Totally serious question

[Hobo]

I am a reasonably well read person, where and why now did this brouhaha start about CRT? I had never heard of it until the last 3 months or so. To quote Thomas Jefferson in Hamilton, What did I miss?

Hobo

[drray23]

1. These things get started in right wing think tanks

looking for ways to exploit wedge issues ahead of elections. Given that Biden is widely successful with the covid, will probably pass an infrastructure bill that the majority of voters want, the gdp is projected to grow 6.2% this year, it's hard to attack the democrats on that. Instead they are manufacturing crisis. They started with the border, this is another attempt.

It was adopted by the repubs in congress and amplified through Fox News and the like. They are hoping it will motivate their base to donate and go vote.

[Phoenix61]

2. The RWNJs trying to distract from the high approval

ratings that Biden and his agenda are enjoying. They also would like people to not notice that they are the ones that are preventing much of it from passing.

[lagomorph777]

3. Just the latest Koch-bro bullshit.

They know their base is incredibly gullible. They cook shit up all the time. Sometimes, just for fun. But always, with evil intent.

[Tomconroy]

4. I don't know what Critical Race Theory is..

[Wingus Dingus]

5. I haven't followed it either, but the RW blogs I sometimes read were

all over it. I just don't care, I guess. I figured it was another boogeyman culture war rallying point for them, like Antifa.

[Caliman73]

6. It seems, based on reporting, it has been fueled by the Heritage Foundation.

There has been some noise from right wing You Tube personalities, about "wokeness" for a little while. The CRT thing however, is relatively new and appears to be entirely created by Heritage and other right wing proponents. There is even some reporting that those "concerned parents" showing up at School Board meetings, are being promoted by Heritage.

It is like clockwork. Whenever a Democratic President is in office, you will immediately see "race", crime, and "divisiveness" being raised by the right wing. In the 90's it was the "Sista Soulja moment" and the Crime Bill. When President Obama was elected, well you know. It was the god damned "Tan Suit" and other bullshit. When President Obama had the "beer summit" and especially when he said Treyvon Martin could have been his son...right wingers went apeshit.

Now, here we are, with Biden trying to guide us out of COVID and the economic ditch we were run into, and the right wingers are all up in arms about "the border crisis" which is scary Brown people and CRT, which is scary Black people.

[brush]

15. Not created by the Heritage Foundation. That's not accurate.

See post 11. It's not a right wing creation. It's a credible theory on systemic racism, which is why there's such a strenuous and intense republican reaction to it.

[Crunchy Frog]

24. The actual theory isn't created by Heritage...

but the gross exaggerations and twisted meanings attached to it, and the painting of their political opponents, schools, etc. does come from Heritage or other think tanks.

I don't think anyone is arguing that it doesn't exist. Just talking about the way it's being misused by the RW.

[Caliman73]

25. If you take just about 10 seconds to read the OP...

You will see that the OP is not asking about where CRT came from, but where the brouhaha about CRT started. I know that CRT is not a right wing creation. I understand the elements of CRT. I also understand why it is currently being used by right wingers.

[brush]

26. The OP poster seemed to not know about CRT so I explained it to him.

IMO being informed of what it is is pretty important, that way he/she can know the real deal and discount the disinformation coming from Heritage and other extreme winger sources.

Good idea, don't you think? Truth is always better than right wing lies.

[Caliman73]

29. Yes. Information is always good.

I was reacting to your assumption that I might not know what CRT was and the OP's question was about, as I said, the bouhaha. Perhaps I did not fully understand what the OP was asking or it was worded oddly.

In any case. We are on the same side on this. CRT is a rigorous academic framework for studying why things are the way they are here in the US. The demonization is recent and is almost completely made up by astroturf organizations funded by Heritage and other right wingers to make it the wedge issue for the coming election cycle.

[brush]

30. I'm glad we're on the same side and same page.

[iemanja]

31. Its use in politics

is a RW creation. But not the theory itself.

[Solly Mack]

7. It's been around over 40 years. It's not new.

The right is using it to rile up their idiot voters. They're using it the same way they use everything else they use as a code word or phrase to mean black people or brown people are coming for white people.

They are appealing to the prejudices of their voters and they are chock full of it.

[frazzled]

8. Well, it is a real thing, and hardly new

You probably never heard of it if you are not in certain rarefied academic circles. You’ve only heard it recently because some right-wingers decided to take up this rubric as a cudgel. But there are many books on the subject that have been published over the years, many with the title “Critical Race Theory.”

