I was contemplating the relentless quest in most universities for “diversity”. By diversity, they mean non-whites, and non-Asians, and preferably non-Jews. They mean everyone else, regardless of their talents and intellectual aptitudes. They get the best they can, but the best 10% from a horrible schools will be vastly worse academically than the bottom 10% from a good school. You know, the sorts of schools white people–including white Leftists–make sure their kids attend, all while bemoaning “systemic racism” that starts, if it is a thing, with the educational system–the K-12 system–which they have ruthlessly and even violently opposed even attempting to fix with anything but more money for teachers who are demonstrably incompetent.
[Charter schools, of course, are the obvious, scientific, and proven answer. And they HATE Charter Schools. If you would like, use that fact alone to assess their priorities, and in the process consider that we have known this now for at least 20-30 years, or so I understand.]
Here is the point I would make: if you asked them “why is this so important to you? Do you have evidence that the specific communities you claim to care about will benefit?”, then they would reply “this is HOW WE’VE ALWAYS DONE IT. AT LEAST SINCE I’VE BEEN HERE.”
Think about that. The words may differ, but in substance I am right. They stopped evaluating the merits of this mania long, long ago, probably some time back in the 1980’s, which would the very beginnings of the careers of the people who run things now.
When people express sentiments like that, that is reactionary. “We’ve always done it that way” is the mantra of people who are stuck in the mud and stuck in their ways, and actively opposed to any and all innovation.
The great merit of CRT is that it permits them to return to the status quo ante progress, when there actually WAS useful work to be done in reforming the “System” in some places, writ large.
But these people don’t understand economics. They don’t even really understand PEOPLE. They are not conversant with the needs of rank and file folks of color. So they make shit up, that places them back in the center of everything, even if it is supposedly other people they are talking about.
And I think about this famous quote from Frederick Douglass, with whom the Left is VERY uncomfortable, not least because he has the dignity to oppose their codependent and almost entirely selfish interference:
“Everybody has asked the question. . .”What shall we do with the Negro?” I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature’s plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!”
Here is the thing: CRT–as a discussion mainly happening among white people, and consisting mostly in one group of white people yelling interminably and without conscience at another group of white people–STILL, after more than 150 years, amounts to “doing” with black folks. It STILL amounts to self appointed “adults” determining the destiny of the designated “children”, which is persons of color. It is STILL racist to the core, not just with respect to white folks, but with respect to the assumptions of helplessness and a sort of existential stain of Victimhood that they attribute to ALL blacks, and which somehow are absent even among the most victimized whites.
I still can’t get over Chelsea Handler telling 50 Cent he needed to remember he was black. It was exactly like a rich white slave owner telling a slave to remember his place. It was way, way past patronizing. 50 Cent should have told her to go fuck herself. Or, perhaps in her case, to go fuck a rich white Republican without drinking any vodka first.