Critical Race Theory policy in hiring at UT

[Neonmoon 38127]

More textbooks 

 

[TwiceHorn 31268]

8 hours ago, GRHorn said:

Hey, check out this systemic racism. 

 

That's not systemic racism

It's not systemic because it isn't so much "built in" as it is an intentional ongoing practice. 

It is, most certainly, discrimination.  Not all discrimination is racism.

You can disagree with whether Harvard should be doing it or not.  But it sure as shit isn't systemic racism.

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

And it used to be the non-elite whites didn't give much of a shit about the woes of the slaveholders. Now they're trying to get every white -- no matter if they are the descendants of 16 generations of White Trash -- to identify with the planters. 

[TwiceHorn 31268]

1 minute ago, Neonmoon said:

More textbooks 

 

In addition to the whole "whitewashing" aspect, I think the "states rights" idea got a lot of traction because it was CSA propaganda to keep non-slave-owning southerners sending their boys to die.  It was, as most are I suppose, a rich-man's war and they had to elide that fact to keep the average citizenry fighting.

I minimize the "whitewashing" aspect because for many southerners, nothing needed to be whitewashed.  That came much later.

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

5 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

In addition to the whole "whitewashing" aspect, I think the "states rights" idea got a lot of traction because it was CSA propaganda to keep non-slave-owning southerners sending their boys to die.  It was, as most are I suppose, a rich-man's war and they had to elide that fact to keep the average citizenry fighting.

I minimize the "whitewashing" aspect because for many southerners, nothing needed to be whitewashed.  That came much later.

cross posting from earlier this year:

Nah, they knew [about what they were being tricked into fighting for]. Just before he died my great-grandfather took down his dad's life story. The old guy had to speak it because he was illiterate. Came up a sharecropper, then was an overseer, and then made money enough to get a Mississippi tanyard and bought two slaves -- a married couple. He was doing pretty well when the war broke out and he lost almost everything. Anyway, he told his son he hated slavery, and not only because guys like him had to compete against free in the labor market, but also because if you did not own slaves you were ipso facto trash.

Before the war his younger brother married up into a slaveholding family and was thereby enough a big shot to captain a company of home guards, and drafted his older brother -- my gg-grandfather, who was then in his 40s -- into service. He tromped around Mississippi for a few weeks and then deserted. He explained that, while he was a Southern man, and loved the South, he was not a "hot-headed partisan" for slavery, because he hated the system that had kept him down for so long and then bankrupted him. (Which, I am sad to say, is not to say he was woke; he frankly stated that he moved his family to the edge of the Texas frontier in 1869 to "get away from the Negroes" who were then briefly in control of Reconstruction Mississippi.)

There were hundreds of thousands of men like him who fought out of some combination of peer pressure, a sense of being invaded, at the barrel of a gun (after 1862, desertion was potentially a capital offense), or just because they wanted adventure.

Some, like the Irish-born General Patrick Cleburne, actually believed it was about states rights and put that to the test -- he drafted a proposal to arm and enlist the slaves, whose service would grant them freedom. After all, he said, are we or are we not defending our confederation of states against a tyrannical union?  

He and about dozen co-signers had the balls to send it up the chain of command all the way to Jefferson Davis's desk. He was lucky to escape the gallows. All the way up and down the chain of command people thought Cleburne had gone insane, and Davis and subordinates are on the record as saying that arming and freeing the slaves would defeat the whole purpose of the war. (It's a great trump card in arguments against stubborn Lost Causers.) Cleburne was a complete badass in the field -- he'd earned the nickname Stonewall of the West -- but he started getting passed over for promotions by less-qualified officers after that, one of whom ordered him and his men into a foolish charge at the Battle of Franklin where Cleburne died at the head of his men.

But yeah, there were some idiots who fought believing that some day they might be Mr Bigshot Plantation Owner, but probably nothing like the majority. Hell, Lee said that as early as the Battle of Antietam, 30 percent of his army was AWOL. 

It didn't help that everyone knew that owners of 20 or more slaves were exempted from military service. Rich man's war, poor man's fight. 

[TwiceHorn 31268]

27 minutes ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

The conditions under which the Brits developed their Black Codes here preceded the mass importation of slaves by a century or two. This goes back to the pre-cotton days.

Initially, the upper crust believe the white rabble and the Africans were equal in that they were both simply trash. There was no taboo against them intermarrying -- even Black men could take White common-law wives, and so long as they kept their hands off the few "ladies" in old Virginia, nobody cared. It was only when this mixed-race class became very numerous and were set free from their servitude and starting pressing west that they became extremely troublesome, so much so that they pretty much pressed the Crown into inventing racism as we know it North America today. For them it was a matter of survival.

If the world of Black and White harmony I describe sounds a little too Kumbayah to be believed, it was. One of the main beefs the ex-servants -- Black, White, and mixed -- had with Jamestown was that the Crown was not giving them enough support in their efforts to exterminate the Virginia Indians as they moved west. The Crown was not ready for that fight, especially not if it was on the behalf of this rabble. 

Our thoughts on the matter are not fundamentally incompatible.  Classism generally preceded mass racism because most societies were pretty racially monolithic.  Although I imagine you can find some ancient examples of racial genocide at some sort of "racial frontier," where there was "mixing."  I imagine the Mongol hordes did some of that.

You have an example where classism and racism kind of merged for a bit, and it's unsurprising that it's the Brits, who probably elevated classism to it's apogee (or perigee as it were).

