This is a site for discussing roleplaying games. Have fun doing so, but there is one major rule: do not discuss political issues that aren't directly and uniquely related to the subject of the thread and about gaming. While this site is dedicated to free speech, the following will not be tolerated: devolving a thread into unrelated political discussion, sockpuppeting (using multiple and/or bogus accounts), disrupting topics without contributing to them, and posting images that could get someone fired in the workplace (an external link is OK, but clearly mark it as Not Safe For Work, or NSFW). If you receive a warning, please take it seriously and either move on to another topic or steer the discussion back to its original RPG-related theme.
The RPGPundit's Own Forum Rules
This part of the site is controlled by the RPGPundit. This is where he discusses topics that he finds interesting. You may post here, but understand that there are limits. The RPGPundit can shut down any thread, topic of discussion, or user in a thread at his pleasure. This part of the site is essentially his house, so keep that in mind. Note that this is the only part of the site where political discussion is permitted, but is regulated by the RPGPundit.

Author Topic: Turning the corner on "woke"?  (Read 107242 times)

Zelen

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 861
Re: Turning the corner on "woke"?
« Reply #15 on: July 02, 2021, 01:54:47 AM »
So Critical Race Theory is, at it's base, looking at the legal history of the United States of America and seeing how much of our laws were designed to keep WASP men in power, and particularly to keep black folks in line beneath the WASPs. It's hard to argue that redlining didn't happen, or that 'sundown' towns didn't exist, or that several hundred people were not murdered in Tulsa, and a couple thousand more were not burned out of their homes. In order to argue against Critical Race Theory, you have to ignore all of the Jim Crow laws and all of the times when 'driving while black' got someone tossed in jail.

Are we really buying into the propaganda in all of these issues?

I mean that sincerely. The CRT theory people are malicious liars who have demonstrated quite amply they don't care who they hurt with their lies, who lives or who dies, as long as they can profit from fomenting racial division.

What happened in Tulsa 100 years ago? No one really knows besides about 20 people (black & white) were killed after clashing over a sex crime(?) incident. After that? Well, what happened in dozens of major American cities last year? Is it at all possible that these were similar events?

Redlining? What exactly was going on here? Obviously a complex topic, but one in which, again, we see the range of acceptable discourse seems to narrow as the CRT types gain power and start using social bullying tactics to shut people up. Not all scholars agree, and I've seen some analysis that demonstrated (IMO) that these supposedly racist policies were actually reasonable financially sound policy. When government tried stepping in to "correct" the lending/homeownership problem they gave us the 2008 housing crash.

Sundown towns? Isn't it weird how we have all these scary names for things white people allegedly did a century ago (I'm sure there's some truth to it, but also a lot of motivated exaggeration), but our lexicon of ominous phrases doesn't have a word for the same phenomenon happening to whites?

ScytheSong

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 132
Re: Turning the corner on "woke"?
« Reply #16 on: July 02, 2021, 02:09:59 AM »
I think I know what's going on, now. Someone seems to have conflated Anti-Racism Training and Critical Race Theory in the Foxosphere's minds. Anti-racism training is an insane mish-mash of several things, including a warped view of CRT, usually pushed by people who don't know why anti-racism can be useful or important, and the actual trainings (including 90% of the ones I've been subjected to) are almost always poorly executed or so basic to be useless. Yes, everyone knows that racism is bad, and looking at ways in which the deck is stacked against people who aren't white (or white *enough* in some times and places) can be useful. But hearing for the eighth or ninth time in a 40-hour "training" that "white privilege" and "white fragility" need to be accepted (without going in-depth into what exactly those two phrases are shorthand for) before "racial healing" (again, left undefined) can begin is really difficult to swallow....

Unless you've had the 15 semester-hours that I've had on Critical Race Theory, Cultural Encounters and Reflection, Clinical Pastoral Education, and Imago Dei (M.Div. branch of understanding these things) that build a picture of just how fucked up the United States is on race relations. I had one class that was led by a Tejano whose family had lived in the San Antonio area since the 1500's, had an ancestor who got out of the Alamo before the Mexicans closed in, and was told by a guy whose parents were refugees from WWII Poland that he should "Leave the US to us Americans." in my presence. These things are really, really tricky and need some time to work through and nuanced discussion. They don't work so well in soundbites or "trainings" that are designed (even by well-meaning people) to make a buck and cover HR-required Continuing Education hours.

deathknight4044

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • d
  • Posts: 79
Re: Turning the corner on "woke"?
« Reply #17 on: July 02, 2021, 02:11:18 AM »
So Critical Race Theory is, at it's base, looking at the legal history of the United States of America and seeing how much of our laws were designed to keep WASP men in power, and particularly to keep black folks in line beneath the WASPs. It's hard to argue that redlining didn't happen, or that 'sundown' towns didn't exist, or that several hundred people were not murdered in Tulsa, and a couple thousand more were not burned out of their homes. In order to argue against Critical Race Theory, you have to ignore all of the Jim Crow laws and all of the times when 'driving while black' got someone tossed in jail.

