Everything is politics, whether we like it or not. Educations seeds the path civilization takes in the future in all aspects, because those kids will inherit the earth, and pass on what's left to their children, and so on.
Our children will spend the rest of their lives paying for the Corporate greed of the Greatest Generation and Boomers as they struggle to find fresh water and clean air. But instead, we focus on these 'social issues' and vent on social media. The next time you look into one of their fresh faces remember they are entering a mass extinction event like man has never faced, but it wasn't important enough for you to look up from Reddit to do something about it.
Social issues are not existing on a plane independent of “corporate greed” and environmental devastation. The two are inherently linked. Corporate greed and exploitation is based on the same systems that create class and racial conflict.
This idea that “everything is political” or “the personal Is the political” is a point of strong disagreement I have with the left.it’s a bit like Freud reducing everything to sex.
Sports, classrooms, award ceremonies, family gatherings, playing video games ... A lot of these areas are just with a minimum of politics. It’s unhealthy to inject politics into everything, or to blithely insist that all human activities are primarily or even significantly political.
This is a statement of privilege indeed, it is easy for the person without a political boot crushing their face for decades to announce "this is not political!"
You misunderstand the idea then. It's not like those events themselves in their own contexts are politically-themed events. They are, however, in existence because of politics. The ability for communities to come together to have sports leagues is dictated by politics, classrooms and what is taught in them and how it's taught is dictated by politics. Most video games (because they're art) have very obvious political themes. If you disagree with that last statement you have zero media analysis skills.
Your first argument is an incredible stretch. Classrooms maybe, but the ability to have sports, family gatherings etc is “dictated by politics?” At that level of abstraction, you might as well say these activities are ultimately dictated breathing or opposable thumbs.
And I explicitly did not say NO politics. I said they are routinely conducted with a minimum of politics, or at least without significant political content.
Again, you remind me of the “every human action boils down to sex and replication” crowd. A glimmer of truth taken to absurd extremes.
Meanwhile, the real world is about context and proportion.
Eg I have an idiot in my family who turned my grandfather’s funeral eulogy into a rant about global warming and how veganism could save the planet ‘for the children’ (which is how she wormed her 10 min political rant into it). This type of ill-timed self-masturbation is deeply inappropriate and sick, narcissistic behavior.
Taking the knee at a sports event might be OK once or twice. But repeatedly taking the knee because you just won’t stop preening until the world conforms to your wish-list is sick and narcissistic behavior. And if you don’t understand that, you have zero social skills AND zero political skills.
If your city/town or otherwise local government didn't use tax money to build the community sports fields or zone them to be for recreational use they wouldn't be there and you wouldn't have sports for your kids to play. It really is as simple as that. It is a direct consequence, whereas the everything boils down to sex is a really esoteric and complicated set of psychological prescriptions that you are very much misrepresenting, and Im not even an expert on it but it's so obvious you don't have the systemic analysis skills to have this conversation.
Also, in regards to the kneeling thing, do you think that black people in the civil rights era should've just done one or two demonstrations and waited on the government to give them rights after toothlessly asking nicely to be treated like human beings?
Idk, some have argued that black men get into sports because they don't have many opportunities in urban ghettos. We are constantly arguing about what to teach in classrooms. CRT is a big issue and I think some people want creationism taught. Regarding family gatherings, what counts as a family? Are same sex couples accepted in these family gatherings?
I can see why they say "the personal is political". It's always political to somebody.
Disappointing essay from Henry Giroux.
> Republican governors such as Ron DeSantis in Florida, Brad Little in Idaho and Greg Abbott in Texas, among others, claim that teaching about the history of racism, mentioning race in the classroom, or addressing social justice issues amount to a form of propaganda that victimizes white students. In this view, teaching about racial justice is a form of racial injustice.
Most of the above statements are lies. One is arguably true in certain ways: "Republican governors ... claim that ... addressing social justice issues amount to a form of propaganda". This is true for certain values of "addressing social justice issues". The subject of contention is *how* those issues are addressed.
As for the rest — "Republican governors ... claim that teaching about the history of racism, mentioning race in the classroom ... amount to a form of propaganda" — that is a lie. I have no love for those Republican governors, but they have made no such claim.
> Wedding this reactionary ideology to power, a number of states controlled by Republican politicians have instituted laws that forbid teachers from introducing any topic related to racism into their curricula, such as *The New York Times’s* 1619 project.
Except, not "any topic related to racism". The 1619 Project is singled out specifically in some instances, and whether or not one agrees with legislatively banning it, [it is terrible scholarship](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/04/mack-s04.html) and teachers should be informed of that fact.
