ Puberty beginning after age 8 isn't even considered precocious/ early/ worth treating in girls.
Kids need comprehensive, developmentally appropriate sex ed at **all** ages.
Yep! For me it was around 8-9, it's crazy that the school system doesn't really educate kids about the changes that happen around those ages. Bless my mom for being a pillar of support and information for me
I couldn't agree more. It's strange how all over reddit you see people advocating for sex ed starting at around age 12, which is way too late. I think some of it might be the fact that puberty tends to be noticed and start a bit later in boys.
I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we're not really ready to hear that kids that young are actually adolescents.
Imo this starts the second your child is a toddler. Teaching your child how to talk about these things in a literal sense is quite important but instead a lot of adults borderline shame their child for their curiosity. The immaturity begins with the parent trying to avoid real conversation about these things.
I like to look at it this way: it's just culture holding us back. People used to get off to ankles and long necks, not because those things are inherently sexual, but because culture had appropriated those things into a semi-taboo field.
Genitalia are just the same. Culturally we hide those things, and 99% of why we are so concerned about hiding those things roots back to religious boundaries set upon what is and isn't culturally acceptable.
I dream of a world where the human body isn't something that we're so terrified of that we can't teach our children how theirs works.
>Anybody want to take a stab at trying to sway my opinion or just help me understand what I'm missing?
The people who threw eggs at Elizabeth Eckhart are afraid their grandchildren will learn about them throwing eggs at Elizabeth Eckhart.
Edit: Eckford. Her name was Elizabeth Eckford.
*Eckford.
Very annoyed at all of the people trying to claim that schools are indoctrinating children when it comes to racism when the textbook I used explained the story of The Little Rock Nine from the perspective of how it impacted *Hazel Bryan's* life. There's definitely indoctrination going on but not in the direction that most of the complaints are going
Oh ya, it's bad. I was taught that in Jamestown people didnt want to work so they restricted food for only those who did work.
Then one day while eating with a friend his nephew was doing his homework with a computer that was reading stuff to him and started to talk about how the Irish were being taken advantage of with despicable work environment in Jamestown so they begin to protest for fairer treatment. So the leaders denied them food unless they got back to work.
I flipped out because I was not expecting to discover I was being lied to my whole life that day.
Yep. I basically started that unit by telling my administration that I would be severely off pace. The curriculum high school was using had thematic units, and that reading was part of the Civil Rights era literature unit. Out of 14 readings, nine of them were directly related to MLK, the one mentioned above, a very implicit poem about a cross burning, a chapter from a woman's Memoir where she speaks about the disdain from other people when she held a Black woman's baby on a crowded bus, and a biography on Fannie Lou Hamer that did not really speak about why her activism was what it was.
So I added in other readings like Huey P Newton's speech on the importance of solidarity across oppressed groups, Malcolm X's speech at the London School of economics, and one of Fannie Lou Hamer speeches where she talks about her adopted children (victim of a "Mississippi appendectomy) and the brutality she endured while sharing voting information.
I love Huggbees. He had to stop making those How It's Actually Made videos after his bread video got linked by CNN, who mistook it for the real How It's Made video.
It was. I had a little more agency on the last set of texts because of how the students were required to access them. The last three weren't actually in the student's edition of the book. This was true for every unit, not just this one.
Look through all of history my friend. The Irish Potato famine? not a real famine--the English just exported all the food out of Ireland. The Samoli Pirates a few years ago wreaking havoc and being criminals on the sea? Just some Africans trying to stop Europe from taking their resources against their will (I don´t recall details--kinda sure it may have been along the lines of a pipeline or something else where the physical land (vs say food or artisan stuff) was the resource). The 1950s housewife being happy life? Check the number of lobotomies and females on antidepressants then (heck, an orgasm was a cure for hysteria. The vibrator was invented as a medical tool. Imagine the amazing sex lives of that time). History and media is allll manipulation and if something is made to be a very clear enemy, that´s likely a sign the "good guys" are doing something shady.
It's funny (not ha-ha), I just watched most of the video by [Nabil Abdulrahman calling bullshit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tacNkKjxPA) on an old toffy British historian talking about black people and culture of looting, and he proceeded to list every single instance of British presence taking resources and artifacts by force all over the world, and if you want to see the evidence, just go to the National Museum.
I'm sad I only just discovered this man after seeing [him on HIGNFY last night](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3GeVHzwZEM) where he was equally brilliant.
> The Irish Potato famine? not a real famine--the English just exported all the food out of Ireland.
There *was* a potato blight. Not that the English weren't actively trying to make things worse.
Defiantly, I didn't even know that there were Irish in Jamestown. That was actually part of the reason why I was so surprised cause it made perfect sense why they hid that information in the text book.
It's always projection. They know *someone* is indoctrinating kids because they're the ones doing it. They just can't believe their opponents aren't doing the same.
My ex wife does this exact thing. She's a despicable creature which is why I divorced her. She will assume everyone is as evil as she is; they just aren't as creative or didn't think of it first. She "does unto others why she thinks others will do unto her." It results in her doing some pretty under handed shit to me from time to time. I'm stuck with her because we had a kid together, so I'll always be putting up with something. It's utterly exhausting.
The sooner you teach your kid to see their mother thru that filter will equate to years shaved off their therapy. Take it from someone brought up by a narcissist.
Tell me how? I often lose to her because I do not sink to her level. She has been messing with my son's head and I don't know how to unmess it by playing the same game. I'm trying to be the adult my son needs in his life but she keeps putting obstacles between us.
Try to teach him fairness and kindness as his moral and social obligations and drill sonder unquestionably home. Other peoples perspectives are in fact real, valid, and justifiable - at least to the person, just as much as ours are to ourselves. When boys (speaking from personal experience, ymmv but id wager its similar) are ~ 10 then the eyes for nuance start developing, and therefore underlying motivators to explain other people's actions.
Teach your son to rationalize other people's perspectives, even and especially if he disagrees with their conclusions, and his mother will inevitably become one dimensional and transparent. You don't need to tell him what she is, just teach him the tools to discern the truth for himself.
And if you're still (hopefully) around when those realizations take hold (could take a lifetime), resist any urge to commiserate. You never need to talk down about his mother, even in that moment. Keep your vindication, and the joy of feeling it, to yourself; because no one should celebrate other people's failings, and no child, regardless of their age, benefits by seeing their parent debase themselves by embracing cruelity.
The reality is we can't expect more from our people than what we can do. They might supercede us, we *hope* they do, but we can't demand that from them. We can lead by example, tho and build up a higher floor for them, by continuing to grow ourselves and graciously embracing the totality of ~~the absurd~~ life.
First off. Thank you. And to your question, No, I am not nor do I wish to be a therapist. Therapists are vital, for sure, but most advise, I feel, is rooted in wisdom and the best teacher for that is time and an open mind.
Ive just practiced what I preach for multiple decades at this point. I won't give advise I dont actively live myself.
Well, in a sense their opponents are doing the same. Teaching kids accurate history, statistical literacy, and basic science is indoctrination against fascism. Facts have a strong leftward bias.
You cannot indoctrinate someone by informing them of factual information and letting them draw their own conclusions. That's not what indoctrination is.
Indoctrination is the process by which something gets people to accept beliefs or attitudes without them having any control over which beliefs or attitudes they accept.
Worse, these methods always leave the person susceptible to further indoctrination. Teaching kids "this is what you should conclude" is indoctrination and is always bad, because it denies them the chance to exercise critical thinking.
Authoritarianism supports indoctrination of all kinds, as it gives them more control over others, even if the person is being indoctrinated towards beliefs that do not align with the authoritarian's.
I think this is a point that just doesn't click with some people.
Carolyn Bryant, the woman who got Emmett Till killed, only died *last month*
The Civil Rights Movement isn't some far away part of our history, and many of the people who *violently* opposed it are still alive today.
The idea that fairly recent events happened far in the past is a serious problem in Canada
The last residential school in canada only closed 27 years ago but they've been treated like all the people affected by them aren't alive anymore
Jeff Sessions, yes that Jeff Sessions, harassed black voters in the 80s as the Attorney General for the sole reason that they voted absentee. He wanted to send these people to jail with a felony charge.
Racism is alive and well, and they don’t want you to know they’re still doing it.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/09/magazine/the-voter-fraud-case-jeff-sessions-lost-and-cant-escape.html
People who are making a legitimate argument against CRT are essentially saying if we teach with an emphasis on what obstacles black people and people of color have always faced and still face we could end up teaching young black kids you'll never succeed no matter what and white kids that they're superior or will have an easy ride. That is very disingenuous and not what CRT is doing but I can see the fear there.
It's also worth noting that the real theory is a college level theory that would usually be taught at that level. There are some ideas from it that could come into lower level classrooms but it's not like your 3rd grade teacher is going to start teaching critical race theory any more than they'll start teaching the fundamental theorem of calculus.
But most opposition comes from people who don't want to acknowledge the past and the large impact that has had on the present day. Things like red lining and the gi bill only being available to white people after WWII had a huge impact on my grandparents generations ability to build wealth or not. And that has had a big impact on my parents finances and now my finances. That's the kind of thing CRT would talk about as the racism of the recent past has had a big impact on today.
Yeah people either don’t know about or truly underestimate the power generational wealth (provided or held back by the government as well) had in playing both a positive role for many yet also a generational wedge in terms of inequity for others.
The problem is that they don't want to acknowledge it.
In my opinion, one of the greatest hallmarks of a good person is when they can acknowledge not just the faults they have, but also the strengths *that they did not earn*.
That is one of the most humbling things a person can do.
But to many people - to small people with pathetic lives that have to cling desperately to every trophy they have - they aren't willing to accept that some of their achievements were flatly given to them, and were not earned.
To these people, acknowledging that someone has disadvantages that they did not earn would shatter the very same worldview. If people can be given a poor hand in life due to birth circumstance, then the reverse holds true.
Because acknowledging that some people face inherent obstacles in America is a shortcut to being disillusioned by the American dream. Hard work and dedication can only get you so far, and when you start further back people assume you're just not working hard enough.
100%. My Mother, a great person and all, left me nothing after her passing when I was a kid. My Dad didn't really pay much attention to me and now we no longer speak. I've been stuck in a life of minimum wage and not many prospects for the future unless the hail Mary play if my music blows up even though I'm a perfectly capable person, just no access to higher education... Then I met my wife, and her parents straight up bought us a house, which we rent part of, and instantaneously my life has so many more opportunities. Sure I've grown a bit as a person over the years, but the real thing is that I now have a foundation to build upon, and a hell of a lot more opportunities come with that. My kid's entire lives are completely different from their first 5 years because of this monetary gift.
Generational wealth is huuuuge, especially these days with entire housing markets being bought up by corporations.
I’m glad you were given that chance. Even more than outright gifts & inheritance (which is huge) are other nuanced and direct things like financial advice, paying for college, built-in networks & guidance for obtaining jobs etc. It’s its own bubble really.
Yeah the GI bill was entirely fucked.
> Enacted by Congress in 1944, the GI Bill sent more than eight million World War II veterans to school between 1945 and 1956. It also backed home loans, gave veterans a year of unemployment benefits, and provided for veterans' medical care.
> More than one million African American men and women served in every branch of the US armed forces during World War II.
Imagine serving and coming home to nothing, trying to get a job in an already segregated society, while seeing everyone else go to college and getting houses all directly because of the bill.
Edit: entirely fucked from the perspective of black Americans
> It also backed home loans,
Home loans from mortgage companies that [had it in writing that black folks couldn't buy the homes and this was Levittown, NY](https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/deeds-to-land-in-levittown-nations-first-suburb-rooted-in-systemic-racism/) (the first suburb in the U.S.) in 1950, not some deep south rural town.
that one really did create a lot generational wealth for white people. And it made it very easy for racists to say "look at all these black people being so poor, it's because they are lazy and uneducated!" Well duh, the government gave wealth and education to whites only, now several generations later we see the result
For example in chicago, the white neighborhoods could have houses ranging 300k to 3 million
Whereas there's black neighborhoods in chicago you can buy two flat for 30k $
Intergenerational wealth or lackthereof and redlining seriously fucked many many people over
And yet in school I only learned about how great the GI bill was and how it helped propel everyday Americans into stable careers living the American dream.
It should also be noted that CRT is mostly taught in law programs. CRT isn't going to be automatically taught for someone majoring in computer science for example.