On the other hand, "woke" is and has always been stupid when taken out of the context of Black culture. It's a phrase coined by black folks in the South to talk about other folks (usually white but occasionally black or other race) and how well they understand what black folks go through on a daily basis. If anyone who passes the paper bag test is talking about wokeness in any form, I feel completely free to ignore them as uninformed, whether they are on the left or the right side of the spectrum.

Absolute nonsense your presentation of it is a trojan horse. You know we can read the work of people like Robin DeAngelo online for free right? Its anti White libel and will be fought at every turn.

I've asked it before and I'll ask it again, if the use of the terms Wuhan virus or kung flu instigate violence against Asians, how is the constant charges of white supremacy, white fragility, white rage, oppressor etc not instigate violence against my race? How is "deadnaming" or referring to a tranny by their actual sex "violence" yet constant vilification of White European peoples is a okay? This game has gone on for long enough.

deathknight4044

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • d
  • Posts: 79
Re: Turning the corner on "woke"?
« Reply #18 on: July 02, 2021, 02:16:06 AM »
I think I know what's going on, now. Someone seems to have conflated Anti-Racism Training and Critical Race Theory in the Foxosphere's minds. Anti-racism training is an insane mish-mash of several things, including a warped view of CRT, usually pushed by people who don't know why anti-racism can be useful or important, and the actual trainings (including 90% of the ones I've been subjected to) are almost always poorly executed or so basic to be useless. Yes, everyone knows that racism is bad, and looking at ways in which the deck is stacked against people who aren't white (or white *enough* in some times and places) can be useful. But hearing for the eighth or ninth time in a 40-hour "training" that "white privilege" and "white fragility" need to be accepted (without going in-depth into what exactly those two phrases are shorthand for) before "racial healing" (again, left undefined) can begin is really difficult to swallow....

Unless you've had the 15 semester-hours that I've had on Critical Race Theory, Cultural Encounters and Reflection, Clinical Pastoral Education, and Imago Dei (M.Div. branch of understanding these things) that build a picture of just how fucked up the United States is on race relations. I had one class that was led by a Tejano whose family had lived in the San Antonio area since the 1500's, had an ancestor who got out of the Alamo before the Mexicans closed in, and was told by a guy whose parents were refugees from WWII Poland that he should "Leave the US to us Americans." in my presence. These things are really, really tricky and need some time to work through and nuanced discussion. They don't work so well in soundbites or "trainings" that are designed (even by well-meaning people) to make a buck and cover HR-required Continuing Education hours.


"Unless youve been indoctrinated as I have, you arent allowed to have an opinion about our systemic vilification of White western people". Yeah man its so esoteric it's not like we can read the works of proponents of critical race theory like Robin DeAngelo, or the training material that teachers are being given, or the training corporation's like Disney and coca cola are pushing on to their employees.

ScytheSong

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 132
Re: Turning the corner on "woke"?
« Reply #19 on: July 02, 2021, 02:26:59 AM »
Sundown towns? Isn't it weird how we have all these scary names for things white people allegedly did a century ago (I'm sure there's some truth to it, but also a lot of motivated exaggeration), but our lexicon of ominous phrases doesn't have a word for the same phenomenon happening to whites?

Just on this one: I'm curious if you know of any US townships or counties where, by law, if you were white, you couldn't stay overnight (even in a payed lodging) without being arrested and thrown in jail for vagrancy. There were several of those for nonwhites in the early-to-mid twentieth century US. In fact, Washington Territory (now Washington State) actually declared a handful of Black families "officially white" when they passed their restrictive "anti-Negro" laws preventing any black person from owning real property.

Pat
BANNED

  • BANNED
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • ?
  • Posts: 5252
  • Rats do 0 damage
Re: Turning the corner on "woke"?
« Reply #20 on: July 02, 2021, 02:40:40 AM »
I think I know what's going on, now. Someone seems to have conflated Anti-Racism Training and Critical Race Theory in the Foxosphere's minds.
Nope, never listened to Fox News. My only exposure to any of their shows is watching the (not complimentary) Outfoxed documentary.

