The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 9
I want to explain Critical Race Theory to you. I just want to help you understand it, so I sat down with my microphone and no real plan except to talk through the claims, history, and thought of Critical Race Theory, highlighting where it came from and why it’s a terrible way to think about race and racism, in its own ideas. So, this episode of the New Discourses podcast is a little different. It’s just me sitting down with you through my microphone to make a seemingly complicated thing clear. I hope it helps.
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10 comments
Is a transcript of this podcast available?
I appreciated your explanation. At the end you rapidly defend liberalism, saying it had done and was doing an adequate job of dismantling historic injustices against victims of racism. But what about George Floyd and income gaps between whites and blacks?
What happened to George Floyd does not and can not reflect liberalism or society. The death of Mr. Floyd was the result of the actions of a single person; it cannot be the case that in order for liberalism to be worth keeping, there must be zero instances of grave injustice. That bar is so ludicrously high that it cannot be met, and there is no reasonable expectation that any change in societal structure would result in zero of these instances. The response to his death, however, may be reflective, and I think we can all agree that the response was one of compassion, where nearly everyone (Including Fox News) took the position that what happened to him was disgusting and unacceptable, and some drastic measures have been taken to try and avoid these sorts of incidents from happening in the future.
Income gaps are a huge bag of worms, but really you’re talking about equality vs equity. Many things have been done to try and close the income gaps, and certainly they haven’t entirely worked, and more needs to be done. However, once again if you take the position that any inequity is proof that society is structurally oppressive, then you have set the bar so ludicrously high that it could not be met. Income is but one of many variables- no matter the societal structure, if you’re interested in finding inequity that is against any particular class of people, you can find it.
The fact that this conversation almost always centers around inequity and not inequality is illustrative- because we have purged almost all genuine inequality from our laws and from the actual mechanisms of society. Isn’t that to the credit of society? I’m all in favor of massive changes to the way things are now that would favor disadvantaged communities- ending the drug war, medicare for all, educational reform, criminal justice reform, etc. Society has problems, but it should be fair to say that it has far fewer problems than it had fifty years ago. It’s also fair to point out that liberalism is a far more promising path than the alternatives- the critical theory people love to complain and try and poke holes in things, but what are their solutions? What is their vision of society? I’ve seen no compelling evidence that it would be any improvement.
If this is a podcast, where is the RSS feed?
A trusted friend recommended me this episode, and I came here to subscribe. Yet there doesn’t seem to be a podcast subscription link, merely links to six different audio playing services. Neither of them being one I have any interest in signing up with, since I’m perfectly happy with the player I already do use.
Since you use the term podcast to describe what you have here, could you please make it a proper podcast by publishing a link to an RSS feed usable with any podcatcher?
Thanks,
https://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:781116325/sounds.rss
Excellent! Thanks! Am subscribed now.
Awesome. Thank you!
It sounds like self-contradictory nonsense. I suppose that’s why “thought reform” techniques seem to be used in places where indoctrination in this subject takes place – https://www.culteducation.com/brainwashing19.html
I am very interested in reading the foundational literature for all of these ideologies and philosophies. Critical theory, critical race theory, postmodernism, constructivism, marxism and neo-marxism etc. Do you have or can you point me to a bibliography of the topics?
Cynical Theories, by James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose.
https://www.amazon.com/Cynical-Theories-Scholarship-Everything-Identity-ebook/dp/B08BGCM5QZ/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=cynical+theories&qid=1629863410&sr=8-1