Pursuing the light of objective truth in subjective darkness.
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James Lindsay
273 posts
An American-born author, mathematician, and professional troublemaker, Dr. James Lindsay has written six books spanning a range of subjects including religion, the philosophy of science and postmodern theory. He is a leading expert on Critical Race Theory, which leads him to reject it completely. He is the founder of New Discourses and currently promoting his new book "Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody," which is currently being translated into more than fifteen languages.
Critical Race Theory proceeds upon a number of core tenets, the first and most central of which is that racism is the ordinary state of affairs in our society.
When it comes to our children's schools, many of us will conclude that it's necessary and important in our modern, progressive world for our children to learn about these sorts of issues.
The question of whether or not the worldview and practice—for practice it intentionally is—going variously by the names “Social Justice,” “Critical Social Justice,” or, more colloquially, “Woke” constitutes a religion is one of some general interest that seems to be growing.
If you own a business or run an organization, there’s a fairly good chance that you might be concerned about how you can resist the social pressure of the “Woke” mob, should it come yelling (or tweeting).
The 1960s ended, in fact, some half a century ago. Nonetheless, they all share a concern that their employer, university, or children’s school seems to think otherwise and is therefore requiring an affirmation to a very specific understanding of “racism” and “anti-racism”.
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.
The Woke use a very particular, very narrow definition of “racism” that has a very expansive application because it is believed to be “systemic” and thus applicable to and a part of everything.
Given the events of the past few months, it has probably been explained to you at least once that all people who are “white” and “white-adjacent” are allegedly complicit in “systemic racism.”