Scattered Musings about Critical Race Theory

Critical Race Theory is rampant in American elementary and secondary schools, according to the Right.  Or non-existent, according to the Left.  Or, according to others on the Left, necessary.  What’s key here is that no one this side of Humpty Dumpty can agree what the term means.  Are there some zealots who would think reparations ought to be paid to anyone with a sufficiently high melanin count?  Yes.  Are there similarly some people who think it “un-American” to mention the name of Sally Hemings?  Yes.  Do either of these things fall under the heading of CRT?  Uh… maybe?

Curmie takes what he’s going to call the “Competitive Diving” approach to many such matters.  That is, an athlete’s score in a diving competition is determined not by the average of all judges’ opinions (and also by degree of difficulty, but that’s irrelevant to this argument), but by that average after the high and low scores are discarded.  Maybe we should ignore the foam-flecked ideologues on both sides, in other words.

Curmie, in some ways, represents the quintessence of privilege: white, male (and born that way), heterosexual, Ivy-league educated, at least culturally Christian.  His grandparents weren’t rich, by any means: one grandfather owned a rocky New England hillside farm of about 100 acres; the other managed a neighborhood grocery store.  But Curmie grew up in a decidedly middle-class environment.  Nor has he ever been truly poor: falling further into debt because there isn’t enough in the bank account to cover the entirety of the credit card bill is different than having to choose between eating and buying needed medicine.

Curmie’s personality features an independent, libertarian streak; his personal Facebook page announces his politics as “contrarian.”  This isn’t (merely) being cute.  Rather, the more he sees of any ideology, the more the faults in that approach are highlighted.  He’s never been ultra-conservative, but he was certainly more likely to vote for Republicans when he lived in the town with the biggest Democratic caucus in the state of Iowa than he’s been more recently.  Indeed, he’s probably never been more liberal than he is now, in a time and place in which an idiot like Louie Gohmert can get re-elected without even any real opposition. 

Curmie’s politics are, of course, (currently, at least) well to the left of the national center.  He voted for Democrats against Donald Trump in the last two Presidential elections, and indeed hasn’t voted for a Republican for any Congressional or gubernatorial position since moving to Texas over two decades ago.  (Kay Bailey Hutchison would have been a real possibility, but she was defeated in the primary by the odious Ted Cruz; John Cornyn, who is probably no worse than most other party hacks on either side of the aisle, actually had a reasonable opponent last time out.  Curmie would vote for Voldemort over Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton, or Louie Gohmert.)

Having now entered semi-retirement, Curmie is no longer accepting new advisees, but is keeping the four holdovers who chose to keep him as their advisor.  Three of the four are non-binary.  Coincidence?  Probably.  But there’s no question that he’ll advocate for both their general and specific interests, as he has done for years for black and Latinx students.  Still, he recognizes that terms like “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” are not redundant, and that sometimes, for example, equity and diversity are in fact at odds.  In such cases, Curmie will always choose the former; a lot of university administrators will choose the latter, primarily because at the moment it’s the path of least resistance (they’re intellectual cowards, and having actual principles is hard!).

Contemplations of gender, sexual orientation, and especially race are therefore far more complex and nuanced than the True Believers on either side would have us believe.  So whereas Curmie feels no personal guilt nor any need to make amends with respect to what happened over a century and a half ago, hundreds of miles away from any of his forebears, acknowledging not merely that life isn’t fair, but that it’s often been more unfair to some groups of people than to others seems appropriate.

Curmie’s netpal Jack Marshall wondered this morning, “How many supposedly educated American[s] know about the significance of this date?”.  Well, that depends on how you frame the question.  If it’s about the date per se, Curmie would have struck out without getting the bat off his shoulder.  But mention that it’s the anniversary of Kristallnacht, and I’ll do a lot better.  Curmie learned about this horrific event in a world history class in high school—a class taught (perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not) by a US Army WWII veteran with a German surname.

What Curmie didn’t learn about in high school were the massacres at Wounded Knee in 1890 or Tulsa in 1921, or the fact that the original GI bill was structured to deny benefits to black veterans, or the wartime internment of US citizens who happened to be of Japanese descent.  Intentionally or otherwise, what we learned in history classes was filtered, sanitized and viewed through a very Caucasian lens.  Of course, Curmie’s hometown was overwhelming white and overwhelmingly Christian, so these omissions and commissions were both more and less insidious than would have been the case in a more integrated environment.

Noticing the “other” in an increasingly more heterogeneous society is, of course, imperative.  But what do we do with those now-foregrounded recognitions of subjectivity, which are at the core of CRT?  Treating someone differently because they’re different from you may be an admirable exercise in empathy… or it may be a toxic cocktail of virtue signaling and condescension: “we can’t expect that person to compete on a level playing field; after all, they’re [insert demographic marker here].”  This latter example is one of tolerance, the evil cousin of inclusion: “you are inferior to me because of objective factor X, but I will treat you well, ostensibly at least, because I wish to be regarded as a good person… all the while comfortable in my presumed superiority.”