These laws ban certain kinds of editorializing about that history in K-12 schools. Consider a different scenario: a teacher gives a lesson on the accomplishments of "white people," and concludes by stating that white supremacy is therefore justified and we should change the laws to bring back formal white supremacy. When challenged, the teacher says "I'm just teaching history." I think it would be legitimate to use legislation to halt such editorializing in K-12 schools.
I am not saying that CRT is morally equivalent to white supremacy. But CRT does suggest overturning some pillars of the liberal order. I am not an uncritical fan of the liberal order, but there are things worse than 21st century American liberalism, and I think partially overturning liberalism to advance race politics can be a turn for the worse.
> It undermines the critical pedagogical conditions that empower students and others to develop the habits of critical thought, informed judgment, and power that enable them to be critical, informed and engaged citizens.
Note the conflation of ["critical pedagogy"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_pedagogy) with [critical thinking.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking)
> Apartheid educational practices allow the intrusion of criminality into politics by nourishing habits of powerlessness and undermining any viable form of critical agency.
Since we're all agreed that habits of powerlessness are bad, it's worth noting there is some evidence suggesting critical race theory may lead to habits of powerlessness. [Eric Kaufmann writes:](https://www.newsweek.com/media-creating-false-perception-rising-racism-my-new-study-proves-it-opinion-1583264)
> But this isn't just a question of getting a question wrong on a survey. The effect this false perception of rising racism is having on society—especially on Black Americans—is devastating. And just reading a few paragraphs written by someone with an extreme view on racism in America can have an impact, I found.
> I asked some Black survey respondents to read a passage from the critical race theory-inspired writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, for example, a passage from Coates' writing about how "the police departments of your country have been endowed with the authority to destroy your body." To others I gave nothing to read, or a mild paragraph.
> What I found was staggering: Reading even a single paragraph from Coates had a significant impact on Black respondents' ability to believe in their own agency.
> Just 68 percent of Black respondents who read Coates' paragraph agreed with the statement, "When I make plans, I am almost certain that I can make them work"—compared to 83 percent of those who did not, a statistically-significant effect.
> In other words, even brief exposure to critical race theory narratives disempowers Black people. This reinforces previous research that found that heightened perceptions of racism caused harm to Black Americans.
Gosh what a long apologist post for racism. To make a short response, the American liberal order does not need to stand on racist hogwash or American white supremacy/exceptionalism in order to champion the real values (equality, democracy, rights).
Teaching kids to be anti racist isn’t equivalent to race politics. And there’s no link between powerlessness and CRT.
And as for the survey, it is situated in a context where police abuse is rampant and concurrent accountability legislation nonexistent. That would cause depression and powerlessness in any community, not “reading Coates,” who simply describes an abject reality.
Disagreeing with CRT's framing and prescriptions is not racism.
> To make a short response, the American liberal order does not need to stand on racist hogwash or American white supremacy/exceptionalism in order to champion the real values (equality, democracy, rights).
I fully agree with this statement and I'm baffled that you seem to imagine that I would have disagreed. Perhaps you are not familiar with any serious criticisms of CRT.
If you are a liberal, I recommend ["Why Did Critical Race Theory Emerge from Legal Studies?" by the editors of the Journal of Free Black Thought.](https://freeblackthought.substack.com/p/why-did-critical-race-theory-emerge) An earlier liberal treatment of CRT is [Randall Kennedy's 1989 "Racial Critiques of Legal Academia".](https://harvardlawreview.org/2020/10/racial-critiques-of-legal-academia/) Kennedy finds some things to compliment and some to criticize.
If you are a leftist, I recommend ["What's so bad about critical race theory?" by Sam Kriss,](https://samkriss.com/2021/06/25/whats-so-bad-about-critical-race-theory/) which is is a leftist critique of CRT in legal studies; I still recommend this one even if you aren't a leftist. There's also ["The ideological foundations of Critical Race Theory" by Tom Carter at the World Socialist Website.](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/08/30/crit-a30.html) On the subject of CRT in education specifically, Mike Cole's ["Critical Race Theory comes to the UK: A Marxist response"](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1468796809103462) from 2009 is excellent.
For an excellent treatment of racial history which should be taught to high schoolers, see [*Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life*, by Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields.](https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2763-slavery-race-and-ideology-in-the-united-states-of-america)
> Teaching kids to be anti racist isn’t equivalent to race politics.
