Racism and Reality -Tommy Curry and Critical Race Theory

[Stavros]

Has racism been the key factor in the development of the USA since the 17th century? Tommy Curry, an advocate of Critical Race Theory and an Associate Professor at Texas A&M University has offered an at times profound, if flawed answer to this question, which is yes.

By way of background there is a long read in The Guardian (linked below) which explores the controversy that erupted earlier this year when The American Conservative came across a 2012 podcast relating to Tarantino's film Django Unchained and the way Curry explained the rationale behind the character Django taking part in the execution of whites in the film:

“I said in the initial conversation five years ago, the hypocrisy of self-defense proponents is that every group has a right to self-defense except historically oppressed groups like black Americans. My comments are about this historical contradiction. Black Americans’ right to defend themselves against white violence has historically been framed as hateful, whereas white Americans’ right [to] self-defense, which is often understood as their need to protect themselves from blacks, Mexicans and Muslims, is thought to be constitutional and an exercise of freedom..."
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/...t-white-people

Having presented a short-hand version of Curry's argument -'its ok to kill whites' The American Conservative unleashed a vitriolic level of abuse aimed at Curry and his family to the extent that they now need police protection.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-tommy-j-curry

Because he is a professional philosopher Curry uses the language and jargon of philosophy to present his arguments, most recently in a book called The Man-Not (Temple University, 2017), and also in a fascinating article on Critical Race Theory (CRT), also linked below (click the download for easier access), which will be of interest to those familiar with this kind of academic presentation but others might find hard going, but worth exploring -
http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/2453_reg.html
https://www.academia.edu/2635853/Wil...butions_to_CRT

I will try to present the arguments in as simple a manner as I can:

1. Race is a concept that has no science, no biology and thus no real meaning, but Racism is the reality that has shaped the USA from early European settlement to just now.

2. Philosophy uses theory to give order and meaning to a world of chaos and confusion, but theory can only go so far in understanding Racism. Narratives are the key to unlocking the realities that arid theory at best fails to come to terms with, at worst deliberately ignores.

3. Narratives are the voices of Black people, whose stories tell the truth about racism in everyday life.

4. Black or 'African-a' Philosophy, cystallized in Critical Race Theory attempts to organize theories of racism to illuminate and ultimately destroy the edifice of racism that has killed, injured, crushed, distorted, exploited, ridiculed, and ignored Black lives (by implication it also applies to other ethnic non-white minorities).

5. Critical Race Theory is syncretic in that it attempts to bring together politics, economics, sociology, psychology, language and culture to show how in the USA white privilege and power has only been possible through the creation of Black inferiority. It is radical because it questions the very foundations of the USA, and because it questions the validity of rationalism, incremental progress, liberal humanism and the 'why can't we just all get along' aspirations of people who neither live nor understand the meaning of being Black in the USA. 'Post-racial humanity' is an illusion. There is no need for white people to feel guilty and 'atone' for the evils of slavery and segregation, it is not in their gift to liberate Black people from an embedded system that still exists.

6. Racism in the USA is not accidental, it is not an irrational 'aberration' but embedded in the logic of its history and development.

7.Reforms in the USA which ended segregation and extended the vote are described as 'interest-convergence' where the white elite 'allowed' a relaxation of racism in the system because it could do so without undermining its power, and because it looked good to outsiders. Thus Brown-vs-Board of Education (1954) was a Cold War tactic designed to show the rest of the world that the USA had humanity not prejudice at its heart when education was de-segregated.

8. Racism has had so profound an impact on Black people, in particular Black men, that neither philosophy nor psychology can yet unravel what has actually happened to the sense of being (known as ontology) that Black people have of themselves, because they have never been free. The perpetual condition of inferiority from slavery to 'legal freedom' must have an impact on being, not least if in reality, as the narratives -not the theory- will tell you jobs are hard to get, the law is always 'up your ass' if not shooting you to death, and even success can be rewarded with ridicule and prejudice.

-I have not covered all the ground, but it does seem to me that Curry and CRT have an important job to do. If there are flaws in this work, I am not sure that in terms of philosophy, the philosophy of language is as important as it could be, while the need for psychology to help unravel the mysteries of being is uncertain because psychology offers a weak approach not least because of contentious concepts such as the 'unconscious'.

-I appreciate the difference between race and racism but is it fair to insist that racism has been the primary factor in American history, rather than, say class, religion, or capitalism? Can these be seen separately or are they all part of the same system?

-There is an intensity to Curry's work which may come across to some as resentment, of the kind which one finds in some literature, for example in Frantz Fanon, and James Baldwin where the claims of white culture to humanity are regarded with cynical indifference in the light of slavery and Auschwitz. Resentment, though powerful a driver, is not the most effective way of dealing with problems -it is more a cause than a solution.

-I am not sure how Curry's philosophy fits with the Apartheid movement in 'Black America' which one associates with the Lost-Found Nation of Islam, the Nation of Islam, Africa Now and a whole list of Black nationalists from Marcus Garvey to the Panthers.

But these are fascinating arguments that will provoke, and that I think is the intention.

[filghy2]

-I appreciate the difference between race and racism but is it fair to insist that racism has been the primary factor in American history, rather than, say class, religion, or capitalism? Can these be seen separately or are they all part of the same system?

It is striking that the US has evolved in ways that are markedly different to any other advanced Western country. If you search around for unique factors that might explain this it is hard to go past the history of slavery and segregation in the US. For instance, the fact that the US has a much more stingy welfare system than other advanced countries is often attributed to the perception that the primary beneficiaries of welfare are African-Americans.