Finally, of course, it’s important to differentiate between equal opportunity and equal outcomes.  Professional sports are in some ways the ultimate meritocracy: teams want to win.  (Perhaps the Colin Kaepernick case is the exception that proves the rule.)  But it would take a real fan to name even two or three American-born white players currently in the NBA.  The flip side is true in swimming, despite the presence of the likes of Cullen Jones and Simone Manuel.  Socio-economic factors and availability of training facilities and venues account for some of the discrepancy… but all of it?  Curmie can’t muster more than a “maybe” on that one.

Untangling all these strands is rather like trying to get the mats out of a long-haired pet: maybe it will work, but there are times we have to clip the tangle out rather than hoping to unravel it.  A little good will towards our fellow travelers, who are as confused and fallible as ourselves would go a long way.

Thoughts on the First Anniversary of the Death of George Floyd

Curmie makes no promises, but it may be that he’ll be returning to writing more blog pieces in the future.  He’s teaching a single course this summer, and it not only has no meetings on Fridays, but it ends in late June.  He’s officially retiring effective August 31, although he’ll be teaching a couple of courses as an “adjunct” in the fall, will keep the small cadre of advisees he now has (but add no more), and will supervise a student production of a play he acted in several years before the student director in question was born.  <Sigh.>  I hope to maintain at least my current level of scholarly activity—there’s a book chapter awaiting my revision, two conference presentations for later this summer, and at least two conference papers that I’d like to turn into articles.  And I’ll continue my presidency of a national honor society for another year or two, at least.

But it’s already clear that giving up the multitudinous service activities undertaken for the department, college, and university will free up literally dozens of hours of time; taken in conjunction with the required reduction in teaching load, I’ll definitely be able to devote myself to some other things.  A friend who retired from university teaching some years ago  remains a more active scholar than I’ll ever be; he describes his current life as “less of the same, and without the boring bits.”  I’m hoping for a similar experience.  One of the manifestations of such an eventuality would be at least a weekly blog post.  On y verra, as they say en France.

So, where to begin after such spotty blogging activity for several years?  There are a lot of potential topics vying for attention right now, but what comes first to Curmie’s mind is the anniversary earlier this week of the death of George Floyd.  I approach this topic, curiously enough, in the spirit of moderation. 

Here, it might be valuable to tease out the differences in meaning between two often conflated concepts: vagueness and ambiguity.  The former suggests that there is no clearly identifiable meaning; the latter implies that different, perhaps even opposed, implications might exist simultaneously.  The George Floyd case is vague only in terms of details we don’t yet know and probably never will.  It is ambiguous or even multivalent in virtually everything else.  Of course, it’s sometimes difficult to disentangle the strands.  In Curmie’s world, a B student might have gotten there with 3 B’s, or with 2 A’s and a D, etc.  In the Floyd case, as with that hypothetical B student, what is difficult to find is anything approaching a complete picture.

What we see in most of the “mainstream” press coverage of both the death of Mr. Floyd and its aftermath—the BLM protests, the trial, etc.—is a sort of gasping idolatry of a petty criminal, for that’s what Floyd was.  (Curmie gets it: he wasn’t only that.)  We barely hear about the medical examiner’s report that drug use and an underlying heart condition were contributing causes of Floyd’s death, albeit his ultimate conclusion was that the restraint by police, specifically by Derek Chauvin, was the primary cause.  And the presumed racial motivation of Chauvin’s actions has been taken as given from the outset, without any evidence, let alone proof.

Nor is it possible to deny that some of the literally billions of dollars of damage from riots was caused by those who used BLM as a justification—or perhaps as a cover—for their actions.  (Note: Curmie was seeing the catch-phrase “Black Lives Matter” long before the death of Mr. Floyd, but it didn’t achieve the spotlight until last year.)

So let’s get this straight.  Were Chauvin’s actions appropriate?  No.  Criminal?  Yes.  Murder 1?  Doubtful at best.  Felony murder or Murder 2?  Maybe.  Manslaughter?  In all likelihood.  Was Chauvin a bad cop?  Yes.  Should he have been removed from the police force long before this incident?  Apparently so.  Was the system that kept Chauvin on the job racist?  Somewhere between “perhaps” and “probably.”  Did Floyd’s race have anything to do with Chauvin’s actions?  Maybe, but there has been literally no actual evidence adduced to support that conclusion.  Let me repeat that: none. 

The fact that Chauvin is white and Floyd was black might, of course, be relevant, but it strikes me that this is ultimately a problem one encounters early in a course in formal logic: the fact that A implies B does not mean that B implies A.  That is, all racists are inherently bad cops, but not all bad cops are racists.  (Spare me the “all white people are racist” dogma.  It gets us nowhere.)  And, as Curmie noted in the aftermath, cops across the country, presumably aware of increased scrutiny, responded not by toning down the violence against black people, but evening the score by abusing a few white folks.  The problem is bad cops, and a system that covers up for them; many, but nowhere near all, manifestations of these people’s unfitness involve racism.