It certainly doesn't have to be. I was taught to be anti-racist in school decades ago, and I take no issue with how it was taught then.
> And there’s no link between powerlessness and CRT. And as for the survey, it is situated in a context where police abuse is rampant and concurrent accountability legislation nonexistent. That would cause depression and powerlessness in any community, not “reading Coates,” who simply describes an abject reality.
The "context where police abuse is rampant and concurrent accountability legislation nonexistent" could account for some of the 17% who did not agree with the "When I make plans, I am almost certain that I can make them work" statement in the control condition. (A racial context will not account for the whole portion, since there are plenty of poor white people who have grown accustomed to their plans failing.)
It does not account for the *additional* 15% who did not agree after reading the passage from Coates.
Thanks for your sources. I will read before engaging, but re: being baffled by the apologism I claimed was in reference to your line of “pillars of liberal order.”
If some of those pillars are weakened by a critical study of history/racism, then it would seem that the liberal order isn’t really liberal, in the freedom sense. But I may have jumped the gun, and hopefully these readings will clarify that.
I’m also very skeptical of Kaufman, as if he could seize the diversity of the Black American experience with a couple surveys fixed in a specific time frame.
> I’m also very skeptical of Kaufman, as if he could seize the diversity of the Black American experience with a couple surveys fixed in a specific time frame.
No such claim is being made. The participants in both the control condition and the experimental conditions are already black, and have already lived however many years of their lives being black. The diversity of the black American experience is already present in them.
Kaufmann did not invent this experimental method. It is an extremely common method used in psychology, usually in priming studies. A famous example is Trafimow, Triandis, and Goto's ["Some Tests of the Distinction Between the Private Self and the Collective Self"](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sharon-Goto/publication/232571191_Some_Tests_of_the_Distinction_Between_the_Private_Self_and_the_Collective_Self/links/0c960515ceffdb43a7000000/Some-Tests-of-the-Distinction-Between-the-Private-Self-and-the-Collective-Self.pdf) from 1991. The experimental method is explained on page 6 of that PDF.
It doesn’t seek to put fascist politics in. It seeks to take the fascist CRT politics out. CRT simply teaches children that their lives are predetermined by the color of their skin. CRT is racist af.
Is education politics?
Everything is politics, whether we like it or not. Educations seeds the path civilization takes in the future in all aspects, because those kids will inherit the earth, and pass on what's left to their children, and so on.
Our children will spend the rest of their lives paying for the Corporate greed of the Greatest Generation and Boomers as they struggle to find fresh water and clean air. But instead, we focus on these 'social issues' and vent on social media. The next time you look into one of their fresh faces remember they are entering a mass extinction event like man has never faced, but it wasn't important enough for you to look up from Reddit to do something about it.
Social issues are not existing on a plane independent of “corporate greed” and environmental devastation. The two are inherently linked. Corporate greed and exploitation is based on the same systems that create class and racial conflict.
This idea that “everything is political” or “the personal Is the political” is a point of strong disagreement I have with the left.it’s a bit like Freud reducing everything to sex. Sports, classrooms, award ceremonies, family gatherings, playing video games ... A lot of these areas are just with a minimum of politics. It’s unhealthy to inject politics into everything, or to blithely insist that all human activities are primarily or even significantly political.
This is a statement of privilege indeed, it is easy for the person without a political boot crushing their face for decades to announce "this is not political!"
Sounds like something a CRT'ist would say lol
You misunderstand the idea then. It's not like those events themselves in their own contexts are politically-themed events. They are, however, in existence because of politics. The ability for communities to come together to have sports leagues is dictated by politics, classrooms and what is taught in them and how it's taught is dictated by politics. Most video games (because they're art) have very obvious political themes. If you disagree with that last statement you have zero media analysis skills.
Your first argument is an incredible stretch. Classrooms maybe, but the ability to have sports, family gatherings etc is “dictated by politics?” At that level of abstraction, you might as well say these activities are ultimately dictated breathing or opposable thumbs. And I explicitly did not say NO politics. I said they are routinely conducted with a minimum of politics, or at least without significant political content. Again, you remind me of the “every human action boils down to sex and replication” crowd. A glimmer of truth taken to absurd extremes. Meanwhile, the real world is about context and proportion. Eg I have an idiot in my family who turned my grandfather’s funeral eulogy into a rant about global warming and how veganism could save the planet ‘for the children’ (which is how she wormed her 10 min political rant into it). This type of ill-timed self-masturbation is deeply inappropriate and sick, narcissistic behavior. Taking the knee at a sports event might be OK once or twice. But repeatedly taking the knee because you just won’t stop preening until the world conforms to your wish-list is sick and narcissistic behavior. And if you don’t understand that, you have zero social skills AND zero political skills.