[Stavros]

It is striking that the US has evolved in ways that are markedly different to any other advanced Western country. If you search around for unique factors that might explain this it is hard to go past the history of slavery and segregation in the US. For instance, the fact that the US has a much more stingy welfare system than other advanced countries is often attributed to the perception that the primary beneficiaries of welfare are African-Americans.

Welfare is one of the key battlegrounds on which the free marketeers want to engage the Federal government, for the reasons you have cited. In fact, what is revealed here is the same hypocrisy which Curry argues is shaped by racism, where one social group (White) can both carry and use firearms and it is self-defence but if another group (Black) carries and uses arms, it is attack.

There is a similar contradiction with welfare. The argument proposed by the free marketeers is simple: if you take away welfare, those dependent on welfare will find work. It is because they are on welfare that dependents, mostly Black people, do not work.

The ironies here are that if people did have jobs that were lost and find themselves actually or close to destitution, welfare performs the task it is intended to. In this case welfare does not create dependency, it solves the daily problem of basic needs. But suppose the Black man who has lost his job, or who has left high school with no job prospects becomes a dealer in narcotics. Not only has he found himself a job rather than being on welfare, he is practicing a basic form of capitalism which involves a network of producers-suppliers-customers as a result of which he could become a rich man, depending on how he spends his profits.

Because tea, coffee and tobacco are not banned narcotics, a man, A, who develops an industry around them can become a multi-millionaire -in the case of tobacco a multi-billionaire- and his status is legitimate. The Black man who peddles crack cocaine is a criminal because crack cocaine is illegal.

The perfect summary of this is found in the contrast between banned narcotics and opiates. The 'War on Drugs' that Nixon began in the early 1970s identified Marijuana as 'Enemy No 1', a narcotic more commonly used than Heroin. Marijuana is now legal in many states, while from the 1980s to the 1990s Cocaine and Crack became the narcotic villains, and, as a substantial number of dealers and users were Black (and Latino) the prison population surged as criminal behaviour was punished.

Opiates prescribed as pain killers have become part of a damaging epidemic of opiate abuse across the USA, Pennsylvania has been badly hit, for example - but there is no war on drugs for a problem that concerns mostly white people, but a 'health emergency'. Thus, the War on Drugs became part of what Curry would call 'systemic racism' characterised by zealous law enforcement and imprisonment (often for life), while the Health Emergency does not send law enforcement into the white communities of Pennsylvania to round up doctors and their patients and lock them up for 40 years.

Most bizarre of all: the same people who want to end welfare because they say it takes tax dollars from people who work and gives it to those who don't, support the prison system which takes tax dollars from people who work and spends it on the incarceration of people who can't.

[Stavros]

An apology and correction on my last post, Opioids not Opiates have become the 'health emergency' in the US. Opiates are derived from opium whereas Opioids are synthetic drugs.

[Stavros]

"A police lieutenant in Georgia has been moved to administrative duty after being heard on video during a traffic stop saying “we only shoot black people”.

-Some people will not be surprised with this report, but the man himself has added that
his comments were meant to “de-escalate a situation involving an uncooperative passenger”.

-We have not got the whole of the tape, but in what way was the woman in question being uncooperative?
There is something wrong with policing in the USA, it is time to stop blaming the victims.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...t-black-people

[filghy2]

The longer version of the tape is here http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-0...people/8862596

[filghy2]

There is something wrong with policing in the USA, it is time to stop blaming the victims.

It looks like some people want to make things even worse by removing federal oversight. http://www.politico.com/magazine/sto...15566?lo=ap_e1

[Stavros]

It looks like some people want to make things even worse by removing federal oversight. http://www.politico.com/magazine/sto...15566?lo=ap_e1

Thank you for the link to a meticulous article on something I had never heard of before. I just wonder if a 'Constitutional Sheriff' and his not-so-merry band of Posse boys should be re-defined as terrorists.

[filghy2]

When officials charged with enforcing the law, backed by armed force, decide that only they have the right to decide what the law is, I would call that dictatorship.

What I find amazing is that conservatives are supposed to be concerned with protecting individuals against abuse of power by the state, yet the heroes of the right these days seem to be people like Arpaio.

[Stavros]

A few years on and Critical Race Theory continues to excite and confuse-

"A Republican lawmaker in Alabama who's trying to ban critical race theory from being taught in schools struggled to define the concept when asked by a political commentator at AL.com.
As part of his definition, he said the practice teaches students "certain children are inherently bad because of the color of their skin."
When pressed to name a specific person claiming to teach that, Pringle responded: "Yeah, uh, well - I can assure you - I'll have to read a lot more," he said.
"These people, when they were doing the training programs - and the government - if you didn't buy into what they taught you a hundred percent, they sent you away to a reeducation camp," Pringle added without evidence.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/alabama-re...202052720.html

Tommy Curry, who was the initial focus of this thread has a useful, if very philosophical overview of CRT in the link below. He is good at exposition, but his own contribution 'Culturalogics' is not the most engaging of concepts.
https://www.researchgate.net/publica..._Jurisprudence

I would rather spend time with someone who understand the subject than a few minutes with those who don't. Curry pays a lot of attention to Derrick Bell, one of the key CRT theorists, who not only taught at Harvard when Obama was there (this aspect of his life is not in his book A Promised Land) but is seen being hugged by a young activist Obama, in an article claiming Bell twice visited the White House -and in the contxt of CRT this is part of the 'anti-White' purpose of the theory, handed down from the Professor to his student-cum-President-
https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politic...he-white-house

Obama-Bell gets it again in this superficial nonsense, the key point not being the challenge that CRT poses to 245 years of American jurisprudence, but the 'threat' posed to it, with its own consequence Jan 6th 2021 and the claim now so oddly ironic, that "so-called facts are merely myths of the white power structure." Amen, brother.
https://www.politico.com/blogs/media...k-obama-116868