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> The whole thing really boils down to "all X are inherently bad" because that's what all 'criticism' shorn of potential solutions boils down to. That's not tr

> The whole thing really boils down to "all X are inherently bad" because that's what all 'criticism' shorn of potential solutions boils down to. That's not true, because critical theory is about social systems, not essential properties of human beings. To take the "white supremacy" thing as an example, one of the key points is that the US transitioned from actual racist policy (slavery, redlining, segregation etc), to race-neutral policy, and race-neutral policy does not undo the damage that racist policy causes to black people's economic and social conditions. That does not translate to "white people bad, black people good" when presented without solutions; it describes a situation that is not essentialised at all to people's ethnicity, but came about as a product of historical dynamics between two racial groups and their economic and political interests (slavery existed for economic gain of plantation-owners, after all). You have to be able to separate group conflict from group membership to be able to interpret this stuff correctly, and I don't see that happening in many analyses, including your own. This leads to both the conservative interpretation of "CRT is about white people being inherently bad" and the liberal interpretation of "as a white person, I should feel guilty for the suffering of black people". These are both bad interpretations; the whole problem/solution model lies at the policy level.

zozbot234 5y ago
> That's not true, because critical theory is about social systems, not essential properties of human beings. ... You have to be able to separate group conflict from group membership Social systems can persist for generations. Your whole argument would lead us to think that, e.g. there's nothing wrong with blaming detrimental aspects of Black culture as the only relevant causal factor behind the continued poverty and social marginalization of minorities in the U.S., but this is often regarded by many as being little different from showing overt hostility to Black people themselves. There's quite simply no shared consensus over what counts as an 'essentialised' vs. a properly nuanced analysis - a narrative focusing on historical dynamics and purported political interests can very much be so coarse and unsupported by evidence as to be quite 'essentialised' in practice. Arguably, this might describe much of what passes for scholarship in the 'critical' tradition, and the unrelenting, thoroughly naïve focus on facile narratives of "liberation from oppression" does not exactly help matters.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  Blaming black culture for the continuation of black struggles is incorrect because it reverses the causality. Assuming by "detrimental aspects of Black culture" you mean the usual conservative talking points of gangs, rap, drugs etc - these things are driven by poverty, not the other way around. Eastern Europe is home to many of these afflictions for reasons of poverty as well; same with "chav" culture in the UK - and both of these cultural groups are white. The point of origin of these issues is the ghettoisation of black people by redlining combined with the relative lack of wealth caused by slavery and subsequent discrimination; when you're stuck areas of little economic opportunity, gangs, impulsivity, violence and drug addiction are inevitable regardless of who is the victim. You can't really bootstrap a healthy economy from within a poor one. To prove my point, look at Detroit - when it was a hub of car manufacturing (ie, healthy industry) it was a hub of economic productivity. When all the jobs left it collapsed. It was a majority-black city at both of these points; poverty was the only difference. Thus, the people in this cycle can be said to be oppressed by their circumstances (not, importantly, other people); the systemic approach would be to try to lift these people out of poverty through policy-based interventions in order to liberate them from their dire circumstances. The catchphrase of critical theory is that the aim is "liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them". It is both coherent and a useful and pragmatic political approach to helping people get out of oppressive circumstances.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    > Blaming black culture for the continuation of black struggles is incorrect because it reverses the causality. Causal feedbacks are a thing, too - though admittedly, they might be hard to tease out via a purely "historical" analysis. Ultimately, one wants to look at purely exogenous "forcings" when faced with potential feedbacks. Teaching the fundamentals behind the bourgeois ethic in schools and via public awareness raising might be a good "exogenous" intervention that would mitigate this particular problematic feedback. The prevailing orientation these days among self-described 'progressive' elites is just the opposite: successful values are portrayed as the mere reflection of "Whiteness", and implicitly, the converse attitudes are praised as authentic. Can we really expect this to be a positive development? Is this really what passes for "a useful and pragmatic political approach to helping people get out of oppressive circumstances" in modern academia? (Of course, this is not to say that interventions on the "overall circumstances" side of the equation might not also be successful! For example income transfers to the poor, when accompanied by good surrounding incentives, have sometimes worked very well to bootstrap sustained growth. The recent childcare-focused tax subsidies seem to be exploring this direction.)

zozbot234 5y ago

> That's not true, because critical theory is about social systems, not essential properties of human beings. ... You have to be able to separate group conflict from group membership Social systems can persist for generations. Your whole argument would lead us to think that, e.g. there's nothing wrong with blaming detrimental aspects of Black culture as the only relevant causal factor behind the continued poverty and social marginalization of minorities in the U.S., but this is often regarded by many as being little different from showing overt hostility to Black people themselves. There's quite simply no shared consensus over what counts as an 'essentialised' vs. a properly nuanced analysis - a narrative focusing on historical dynamics and purported political interests can very much be so coarse and unsupported by evidence as to be quite 'essentialised' in practice. Arguably, this might describe much of what passes for scholarship in the 'critical' tradition, and the unrelenting, thoroughly naïve focus on facile narratives of "liberation from oppression" does not exactly help matters.

beaconstudios 5y ago
Blaming black culture for the continuation of black struggles is incorrect because it reverses the causality. Assuming by "detrimental aspects of Black culture" you mean the usual conservative talking points of gangs, rap, drugs etc - these things are driven by poverty, not the other way around. Eastern Europe is home to many of these afflictions for reasons of poverty as well; same with "chav" culture in the UK - and both of these cultural groups are white. The point of origin of these issues is the ghettoisation of black people by redlining combined with the relative lack of wealth caused by slavery and subsequent discrimination; when you're stuck areas of little economic opportunity, gangs, impulsivity, violence and drug addiction are inevitable regardless of who is the victim. You can't really bootstrap a healthy economy from within a poor one. To prove my point, look at Detroit - when it was a hub of car manufacturing (ie, healthy industry) it was a hub of economic productivity. When all the jobs left it collapsed. It was a majority-black city at both of these points; poverty was the only difference. Thus, the people in this cycle can be said to be oppressed by their circumstances (not, importantly, other people); the systemic approach would be to try to lift these people out of poverty through policy-based interventions in order to liberate them from their dire circumstances. The catchphrase of critical theory is that the aim is "liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them". It is both coherent and a useful and pragmatic political approach to helping people get out of oppressive circumstances.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  > Blaming black culture for the continuation of black struggles is incorrect because it reverses the causality. Causal feedbacks are a thing, too - though admittedly, they might be hard to tease out via a purely "historical" analysis. Ultimately, one wants to look at purely exogenous "forcings" when faced with potential feedbacks. Teaching the fundamentals behind the bourgeois ethic in schools and via public awareness raising might be a good "exogenous" intervention that would mitigate this particular problematic feedback. The prevailing orientation these days among self-described 'progressive' elites is just the opposite: successful values are portrayed as the mere reflection of "Whiteness", and implicitly, the converse attitudes are praised as authentic. Can we really expect this to be a positive development? Is this really what passes for "a useful and pragmatic political approach to helping people get out of oppressive circumstances" in modern academia? (Of course, this is not to say that interventions on the "overall circumstances" side of the equation might not also be successful! For example income transfers to the poor, when accompanied by good surrounding incentives, have sometimes worked very well to bootstrap sustained growth. The recent childcare-focused tax subsidies seem to be exploring this direction.)