The Truth about “Critical Race Theory”: Part II
I grew up in southern Georgia and Northern Florida in the 1940s and 1950s. People there did not talk about the Black Code, Jim Crow policies, slavery, discrimination, the KKK, segregation, racism or discrimination. And the schools, we were simply taught that slavery was an almost essential practice to provide enough labor for the rural agricultural economy. None of the rest was even mentioned in our classes. The Civil War was barely talked about. If the causes of the Civil War were ever discussed in school or in social contact, the cause was depicted as a northern instruction on states; rights to condone slavery.
But, the facts were that the following were key aspects of the culture in the region. All aspects of life were characterized by Black – White segregation” schools, housing, employment, employment, social interaction, use of public facilities, transportation, etc. etc. were segregated by race. In all contacts, Blacks were required to show deference to whites. In any Black – white person disagreements, the Black was always wrong and he dared not engage in open conflict. If a white person moved outside of the unspoken rules of interracial contact, he or she would be reminded quickly and warned not to act in such a manner again, without giving a real reason why. An example was (when I was 8 years old) my father gently chastised me, telling me that I was not to address a Black man as “sir.” Any Black person going beyond those bounds might well encounter violent reminders not to repeat the behavior.
All facilities for Blacks were inferior to those available to whites.
That included public facilities, public transportation, housing, and schools. Some Black schools were little more than unheated one-room shacks, and most school textbooks for Blacks were worn-out and outdated castoffs from white schools.
Growing up in ad being immersed in such a culture, a white kid could never understand what was happening and what the effects were. He or she simply knew that was the way things were and was likely going to continue. Without exposure to different thought from outside, one simply accepted that was life in the South. I can remember that when the Supreme Court Brown vs. the Board of Education ruing came down in 1954c, my reaction was similar to that of Tennessee Governor Frank Clements: I preferred segregation because it was all that I had ever known. But, the Supreme Court had spoken and its ruling must be followed.
We did not have close and sustained contact with Black individuals, so never really understood them or their plight. The first time I ever had sustained contact with a Black person or had an intellectual conversation with one was when I was in the U.S. Army at the age of 22. The first time I ever went to school with a Black person was in graduate school at the age of 30. It took that contact, an undergraduate and graduate education, and three years in the culture of West Berlin to see the shame of the South and in the lies imedded in its culture.
Southern culture is constructed so that white people are unlikely to see the truth unless he or she is able to live in a different culture which has different beliefs and values. It is constructed to hide the truth about racism and the social conditions it produces. That is exactly what is happening when they attempt to ban “critical race theory” in our schools. The truth MUST be told!! The misuse of “critical race theory MUST be discredited and stopped.
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.Considering that I live in the South and down the road from several black families, I would say that the South has come a long way. There are many interracial couples in the South and in general, free to associate with whoever the hell we want. CRT is ahistorical nonsense. If there are inequalities, it is based on life choices, not systemic racism, which has been done away with. If anything, government interference especially with the War on Poverty has made things worse for everyone, especially Blacks. CRT sets out to promote the narrative that at its very core, this country is irredeemable and must be done away with especially if you believe pinheads like Robin DiAngelo or Ibram X. Kendi.
Heavykevy1985
Level 6
Oct 7, 2021
1
You almosty enmtirely miss my point. I fo NOT call for CRT as public policy. What I call for is telling the truth about our past and present so that we can address the cultural and institutional racism that definitely still exists in the south and which is holding back blacks and whites culturally, economically, and morally. Yes the soyth has come some distance, but it still has a damned long way to go. Please remembet that I am a native southerner, not an outside critic. I want what is best for us all.
@wordywalt but you are listing out the history of it, which has nothing to do with CRT. You have missed the point
@wordywalt How about instead advocate for the abolition of affirmative action quotas? Do away with preferential hiring based upon race? I would say that alone destroys the myth of white privilege.
@Heavykevy1985 I knoweof NO business4es which se affirmative action and NO laws which require businesses to use affirmative action. You are trying to makie an issue of something that does not exist in hiring.
@Heavykevy1985 I have no idea of what you trying to say.
@wordywalt I realize that. Someone who makes a word salad posts and tried to conflate with a theory would definitely have a hard time grasping basic concepts.
@wordywalt I call bullshit on that. If your company is a certain size, you are required by law to have a certain number of minorities working for you. Also, institutions like Harvard are actively and openly discriminating against whites and Asians so they can have more diverse student body, merit be damned
@Heavykevy1985 So, you are running out of arguments so you resort to personal attack. That shows both lack of honesty and intellectual effort. I am not going to try to conduct a level headed discourse iwth you any more. You are still too steeped in shouthen denail culture to ever recognize the truth. I am sorry that you are unable to grow out of that.