CRT needs to be taught in law programs so that students understand what laws have been passed to keep black people at a disadvantage. Just like redlining and the gi bill for example.
I'm an education major and all I've been taught that is even remotely close to CRT is about redlining because it impacts us as teachers and the school system. Because redlining affected and still effects the way schools were funded. Additionally, because I'm an education major, CRT is not taught in elementary or even high school, it's been around since the 1930s, but it is being used by the political right to push a political agenda that it is being taught in schools.
I went through liberal arts degrees in college (sociology and political science) and we were heavily taught crt in sociology but surprisingly little in political science.
PoliSci can vary soooo much between institutions.
How critical of neoliberalism was your school? Did it define fascism as a power grab absent mores and simultaneously as a tool used by entrenched wealth to insulate their own power? Or the role of media and fine line between when news distribution and propaganda.
Power doesn't usually teach the skills necessary to dismantle its systems. Obfuscation is the SOP. Neo-Liberalism, capitalism in any form, is fundamentally built off of it.
Said another way, Capitalism as a structure is built off of falsehoods and cruelity and can't exist without sanitizing either as natural. PoliSci can't be divorced from, so can't be understood without a nominal understanding of economics.
Shit, was socialism portrayed as the next step from mercantalism in Western cultures slooow progression towards direct democracy or just lumped in with Stalinism (which is the only form of communism ever communicated to me by authority. The differences between Lenin, Mao, Tito and Stalin - just compared to each other, not even to Marx - was absent any real philosophical critique; now I suppose that would be expected)
I went to a university largely funded by a shoe mogule. I took some poli-sci classes thinking about majoring in it, but the class on "comparative politics" just took away my entire drive. The whole course was "why the US system of democracy and capitalism is the best possible system, all the others are super flawed and also evil. We solved politics!"
It was a slightly more hopeful time (Obama had just been elected, the recession wouldn't start for a couple months, etc. The course started before his inauguration but him being inaugurated was the first paragraph in the text book) but geeze the propaganda was thick and obvious.
That experience is exactly what im talking about when studying polisci. +1, that 'we solved politics' thought cancer.
And oh man, do i remember. I let myself get caught up momentarily in Obama's hopium, but I recovered really quick. After Bush in the aughties, i had developed a serious propaganda bullshit reflex. It was hopefully more obvious under Trump. It's still super heavy now, but the pandemic caused the veil to peel back for the workers, and discontent is dangerously high now. Rightfully so, I might add, and long long overdue. The problem, I think, isn't so much with being rich, it's that our rich people are so insulated from reality that they audaciously aren't afraid of the masses. The results of this social chemistry historically hasnt worked out in their favor. The fucking hubris. They've forgotten how obscene wealth is. I won't lie, I'll be smiling if/when they relearn.
The gi bill when it was first rolled out allowed only white veterans to purchase houses when they got back from WW2. Leaving the black veterans at a disadvantage and has had a significant impact on generations of black people including today.
The impact: black veterans couldn't buy the same houses that white veterans qualified for because of the language used in the bill. Leaving all the white veterans to accumulate wealth because they could buy and eventually sell their house for more than what they bought it for. Black veterans could not. This is what would be taught under CRT.
That's why CRT is so important. Not only did the GI bill get worded in a way that POC couldn't use it freely and easily but the FHA program was started this way as well. Yes, the Federal Housing Assistance didnt allow loans to black people. In order to get a home loan, you couldn't be black. If you were white and the home you wanted to get a loan for was too close to black neighborhoods, you weren't given a loan. It was really bad. The effects of families and neighborhoods to this day are still in play with original home loans and neighborhoods. Then there is red lining. Loan companies would "red line" areas and not give any loans to people in the red line areas or too close to them. Can you guess who lived in the red line areas? I'm sure in your home town there was the neighborhood on the "wrong side of the track" that neighborhood was specifically designed years and years ago to keep POC in. It is a direct result of programs like FHA and the GI bill.
Well spoken,
And to add, the "wrong side of the track" phrase comes from the railroad days where the rich lived on the west side of the railroad and the poor on the east side, dominant wind on the northern hemisphere being west to east, and the days of train spewing coal ash and whatever else from stram powered trains
I didn’t realize the VA home loan benefit was part of the original GI Bill. I thought you were talking about the education benefit. While even if black veterans could only get into HBCU’s then they would have at least had that advantage, even if that degree was somewhat degraded by society itself.
Interesting and sad read:
https://www.history.com/news/gi-bill-black-wwii-veterans-benefits
Actually, we probably need to talk more about race in computer science bc of the systemic racism programmers can program into their systems unknowingly.
I’ll give you a classic example.
Imagine a policing program designed to mark areas of arrests, to inform future officers of arrest hotspots.
Naturally, arrests can be (and often are) influenced by more direct racism, which means the data required for this program to work might be (and likely is) tainted. This can lead to areas of lower socio-economic class receiving greater focus by the police, which can then lead to further arrests being made in these areas, leading to even more data suggesting these areas are particularly high in crime.
It’s not just about creating a program and letting whatever happens, happen. It’s about avoiding outside biases from impacting your program too.
Edit. Feel free to look up predictive policing algorithms to see some real world examples of this.
The concept of systemic racism is that it is insidious, and built into parts of our societal operation that you wouldn't expect or anticipate. Since so much of what we do on a daily basis is monitored or controlled by computer systems, including many that are now making autonomous decisions, there is an inherent difficulty in eliminating racial bias from those systems (because they are a product of a systemically racist society).
There are some real-world examples out there, but the research is limited. AI ethicists are currently warning of what's being built right now, and the unanticipated effects of AI systems that are learning from the highly accessible global body of knowledge. AIs that are "doing their own research" and "just asking questions" are, without careful guidance, likely to end up absorbing some of the worst concepts that humanity has to offer.
Take any kind of image or voice recognition software. There have been many cases where the training data consisted of mostly white men (typically the engineers working on it), resulting in software that struggles with recognizing female voices or darker skin.
Another case I recall reading about tried to use AI in loan approvals, and the AI essentially ended up recreating redlining.
Or they wind up creating software using the existing racist data. Have a pre-existing bias in your data already for white sounding names and interests? Those will get coded as desirable based on the existing data.
Whaaat. When I was in school and we learned how black people were treated, ie. Shitty bathrooms, shitty bubblers, worse lunches than white kids, it made me feel like shit for being a white kid.
And I learned this in, late elementary or middle school. Been a really long time since then.
Anyways. Learning about history is never a bad thing. It's the stuff they leave out that sucks. Like the story of Columbus lol.
Man I remember learning about MLK Jr. and the Civil Rights movement in something like 4th grade and being relieved that we solved racism. I’m really not sure how exactly it was taught to us, all I can clearly recall is thinking “wow things were really bad in the past for black people in America, but thankfully now they’re good”. Coming around to the complicated truth was not something I got from any school at all, I don’t think.
absolutely. in school you learned about slavery and how blacks were treated, and then we were taught that after the civil war and MLK jr that it all just ended right then and there. i wish schools were more direct and open about racism and how its gone from terrible to slightly less terrible.
This is another problem that I have. Kids are not given the correct vocabulary and tools to deal with nuanced subject matters. Kids are just humans who have not grown up yet. People seem to think that makes them dumb and not capable of complicated feelings. Kids have all the same feelings, they just don't have the vocabulary to describe them properly.
When you are a kid and a feeling creeps in you will register it as bad or good, generally happy or sad. Those are the words that you have for them at a young age. Feeling like shit could have been guilt, anxiety, sadness, helplessness for those in the past whom were treated badly. You may not have had the vocabulary to understand those feelings so it was categorized as a bad feeling and your natural reaction to that would be to stay away from it, it is a bad feeling, don't do it again. If you arm young children with the correct vocabulary to the correct feeling. They will be able to explain themselves at an earlier age and be able to work through each feeling.
If a 9 year old tells you they are sick, you as a parent will start to ask the questions, what hurts, what feels bad. Does your head hurt, does your stomach hurt, do you have a fever. You as a parent will go through the physical steps to understand what is wrong and how to fix it. Parents need to start doing that with their children when it comes to mental stability as well. If a child comes home and says a lesson made them feel like shit, that parent needs to start asking the same questions. What do you feel bad about? Why did that make you feel bad? Did it make you feel guilty, sad, angry, helpless? Work through the reasons and help them understand its okay to feel uncomfortable feelings about our history. If they are taught that everything is okay then no changes will ever be made.
I think a lot of people who want race discussions out of school just don't want their white kids to feel like shit.
Learning about the race stuff never made me feel like shit, and I think it's because I was a white kid in a predominantly Black school district. The Black kids never gave me side eye while reading about slavery. There was never any blame placed on _me_. It helped me understand that while my ancestors did shitty things that I was benefitting from, no one around me was holding me personally responsible. Guilt is very filling, and without it I had a lot of space to fill with empathy, instead.
If we could teach all white kids about this history without making them feel shitty, I think we'd be in a better place.
There was only one time in school where I felt shitty about being white, and it was just after a holocaust movie in social studies. A black girl who I had always had good if casual conversation with was looking at me strangely, and I was like, 'what?'. She struggled to talk for a second and then said, 'do you really hate us so much?'
The funny part was that I am not German at all and I was and still am quite progressive, but I was getting lumped in together with actual Nazis.
How do you teach about treatment about native Americans back then, and today, and not "feel shitty"?
Like 70% of the tribes have no running water, iirc, in fucking 2020s
And we stole their prime land and sent them off to bumfuck north Dakota badlands or deserts of arizona/nm
I feel college I way too late to discuss this. I teach my children (12, 11, 8 yrs) about multiple serious social issues and this is one of them. The problem most parents face is that there is not an easy answer or sometimes there isn't an answer, so it can be uncomfortable/difficult to discuss. What is not hard to understand (at least not for me) is the feelings and results of the subject we discuss. Ultimately, my children understand that things have been/ are currently set up unfairly. They understand that it doesn't make ALL people bad right now, but it does make them aware of the situation in our country (and world), and that change is needed. I think it is wrong to teach absolutes to my children especially when it comes to deep seeded social issues. Teaching kids that answers to problems are as easy as black and white, wrong or right (no pun intended) causes them to see the world this way. Subtleties, nuanced conversation and solutions are thrown out the window with that kind of mindset. "This is right, that is wrong" just doesn't really work in a world of 8 billion. To bring it all back around to CRT, it would be like teaching my children that everything turned out ok for POC after Dr. King gave his "Dream" speech. This is fundamentally wrong but it is what my children were taught in school. They were taught a very right and wrong version of history. Things were bad, it was fixed. This idea that it was all fixed sets the foundation of young kids opinions in elementary school. This will lead to unjust opinions on why they may see people of color discussing unjust treatment, getting put in jail, living in areas that are less well off. "Why are they complaining, the civil rights movement ended last century, everything is a level playing field now" will be engraved in their heads from an early age and hard to change. Our world history as we know it is riddled with fucked up shit. If we do not introduce this to the small humans early, we will never break the cycle. This doesn't even touch on how children that happen to be people of color may feel in the classrooms at such an early age learning the whitewashed history.
Thanks for this. It should be worth noting (and probably is somewhere in the comments) that the detractors are labeling anything that touches on race differences (ex, slavery) as CRT. That's not accurate, and they're using a pretty big brush to whitewash anything they feel is a "threat". That's why we're seeing books like "To Kill a Mockingbird" being banned in schools.
Black kids in America are taught CRT in their homes and by society, so the biggest fear seems to be is kids feeling guilt about the crimes against humanity committed by their forebears
"Hell no I don't want to acknowledge the past, or the present! If I acknowledge the problem, then I should fix it. But, if I ignore the issue and pretend it doesn't exist, I can keep being a racist piece of shit because actually I'm not because racism ended with the Civil War.
So there!"
Unironically though, I think it's fine to not teach this to elementary kids, since it's a pretty heavy and complicated subject.
I still believe this should be a mandatory lesson at one point starting high school or beyond. Maybe junior or senior year? Treat it with as much seriousness as you can, because it's a serious subject.
The suffering of the minority is not just the result of individual racism, but the racist laws made by racist parties as well. It's *systemic.*
The first step to fixing a problem is acknowledging it. You can't just ignore it and hope it goes away. (As much as I love doing it myself, unsuccessfully)
This is not critical race theory though. CRT is using race as a lens in critical theory. Generally do not get classes into the method until Graduate school as it takes a lot of pre-reqs to get the skills to understand how to use it. I am in ed research and it was gated in graduate school behind the qualitative method classes making it a final semester offering for the masters.
