Chilling Orwellianism at NYU

[Enoch the Red]

Should be? No. Can be? Yeah, probably. And they already are via home-schooling with government aid and that doesn't really bug me, no.

I am very happy for your principled stand for free speech. It may exceed my own.

First of all? Because at its fundamental base it's true and accurate and our entire system of education (also your entire political and ideological framework, for the record) works hard to be blind to those truths about how environment shapes us as an aggregate population and our environment is one filled with soft barriers along racial lines. Are they the only barriers? No. Are they insurmountable? No. But it amounts to a systemic racist bias Now maybe time and real dedication to colorblindness can remove those barriers and bias. But the timescale involved would be hundreds of years and taking a look around the world today and at the history of innumerable areas, the idea that time actually WOULD result in such change absent radical action or destruction starts to look kinda like a blind faith cargo cult.

Perhaps you can be more descriptive about what you believe the fundamental base of CRT is, and what makes it true. Again, specifics please. Maybe then you can explain what policies you believe should be implemented to address these changes. What would Fuzzy do to address the very real issue of racial bias?

I am also struggling to understand your point regarding the progress that has already clearly been made. Hundreds of years ago slavery was widely practiced and accepted. Black Americans were legally considered to be 3/5ths of a person. Boats crossed the Atlantic with human beings stuffed in their holds and stacked like cord wood. A hundred years ago race riots where scores of people were killed and families would pack picnics for lynchings were relatively common. Sixty years ago anti-miscegenation laws were on the books and being enforced and there were no black justices on the Supreme Court. Thirty years ago there had never been an African American serving as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking official in the military, and fifteen years ago there had never been a black president. If you asked a slave in the 1790's if he thought that one day there might be a black president, what do you think their response would be? It is almost within my living memory that there were people who were proud to be racist. Today it is among the worst things you can be accused of. The pace of progress, admittedly often too slow, is hardly measured in hundreds of years, it is better measured in years or decades, and to be blind to it is to ignore the incredible changes that have been made in our country, socially, culturally, and institutionally. It is, to use your wording, to blind yourself to historical truths, and ignore how progress, even incremental progress, can and is being made on timescales far smaller than you seem to believe. To argue that bias exists is true and trite. To say that the foundations of this country must be removed, its institutions torn down, and the baby thrown out with the bath water, to remove the rot of racism is deranged. Racial animus is a terrible thing and should be excised wherever it is found. Racism is not a cancer requiring poison to treat.

I would remind you that education is descriptivist, not prescriptivist. Just because you don't want society to be changed to remove racial bias (and the idea that all such bias can be removed is fantasy) doesn't provide the least bit of justification for refusing to recognize the reality or setting up more barriers to keep others from learning about the reality.

Second point, beyond the bad faith assertion that I do not want society to remove racial bias, I am left with the conclusion that you believe the only way that society can be changed to remove racial bias is through CRT. Maybe you would care to flesh that out a little. Why is CRT the only way to drive societal change to remove racial bias, and what are the policy prescriptions it has offered to do so?