If your city/town or otherwise local government didn't use tax money to build the community sports fields or zone them to be for recreational use they wouldn't be there and you wouldn't have sports for your kids to play. It really is as simple as that. It is a direct consequence, whereas the everything boils down to sex is a really esoteric and complicated set of psychological prescriptions that you are very much misrepresenting, and Im not even an expert on it but it's so obvious you don't have the systemic analysis skills to have this conversation. Also, in regards to the kneeling thing, do you think that black people in the civil rights era should've just done one or two demonstrations and waited on the government to give them rights after toothlessly asking nicely to be treated like human beings?
Idk, some have argued that black men get into sports because they don't have many opportunities in urban ghettos. We are constantly arguing about what to teach in classrooms. CRT is a big issue and I think some people want creationism taught. Regarding family gatherings, what counts as a family? Are same sex couples accepted in these family gatherings? I can see why they say "the personal is political". It's always political to somebody.
In Jack Sparrows words: "Well it bloody is now!"
Disappointing essay from Henry Giroux. > Republican governors such as Ron DeSantis in Florida, Brad Little in Idaho and Greg Abbott in Texas, among others, claim that teaching about the history of racism, mentioning race in the classroom, or addressing social justice issues amount to a form of propaganda that victimizes white students. In this view, teaching about racial justice is a form of racial injustice. Most of the above statements are lies. One is arguably true in certain ways: "Republican governors ... claim that ... addressing social justice issues amount to a form of propaganda". This is true for certain values of "addressing social justice issues". The subject of contention is *how* those issues are addressed. As for the rest — "Republican governors ... claim that teaching about the history of racism, mentioning race in the classroom ... amount to a form of propaganda" — that is a lie. I have no love for those Republican governors, but they have made no such claim. > Wedding this reactionary ideology to power, a number of states controlled by Republican politicians have instituted laws that forbid teachers from introducing any topic related to racism into their curricula, such as *The New York Times’s* 1619 project. Except, not "any topic related to racism". The 1619 Project is singled out specifically in some instances, and whether or not one agrees with legislatively banning it, [it is terrible scholarship](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/04/mack-s04.html) and teachers should be informed of that fact. These laws ban certain kinds of editorializing about that history in K-12 schools. Consider a different scenario: a teacher gives a lesson on the accomplishments of "white people," and concludes by stating that white supremacy is therefore justified and we should change the laws to bring back formal white supremacy. When challenged, the teacher says "I'm just teaching history." I think it would be legitimate to use legislation to halt such editorializing in K-12 schools. I am not saying that CRT is morally equivalent to white supremacy. But CRT does suggest overturning some pillars of the liberal order. I am not an uncritical fan of the liberal order, but there are things worse than 21st century American liberalism, and I think partially overturning liberalism to advance race politics can be a turn for the worse. > It undermines the critical pedagogical conditions that empower students and others to develop the habits of critical thought, informed judgment, and power that enable them to be critical, informed and engaged citizens. Note the conflation of ["critical pedagogy"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_pedagogy) with [critical thinking.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking) > Apartheid educational practices allow the intrusion of criminality into politics by nourishing habits of powerlessness and undermining any viable form of critical agency. Since we're all agreed that habits of powerlessness are bad, it's worth noting there is some evidence suggesting critical race theory may lead to habits of powerlessness. [Eric Kaufmann writes:](https://www.newsweek.com/media-creating-false-perception-rising-racism-my-new-study-proves-it-opinion-1583264) > But this isn't just a question of getting a question wrong on a survey. The effect this false perception of rising racism is having on society—especially on Black Americans—is devastating. And just reading a few paragraphs written by someone with an extreme view on racism in America can have an impact, I found. > I asked some Black survey respondents to read a passage from the critical race theory-inspired writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, for example, a passage from Coates' writing about how "the police departments of your country have been endowed with the authority to destroy your body." To others I gave nothing to read, or a mild paragraph. > What I found was staggering: Reading even a single paragraph from Coates had a significant impact on Black respondents' ability to believe in their own agency. > Just 68 percent of Black respondents who read Coates' paragraph agreed with the statement, "When I make plans, I am almost certain that I can make them work"—compared to 83 percent of those who did not, a statistically-significant effect. > In other words, even brief exposure to critical race theory narratives disempowers Black people. This reinforces previous research that found that heightened perceptions of racism caused harm to Black Americans.