And you're the one who's claiming that Critical Race Theory is behind the Civil Rights Movement, when in fact it was created by Harvard scholars in the 60s and 70s, after, and in response to the successes of, the Civil Right Movement. And you can't weasel your way of the out the timing by claiming you were referring to something broader, because another poster referred back to the older Critical Theory, and you rejected that and said you're referring to Critical Race Theory in specific.

So your entire first post, which tries to credit all kinds of earlier historical events to Critical Race Theory, is completely and objectively wrong. Which you can't defend, so you're just making unsubstantiated claims that everybody else knows nothing.
« Last Edit: July 02, 2021, 02:44:07 AM by Pat »

Zelen

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 861
Re: Turning the corner on "woke"?
« Reply #21 on: July 02, 2021, 02:47:35 AM »
Just on this one: I'm curious if you know of any US townships or counties where, by law, if you were white, you couldn't stay overnight (even in a payed lodging) without being arrested and thrown in jail for vagrancy. There were several of those for nonwhites in the early-to-mid twentieth century US. In fact, Washington Territory (now Washington State) actually declared a handful of Black families "officially white" when they passed their restrictive "anti-Negro" laws preventing any black person from owning real property.

No doubt that's awful. I'm not sure if that's fundamentally any different than being under threat of grievous bodily injury for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. For legal codification? I don't think that exists yet, but give it another few years.

ScytheSong

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 132
Re: Turning the corner on "woke"?
« Reply #22 on: July 02, 2021, 02:48:23 AM »

"Unless youve been indoctrinated as I have, you arent allowed to have an opinion about our systemic vilification of White western people". Yeah man its so esoteric it's not like we can read the works of proponents of critical race theory like Robin DeAngelo, or the training material that teachers are being given, or the training corporation's like Disney and coca cola are pushing on to their employees.

Not what I was saying, but you do you. You can have any opinion you want, you can feel as vilified as you want, but I put it down to jargon. I mean, "white fragility" and "non-whites are better at this than whites are" (which are entirely from one person's academic work, mind you) are jarring to hear without a lot of context and conversations that need to occur in a better setting than with online randos like me.

But, no, it isn't supposed to be a vilification. It's part of a conversation about race that noticed, like you've shown, as soon as racial issues come up, a lot of white folk get really defensive. Why is that? I've seen it happen again and again in conversations I've had -- in fact, until I got my nose rubbed in it when I was 20, I was much the same way -- and "white fragility" is one way to shorthand what's going on.

ScytheSong

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 132
Re: Turning the corner on "woke"?
« Reply #23 on: July 02, 2021, 02:52:37 AM »
I think I know what's going on, now. Someone seems to have conflated Anti-Racism Training and Critical Race Theory in the Foxosphere's minds.
Nope, never listened to Fox News. My only exposure to any of their shows is watching the (not complimentary) Outfoxed documentary.

And you're the one who's claiming that Critical Race Theory is behind the Civil Rights Movement, when in fact it was created by Harvard scholars in the 60s and 70s, after, and in response to the successes of, the Civil Right Movement. And you can't weasel your way of the out the timing by claiming you were referring to something broader, because another poster referred back to the older Critical Theory, and you rejected that and said you're referring to Critical Race Theory in specific.

So your entire first post, which tries to credit all kinds of earlier historical events to Critical Race Theory, is completely and objectively wrong. Which you can't defend, so you're just making unsubstantiated claims that everybody else knows nothing.

Critical Race Theory explores how the surrounding structures of laws allowed those things to happen. I didn't claim that it was behind the Civil Rights Movement. That would be absurd, and you probably got the idea from the individual who conflated Critical Race Theory (mostly started in the 1970s) with Critical Theory/the Frankfurt School (that got its start in 1920's Germany). I don't get how you managed to misread me that badly.

deathknight4044

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • d
  • Posts: 79
Re: Turning the corner on "woke"?
« Reply #24 on: July 02, 2021, 02:55:45 AM »
Quote
But, no, it isn't supposed to be a vilification. It's part of a conversation about race that noticed, like you've shown, as soon as racial issues come up, a lot of white folk get really defensive. Why is that? I've seen it happen again and again in conversations I've had -- in fact, until I got my nose rubbed in it when I was 20, I was much the same way -- and "white fragility" is one way to shorthand what's going on.
[/quote

I've asked it before and I'll ask it again, if the use of the terms Wuhan virus or kung flu instigate violence against Asians, how is the constant charges of white supremacy, white fragility, white rage, oppressor etc not instigate violence against my race? Why is the former a valid concern and the latter "fragile"?

