I have been listening to a bunch of round table discussions, with panelists on both sides, about Critical Race Theory, because I want to hear more from the pro-CRT side, and I think you get better answers when people are challenging one another.  

But germane to a point I had tried to make in a previous post, one of the panelists on one of the discussions mentioned that when they were taught about the civil war, slavery was never mentioned as a reason why it was fought.

While I WAS taught in school that slavery was the reason the civil war was fought, I have also heard the conflict framed as being fought over state’s rights. On one level that’s true, the south states thought their state’s rights (and here’s the relevant point- to uphold slavery) were being usurped by the federal government. So it WAS about state’s rights, but that IS a case of whitewashing the real cause.

This made me rethink what I had written earlier about the whitewashing of history. I had claimed that I was taught about the evils the US had done, and therefore history had not been whitewashed. But I have to acknowledge I went to one set of public schools. I can only speak to my experience. I don’t know what other people in other parts of the country were taught. It’s entirely possible that my experience was an outlier and that many people never learned about slavery or the mistreatment of the Indians or any other number of incidents.

Another thing that resonates with me starts with my own personal approach to judgments about life.

This one will take some explaining, but I’ll contrast it by giving a hypothetical example. I have a situation in my life where I’m not getting along with someone. The problem seems intractable to me. I feel like I’ve given my best efforts to reconcile, but we just can’t seem to get along.

A third person comes in, hears about the issue, and immediately thinks they have the answers, and if I’d just be reasonable, everything would be good.  

I’ll grant that it’s of course possible I, being in the middle of issue, can’t see the forest for the trees, and so am missing some obvious path to reconciliation. I have to acknowledge that’s possible.

But at the same time, the third party hasn’t been through what I’ve been through, doesn’t know the steps I’ve taken, etc. I think that third party is guilty of facile thinking. I wouldn’t presume to look at some area where they are having problems, and assume I knew everything about how to solve it, after having looked at the issue for 2 minutes. I’m going to assume that the person involved directly has more intimate knowledge about their situation than I do. Of course, mistakes can be made by both the first and second party, mistakes that hinder rather than foster reconciliation, but even so, I, as a third party only recently acquainted with the broader picture, am simply not in a position to judge accurately what is going on.

This all comes down to my belief that people are not stupid. Yes, people often work hard to prove me wrong on this count, and yes, I know that they do stupid things…. because I have done many stupid things myself.

However, those caveats aside, I’m going to assume that people aren’t necessarily stupid. I think in many instances, they’re simply reacting to incentives. I’ll also concede that 1) those incentives may not lead them down a long-term viable path, and 2) individuals also have enough agency to act contrary to incentives IF they can awaken themselves to long-term vs. short term good.  
But that said, responding to incentives is not an example of stupidity. It is a type of rational response to what’s happening.

If it’s not clear why I’m talking about this with any reference to the discussions about CRT, here’s my perspective: I don’t like CRT. It’s a method for disrupting and dismantling systems of oppression. I think it’s ultimately counterproductive, and it’s simply not built for questioning its own assumptions.  

So while I don’t like CRT as an answer to whatever level of racism we have, my aforementioned outlook leads me to believe the black community is not acting irrationally in seeing a problem that I don’t.

I acknowledge I don’t have their experience. While I can cite statistics demonstrating far less police bias than BLM would lead us to believe, I can’t believe this is a case of an entire population behaving hysterically or irrationally. They are in a place that I’m not, and they’re responding to things that I don’t get. That doesn’t mean I accept every answer that comes down the pipes for what to do about as good or productive, but neither is it fair for me to dismiss the concerns. It would be easier for me to dismiss talking heads as the kind of big-mouth that gets invited to reality tv because it’s more fun to watch….but I have black friends who have reacted this way too, and I know they aren’t outliers. They’re as reasonable as I am.

Which leads me to the uncomfortable position of once again conceding I’m missing something.  

I think, like it or not, it’s incumbent on me to listen a little harder and help figure out good and decent responses to a real problem, or else bad solutions like CRT are going to gain more and more traction.