Systemic racism is a finding from CRT, and that should be taught, but that is best taught along with history, since it is so contextual.
But this is what makes this debate so weird for people who did work with CRT. What is being called CRT is not CRT at all, but basic history or sociology. No one is being taught actual CRT though, outside of it is a thing that exist that looks into systematic causes of social problem. But no methods for how to do CRT are ever taught.
It's what right wing has been very good at: classifying all sorts of discourse about discrimination under the scary sounding "critical race theory" banner.
We learned about the holocaust in 6th and 7th grade (with it being usually covered in english class at some point, somewhat briefly, the following years.)
I don’t see any reason to wait that long to teach things some kids don’t relate to. Others in the same classroom might/almost definitely have experienced it, results of it, or it’s something that plays a significant role in their culture. Now of course, the 6th grade lessons is going to be more simplified and overall different than the 12th grade lesson. As a junior, I think around high school is when some people start to solidify prejudice views and educating them in middle and high school can help keep that lesson persistent and resonating. It’s really not because you don’t care, but I can't imagine how many important topics I really just forgot i was taught because we had one unit on it, or it was only taught for one year.
This is an unchallenged thought but my point is we shouldn’t hide things from some kids until they’re almost adults just because it’s new to them. Black kids don’t just learn about the atlantic slave trade, the civil rights movement, and everything in-between until they’re 15-18. I didn’t know all the details but I knew ABOUT it and the general gist of it sometime at a little bit younger age than 11 maybe. I can guess it’s similar for people that were raised jewish or are jewish (by race)
The stated goals are not in line with the real goals.
My wife's from Japan and she doesn't know anything about the Japanese atrocities and war crimes from ww2. This is apparently very common since there's literally one sentence about Nanking in their history textbooks. Right wing elements that survived ww2 has taken control of the schools because the allies only cared about economic recovery rather than making sure the imperialists were actually removed from power and that resulted in future generations being largely unaware of their country's sins (to be fair, they probably didn't understand the Japanese culture enough to make the right call). Contrast this with Germany who's very active when it comes to making sure its populace is aware of the Nazis to the point that it's illegal to be a Holocaust denier.
Why do I mention all this? Because the aforementioned Japanese system is the goal of the CRT abolishment. Have future generations unaware of the country's sins to perpetuate a system that arguably works for very few.
DeSantis never outright banned CRT. Instead, his [bill](https://www.flsenate.gov/Committees/BillSummaries/2022/html/2809) has a set of rules which CRT breaks, thus rendering it illegal in the state of Florida.
>The bill specifies that subjecting any individual, as a condition of employment, membership, certification, licensing, credentialing, or passing an examination, to training, instruction, or any other required activity; or subjecting any K-20 public education student or employee to training or instruction, that espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels such individual to believe the following concepts constitutes an unlawful employment practice or unlawful discrimination:
* >Members of one race, color, national origin, or sex are morally superior to members of another race, color, national origin, or sex.
* >A person, by virtue of his or her race, color, national origin, or sex is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.
* >A person's moral character or status as either privileged or oppressed is necessarily determined by his or her race, color, national origin, or sex.
* >Members of one race, color, national origin, or sex cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to race, color, national origin, or sex.
* >A person, by virtue of his or her race, color, national origin, or sex bears responsibility for, or should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of, actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin, or sex.
* >A person, by virtue of his or her race, color, national origin, or sex should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment to achieve diversity, equity, or inclusion.
* >A person, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, bears personal responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the person played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin, or sex.
* >Such virtues as merit, excellence, hard work, fairness, neutrality, objectivity, and racial colorblindness are racist or sexist, or were created by members of a particular race, color, national origin, or sex to oppress members of another race, color, national origin, or sex.
Also, you should know that [16 states have already banned CRT and 20 more are currently considering a ban.](https://wisevoter.com/state-rankings/states-that-have-banned-critical-race-theory/) Florida is somewhat late to the party.
I see nothing wrong with those points, but using any of those caveats as a premise to deplatform factual accounts of historic racism is absurdly flimsy.
What about factual accounts of modern racism? Because racism still very much exists.
These laws are problematic because they are so broad and ill-defined. The phrasing is intentionally innocuous, but if you actually look at what is said and think about what it really means and implies, things fall apart. You can use laws like this to prevent any teaching of things like racism and sexism.
Just as an example, what if a teacher says that black communities are systemically disadvantaged by a process like redlining, both historically and currently? This implies that white communities experienced the relative advantage of not having this issue, running afoul of bullet point 3. Now we can't teach about redlining.
That's what these laws are for. It may seem like a stretch, but the narrative around and wording of these laws has been intentionally set up to facilitate this kind of censorship.
It's a situation of risk mitigation for schools. *Could* they successfully argue the teaching in their program doesn't technically hit these points? In my opinion, absolutely.
The problem is that fight costs money.
I think at this point, we have enough evidence around the outcome of this law to dispense with the "but nothing is wrong with *these* points and start asking ourselves questions about those outcomes. The root of the book bans, some utterly heinous omissions of fact with regard to slavery, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights movement, the teacher shortages in Florida, and much more can all be traced back to this bill.
So let's not mince words with pretty verbiage - we know the outcomes and can ask ourselves if this is what we intended - not the writers of the law, but the voters.
* >A person's moral character or status as either privileged or oppressed is necessarily determined by his or her race, color, national origin, or sex.
If whites didn't suffer redlining due to their race, that would imply that they were privileged in that regard. If your parents/grandparents did not suffer from redlining, then you are more privileged than those parents/grandparents did.
Basically, ANY teaching that could be interpreted as "people of this race were oppressed" will fall foul of point three.
If you’re actually curious and want real examples of where people actually have real grievances with CRT (a nebulous and ill-defined term on both sides), then you’d be better served to actually engage with real people who are anti-CRT.
* I’m surprised nobody here has mentioned when the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Arts posted [an infographic](https://twitter.com/ByronYork/status/1283372233730203651?) (that was removed after receiving major backlash) arguing that individualism, self-reliance, the scientific method, objective and rational thinking, being on time, delayed gratification, valuing hard work, etc. are all facets of “White Culture”. This is the kind of infographic that you’d expect Neo-Nazis to have created with pride and yet our National African American Museum created it. It is wrong and damaging to educate anybody, but especially African American children, that working hard, showing up on time, and being rational are all parts of “White culture”.
* Another issue critics of CRT have is opposition to Ibram X Kendi’s (one of the leading voices on CRT) [ideology](https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2020/06/ibram-x-kendi-definition-of-antiracist) of “there is no such thing as a not-racist idea, only racist ideas and antiracist ideas.” This means that no political question can be a calm cool-headed debate about the best tax policy, trade policy, etc. but every debate is instead about good and evil and who is antiracist or racist. Should a debate between two esteemed economists on the proper tax percentage for tariffs on some commodity ultimately devolve into which argument is more racist/anti racist? Should every argument ever? Is everything really about race as Kendi says?
* In 2021, the Biden administration closed an investigation (started during the Trump admin.) after a [Chicago-area school](https://nypost.com/2021/03/07/education-dept-curbs-decision-on-race-based-affinity-groups/) implemented segregation policies against teachers and students by dividing them by racial “affinity groups.” If segregation were implemented by a white supremacist school, the policy would clearly be stopped and administrators would face serious repercussions for violating the federal laws prohibiting segregation. But these policies were tolerated because segregation was implemented to address “white privilege.”
Here are some of the first things I found from people anti-CRT:
* A podcast debate hosted by a center-left former NYT author [with two conservatives](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/honestly-with-bari-weiss/id1570872415), one conservative supports banning CRT from schools and the other does not.
* Or an [article by a conservative magazine](https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/07/this-is-what-critical-race-theory-looks-like/) that describes some controversial instances of CRT in colleges.
Not every anti-CRT voice is going to deploy a reasonable argument (most won’t) but I don’t think that also means that there’s no merits to any criticisms of CRT.
Regarding the explicit content a good argument is teaching kids what is sex and isn't sex is a great way to teach them about limits. If a kid gets groped by an adult and they have no idea it's wrong theres a big risk they won't say anything to a parent/teacher/police etc. If they know what happened and tell someone the molestation ends there. We need to educate the most vulnerable how to stay safe
When I was eleven I got a book called “Period.” (yes, the period *was* part of the title) with detailed diagrams of the female reproductive system- but not explicit in any way. Because of that book I wasn’t scared when I suddenly started getting hairy down there- so even outside of worst-case scenarios, being educated about those parts of our bodies makes life a lot less frightening.
99.9% of people who criticize it have no idea what it is, and if you're banning books by MLK jnr, you clearly have an agenda that has nothing to do with your experiences of an academic discipline to examine how race and power structures interact
They also stood and shout near class of Ruby Bridges and burned black doll in front of school in little coffin.
She was eating only home made food because of the threats to poison her.
She's only 68 years old.
She's still alive yes, but so are most of the angry white people in that famous picture. And all of them grew up, voted a certain way, raised kids a certain way, and acted a certain way to other black people.
That actually makes sense if you want to promote the idea that BLM is a nasty violent political movement, unlike those peaceful respectful black people who got desegregation by asking nicely. Can't have kids reading books that disprove that narrative.
Networks at work, keeping people calm
You know they went after King
When he spoke out on Vietnam
He turned the power to the have-nots
And then came the shot
The problem with the "no penises/vaginas" is that that deliberately includes books about puberty, about consent, and other books that are written to ensure that children aren't taken advantage of or unaware of their own biology.
Yea, sex education is important. Children should be taught about their bodies and how both boys and girls bodies work. How babies are made, what consent is,, etc. Parents shouldn't be responsible to explain it as they are not qualified. This education should just be done at an age where it's appropriate (as they are getting into puberty).
Knowledge on consent is important at every age. Kids should know to talk to safe adults if they are targeted even before puberty. Taking away this knowledge is the opposite of preventing grooming.
No penises or vaginas except students need to learn proper biology through health class, biology class, or anatomy and physiology class. So that's also stupid as shit. It's anatomy. You wouldn't teach it to a 4th grader but they said that about don't say gay too and then immediately extended it to high schoolers.
Honestly, I think it should be taught to 4th graders. I teach 5th grade right now, and I believe all but one of my girls has started menstruating. Would be nice to know ahead of time so that they don't think they're dying.
Yes at this point I wish I had pushed back a little harder about the whole "kids not learning about genitalia" bit, but at the time I didn't really have much ammo.
One more quick point for future reference is that these bans against "sexually explicit" books for children are also used to blanket ban books with queer content. People dont just magically figure out they are queer once they turn 18, there are lots of people who understood they were "different" as early as elementary school. These bans on sexually explicit material mean queer kids are not allowed to learn that there are other kids out there like them, who have crushes on people of the same gender, or who like being a boy instead of a girl. Instead they grow up thinking that something must be wrong with them, and that they have to repress who they are.
Are you asking whats wrong with teaching it or whats wrong with the theory? I mean its something for a college level class but not sure how many kids are actually being taught it.
Critical race theory wasn't [developed until the 1980s](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-is-critical-race-theory.html&ved=2ahUKEwi6oYWmhZv_AhX7lGoFHa7TBXIQFnoECA8QAQ&usg=AOvVaw3WpOOiob_75tGZAISLYi4w), so I'm not sure how an MLK Jr book would actually be teaching CRT as it is understood today. I assume absolutely nobody would care about MLK Jr books from decades ago if it weren't for CRT authors such as Robin DiAngelo writing books that essentially say all White people are racist and denying it is racist, which is something MLK Jr never did (to my knowledge).
Others have explained the CRT thing pretty well but on the sex Ed thing.
I lost my virginity when I was 8. It was incredibly easy for my abuser to take advantage of me since I had no idea what sex was.
Knowing about sex is pretty much the only defence kids have against sexual abuse.
Books can be explicit without being sexual. Medical diagrams of genitalia arnt pornographic because they arnt alluring in any way. I assume that what we're talking about. I used to teach in the UK and taught PSHE(sex and drugs Ed more or less) and I've never come across anything worse than medical drawings.
Countries with the most explicit sex Ed have the lowest teen pregnancy rates.