@Heavykevy1985 That is not true. There is no such requirement as you state it.
@wordywalt Southern denial? All you have are cliches, jargon, and buzzwords. You have no argument, old man. No, your idea of “level-headed discourse” is agree with every word I say or else I will claim that you are brainwashed. Again, confession through projection on your part.
@wordywalt yes, there is.
I have no doubt that your account of ugly jim crow practices in the past reflects the truth, and that the much uglier slavery that proceeded it reflects still uglier truth. But is there some thing about this ugly history that confirms a special virtue or moral invulnerability on black people? Or is this a complicated
"which came first, the chicken or the egg" story, for today's commentator not to to be spoken of even in the vaguest terms except on pain of ostracism or condemnation? Does the fact that slavery and jim crow were evil confer for ever after a moral invulnerability on blacks? Or worse yet, does it criminalize all mention of the fact of that the damage from that slavery to a people already with multiple vulnerabilities now begs consideration that blacks need to focus on reforming themselves as central to curing that damage?
IN 1965 the famous MOYNAHAN CONCRSSIONAL REPORT was published, with the worldwide support of the entire liberal intelligentsia, examining in minute clinical detail the collapse and failure of the black american subculture. With a fine tooth comb,. and or course also the mortal danger that this collapse represented to the entire country. Johnson's Great Society was based on it. It was to be the great polar star meant to guide us racially for the next 100 years. How did we get from that mass polar star of liberal awareness, to the present day canonization of Saint George Floyd? Was it the 70 years of intermittent looting, burning, and rioting?
The worst kind of racism in the whole long benighted history of racism in this sad racist country is the rasism of turning a blind eye to mass racial moral torpitude and a false leadership's simpletonian rationalizations for it. Its the ultimate contempt of saying .... "we think youre too stupid and violent to think, so we'll coddle you by mouthing back your own blather."
holdenc98
Level 7
Oct 6, 2021
0
My mom is from South Georgia. I’ve lived in Ga all my life and can attest to what she is saying. Gre up in the 70s. We were taught that slavery was not so bad and that we were actually doing them a favor by bringing them out of the jungle. Looking back I shudder to think I ever believed that garbage.
abyers1970
Level 7
Oct 6, 2021
2
so then youve made a study of the condition of blacks in pre slavery africa? what can i read on thesubject? when was pre slavery aftica, by the way? i thought the romans were doing it.
@holdenc98 Your post makes no sense. I said we were taught growing up we were doing them a favor. Never said anything about doing a study about this
@abyers1970 .......yes. thats the point. youve made no study. im making that point sacrasticly. perhaps sarcasm is a little too subtle for you? thy this: you don't know diddly about racism and its complex far from linear interaction with thr realities of what the black american race is.
@holdenc98 Once again your post makes zero sense. You sound like one of these jackasses that just like to argue. If you would read my post I was talking about my experience and what was taught when I was growing up. Never ever mentioned about knowing what black folks went thru but seems like you couldn’t resist being a sarcastic smartass.
@abyers1970 .............easy on the name calling there, mr moron hillbilly ........ "We were taught that slavery was not so bad and that we were actually doing them a favor by bringing them out of the jungle. Looking back I shudder to think I ever believed that garbage.", you say? how many of them did in fact ever go back to the african homeland? close to none. compare that 14% of americas 330 million today that the black claim as their numbers despite their endlessly claimed oppression to the much more actual oppression of the holocaust .
" Before the Nazi takeover of power in 1933, Europe had a vibrant and mature Jewish culture. By 1945, most European Jews—two out of every three—had been killed. Most of the surviving remnant of European Jewry decided to leave Europe. Hundreds of thousands established new lives in Israel, the United States, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, South America, and South Africa." (from the holocaust museum). see the difference? maybe what you ole pappy and ma used to say had some truth in it. maybe wour too dopey to see sense when it put in front of you.
From a European perspective, the segregation issue has never been a problem. Collectively we have had too small an African population for it to become a cultural issue. This does not mean we have not had divisive problems resulting in unofficial segregation, but these are not supported by governments.
Turning to America, your society is split geographically and culturally into north and south. Then people also do not identify as American, but instead divide themselves by adding something else, such as Irish American, Italian American, African American and Hispanic. The last two lack national identity, but either state a level of browness or from Spanish speaking cultures.