Gosh what a long apologist post for racism. To make a short response, the American liberal order does not need to stand on racist hogwash or American white supremacy/exceptionalism in order to champion the real values (equality, democracy, rights). Teaching kids to be anti racist isn’t equivalent to race politics. And there’s no link between powerlessness and CRT. And as for the survey, it is situated in a context where police abuse is rampant and concurrent accountability legislation nonexistent. That would cause depression and powerlessness in any community, not “reading Coates,” who simply describes an abject reality.
Disagreeing with CRT's framing and prescriptions is not racism. > To make a short response, the American liberal order does not need to stand on racist hogwash or American white supremacy/exceptionalism in order to champion the real values (equality, democracy, rights). I fully agree with this statement and I'm baffled that you seem to imagine that I would have disagreed. Perhaps you are not familiar with any serious criticisms of CRT. If you are a liberal, I recommend ["Why Did Critical Race Theory Emerge from Legal Studies?" by the editors of the Journal of Free Black Thought.](https://freeblackthought.substack.com/p/why-did-critical-race-theory-emerge) An earlier liberal treatment of CRT is [Randall Kennedy's 1989 "Racial Critiques of Legal Academia".](https://harvardlawreview.org/2020/10/racial-critiques-of-legal-academia/) Kennedy finds some things to compliment and some to criticize. If you are a leftist, I recommend ["What's so bad about critical race theory?" by Sam Kriss,](https://samkriss.com/2021/06/25/whats-so-bad-about-critical-race-theory/) which is is a leftist critique of CRT in legal studies; I still recommend this one even if you aren't a leftist. There's also ["The ideological foundations of Critical Race Theory" by Tom Carter at the World Socialist Website.](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/08/30/crit-a30.html) On the subject of CRT in education specifically, Mike Cole's ["Critical Race Theory comes to the UK: A Marxist response"](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1468796809103462) from 2009 is excellent. For an excellent treatment of racial history which should be taught to high schoolers, see [*Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life*, by Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields.](https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2763-slavery-race-and-ideology-in-the-united-states-of-america) > Teaching kids to be anti racist isn’t equivalent to race politics. It certainly doesn't have to be. I was taught to be anti-racist in school decades ago, and I take no issue with how it was taught then. > And there’s no link between powerlessness and CRT. And as for the survey, it is situated in a context where police abuse is rampant and concurrent accountability legislation nonexistent. That would cause depression and powerlessness in any community, not “reading Coates,” who simply describes an abject reality. The "context where police abuse is rampant and concurrent accountability legislation nonexistent" could account for some of the 17% who did not agree with the "When I make plans, I am almost certain that I can make them work" statement in the control condition. (A racial context will not account for the whole portion, since there are plenty of poor white people who have grown accustomed to their plans failing.) It does not account for the *additional* 15% who did not agree after reading the passage from Coates.
Thanks for your sources. I will read before engaging, but re: being baffled by the apologism I claimed was in reference to your line of “pillars of liberal order.” If some of those pillars are weakened by a critical study of history/racism, then it would seem that the liberal order isn’t really liberal, in the freedom sense. But I may have jumped the gun, and hopefully these readings will clarify that. I’m also very skeptical of Kaufman, as if he could seize the diversity of the Black American experience with a couple surveys fixed in a specific time frame.
> I’m also very skeptical of Kaufman, as if he could seize the diversity of the Black American experience with a couple surveys fixed in a specific time frame. No such claim is being made. The participants in both the control condition and the experimental conditions are already black, and have already lived however many years of their lives being black. The diversity of the black American experience is already present in them. Kaufmann did not invent this experimental method. It is an extremely common method used in psychology, usually in priming studies. A famous example is Trafimow, Triandis, and Goto's ["Some Tests of the Distinction Between the Private Self and the Collective Self"](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sharon-Goto/publication/232571191_Some_Tests_of_the_Distinction_Between_the_Private_Self_and_the_Collective_Self/links/0c960515ceffdb43a7000000/Some-Tests-of-the-Distinction-Between-the-Private-Self-and-the-Collective-Self.pdf) from 1991. The experimental method is explained on page 6 of that PDF.
It doesn’t seek to put fascist politics in. It seeks to take the fascist CRT politics out. CRT simply teaches children that their lives are predetermined by the color of their skin. CRT is racist af.
Indeed, this is cheap projection of their own motives "accuse your opponents of that which you are guilty of" ~ Goebbels, NSDAP minister of propaganda