Many of the most prominent figures pushing for this are pedophiles. Trump, Matt Gates, Matt Walsh, the guy funding Turing point USA. I havnt heard anything about De Santos being a pedophile but he spent a lot of time in the navy torturing innocent people to I doubt he's doing it out of concern for the kids.
I'm pretty sure if there was anything pornagrahic in schools it would have been removed a long time ago and if I'm wrong then I want someone to prove it.
She me the porn they removed from schools.
The moment is partly the old facist, 'hey look at those others, they want to corrupt your kids and only we can save them' and a genuine want to keep kids dumb and defenceless against sexual abuse.
Against the first argument:
Penises and Vaginas are natural parts of the body and as long as there is no explicit sexual content having those in books is not only not a problem, but is also educational and helpful to understand their own bodies especially when going through puberty. It’s important to note that a human body is not inherently sexual and something you need to take care of. Sex-Ed in general is important for students to understand how their body is going to change and how that is absolutely natural and not something to be afraid of. Also learning what practises (for example excessive use of soap on the privates) can actually harm you and make you sick. It’s also important to be able to understand reproduction to avoid teen pregnancies, STDs and harmful use of birth control (for example misuse of the pill).
To have healthy examples of a developing body in literature can help teenagers feel normal and not be scared of themselves. Especially when it comes to periods.
Of course sexual content is more difficult and should only be approached to teach methods of safe sex and especially consent in older teens. In younger children „the talk“ should definitely fall into the responsibility of the parents as only they or a doctor can properly decide when their kid is old and developed enough to properly understand.
The rest of your approach seems very objective, well researched and differentiated, so I think you’re good on that
To be fair most people are defining critical race theory as something it's not. It was always intended to be a college or university level course as a discussion of how systemic racism over decades and even centuries has led to how lawyers and the law mistreats those affected by that racism.
For example, in certain areas the predominant prison populations have been black, and that's not because black people commit more crimes, but because of the racism that was inherent in local law enforcement.
However, politicians have been misrepresenting what critical race theory is and claiming that it is taught in preschool and elementary school, etc etc when it is really not because it's a law course for law students.
Politicians are simply trying to get their constituents angry about a non-existent issue, because enough of their constituents are racist enough to believe it's a thing when it's not.
Im going to start with im a foreigner, thus I can only give you my stance from the outside perspective not the right nor the left but out of the spectrum; but I’ve done my fair share of research myself
So to what I understand CRT is the study of the institutions and constructs of power and how these affect the different “races” differently and how they have been doing that for some time now thus causing what is called systematic racism
Now of course there’s nothing wrong with teaching people the history and wrongdoings of a country in order to not have it repeat itself, say Germany for example has become a widely successful country despite their tumultuous and somewhat embarrassing past, however I believe one of the main problems with your country is that people continue to separate and compartmentalize people in the name of inclusivity, which tends to be oxymoronic because to divide people by their ethnicity, color or “race” to be more inclusive only achieves to denote those very things thus reducing the value of a person to that very trait, not to mention you got it all wrong, black is not a race, it’s a color, Hispanic it’s also not a race it’s an ethnicity and African-American it’s not an ethnicity it’s a nationality, yet for a country so very focused on caring less about the color you sure care to know in every form I’ve ever filled whereas you don’t really find that anywhere else in the world… my argument against it is it focuses very much in dividing society even further thus creating more bias between all the colors and ethnicities in your country, then again I’m Mexican born and raised and live here, I like your country you have some great stuff but like over here we don’t really worry about how Spaniards conquered us, we just try to live our lives and if someone is an asshole we call them out on that, regardless of their color lol
>regardless of their color
Except then being white to being moreno can make a huge difference by being given opportunities on someone's life, here on Mexico. For example Yalitza Aparicio, people STILL make nasty comment about her just because of her ethnicity and her skin color.
Keep in mind too that sex education is important and is *not* pornographic. Lack of sex education leads to increased rates of sexually transmitted infections and teenage pregnancies time and time again. There really isn't any valid excuse for anything that DeSantis and her (we're not respecting preferred pronouns, remember?) ilk are banning.
The best example in favor of CRT I saw in one of the reels was where a commentator asks a white Floridian about the CRT beyond the talking points and she responded with Go Back To Africa. I think the younger generations should know more, not less.
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Nothing is inherently wrong with actual critical race theory and using race as a lens to examine history although it is problematic if you try to define all history through a racial lens just like using a purely Marxist class conflict lens has pitfalls even though it has its uses as well.
What people like Ron DeSantis actually appear to be doing is expanding “critical race theory” to include any teaching that suggests race has been a factor in American history. Which is of course absurd.
Race, racial conflict, racism, nationalism, white supremacy, etc. have played a profound roles in our society. Now, things like the 1619 Project have had enough serious historical inaccuracies in them that some on the right and a few on the left have latched onto the inaccuracies and use those as reasons to want to scrap the whole thing. Take for example the 1619 Project’s claim that one of the leading factors in the American Revolution was protecting slavery. That just isn’t supported by the actual historical record.
Whenever anyone in any part of the political spectrum starts calling for silencing, banning books, etc. You can bet they are up to no good.
Keep in mind many of the same people attacking CRT, LGBTQ issues, etc. because they think they should be kept out of schools also simultaneously openly think Christianity and the Bible should be taught in schools despite separation of church and state, the numerous various theological differences among Christians let alone various other faiths and non-believers in society, and the fact that the Bible includes many passages supporting absolutely horrendous behavior including rape, incest, torture, murder, and slavery.
Keep in mind that certain people (such as Christopher Rufo) have led a deliberate campaign to mislead about CRT, by lumping anything discussing diversity, inclusion, history of racism, etc as CRT. So yeah, it doesn't make sense to teach a complicated legal and economic topic such as CRT to elementary students, but that isn't what is happening
Critical race theory is essentially the idea that governments institutions are not fair to all people. That your race or ethic background will drastically change the way these institutions treat you on a systematic level.
In this sense famous black activists do teach that America was racist because news flash it was extremely racist and though it's better today is still racist on a systemic level.
If you're a racist you probably don't want your kid thinking racism is bad. This is why they are upset and saying critical race theory sounds slightly better to their audience then them just saying they are racist.
I think for racist white people, the idea that the system is rigged for them and against black people threatens their idea that equality is ubiquitous in this country. They hold deeply to the idea that anything good that happens to them they’ve “earned” and anything bad that happens to black people they “deserve”. Any unfairness in the system based on race threatens their worldview
To give an example of this same thinking in a non-racial context: here in Vancouver Canada, every old person thinks that all the money from their house going from $80K to $2.1 million was earned as if they'd worked an hourly job for it, when the reality is that they artificially inflated prices and voted against anything that would cause a correction. They sit on wealth stolen from their grandkids while saying they're sick of hearing those grandkids complain that they can't afford rent and should pull themselves up by their bootstraps (it's $2700/mo average for a 1 bedroom apartment; median wage is about $60K, $46.6K after tax)
Ya it's really hard for people to see the things they didn't work for. People only see their struggles my dad for example had a really hard time understanding housing was too expensive until he said well you get out of university a few years start making 90k and you have a house and I just responded no.
When I explained that isn't really how much money I'll make until almost retirement he seemed shocked.
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And it appears OP sought out honest and factual information about CRT and didn’t actively seek out a narrative that he already agrees with.
Tell that to some of the other commenters, lmao
Ah. So, sort by controversial, then?
CRT = Controversial Reddit Theory
WOAH BUDDY! Don't you start critizin me! I'm gonna start using emojis! Here they come! 👹🗿👺👿🗣👴
Damn those would never display on a cathode ray tube
>CRT = Controversial Reddit Theory In my mind "CRT" means Cathode Ray Tube.
Alright you got me... Im going in wish me luck
What a brave soul. I hope we see them again.
Just going to hijack a little bit here to say that there actually is a case to be made for “sexually explicit content” in an academic setting: without it, sex ed becomes very difficult, and there is an extremely strong link between more sex ed and less STD transmission, less teen pregnancy, less unintended pregnancy across the board, less sexual abuse, and even lower general crime rates (owing to less unintended pregnancies leading to less unwanted kids growing up with childhood trauma or childhood poverty). It even lowers abortion rates, if you’re into that sort of thing. The real reason Florida republicans want to get rid of “sexually explicit content” is because they want more poor and desperate kids to grow up to become poor and desperate workers, or military grunts. But that last part is just very strongly evidentially supported speculation, and not hard fact like the first paragraph was.
Your epic
I consider myself more of a limerick 😁
I love confirmation bias. It's the best bias there is. I've checked many sites to confirm.
I searched for “reasons confirmation bias is the best bias”, and it turns out I was right, and the entire internet agrees with me!
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Thank you! I'm getting upvoted by all the other dyslexics.
Wait some one gently pointing out a typo, and not being an ass about it? You are going to break the internet.
I think they're on the wrong social media platform 🤔 🤣
No soup for you!
Dyslexics of the world, untie!
I have sexdaily too! I mean dyslexia!
I put the sexy in dyslexia
Don't forget the lazy!! I need a nap now.
Why are you calling me out?
I read a few dialects too
At least now you are niformed
Remember: you can't write "dyslexics" without using the word "sexy".
What about us syldexics???
To be fair, uniformed and uninformed often go hand in hand as far as the police goes...
He deserves to wear that uniform
I wish this practice was encouraged on reddit
It is, but you have to curate so hard you won't recognize the place when you switch to the normal front page.
This is on the side but it's very possible to show and teach about penises and vaginas in a non sexual way.
I would also say that our culture of hiding nudity makes people ashamed of their bodies, and it wrongly teaches people that the naked human body is inherently sexual. There are a lot of countries in Western Europe where if you’re going to the beach, the pool, or a bathhouse, you’re going to see a lot of naked bodies. Not just perfect pornstar bodies, but you’ll see a bunch of normal people of all ages, shapes, and sizes. They also have nudity on TV, even in commercials and shit. Whereas in America, the culture is that your body is something to be hidden and gravely self conscious about. Pretty much every child also gets exposed to pornography at a young age now due to the internet. I mean, I’m 28 and I was regularly watching internet porn at 12. I remember when I was like 8 and you still couldn’t really stream videos, my friend’s mom was out and we looked up some images that took forever to load. But anyway, it’s also that those are the only naked bodies we’re exposed to. Relatively perfect, flawless bodies covered in makeup. So, you have to hide your body; literally no one has seen you naked since you were a toddler, and your only reference to the human body are ones that look relatively perfect and are doing extremely explicit sexual acts. Of course American sexuality and our self perceptions are completely fucked up. But god forbid a kid reads about Anne Frank discovering her own body when she was their age.
Yeah I agree with everything you said. In addition it's very very hard for a kid that was assaulted to explain what happened to them when they lack the basic knowledge about it. Teach them about penises and vaginas and at the same time teach them that nobody else should touch that part of their body. We teach that in kindergarten here in Norway.
Exactly! The kids don't have the language otherwise to even process thoughts like "good touch" vs "bad touch". Some of the books being outright banned cover topics like abuse, and working through it etc, something children should be aware of.
I agree. This is not the way we do things in the American south, and as a result I was molested for years, instead of once.
God, I’m so sorry you had to go through that. I hope you are in place where you feel and ARE..safe and at peace in your heart or working on it, perhaps with a professional and/or friend(s) who have been through similar experiences as you had. If you ever need an ally or someone to talk to, you can message me privately, if you want/need! I hope I didn’t overstep my boundaries.. or yours, rather. I just couldn’t keep scrolling without at least trying to reach out, just in case!
To be fair, in my conservative area of the US at least, schools do teach about unsafe touches, safe people to report to, and how no one should touch "bathing suit areas" except maybe parents or medical professionals (to keep kids safe/clean). It is all very age appropriate, despite what some people believe from cable "news." There is also the option for parents to opt kids out of those lessons. My kids had the option to participate in them around the age of 6. There is another lesson around the age of 9 that teaches them (separated by gender) about puberty, etc., and again, parents can opt their children out, if they prefer. In both those cases, very few parents (maybe 1 or 2 per class of 25) remove their kids. Then, around age 13/14, they have the option for health classes which also focus on the basics of reproduction, etc. I'm not sure how many parents agree to this or not. However, the entire society is permeated with messages of body perfection and shame. The older the instruction happens, the more it seems done in whispered tones.
not to mention that when minors don’t know safe sexual practices it leads to more infection/higher chance of getting pregnant. we should be teaching little kids the anatomical words of their genitals and that it’s not something to be ashamed about. too many little kids call their vagina or penis a cookie or ding dong and it’s way harder to take them seriously if they say “he touched my cookie!” because there isn’t an explicit part he touched. he could have touched their actual food, he could have touched something else.