Critical race theory originated in the mid-1970s in the writings of several American legal scholars, including Derrick Bell, Alan Freeman, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Richard Delgado, Cheryl Harris, Charles R. Lawrence III, Mari Matsuda, and Patricia J. Williams.[1] It emerged as a movement by the 1980s, reworking theories of critical legal studies (CLS) with more focus on race.[4] Both critical race theory and critical legal studies are rooted in Critical Theory, an approach to social theory established by members of the Frankfurt School, which argues that social problems are influenced and created more by societal structures and cultural assumptions than by individual and psychological factors.[5]

Critical race theory sees racism as systemic and institutional, rather than just a collection of individual prejudices.[6][7] It also views race as a socially constructed identity.[6] The theory emphasizes how racism and disparate racial outcomes can be the result of complex, changing and often subtle social and institutional dynamics, rather than explicit and intentional prejudices by individuals.[6] In the field of legal studies, critical race theory emphasizes that merely making laws colorblind on paper may not be enough to make the application of the laws colorblind; ostensibly colorblind laws can be applied in racially discriminatory ways.[8] Intersectionality – which emphasizes that race can intersect with other identities (such as gender and class) to produce complex combinations of power and disadvantage – is a key concept in critical race theory.[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory

[malaise]

9. It is recent bullshit

Just another RW outrage and M$Greedia has played along with it.

[brush]

13. See post 11. What's BS is the republican reaction to it.

[Crunchy Frog]

10. It's just the latest R boogeyman/manufactured outrage,

phoney culture war issue. They're using it to take maximum advantage current racial anxieties.

Just standard R behavior. The talking points probably come from a billionaire funded think tank.

[zuul]

22. Exactly. The repubes can't make any of their attacks stick to President Biden.

Their poutrage issues just keep getting more and more silly.

[brush]

11. It originated in legal circles and has been around for several decades.

It's just come to the fore generally in the last few months. One of the authors, Kimberlé Crenshaw, a legal scholar and professor, describes it as such, and I'm paraphrasing: Since 1619 when enslaved humans were first brought here, on through to the Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil War, the 14th Amendment, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow years and the Civil Rights struggles of the 50s and 60s, there have been legal edifices that have been constructed and operated along side all these historical developments and acted as faciliating conduits instead of acting sufficiently to push back against the inhuman illegality of the many racist obstacles and laws thrown up to continue the oppression of Black people and other POCs to the present.

In other words, the racism has been codified and the law has been used to make it happen more effectively than the other way around. Which is why racism is such a systemic reality to this very day.

Wingers of course are calling it itself racism, Marxism, a movement to put whites in concentration camps...the whole enchilada to rile up white people to be against evidence of systemic racism.

It's the latest bogeyman to scare white voters. Socialism, BLM, antifa and defund the police are sidelined for now but will be bought back when needed.

[malaise]

14. I have read about this

but using it to foment RW outrage is recent BS.

[brush]

16. That's true.

[malaise]

23. That said yours is a nice synopsis

about the real issue

[Hobo]

17. So it been circulating in legal academic circles?

Well, tie me to an ant hill and fill my ears with jam, and how did the repubs ever find it there? In academia? Stop it.

Hobo

[brush]

20. It's emergence into mainstream news probably because of the...

NYT's publication of the "The 1619 Project" which also delves into the persistent and systemic racism in the country. And you know the republicans are in total denial about that and have to react by calling CRT racism against whites, Marxism and a thereat to put white people in concentration camps.

You know, the usual, right wing scare tactics to rile up white fear.

[Submariner]

12. CRT is Cracker-speak for the un-vaccinated masses

looking for someone else to blame for their plight in life.

[brush]

18. See post 11. There is actual substance to its position on systemic racism.

[Vinca]

19. It's the right wing outrage du jour. Apparently there is such a thing, but it's not what the right

is trying to make it out to be. For starters, the professor I heard explain it made it sound complicated and righties don't do complicated. They're looking for something to run their next campaigns on. They've pretty much used up the gays, welfare queens, Mexican drug dealers with cantaloupe thighs, still trying on abortion and birth control, but pretty much given up on trashing Biden and Harris. They can't run on what they've done, because they've done nothing on a good day. Maybe they'll go back to calling Democrats "feckless" or something. They haven't used that one in a few years.

[brush]

21. Right. It's their latest bogeyman to scare white voters.

There's substance and truth to CRT though which is why there's such strenuous and loud push back from republicans.

[Maeve]

27. Well, the Dr Seuss b.s. was played out so they needed SOMETHING

How dare people notice racism is both systemic and real????

[StarfishSaver]

28. You didn't miss anything

This is a bs controversy. CRT wasn't a problem for the first 40+ years of its existence but now that more and more (white) people are recognizing that racial injustice and systemic racism are still major problems, the right wing is grasping at straws trying to find a way to shut Black people up.