Yes, I am 61 years old, soon to turn 62. I’ve seen quite a few “culture wars” in my day, so these are nothing new.
The current one centers about talking about race and racism in schools, colleges and the workplace.
Of course, there are some dreadfully bad training programs out there.
I am of the opinion that change comes from “within” and it comes from someone you trust speaking to you in language that you understand.
So, white people wagging their fingers at black people won’t help:
And no…some woke wagging their finger outside of woke academia won’t help either. But I digress.
The Republicans have seized on some honestly dreadful training and decided to call it a war on Critical Race Theory (CRT)
Now CRT was created in law schools as a way of studying the effect that race has on our institutions and how it tends to permeate everything; after all, just who set up the legal framework, or social framework? What was society like then?
And yes, some have built upon this idea to study other institutions; e. g. education.
And some of this is indeed cringeworthy:
So, when the public is criticizing CRT, MOST are criticizing stuff like this and not the actual academic theory.
But I believe the CRT critics are overreaching. IMHO, most Americans want accurate history to be taught; we know that our country has made mistakes and has failed morally at times and we really want to do better. They don’t want our mistakes whitewashed ..nor do we want to be seen as only one mistake either.
This is why I think things like this are overreach and will end up backfiring on the Republicans. They will do well if they focus on the specific genuinely bad things. But maybe they can’t help themselves?
On another note: a journalist was offered a position at the University of North Carolina but, contrary to the wishes of the faculty, she would have not been granted tenure by the board. The board decided to vote and ended up changing their mind, but she decided to take a position at Howard University.
Her supporters are exclaiming “see, she showed them and North Carolina lost!” but it appears to me that upper administration and the big money donors got exactly what they wanted: they were free from a high profile thorn in their side and have plausible deniability. And Howard scored a coup.
Yes, I know that universities and colleges are viewed as bastions of woke liberalism, and some professors and students are. But I think that many underestimate how conservative the big donors are and how conservative many blocks of students are. And this varies from college to college; a hint to which college recruits what can be seen by looking at a list of which colleges will require students to be COVID vaccinated. If your uni isn’t on this list, it is probably because they recruit a conservative demographic.
Life of an old goat 