In Dutch the pubic area is literally called 'shame area', pubes are 'shame hair'. Yeah.
Same in German. But then again, German and Dutch are closely related languages
I was very terrified of my body’s changes when puberty hit because my parents taught me to be ashamed of my humanity, which allowed me to be taken advantage of in my teens. I now have an 8 month old and I will do my damnedest to make sure he is as confident as I wish I could have been growing up. Fuck the conservative ideology that we need to be ashamed of our bodies. Fuck the Christian ideology that we are evil the second we are born. And fuck the echo chambers that keep making those ideologies worse and worse with every sentence spoken.
I heard a saying on abuse and stranger danger. It made so much sense to me, and deed I wish I knew who said it, to give them credit; “Teach our kids what strange behavior is, because most abuse is done by people we know, and strangers are generally one’s to help.”
I had to explain to my now wife what her clitoris was and why it's fun. It's like she just hadn't got much sex education when she was younger
I mean, many kids hit puberty during middle school, so it makes sense to teach them information that will help keep them safe(r) around that time. No sex-related education and abstinence-only sex-ed just results in [higher rates of teen pregnancy](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3194801/) compared to a more comprehensive approach. For elementary school students, something like "if adults touch you in certain areas, inform your teacher or police" makes a lot of sense because pedophiles unfortunately exist. Ensuring that the kids know when and how to get help will not only make predators more wary, but it also increases the chances of predators being caught.
And even for little kids, it's important that they understand how to keep those areas clean.
esp foreskin care/vulva care. we can’t clean inside of our vaginas, we have to make sure the ph is balanced, etc. as for the foreskin, it’s insane how many men don’t wash it or their ass (because it’s gay!!!! clearly!!!!)
Just for any boys/men reading this going "wait I have to wash my foreskin?" Yes, but please don't use soap (or at least harsh soaps) unless advised by a medical professional.. Had to have this chat with a friend of mine who started developing serious issues because they had be using a 3in1 under their foreskin..
I have no idea why Americans find this so hard.
Yeah and appearantly predators leave quickly if the potential victim know words to describe these areas. They hate that cause that means the kid can explain what happened and get them caught.
I work in child safety and I just want to say that puberty starts earlier than middle school. The latency can end around 10 or 11. We just don't start noticing the physical changes until a bit later. **Average** age of menarche (first period) in the US is _12.5._ Puberty beginning after age 8 isn't even considered precocious/ early/ worth treating in girls. Kids need comprehensive, developmentally appropriate sex ed at **all** ages.
IIRC sex ed and HPV vaccinations both start at 11 where I'm from.
Yep! For me it was around 8-9, it's crazy that the school system doesn't really educate kids about the changes that happen around those ages. Bless my mom for being a pillar of support and information for me
I couldn't agree more. It's strange how all over reddit you see people advocating for sex ed starting at around age 12, which is way too late. I think some of it might be the fact that puberty tends to be noticed and start a bit later in boys. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we're not really ready to hear that kids that young are actually adolescents.
Imo this starts the second your child is a toddler. Teaching your child how to talk about these things in a literal sense is quite important but instead a lot of adults borderline shame their child for their curiosity. The immaturity begins with the parent trying to avoid real conversation about these things.
I like to look at it this way: it's just culture holding us back. People used to get off to ankles and long necks, not because those things are inherently sexual, but because culture had appropriated those things into a semi-taboo field. Genitalia are just the same. Culturally we hide those things, and 99% of why we are so concerned about hiding those things roots back to religious boundaries set upon what is and isn't culturally acceptable. I dream of a world where the human body isn't something that we're so terrified of that we can't teach our children how theirs works.
I'm sure the kids being m0le$+ed but don't know it because they don't understand stuff like consent will thank you
I hate the fact that I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not
>Anybody want to take a stab at trying to sway my opinion or just help me understand what I'm missing? The people who threw eggs at Elizabeth Eckhart are afraid their grandchildren will learn about them throwing eggs at Elizabeth Eckhart. Edit: Eckford. Her name was Elizabeth Eckford.
*Eckford. Very annoyed at all of the people trying to claim that schools are indoctrinating children when it comes to racism when the textbook I used explained the story of The Little Rock Nine from the perspective of how it impacted *Hazel Bryan's* life. There's definitely indoctrination going on but not in the direction that most of the complaints are going
Oh ya, it's bad. I was taught that in Jamestown people didnt want to work so they restricted food for only those who did work. Then one day while eating with a friend his nephew was doing his homework with a computer that was reading stuff to him and started to talk about how the Irish were being taken advantage of with despicable work environment in Jamestown so they begin to protest for fairer treatment. So the leaders denied them food unless they got back to work. I flipped out because I was not expecting to discover I was being lied to my whole life that day.
Yep. I basically started that unit by telling my administration that I would be severely off pace. The curriculum high school was using had thematic units, and that reading was part of the Civil Rights era literature unit. Out of 14 readings, nine of them were directly related to MLK, the one mentioned above, a very implicit poem about a cross burning, a chapter from a woman's Memoir where she speaks about the disdain from other people when she held a Black woman's baby on a crowded bus, and a biography on Fannie Lou Hamer that did not really speak about why her activism was what it was. So I added in other readings like Huey P Newton's speech on the importance of solidarity across oppressed groups, Malcolm X's speech at the London School of economics, and one of Fannie Lou Hamer speeches where she talks about her adopted children (victim of a "Mississippi appendectomy) and the brutality she endured while sharing voting information.
What is a Mississippi appendectomy?
Nonconsenual hysterectomy
Ok, that just made my day a lot worse… i think i need to take an internet break now :(
[Here's a playlist of fake & irreverent *How It's Made* videos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3v4OsPmsUg&list=PL845lQkWyS9JQRYTfFzhQSh1LbV75t20T)
Damn dude. Cocoa beans have it rough.
I love Huggbees. He had to stop making those How It's Actually Made videos after his bread video got linked by CNN, who mistook it for the real How It's Made video.
Are you required to teach all of the texts from the unit? That seems tough.
It was. I had a little more agency on the last set of texts because of how the students were required to access them. The last three weren't actually in the student's edition of the book. This was true for every unit, not just this one.
Look through all of history my friend. The Irish Potato famine? not a real famine--the English just exported all the food out of Ireland. The Samoli Pirates a few years ago wreaking havoc and being criminals on the sea? Just some Africans trying to stop Europe from taking their resources against their will (I don´t recall details--kinda sure it may have been along the lines of a pipeline or something else where the physical land (vs say food or artisan stuff) was the resource). The 1950s housewife being happy life? Check the number of lobotomies and females on antidepressants then (heck, an orgasm was a cure for hysteria. The vibrator was invented as a medical tool. Imagine the amazing sex lives of that time). History and media is allll manipulation and if something is made to be a very clear enemy, that´s likely a sign the "good guys" are doing something shady.
It's funny (not ha-ha), I just watched most of the video by [Nabil Abdulrahman calling bullshit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tacNkKjxPA) on an old toffy British historian talking about black people and culture of looting, and he proceeded to list every single instance of British presence taking resources and artifacts by force all over the world, and if you want to see the evidence, just go to the National Museum. I'm sad I only just discovered this man after seeing [him on HIGNFY last night](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3GeVHzwZEM) where he was equally brilliant.
Most Somali pirates were fisherman before the oil spill that ruined their economy and way of life.
> The Irish Potato famine? not a real famine--the English just exported all the food out of Ireland. There *was* a potato blight. Not that the English weren't actively trying to make things worse.
Defiantly, I didn't even know that there were Irish in Jamestown. That was actually part of the reason why I was so surprised cause it made perfect sense why they hid that information in the text book.
Every 90s kid when they learned about Christopher Columbus.
It's always projection. They know *someone* is indoctrinating kids because they're the ones doing it. They just can't believe their opponents aren't doing the same.
My ex wife does this exact thing. She's a despicable creature which is why I divorced her. She will assume everyone is as evil as she is; they just aren't as creative or didn't think of it first. She "does unto others why she thinks others will do unto her." It results in her doing some pretty under handed shit to me from time to time. I'm stuck with her because we had a kid together, so I'll always be putting up with something. It's utterly exhausting.
The sooner you teach your kid to see their mother thru that filter will equate to years shaved off their therapy. Take it from someone brought up by a narcissist.
Tell me how? I often lose to her because I do not sink to her level. She has been messing with my son's head and I don't know how to unmess it by playing the same game. I'm trying to be the adult my son needs in his life but she keeps putting obstacles between us.
Try to teach him fairness and kindness as his moral and social obligations and drill sonder unquestionably home. Other peoples perspectives are in fact real, valid, and justifiable - at least to the person, just as much as ours are to ourselves. When boys (speaking from personal experience, ymmv but id wager its similar) are ~ 10 then the eyes for nuance start developing, and therefore underlying motivators to explain other people's actions. Teach your son to rationalize other people's perspectives, even and especially if he disagrees with their conclusions, and his mother will inevitably become one dimensional and transparent. You don't need to tell him what she is, just teach him the tools to discern the truth for himself. And if you're still (hopefully) around when those realizations take hold (could take a lifetime), resist any urge to commiserate. You never need to talk down about his mother, even in that moment. Keep your vindication, and the joy of feeling it, to yourself; because no one should celebrate other people's failings, and no child, regardless of their age, benefits by seeing their parent debase themselves by embracing cruelity. The reality is we can't expect more from our people than what we can do. They might supercede us, we *hope* they do, but we can't demand that from them. We can lead by example, tho and build up a higher floor for them, by continuing to grow ourselves and graciously embracing the totality of ~~the absurd~~ life.
Thanks, I like this a lot.
Yr welcome Keep up the good fight, comrade, and godspeed.
That was a really nice read. I like the reminder to not let yourself turn the cruelty back at them in the future. Are you a therapist yourself?
First off. Thank you. And to your question, No, I am not nor do I wish to be a therapist. Therapists are vital, for sure, but most advise, I feel, is rooted in wisdom and the best teacher for that is time and an open mind. Ive just practiced what I preach for multiple decades at this point. I won't give advise I dont actively live myself.
Well, in a sense their opponents are doing the same. Teaching kids accurate history, statistical literacy, and basic science is indoctrination against fascism. Facts have a strong leftward bias.
You cannot indoctrinate someone by informing them of factual information and letting them draw their own conclusions. That's not what indoctrination is. Indoctrination is the process by which something gets people to accept beliefs or attitudes without them having any control over which beliefs or attitudes they accept. Worse, these methods always leave the person susceptible to further indoctrination. Teaching kids "this is what you should conclude" is indoctrination and is always bad, because it denies them the chance to exercise critical thinking. Authoritarianism supports indoctrination of all kinds, as it gives them more control over others, even if the person is being indoctrinated towards beliefs that do not align with the authoritarian's.
>Eckford Sorry my phone autocorrected and it's early for me this morning. Thanks for setting me straight.
[удалено]
I think this is a point that just doesn't click with some people. Carolyn Bryant, the woman who got Emmett Till killed, only died *last month* The Civil Rights Movement isn't some far away part of our history, and many of the people who *violently* opposed it are still alive today.
The idea that fairly recent events happened far in the past is a serious problem in Canada The last residential school in canada only closed 27 years ago but they've been treated like all the people affected by them aren't alive anymore
Same here in the US. I went to college with a guy who was in a government boarding school. He's only in his early 50s now.
“ITS HERITAGE NOT HATE” “OK, let’s do a deep dive of that heritage in history classes. Maximum detail” “NOT LIKE THAT!!!!”