At this point I encourage you to keep pushing. This is fueling White racial consciousness and White identity in a way that was inconceivable just a few short years ago. I say keep going.

Pat
BANNED

  • BANNED
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • ?
  • Posts: 5252
  • Rats do 0 damage
Re: Turning the corner on "woke"?
« Reply #25 on: July 02, 2021, 02:59:16 AM »
I think I know what's going on, now. Someone seems to have conflated Anti-Racism Training and Critical Race Theory in the Foxosphere's minds.
Nope, never listened to Fox News. My only exposure to any of their shows is watching the (not complimentary) Outfoxed documentary.

And you're the one who's claiming that Critical Race Theory is behind the Civil Rights Movement, when in fact it was created by Harvard scholars in the 60s and 70s, after, and in response to the successes of, the Civil Right Movement. And you can't weasel your way of the out the timing by claiming you were referring to something broader, because another poster referred back to the older Critical Theory, and you rejected that and said you're referring to Critical Race Theory in specific.

So your entire first post, which tries to credit all kinds of earlier historical events to Critical Race Theory, is completely and objectively wrong. Which you can't defend, so you're just making unsubstantiated claims that everybody else knows nothing.

Critical Race Theory explores how the surrounding structures of laws allowed those things to happen. I didn't claim that it was behind the Civil Rights Movement. That would be absurd, and you probably got the idea from the individual who conflated Critical Race Theory (mostly started in the 1970s) with Critical Theory/the Frankfurt School (that got its start in 1920's Germany). I don't get how you managed to misread me that badly.
I didn't misread anything. You literally said: "In order to argue against Critical Race Theory, you have to ignore all of the Jim Crow laws...."

That's an explicit claim that Critical Race Theory owns those events, and all the other ones you named elsewhere in the paragraph. That Critical Race Theory is so enwrapped in those events, that arguing against Critical Race Theory is tantamount to supporting those events.

But, as I pointed out, all those events occurred, and were overcome, before Critical Race Theory even existed. They were defeated by the liberal principles, like equal treatment under the law, that Critical Race Theory has come to completely reject.

deathknight4044

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • d
  • Posts: 79
Re: Turning the corner on "woke"?
« Reply #26 on: July 02, 2021, 02:59:43 AM »
Sundown towns? Isn't it weird how we have all these scary names for things white people allegedly did a century ago (I'm sure there's some truth to it, but also a lot of motivated exaggeration), but our lexicon of ominous phrases doesn't have a word for the same phenomenon happening to whites?

Just on this one: I'm curious if you know of any US townships or counties where, by law, if you were white, you couldn't stay overnight (even in a payed lodging) without being arrested and thrown in jail for vagrancy. There were several of those for nonwhites in the early-to-mid twentieth century US. In fact, Washington Territory (now Washington State) actually declared a handful of Black families "officially white" when they passed their restrictive "anti-Negro" laws preventing any black person from owning real property.

And I should care more about this than the obscenely asymmetrical rates of interracial murder and rape committed against my race for the past 60 years?

Ratman_tf

  • Alt-Reich Shitlord
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 8331
Re: Turning the corner on "woke"?
« Reply #27 on: July 02, 2021, 03:02:21 AM »
I think I know what's going on, now. Someone seems to have conflated Anti-Racism Training and Critical Race Theory in the Foxosphere's minds. Anti-racism training is an insane mish-mash of several things, including a warped view of CRT, usually pushed by people who don't know why anti-racism can be useful or important, and the actual trainings (including 90% of the ones I've been subjected to) are almost always poorly executed or so basic to be useless. Yes, everyone knows that racism is bad, and looking at ways in which the deck is stacked against people who aren't white (or white *enough* in some times and places) can be useful. But hearing for the eighth or ninth time in a 40-hour "training" that "white privilege" and "white fragility" need to be accepted (without going in-depth into what exactly those two phrases are shorthand for) before "racial healing" (again, left undefined) can begin is really difficult to swallow....

Unless you've had the 15 semester-hours that I've had on Critical Race Theory, Cultural Encounters and Reflection, Clinical Pastoral Education, and Imago Dei (M.Div. branch of understanding these things) that build a picture of just how fucked up the United States is on race relations. I had one class that was led by a Tejano whose family had lived in the San Antonio area since the 1500's, had an ancestor who got out of the Alamo before the Mexicans closed in, and was told by a guy whose parents were refugees from WWII Poland that he should "Leave the US to us Americans." in my presence. These things are really, really tricky and need some time to work through and nuanced discussion. They don't work so well in soundbites or "trainings" that are designed (even by well-meaning people) to make a buck and cover HR-required Continuing Education hours.