So, were the protests legitimate?  Yes, in the sense that the widely viewed video seemed to tell us everything we needed to know (although it now appears that perhaps it didn’t).  Yes, in the sense that racism certainly exists in this country and police forces are particularly rife with it.  Yes, in the sense that protests are nearly always legitimate, using that term to mean legally, morally, and ethically responsible.  No, in the sense that this was not the event that should be the watershed moment.  (Had it been the killing of Breonna Taylor or the death of Sandra Bland, Curmie would be more on board.)  No, in the sense that not all of the protests were non-violent.  Which leads us to…

Was a good deal of the violence and property damage resulting from protests that turned into riots perpetrated by BLM activists, or at least by those claiming that affiliation with no denials by BLM leaders?  Yes.  Was a good deal of that violence and property damage perpetrated by white racists seeking to undermine the credibility of the BLM movement, or simply by violence-prone assholes using BLM as an excuse?  Yes.  Was a good deal of the violence in particular initiated by the toxic masculinity, arrogance, and irresponsibility of police forces… and in at least isolated cases, by federally-funded mercenaries?  Yes.

So, is the introspection precipitated by the reaction to the Chauvin/Floyd case a good thing?  Yes, in that honest self-evaluation is an inherent positive.  Yes, to the extent that it brought about in unprecedented ways an examination of the power structures in American society and the extent to which that hegemony is exclusionary along racial lines.  No, in that what started as a positive desire to recognize and celebrate diversity has morphed into witch hunts, quotas, and frankly Stalinistic thought control. 

Lest you think Curmie is exaggerating the last point, allow me to direct your attention you to “socialist realism,” a policy which required Russian artists not merely to avoid saying or doing anything critical of the USSR or the Communist Party, but to actively advocate for those entities.  How is that different from universities which now base hiring and promotion/tenure decisions to a large degree not on proven abilities as a teacher or researcher, but on demonstrated, active, commitment to the Great Gods Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion?

At the very least, faculty are expected to participate in “workshops” on these issues.  Curmie has endured dozens of variations on this theme on many topics over the years.  There are two constants: there is never any useful information, only opinion masquerading as fact; and Curmie always leaves far more angry than enlightened... and actively resistant to the propaganda he's just withstood.  (Side note: many of the voluntary programs have, in fact, proved valuable.  I did a weekend-long workshop in Rape Crisis Intervention 30-ish years ago, for example.  I've only used it twice in the ensuing time... but I’ve used it twice in the ensuing time.)

Thirty years ago, Curmie got into trouble for saying that whereas there is much to be gained by applying a feminist lens to texts, not all feminist arguments are good arguments.  The cause du jour has changed, but the expectation of ideological compliance has not.  Alas.

Concentrating for a moment on the professional world Curmie inhabits: this enforced singularity of vision runs through universities and professional organizations alike.  Case in point: there’s an organization Curmie has belonged to for decades.  The committee structure has always worked like this: committee chairs are elected by the membership, subcommittee chairs are appointed by the chairs, and committee members… wait for it… simply volunteer to serve; no one is turned away.  Anyone willing to work is given a task.  But it turns out that a couple of committees have an “under-representation of people of color”… so white people, some of whom have specific expertise, are now being denied access to those committees on which POC folks have expressed no interest, and the organization is denied access to their skills, in the name of “diversity.”  We have to make those percentages work out, after all.

Of course, other power structures—state legislatures, boards of trustees, and the like—are reacting in precisely the opposite way: forbidding discussion of race-sensitive issues and attempting to enforce their own monomaniacal vision, in which American exceptionalism is to be taken as a given, but curricula must otherwise be “apolitical.”  One group wants Critical Race Theory to be mandatory; another wants it completely expunged.  The idea that it might be available, possibly required in certain specific disciplines in the sense of knowing its tenets, but with no expectation of having to agree with its conclusions: this doesn’t seem to be acceptable to the ideologues on either extreme… and it appears at first glance that virtually everyone indeed positions themselves at those opposing poles.  Curmie doubts this is actually true, but those positioned at both extremes demand absolute fidelity.

All of this messiness, this swirl of competing ideologies, this series of simultaneously “yes” and “no” responses, never seems to all come into focus at the same time in the same commenter.  On the one hand, we have the majority of the center-left news agencies and Democratic pols applauding George Floyd as some sort of messianic hero, the noble if accidental progenitor of Racial Justice, the Second Coming of MLK.  On the other side, we have the rightwing press and the GOP condemning all things BLM-related, labeling anyone remotely affiliated with the movement as thuggish, communist (!), anti-American, and probably responsible for the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby.  OK, maybe not that last one, but give them time.

At the moment, universities are more interested in pandering to leftwing claptrap than to rightwing claptrap.  That will probably change, especially in state institutions in red states, before long.  But the glorious concept of the university as the testing ground for opposing ideas, as the site where disputants recognize in each other the desire to seek the truth, as the vigilant guardian of intellectual curiosity and freedom of expression: this vision, the one Curmie believed in when he started out in the profession 40-odd years ago… this noble cause lies in the ICU, gasping for what may soon be its last breath.  

Do black lives matter?  Indubitably.  What about Black Lives Matter?  Sort of.  Any full-throated endorsement or condemnation will forever leave Curmie saying, “yeah, but…”