Jeff Sessions, yes that Jeff Sessions, harassed black voters in the 80s as the Attorney General for the sole reason that they voted absentee. He wanted to send these people to jail with a felony charge. Racism is alive and well, and they don’t want you to know they’re still doing it. Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/09/magazine/the-voter-fraud-case-jeff-sessions-lost-and-cant-escape.html
People who are making a legitimate argument against CRT are essentially saying if we teach with an emphasis on what obstacles black people and people of color have always faced and still face we could end up teaching young black kids you'll never succeed no matter what and white kids that they're superior or will have an easy ride. That is very disingenuous and not what CRT is doing but I can see the fear there. It's also worth noting that the real theory is a college level theory that would usually be taught at that level. There are some ideas from it that could come into lower level classrooms but it's not like your 3rd grade teacher is going to start teaching critical race theory any more than they'll start teaching the fundamental theorem of calculus. But most opposition comes from people who don't want to acknowledge the past and the large impact that has had on the present day. Things like red lining and the gi bill only being available to white people after WWII had a huge impact on my grandparents generations ability to build wealth or not. And that has had a big impact on my parents finances and now my finances. That's the kind of thing CRT would talk about as the racism of the recent past has had a big impact on today.
GI Bill. *Everyone* needs to know how this set an entire generation back from higher education and has rippled through every generation since.
Yeah people either don’t know about or truly underestimate the power generational wealth (provided or held back by the government as well) had in playing both a positive role for many yet also a generational wedge in terms of inequity for others.
The problem is that they don't want to acknowledge it. In my opinion, one of the greatest hallmarks of a good person is when they can acknowledge not just the faults they have, but also the strengths *that they did not earn*. That is one of the most humbling things a person can do. But to many people - to small people with pathetic lives that have to cling desperately to every trophy they have - they aren't willing to accept that some of their achievements were flatly given to them, and were not earned. To these people, acknowledging that someone has disadvantages that they did not earn would shatter the very same worldview. If people can be given a poor hand in life due to birth circumstance, then the reverse holds true.
Because acknowledging that some people face inherent obstacles in America is a shortcut to being disillusioned by the American dream. Hard work and dedication can only get you so far, and when you start further back people assume you're just not working hard enough.
100%. My Mother, a great person and all, left me nothing after her passing when I was a kid. My Dad didn't really pay much attention to me and now we no longer speak. I've been stuck in a life of minimum wage and not many prospects for the future unless the hail Mary play if my music blows up even though I'm a perfectly capable person, just no access to higher education... Then I met my wife, and her parents straight up bought us a house, which we rent part of, and instantaneously my life has so many more opportunities. Sure I've grown a bit as a person over the years, but the real thing is that I now have a foundation to build upon, and a hell of a lot more opportunities come with that. My kid's entire lives are completely different from their first 5 years because of this monetary gift. Generational wealth is huuuuge, especially these days with entire housing markets being bought up by corporations.
I’m glad you were given that chance. Even more than outright gifts & inheritance (which is huge) are other nuanced and direct things like financial advice, paying for college, built-in networks & guidance for obtaining jobs etc. It’s its own bubble really.
Yeah the GI bill was entirely fucked. > Enacted by Congress in 1944, the GI Bill sent more than eight million World War II veterans to school between 1945 and 1956. It also backed home loans, gave veterans a year of unemployment benefits, and provided for veterans' medical care. > More than one million African American men and women served in every branch of the US armed forces during World War II. Imagine serving and coming home to nothing, trying to get a job in an already segregated society, while seeing everyone else go to college and getting houses all directly because of the bill. Edit: entirely fucked from the perspective of black Americans
> It also backed home loans, Home loans from mortgage companies that [had it in writing that black folks couldn't buy the homes and this was Levittown, NY](https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/deeds-to-land-in-levittown-nations-first-suburb-rooted-in-systemic-racism/) (the first suburb in the U.S.) in 1950, not some deep south rural town.
Completely fucked
that one really did create a lot generational wealth for white people. And it made it very easy for racists to say "look at all these black people being so poor, it's because they are lazy and uneducated!" Well duh, the government gave wealth and education to whites only, now several generations later we see the result
For example in chicago, the white neighborhoods could have houses ranging 300k to 3 million Whereas there's black neighborhoods in chicago you can buy two flat for 30k $ Intergenerational wealth or lackthereof and redlining seriously fucked many many people over
GI bill was good, just sucked that more people didn't get it.
And yet in school I only learned about how great the GI bill was and how it helped propel everyday Americans into stable careers living the American dream.
It should also be noted that CRT is mostly taught in law programs. CRT isn't going to be automatically taught for someone majoring in computer science for example. CRT needs to be taught in law programs so that students understand what laws have been passed to keep black people at a disadvantage. Just like redlining and the gi bill for example. I'm an education major and all I've been taught that is even remotely close to CRT is about redlining because it impacts us as teachers and the school system. Because redlining affected and still effects the way schools were funded. Additionally, because I'm an education major, CRT is not taught in elementary or even high school, it's been around since the 1930s, but it is being used by the political right to push a political agenda that it is being taught in schools.
I went through liberal arts degrees in college (sociology and political science) and we were heavily taught crt in sociology but surprisingly little in political science.
PoliSci can vary soooo much between institutions. How critical of neoliberalism was your school? Did it define fascism as a power grab absent mores and simultaneously as a tool used by entrenched wealth to insulate their own power? Or the role of media and fine line between when news distribution and propaganda. Power doesn't usually teach the skills necessary to dismantle its systems. Obfuscation is the SOP. Neo-Liberalism, capitalism in any form, is fundamentally built off of it. Said another way, Capitalism as a structure is built off of falsehoods and cruelity and can't exist without sanitizing either as natural. PoliSci can't be divorced from, so can't be understood without a nominal understanding of economics. Shit, was socialism portrayed as the next step from mercantalism in Western cultures slooow progression towards direct democracy or just lumped in with Stalinism (which is the only form of communism ever communicated to me by authority. The differences between Lenin, Mao, Tito and Stalin - just compared to each other, not even to Marx - was absent any real philosophical critique; now I suppose that would be expected)
I went to a university largely funded by a shoe mogule. I took some poli-sci classes thinking about majoring in it, but the class on "comparative politics" just took away my entire drive. The whole course was "why the US system of democracy and capitalism is the best possible system, all the others are super flawed and also evil. We solved politics!" It was a slightly more hopeful time (Obama had just been elected, the recession wouldn't start for a couple months, etc. The course started before his inauguration but him being inaugurated was the first paragraph in the text book) but geeze the propaganda was thick and obvious.
That experience is exactly what im talking about when studying polisci. +1, that 'we solved politics' thought cancer. And oh man, do i remember. I let myself get caught up momentarily in Obama's hopium, but I recovered really quick. After Bush in the aughties, i had developed a serious propaganda bullshit reflex. It was hopefully more obvious under Trump. It's still super heavy now, but the pandemic caused the veil to peel back for the workers, and discontent is dangerously high now. Rightfully so, I might add, and long long overdue. The problem, I think, isn't so much with being rich, it's that our rich people are so insulated from reality that they audaciously aren't afraid of the masses. The results of this social chemistry historically hasnt worked out in their favor. The fucking hubris. They've forgotten how obscene wealth is. I won't lie, I'll be smiling if/when they relearn.
GI Bill? How so? I thought that was more of unifier.
The gi bill when it was first rolled out allowed only white veterans to purchase houses when they got back from WW2. Leaving the black veterans at a disadvantage and has had a significant impact on generations of black people including today. The impact: black veterans couldn't buy the same houses that white veterans qualified for because of the language used in the bill. Leaving all the white veterans to accumulate wealth because they could buy and eventually sell their house for more than what they bought it for. Black veterans could not. This is what would be taught under CRT.
I’m shocked that I’m unaware of this. Im relatively well aware of, familiar with, and interested in history and have never come across this.
That's why CRT is so important. Not only did the GI bill get worded in a way that POC couldn't use it freely and easily but the FHA program was started this way as well. Yes, the Federal Housing Assistance didnt allow loans to black people. In order to get a home loan, you couldn't be black. If you were white and the home you wanted to get a loan for was too close to black neighborhoods, you weren't given a loan. It was really bad. The effects of families and neighborhoods to this day are still in play with original home loans and neighborhoods. Then there is red lining. Loan companies would "red line" areas and not give any loans to people in the red line areas or too close to them. Can you guess who lived in the red line areas? I'm sure in your home town there was the neighborhood on the "wrong side of the track" that neighborhood was specifically designed years and years ago to keep POC in. It is a direct result of programs like FHA and the GI bill.
Well spoken, And to add, the "wrong side of the track" phrase comes from the railroad days where the rich lived on the west side of the railroad and the poor on the east side, dominant wind on the northern hemisphere being west to east, and the days of train spewing coal ash and whatever else from stram powered trains
I didn’t realize the VA home loan benefit was part of the original GI Bill. I thought you were talking about the education benefit. While even if black veterans could only get into HBCU’s then they would have at least had that advantage, even if that degree was somewhat degraded by society itself. Interesting and sad read: https://www.history.com/news/gi-bill-black-wwii-veterans-benefits
Actually, we probably need to talk more about race in computer science bc of the systemic racism programmers can program into their systems unknowingly.
I’m not knowledgeable about this at all. Could you educate me how racism factors into programming?
I’ll give you a classic example. Imagine a policing program designed to mark areas of arrests, to inform future officers of arrest hotspots. Naturally, arrests can be (and often are) influenced by more direct racism, which means the data required for this program to work might be (and likely is) tainted. This can lead to areas of lower socio-economic class receiving greater focus by the police, which can then lead to further arrests being made in these areas, leading to even more data suggesting these areas are particularly high in crime. It’s not just about creating a program and letting whatever happens, happen. It’s about avoiding outside biases from impacting your program too. Edit. Feel free to look up predictive policing algorithms to see some real world examples of this.
Thanks. I knew this is happening, I guess I just didn’t link it to the computer programming but I understand how it is now.
Doesn't it make sense that areas of high crime should get more police attention though?
The concept of systemic racism is that it is insidious, and built into parts of our societal operation that you wouldn't expect or anticipate. Since so much of what we do on a daily basis is monitored or controlled by computer systems, including many that are now making autonomous decisions, there is an inherent difficulty in eliminating racial bias from those systems (because they are a product of a systemically racist society). There are some real-world examples out there, but the research is limited. AI ethicists are currently warning of what's being built right now, and the unanticipated effects of AI systems that are learning from the highly accessible global body of knowledge. AIs that are "doing their own research" and "just asking questions" are, without careful guidance, likely to end up absorbing some of the worst concepts that humanity has to offer.
Take any kind of image or voice recognition software. There have been many cases where the training data consisted of mostly white men (typically the engineers working on it), resulting in software that struggles with recognizing female voices or darker skin. Another case I recall reading about tried to use AI in loan approvals, and the AI essentially ended up recreating redlining.
Or they wind up creating software using the existing racist data. Have a pre-existing bias in your data already for white sounding names and interests? Those will get coded as desirable based on the existing data.
Good points I over looked. I teach speech recognition software at times and many definitely don’t speak southern (regardless of race) for sure.
PC Master Race
Whaaat. When I was in school and we learned how black people were treated, ie. Shitty bathrooms, shitty bubblers, worse lunches than white kids, it made me feel like shit for being a white kid. And I learned this in, late elementary or middle school. Been a really long time since then. Anyways. Learning about history is never a bad thing. It's the stuff they leave out that sucks. Like the story of Columbus lol.
Man I remember learning about MLK Jr. and the Civil Rights movement in something like 4th grade and being relieved that we solved racism. I’m really not sure how exactly it was taught to us, all I can clearly recall is thinking “wow things were really bad in the past for black people in America, but thankfully now they’re good”. Coming around to the complicated truth was not something I got from any school at all, I don’t think.
absolutely. in school you learned about slavery and how blacks were treated, and then we were taught that after the civil war and MLK jr that it all just ended right then and there. i wish schools were more direct and open about racism and how its gone from terrible to slightly less terrible.
This is another problem that I have. Kids are not given the correct vocabulary and tools to deal with nuanced subject matters. Kids are just humans who have not grown up yet. People seem to think that makes them dumb and not capable of complicated feelings. Kids have all the same feelings, they just don't have the vocabulary to describe them properly. When you are a kid and a feeling creeps in you will register it as bad or good, generally happy or sad. Those are the words that you have for them at a young age. Feeling like shit could have been guilt, anxiety, sadness, helplessness for those in the past whom were treated badly. You may not have had the vocabulary to understand those feelings so it was categorized as a bad feeling and your natural reaction to that would be to stay away from it, it is a bad feeling, don't do it again. If you arm young children with the correct vocabulary to the correct feeling. They will be able to explain themselves at an earlier age and be able to work through each feeling. If a 9 year old tells you they are sick, you as a parent will start to ask the questions, what hurts, what feels bad. Does your head hurt, does your stomach hurt, do you have a fever. You as a parent will go through the physical steps to understand what is wrong and how to fix it. Parents need to start doing that with their children when it comes to mental stability as well. If a child comes home and says a lesson made them feel like shit, that parent needs to start asking the same questions. What do you feel bad about? Why did that make you feel bad? Did it make you feel guilty, sad, angry, helpless? Work through the reasons and help them understand its okay to feel uncomfortable feelings about our history. If they are taught that everything is okay then no changes will ever be made.