I hear that you can't really understand Scientology unless you complete all the OT programs.
The notion of an exclusionary and hostile RPG community is a fever dream of zealots who view all social dynamics through a narrow keyhole of structural oppression.
-Haffrung

Ratman_tf

  • Alt-Reich Shitlord
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 8331
Re: Turning the corner on "woke"?
« Reply #28 on: July 02, 2021, 03:17:27 AM »

"Unless youve been indoctrinated as I have, you arent allowed to have an opinion about our systemic vilification of White western people". Yeah man its so esoteric it's not like we can read the works of proponents of critical race theory like Robin DeAngelo, or the training material that teachers are being given, or the training corporation's like Disney and coca cola are pushing on to their employees.

Not what I was saying, but you do you. You can have any opinion you want, you can feel as vilified as you want, but I put it down to jargon. I mean, "white fragility" and "non-whites are better at this than whites are" (which are entirely from one person's academic work, mind you) are jarring to hear without a lot of context and conversations that need to occur in a better setting than with online randos like me.

But, no, it isn't supposed to be a vilification. It's part of a conversation about race that noticed, like you've shown, as soon as racial issues come up, a lot of white folk get really defensive. Why is that? I've seen it happen again and again in conversations I've had -- in fact, until I got my nose rubbed in it when I was 20, I was much the same way -- and "white fragility" is one way to shorthand what's going on.

White fragility is a deflection from criticism by accusing, either implicitly or explicitly, that the subject is racist and in denial. It's a very sophisticated version of "Have you stopped beating your wife?" It's also a term made popular by a women who is an admitted racist and, in my opinion, projects her racism onto white people in general.
The notion of an exclusionary and hostile RPG community is a fever dream of zealots who view all social dynamics through a narrow keyhole of structural oppression.
-Haffrung

ScytheSong

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 132
Re: Turning the corner on "woke"?
« Reply #29 on: July 02, 2021, 03:18:43 AM »
I think I know what's going on, now. Someone seems to have conflated Anti-Racism Training and Critical Race Theory in the Foxosphere's minds.
Nope, never listened to Fox News. My only exposure to any of their shows is watching the (not complimentary) Outfoxed documentary.

And you're the one who's claiming that Critical Race Theory is behind the Civil Rights Movement, when in fact it was created by Harvard scholars in the 60s and 70s, after, and in response to the successes of, the Civil Right Movement. And you can't weasel your way of the out the timing by claiming you were referring to something broader, because another poster referred back to the older Critical Theory, and you rejected that and said you're referring to Critical Race Theory in specific.

So your entire first post, which tries to credit all kinds of earlier historical events to Critical Race Theory, is completely and objectively wrong. Which you can't defend, so you're just making unsubstantiated claims that everybody else knows nothing.

Critical Race Theory explores how the surrounding structures of laws allowed those things to happen. I didn't claim that it was behind the Civil Rights Movement. That would be absurd, and you probably got the idea from the individual who conflated Critical Race Theory (mostly started in the 1970s) with Critical Theory/the Frankfurt School (that got its start in 1920's Germany). I don't get how you managed to misread me that badly.
I didn't misread anything. You literally said: "In order to argue against Critical Race Theory, you have to ignore all of the Jim Crow laws...."

That's an explicit claim that Critical Race Theory owns those events, and all the other ones you named elsewhere in the paragraph. That Critical Race Theory is so enwrapped in those events, that arguing against Critical Race Theory is tantamount to supporting those events.

But, as I pointed out, all those events occurred, and were overcome, before Critical Race Theory even existed. They were defeated by the liberal principles, like equal treatment under the law, that Critical Race Theory has come to completely reject.

Again, Critical Race Theory is a historical study of how laws in the United States were used, and continue to be used, to keep White folks above folks who were/are seen as not-White. The Jim Crow laws are a clear case of laws that were used for right near a century to keep non-White folks below White folks in society. The fact that most of the Jim Crow laws were struck down by Federal Courts (including the Supreme Court) over the objections of state-level courts, and why that was, is part of the question.

As far as I know, Critical Race Theory doesn't reject the *principle* of equal treatment under the law, but it deeply questions whether the current United States criminal justice system actually *practices* equal treatment under the law (for instance, the difference in incarceration rates for black males vs. white males on non-distribution possession of a controlled substance laws, which is vast).