As long as people see ourselves as different and being superior or oppressed, then humanity will have problems integrating.
Sofabeast
Level 7
Oct 6, 2021
0
I will add more to this when time allows
You are dead wrong on the European prespective. It was the deep and sincere questioning of trhe praqctices by friends in West Berlin that helped me t overcome the cultural racism with which I grew up.
@wordywalt I think you have me wrong here. I'll reword a little.
Segregation in Europe has not been a problem as, we've not had segregation on racial grounds by our governments, although 'ghettoisation' has existed, but not on just skin colour. Religion if anything had played a stronger role. In Europe, we lacked slaves in the numbers used in our colonies, so they were rare, and due to that rarity found themselves mixing into our 'lower classes'.
Sadly, the whole subject is not an easy one to address here. Academically I have written thousands of words on the subject as part of my studies.
If I may, I should like to converse further with you as you grew up there and then grew out of it.
I was born and raised in the North and a bit later than you. Still, the discrimination was there. We moved from the farm to the city when I was small and we were quite poor. Mom started a cake decorating service with a neighbor lady, who just happened to be black. Early sixties, they made those hard sugar decorations, like roses and so forth and sold them to small bakeries. Mom to the white bakeries, Mrs. Green to the black bakeries. I also had an uncle in Texas who was a cattle rancher. This was back in the fifties and sixties when this was going on. An acquaintance could never get a loan from the bank because he was black for operating expenses. My Uncle knew the man, also a fellow producer, a good honest man, so my Uncle borrowed enough for both ranches. His black ranching friend raised the same high quality registered cattle my uncle did, and never once stiff my uncle on the loan. Always paid back the money with the interest the bank charged. The two men bought and sold cattle to one another and my uncle was the one who delivered the cattle for them both even though his neighbor went along as the "hired man" and Uncle said he was selling for a neighbor. Sale barn and buyers never knew that neighbor was "Uncles" hired man and in that way, he was able to realize the honest value. Many cattle would sell off the ranch and Uncle would go over to his friends place and pretend to be selling for the neighbor who was away on a buying trip. It was a necessary deception back then. There were a handful of buyers who didn't care what color the black rancher was, he had good cattle and was honest and his money along with his word were good. They all kept his secret though. It was just too bad it was only a few of them and too bad they had to operate in this manner at all.
misstuffy
Level 7
Oct 6, 2021
5
I can identify with a lot of this as a white kid growing up in Missouri. We simply did not understand because things were set up to where we were not supposed to understand other races. It took the Army to start straightening me out. Notice I said "start." What you are writing here is true but many of us did not give it a second thought. I went from extreme right wing beliefs and politics simply by discovering people and knowing people. All races of people became human to me and my ex wife of 12 years is from Kenya. My small community was upset many years ago because they thought a local man who married a Filipino woman had married a black. This gets more complicated by the fact that a popular song on the radio was "Filipino Baby."
DenoPenno
Level 9
Oct 6, 2021
2
My dad and his brother were raised Mennonite. They do not care what race you are, just if you are a good person or not. These folks were good people, I grew up calling Mrs. Greens mother Grandma Green until we moved away. Mrs. Green had a daughter my age I played with when I was really young.
Yes, it baffles me to hear that it was so. I was educated in Europe and our education was way different to what you had there. Not only did we know what black people had to endure in the US but also what was happening around the world.
Jolanta
Level 9
Oct 6, 2021
4
yes, wonderful europe. land of the " seig heil! "
(for the total dopes among you, this is sarcasm.)
"what and why it happened". ...........your personal candid insights on this might be something truly worth reading here. be my guest , break new ground.
@holdenc98 Well Germany was in a very bad state before Hitler came to power, huge unemployment raging. He gave them work and promises. People did not want to believe the rest of what was happening. Just look at the US and the Native Americans, how they tried to stop the pipe line, or how people love their guns no matter how many die from school shootings. People there are happy to storm the Capital and try to kill democrats.
@Jolanta .......... have you seen shindlers list? the shoa founation films, or any of the 10,000 holocaust documentaties in between?.........." People did not want to believe the rest of what was happening. " is the one statement that europeans commonly make that sticks in my craw. at what exact date did disbelief turn to terror? hitler was already conducting mass murder political opposition purges in 1934.
why not just admit that evil in humanity, even in minority strength, is frequently the prevailing force. because evil is inherently stronger. to believe that, first you have to take your head out of the sand. but i suppose it doesnt mattwer. there's still nothing to be done about it. watch trump come back in 24.
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