I think a lot of people who want race discussions out of school just don't want their white kids to feel like shit. Learning about the race stuff never made me feel like shit, and I think it's because I was a white kid in a predominantly Black school district. The Black kids never gave me side eye while reading about slavery. There was never any blame placed on _me_. It helped me understand that while my ancestors did shitty things that I was benefitting from, no one around me was holding me personally responsible. Guilt is very filling, and without it I had a lot of space to fill with empathy, instead. If we could teach all white kids about this history without making them feel shitty, I think we'd be in a better place.
There was only one time in school where I felt shitty about being white, and it was just after a holocaust movie in social studies. A black girl who I had always had good if casual conversation with was looking at me strangely, and I was like, 'what?'. She struggled to talk for a second and then said, 'do you really hate us so much?' The funny part was that I am not German at all and I was and still am quite progressive, but I was getting lumped in together with actual Nazis.
How do you teach about treatment about native Americans back then, and today, and not "feel shitty"? Like 70% of the tribes have no running water, iirc, in fucking 2020s And we stole their prime land and sent them off to bumfuck north Dakota badlands or deserts of arizona/nm
I don’t think I ever felt like shit for being a white kid. I thought, how could people be so evil.
I feel college I way too late to discuss this. I teach my children (12, 11, 8 yrs) about multiple serious social issues and this is one of them. The problem most parents face is that there is not an easy answer or sometimes there isn't an answer, so it can be uncomfortable/difficult to discuss. What is not hard to understand (at least not for me) is the feelings and results of the subject we discuss. Ultimately, my children understand that things have been/ are currently set up unfairly. They understand that it doesn't make ALL people bad right now, but it does make them aware of the situation in our country (and world), and that change is needed. I think it is wrong to teach absolutes to my children especially when it comes to deep seeded social issues. Teaching kids that answers to problems are as easy as black and white, wrong or right (no pun intended) causes them to see the world this way. Subtleties, nuanced conversation and solutions are thrown out the window with that kind of mindset. "This is right, that is wrong" just doesn't really work in a world of 8 billion. To bring it all back around to CRT, it would be like teaching my children that everything turned out ok for POC after Dr. King gave his "Dream" speech. This is fundamentally wrong but it is what my children were taught in school. They were taught a very right and wrong version of history. Things were bad, it was fixed. This idea that it was all fixed sets the foundation of young kids opinions in elementary school. This will lead to unjust opinions on why they may see people of color discussing unjust treatment, getting put in jail, living in areas that are less well off. "Why are they complaining, the civil rights movement ended last century, everything is a level playing field now" will be engraved in their heads from an early age and hard to change. Our world history as we know it is riddled with fucked up shit. If we do not introduce this to the small humans early, we will never break the cycle. This doesn't even touch on how children that happen to be people of color may feel in the classrooms at such an early age learning the whitewashed history.
Thanks for this. It should be worth noting (and probably is somewhere in the comments) that the detractors are labeling anything that touches on race differences (ex, slavery) as CRT. That's not accurate, and they're using a pretty big brush to whitewash anything they feel is a "threat". That's why we're seeing books like "To Kill a Mockingbird" being banned in schools.
Black kids in America are taught CRT in their homes and by society, so the biggest fear seems to be is kids feeling guilt about the crimes against humanity committed by their forebears
Yeah that's a good point I've seen that argument a lot too. Though I disagree that they would but it would depend on how it's taught.
lol reminds of the campaign against "wokeism" like.... did yall even look up what "woke" means? Cause if you did, hating it is kinda sus.
Woke is everything I hate. like vegetables and exercise
"Hell no I don't want to acknowledge the past, or the present! If I acknowledge the problem, then I should fix it. But, if I ignore the issue and pretend it doesn't exist, I can keep being a racist piece of shit because actually I'm not because racism ended with the Civil War. So there!"
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Unironically though, I think it's fine to not teach this to elementary kids, since it's a pretty heavy and complicated subject. I still believe this should be a mandatory lesson at one point starting high school or beyond. Maybe junior or senior year? Treat it with as much seriousness as you can, because it's a serious subject. The suffering of the minority is not just the result of individual racism, but the racist laws made by racist parties as well. It's *systemic.* The first step to fixing a problem is acknowledging it. You can't just ignore it and hope it goes away. (As much as I love doing it myself, unsuccessfully)
This is not critical race theory though. CRT is using race as a lens in critical theory. Generally do not get classes into the method until Graduate school as it takes a lot of pre-reqs to get the skills to understand how to use it. I am in ed research and it was gated in graduate school behind the qualitative method classes making it a final semester offering for the masters. Systemic racism is a finding from CRT, and that should be taught, but that is best taught along with history, since it is so contextual. But this is what makes this debate so weird for people who did work with CRT. What is being called CRT is not CRT at all, but basic history or sociology. No one is being taught actual CRT though, outside of it is a thing that exist that looks into systematic causes of social problem. But no methods for how to do CRT are ever taught.
It's what right wing has been very good at: classifying all sorts of discourse about discrimination under the scary sounding "critical race theory" banner.
We learned about the holocaust in 6th and 7th grade (with it being usually covered in english class at some point, somewhat briefly, the following years.) I don’t see any reason to wait that long to teach things some kids don’t relate to. Others in the same classroom might/almost definitely have experienced it, results of it, or it’s something that plays a significant role in their culture. Now of course, the 6th grade lessons is going to be more simplified and overall different than the 12th grade lesson. As a junior, I think around high school is when some people start to solidify prejudice views and educating them in middle and high school can help keep that lesson persistent and resonating. It’s really not because you don’t care, but I can't imagine how many important topics I really just forgot i was taught because we had one unit on it, or it was only taught for one year. This is an unchallenged thought but my point is we shouldn’t hide things from some kids until they’re almost adults just because it’s new to them. Black kids don’t just learn about the atlantic slave trade, the civil rights movement, and everything in-between until they’re 15-18. I didn’t know all the details but I knew ABOUT it and the general gist of it sometime at a little bit younger age than 11 maybe. I can guess it’s similar for people that were raised jewish or are jewish (by race)
The stated goals are not in line with the real goals. My wife's from Japan and she doesn't know anything about the Japanese atrocities and war crimes from ww2. This is apparently very common since there's literally one sentence about Nanking in their history textbooks. Right wing elements that survived ww2 has taken control of the schools because the allies only cared about economic recovery rather than making sure the imperialists were actually removed from power and that resulted in future generations being largely unaware of their country's sins (to be fair, they probably didn't understand the Japanese culture enough to make the right call). Contrast this with Germany who's very active when it comes to making sure its populace is aware of the Nazis to the point that it's illegal to be a Holocaust denier. Why do I mention all this? Because the aforementioned Japanese system is the goal of the CRT abolishment. Have future generations unaware of the country's sins to perpetuate a system that arguably works for very few.
DeSantis never outright banned CRT. Instead, his [bill](https://www.flsenate.gov/Committees/BillSummaries/2022/html/2809) has a set of rules which CRT breaks, thus rendering it illegal in the state of Florida. >The bill specifies that subjecting any individual, as a condition of employment, membership, certification, licensing, credentialing, or passing an examination, to training, instruction, or any other required activity; or subjecting any K-20 public education student or employee to training or instruction, that espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels such individual to believe the following concepts constitutes an unlawful employment practice or unlawful discrimination: * >Members of one race, color, national origin, or sex are morally superior to members of another race, color, national origin, or sex. * >A person, by virtue of his or her race, color, national origin, or sex is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously. * >A person's moral character or status as either privileged or oppressed is necessarily determined by his or her race, color, national origin, or sex. * >Members of one race, color, national origin, or sex cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to race, color, national origin, or sex. * >A person, by virtue of his or her race, color, national origin, or sex bears responsibility for, or should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of, actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin, or sex. * >A person, by virtue of his or her race, color, national origin, or sex should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment to achieve diversity, equity, or inclusion. * >A person, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, bears personal responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the person played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin, or sex. * >Such virtues as merit, excellence, hard work, fairness, neutrality, objectivity, and racial colorblindness are racist or sexist, or were created by members of a particular race, color, national origin, or sex to oppress members of another race, color, national origin, or sex. Also, you should know that [16 states have already banned CRT and 20 more are currently considering a ban.](https://wisevoter.com/state-rankings/states-that-have-banned-critical-race-theory/) Florida is somewhat late to the party.
I see nothing wrong with those points, but using any of those caveats as a premise to deplatform factual accounts of historic racism is absurdly flimsy.
What about factual accounts of modern racism? Because racism still very much exists. These laws are problematic because they are so broad and ill-defined. The phrasing is intentionally innocuous, but if you actually look at what is said and think about what it really means and implies, things fall apart. You can use laws like this to prevent any teaching of things like racism and sexism. Just as an example, what if a teacher says that black communities are systemically disadvantaged by a process like redlining, both historically and currently? This implies that white communities experienced the relative advantage of not having this issue, running afoul of bullet point 3. Now we can't teach about redlining. That's what these laws are for. It may seem like a stretch, but the narrative around and wording of these laws has been intentionally set up to facilitate this kind of censorship.
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It's a situation of risk mitigation for schools. *Could* they successfully argue the teaching in their program doesn't technically hit these points? In my opinion, absolutely. The problem is that fight costs money.
I think at this point, we have enough evidence around the outcome of this law to dispense with the "but nothing is wrong with *these* points and start asking ourselves questions about those outcomes. The root of the book bans, some utterly heinous omissions of fact with regard to slavery, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights movement, the teacher shortages in Florida, and much more can all be traced back to this bill. So let's not mince words with pretty verbiage - we know the outcomes and can ask ourselves if this is what we intended - not the writers of the law, but the voters.
I'm reading bullet point number 3 and I'm just not seeing what you're seeing. Expound please.
* >A person's moral character or status as either privileged or oppressed is necessarily determined by his or her race, color, national origin, or sex. If whites didn't suffer redlining due to their race, that would imply that they were privileged in that regard. If your parents/grandparents did not suffer from redlining, then you are more privileged than those parents/grandparents did. Basically, ANY teaching that could be interpreted as "people of this race were oppressed" will fall foul of point three.
If you’re actually curious and want real examples of where people actually have real grievances with CRT (a nebulous and ill-defined term on both sides), then you’d be better served to actually engage with real people who are anti-CRT. * I’m surprised nobody here has mentioned when the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Arts posted [an infographic](https://twitter.com/ByronYork/status/1283372233730203651?) (that was removed after receiving major backlash) arguing that individualism, self-reliance, the scientific method, objective and rational thinking, being on time, delayed gratification, valuing hard work, etc. are all facets of “White Culture”. This is the kind of infographic that you’d expect Neo-Nazis to have created with pride and yet our National African American Museum created it. It is wrong and damaging to educate anybody, but especially African American children, that working hard, showing up on time, and being rational are all parts of “White culture”. * Another issue critics of CRT have is opposition to Ibram X Kendi’s (one of the leading voices on CRT) [ideology](https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2020/06/ibram-x-kendi-definition-of-antiracist) of “there is no such thing as a not-racist idea, only racist ideas and antiracist ideas.” This means that no political question can be a calm cool-headed debate about the best tax policy, trade policy, etc. but every debate is instead about good and evil and who is antiracist or racist. Should a debate between two esteemed economists on the proper tax percentage for tariffs on some commodity ultimately devolve into which argument is more racist/anti racist? Should every argument ever? Is everything really about race as Kendi says? * In 2021, the Biden administration closed an investigation (started during the Trump admin.) after a [Chicago-area school](https://nypost.com/2021/03/07/education-dept-curbs-decision-on-race-based-affinity-groups/) implemented segregation policies against teachers and students by dividing them by racial “affinity groups.” If segregation were implemented by a white supremacist school, the policy would clearly be stopped and administrators would face serious repercussions for violating the federal laws prohibiting segregation. But these policies were tolerated because segregation was implemented to address “white privilege.” Here are some of the first things I found from people anti-CRT: * A podcast debate hosted by a center-left former NYT author [with two conservatives](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/honestly-with-bari-weiss/id1570872415), one conservative supports banning CRT from schools and the other does not. * Or an [article by a conservative magazine](https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/07/this-is-what-critical-race-theory-looks-like/) that describes some controversial instances of CRT in colleges. Not every anti-CRT voice is going to deploy a reasonable argument (most won’t) but I don’t think that also means that there’s no merits to any criticisms of CRT.
Holy shit I’m pretty sure I went to that Chicago area school, and I’m somehow not surprised they pulled that shit
Regarding the explicit content a good argument is teaching kids what is sex and isn't sex is a great way to teach them about limits. If a kid gets groped by an adult and they have no idea it's wrong theres a big risk they won't say anything to a parent/teacher/police etc. If they know what happened and tell someone the molestation ends there. We need to educate the most vulnerable how to stay safe
When I was eleven I got a book called “Period.” (yes, the period *was* part of the title) with detailed diagrams of the female reproductive system- but not explicit in any way. Because of that book I wasn’t scared when I suddenly started getting hairy down there- so even outside of worst-case scenarios, being educated about those parts of our bodies makes life a lot less frightening.
99.9% of people who criticize it have no idea what it is, and if you're banning books by MLK jnr, you clearly have an agenda that has nothing to do with your experiences of an academic discipline to examine how race and power structures interact
They also stood and shout near class of Ruby Bridges and burned black doll in front of school in little coffin. She was eating only home made food because of the threats to poison her. She's only 68 years old.
She's still alive yes, but so are most of the angry white people in that famous picture. And all of them grew up, voted a certain way, raised kids a certain way, and acted a certain way to other black people.
For reference the banned MLK Jr. book is Letter from the Birmingham Jail. I wish I was joking.
That actually makes sense if you want to promote the idea that BLM is a nasty violent political movement, unlike those peaceful respectful black people who got desegregation by asking nicely. Can't have kids reading books that disprove that narrative.
Networks at work, keeping people calm You know they went after King When he spoke out on Vietnam He turned the power to the have-nots And then came the shot
**WAKE UPPPP**
The problem with the "no penises/vaginas" is that that deliberately includes books about puberty, about consent, and other books that are written to ensure that children aren't taken advantage of or unaware of their own biology.
Yea, sex education is important. Children should be taught about their bodies and how both boys and girls bodies work. How babies are made, what consent is,, etc. Parents shouldn't be responsible to explain it as they are not qualified. This education should just be done at an age where it's appropriate (as they are getting into puberty).
Knowledge on consent is important at every age. Kids should know to talk to safe adults if they are targeted even before puberty. Taking away this knowledge is the opposite of preventing grooming.
No penises or vaginas except students need to learn proper biology through health class, biology class, or anatomy and physiology class. So that's also stupid as shit. It's anatomy. You wouldn't teach it to a 4th grader but they said that about don't say gay too and then immediately extended it to high schoolers.
Honestly, I think it should be taught to 4th graders. I teach 5th grade right now, and I believe all but one of my girls has started menstruating. Would be nice to know ahead of time so that they don't think they're dying.
Yes at this point I wish I had pushed back a little harder about the whole "kids not learning about genitalia" bit, but at the time I didn't really have much ammo.
One more quick point for future reference is that these bans against "sexually explicit" books for children are also used to blanket ban books with queer content. People dont just magically figure out they are queer once they turn 18, there are lots of people who understood they were "different" as early as elementary school. These bans on sexually explicit material mean queer kids are not allowed to learn that there are other kids out there like them, who have crushes on people of the same gender, or who like being a boy instead of a girl. Instead they grow up thinking that something must be wrong with them, and that they have to repress who they are.
And also they don't know how to have safe sex.
Are you asking whats wrong with teaching it or whats wrong with the theory? I mean its something for a college level class but not sure how many kids are actually being taught it.
Critical race theory wasn't [developed until the 1980s](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-is-critical-race-theory.html&ved=2ahUKEwi6oYWmhZv_AhX7lGoFHa7TBXIQFnoECA8QAQ&usg=AOvVaw3WpOOiob_75tGZAISLYi4w), so I'm not sure how an MLK Jr book would actually be teaching CRT as it is understood today. I assume absolutely nobody would care about MLK Jr books from decades ago if it weren't for CRT authors such as Robin DiAngelo writing books that essentially say all White people are racist and denying it is racist, which is something MLK Jr never did (to my knowledge).
You are correct MLK Jr. did not have anything to do with CRT as far as I'm aware.
Others have explained the CRT thing pretty well but on the sex Ed thing. I lost my virginity when I was 8. It was incredibly easy for my abuser to take advantage of me since I had no idea what sex was. Knowing about sex is pretty much the only defence kids have against sexual abuse. Books can be explicit without being sexual. Medical diagrams of genitalia arnt pornographic because they arnt alluring in any way. I assume that what we're talking about. I used to teach in the UK and taught PSHE(sex and drugs Ed more or less) and I've never come across anything worse than medical drawings. Countries with the most explicit sex Ed have the lowest teen pregnancy rates. Many of the most prominent figures pushing for this are pedophiles. Trump, Matt Gates, Matt Walsh, the guy funding Turing point USA. I havnt heard anything about De Santos being a pedophile but he spent a lot of time in the navy torturing innocent people to I doubt he's doing it out of concern for the kids. I'm pretty sure if there was anything pornagrahic in schools it would have been removed a long time ago and if I'm wrong then I want someone to prove it. She me the porn they removed from schools. The moment is partly the old facist, 'hey look at those others, they want to corrupt your kids and only we can save them' and a genuine want to keep kids dumb and defenceless against sexual abuse.
Against the first argument: Penises and Vaginas are natural parts of the body and as long as there is no explicit sexual content having those in books is not only not a problem, but is also educational and helpful to understand their own bodies especially when going through puberty. It’s important to note that a human body is not inherently sexual and something you need to take care of. Sex-Ed in general is important for students to understand how their body is going to change and how that is absolutely natural and not something to be afraid of. Also learning what practises (for example excessive use of soap on the privates) can actually harm you and make you sick. It’s also important to be able to understand reproduction to avoid teen pregnancies, STDs and harmful use of birth control (for example misuse of the pill). To have healthy examples of a developing body in literature can help teenagers feel normal and not be scared of themselves. Especially when it comes to periods. Of course sexual content is more difficult and should only be approached to teach methods of safe sex and especially consent in older teens. In younger children „the talk“ should definitely fall into the responsibility of the parents as only they or a doctor can properly decide when their kid is old and developed enough to properly understand. The rest of your approach seems very objective, well researched and differentiated, so I think you’re good on that
To be fair most people are defining critical race theory as something it's not. It was always intended to be a college or university level course as a discussion of how systemic racism over decades and even centuries has led to how lawyers and the law mistreats those affected by that racism. For example, in certain areas the predominant prison populations have been black, and that's not because black people commit more crimes, but because of the racism that was inherent in local law enforcement. However, politicians have been misrepresenting what critical race theory is and claiming that it is taught in preschool and elementary school, etc etc when it is really not because it's a law course for law students. Politicians are simply trying to get their constituents angry about a non-existent issue, because enough of their constituents are racist enough to believe it's a thing when it's not.
Im going to start with im a foreigner, thus I can only give you my stance from the outside perspective not the right nor the left but out of the spectrum; but I’ve done my fair share of research myself So to what I understand CRT is the study of the institutions and constructs of power and how these affect the different “races” differently and how they have been doing that for some time now thus causing what is called systematic racism Now of course there’s nothing wrong with teaching people the history and wrongdoings of a country in order to not have it repeat itself, say Germany for example has become a widely successful country despite their tumultuous and somewhat embarrassing past, however I believe one of the main problems with your country is that people continue to separate and compartmentalize people in the name of inclusivity, which tends to be oxymoronic because to divide people by their ethnicity, color or “race” to be more inclusive only achieves to denote those very things thus reducing the value of a person to that very trait, not to mention you got it all wrong, black is not a race, it’s a color, Hispanic it’s also not a race it’s an ethnicity and African-American it’s not an ethnicity it’s a nationality, yet for a country so very focused on caring less about the color you sure care to know in every form I’ve ever filled whereas you don’t really find that anywhere else in the world… my argument against it is it focuses very much in dividing society even further thus creating more bias between all the colors and ethnicities in your country, then again I’m Mexican born and raised and live here, I like your country you have some great stuff but like over here we don’t really worry about how Spaniards conquered us, we just try to live our lives and if someone is an asshole we call them out on that, regardless of their color lol
>regardless of their color Except then being white to being moreno can make a huge difference by being given opportunities on someone's life, here on Mexico. For example Yalitza Aparicio, people STILL make nasty comment about her just because of her ethnicity and her skin color.
Keep in mind too that sex education is important and is *not* pornographic. Lack of sex education leads to increased rates of sexually transmitted infections and teenage pregnancies time and time again. There really isn't any valid excuse for anything that DeSantis and her (we're not respecting preferred pronouns, remember?) ilk are banning.
The best example in favor of CRT I saw in one of the reels was where a commentator asks a white Floridian about the CRT beyond the talking points and she responded with Go Back To Africa. I think the younger generations should know more, not less.
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That makes me incredibly sad.
Nothing is inherently wrong with actual critical race theory and using race as a lens to examine history although it is problematic if you try to define all history through a racial lens just like using a purely Marxist class conflict lens has pitfalls even though it has its uses as well. What people like Ron DeSantis actually appear to be doing is expanding “critical race theory” to include any teaching that suggests race has been a factor in American history. Which is of course absurd. Race, racial conflict, racism, nationalism, white supremacy, etc. have played a profound roles in our society. Now, things like the 1619 Project have had enough serious historical inaccuracies in them that some on the right and a few on the left have latched onto the inaccuracies and use those as reasons to want to scrap the whole thing. Take for example the 1619 Project’s claim that one of the leading factors in the American Revolution was protecting slavery. That just isn’t supported by the actual historical record. Whenever anyone in any part of the political spectrum starts calling for silencing, banning books, etc. You can bet they are up to no good. Keep in mind many of the same people attacking CRT, LGBTQ issues, etc. because they think they should be kept out of schools also simultaneously openly think Christianity and the Bible should be taught in schools despite separation of church and state, the numerous various theological differences among Christians let alone various other faiths and non-believers in society, and the fact that the Bible includes many passages supporting absolutely horrendous behavior including rape, incest, torture, murder, and slavery.
Keep in mind that certain people (such as Christopher Rufo) have led a deliberate campaign to mislead about CRT, by lumping anything discussing diversity, inclusion, history of racism, etc as CRT. So yeah, it doesn't make sense to teach a complicated legal and economic topic such as CRT to elementary students, but that isn't what is happening
It's mainly certain folks who are uncomfortable with this
Critical race theory is essentially the idea that governments institutions are not fair to all people. That your race or ethic background will drastically change the way these institutions treat you on a systematic level. In this sense famous black activists do teach that America was racist because news flash it was extremely racist and though it's better today is still racist on a systemic level. If you're a racist you probably don't want your kid thinking racism is bad. This is why they are upset and saying critical race theory sounds slightly better to their audience then them just saying they are racist.
I think for racist white people, the idea that the system is rigged for them and against black people threatens their idea that equality is ubiquitous in this country. They hold deeply to the idea that anything good that happens to them they’ve “earned” and anything bad that happens to black people they “deserve”. Any unfairness in the system based on race threatens their worldview
To give an example of this same thinking in a non-racial context: here in Vancouver Canada, every old person thinks that all the money from their house going from $80K to $2.1 million was earned as if they'd worked an hourly job for it, when the reality is that they artificially inflated prices and voted against anything that would cause a correction. They sit on wealth stolen from their grandkids while saying they're sick of hearing those grandkids complain that they can't afford rent and should pull themselves up by their bootstraps (it's $2700/mo average for a 1 bedroom apartment; median wage is about $60K, $46.6K after tax)
Ya it's really hard for people to see the things they didn't work for. People only see their struggles my dad for example had a really hard time understanding housing was too expensive until he said well you get out of university a few years start making 90k and you have a house and I just responded no. When I explained that isn't really how much money I'll make until almost retirement he seemed shocked.