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

I am 51 years old and I grew up steeped in Confederate bullshit. For five years I attended a school where the principal would walk the halls in full Confederate uniform. We had rebel flags on our football helmets and Dixie was our fight song and all that shit, and little by little, year by year, I had to deprogram myself from all that bullshit, and now when I think about fucksticks like Jefferson Davis I want to go back in time and kill them. (I never did much care for him even when I was brainwashed, lol.) They should have known better but their greed destroyed their humanity and their logic. 

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

4 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Our thoughts on the matter are not fundamentally incompatible.  Classism generally preceded mass racism because most societies were pretty racially monolithic.  Although I imagine you can find some ancient examples of racial genocide at some sort of "racial frontier," where there was "mixing."  I imagine the Mongol hordes did some of that.

You have an example where classism and racism kind of merged for a bit, and it's unsurprising that it's the Brits, who probably elevated classism to it's apogee (or perigee as it were).

No, I think we overlap quite a bit, actually. And who knows what used to be considered racism? Were the Celts a different race from the Romans in the thinking of the times? 

[TwiceHorn 31268]

1 minute ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

cross posting from earlier this year:

Nah, they knew [about what they were being tricked into fighting for]. Just before he died my great-grandfather took down his dad's life story. The old guy had to speak it because he was illiterate. Came up a sharecropper, then was an overseer, and then made money enough to get a Mississippi tanyard and bought two slaves -- a married couple. He was doing pretty well when the war broke out and he lost almost everything. Anyway, he told his son he hated slavery, and not only because guys like him had to compete against free in the labor market, but also because if you did not own slaves you were ipso facto trash.

Before the war his younger brother married up into a slaveholding family and was thereby enough a big shot to captain a company of home guards, and drafted his older brother -- my gg-grandfather, who was then in his 40s -- into service. He tromped around Mississippi for a few weeks and then deserted. He explained that, while he was a Southern man, and loved the South, he was not a "hot-headed partisan" for slavery, because he hated the system that had kept him down for so long and then bankrupted him. (Which, I am sad to say, is not to say he was woke; he frankly stated that he moved his family to the edge of the Texas frontier in 1869 to "get away from the Negroes" who were then briefly in control of Reconstruction Mississippi.)

There were hundreds of thousands of men like him who fought out of some combination of peer pressure, a sense of being invaded, at the barrel of a gun (after 1862, desertion was potentially a capital offense), or just because they wanted adventure.

Some, like the Irish-born General Patrick Cleburne, actually believed it was about states rights and put that to the test -- he drafted a proposal to arm and enlist the slaves, whose service would grant them freedom. After all, he said, are we or are we not defending our confederation of states against a tyrannical union?  

He and about dozen co-signers had the balls to send it up the chain of command all the way to Jefferson Davis's desk. He was lucky to escape the gallows. All the way up and down the chain of command people thought Cleburne had gone insane, and Davis and subordinates are on the record as saying that arming and freeing the slaves would defeat the whole purpose of the war. (It's a great trump card in arguments against stubborn Lost Causers.) Cleburne was a complete badass in the field -- he'd earned the nickname Stonewall of the West -- but he started getting passed over for promotions by less-qualified officers after that, one of whom ordered him and his men into a foolish charge at the Battle of Franklin where Cleburne died at the head of his men.

But yeah, there were some idiots who fought believing that some day they might be Mr Bigshot Plantation Owner, but probably nothing like the majority. Hell, Lee said that as early as the Battle of Antietam, 30 percent of his army was AWOL. 

It didn't help that everyone knew that owners of 20 or more slaves were exempted from military service. Rich man's war, poor man's fight. 

Yeah, I suppose like most propaganda, it got people thinking something that they really didn't quite believe. Which only increased the "propagation" of the lie.  If you repeat it long enough, it becomes the truth.  States rights aside, I imagine "those damned Yankees attacked dear ol' Virginny" worked pretty well, too.  Anything but the truth:  we're sending you to fight and die so rich plantation owners can keep getting rich off slaves.

[TwiceHorn 31268]

Just now, MaybeACoordinator said:

No, I think we overlap quite a bit, actually. And who knows what used to be considered racism? Were the Celts a different race from the Romans in the thinking of the times? 

Yeah, Celts and Romans are a good example of fearing other, which is the root of racism, generally speaking.  Racism has the added twist that no matter what environment you encounter the racial minority, they're almost always immediately identifiable as "other."

I suppose you could dress up a Celt in a toga and he could pass for Roman.

Classism and racism are different sides, maybe not even sides, of the same coin.

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

2 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Yeah, I suppose like most propaganda, it got people thinking something that they really didn't quite believe. Which only increased the "propagation" of the lie.  If you repeat it long enough, it becomes the truth.  States rights aside, I imagine "those damned Yankees attacked dear ol' Virginny" worked pretty well, too.  Anything but the truth:  we're sending you to fight and die so rich plantation owners can keep getting rich off slaves.

Yeah, which is why I kind of have a nuanced position on CSA war memorials. Leave up the ones for the common soldier, but contextualize them with reminders of slavery. Remove those of the leadership to museums or whatever. 

 

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

Just now, TwiceHorn said:

Yeah, Celts and Romans are a good example of fearing other, which is the root of racism, generally speaking.  Racism has the added twist that no matter what environment you encounter the racial minority, they're almost always immediately identifiable as "other."

I suppose you could dress up a Celt in a toga and he could pass for Roman.

Classism and racism are different sides, maybe not even sides, of the same coin.

It's a fucking slippery coin to boot. 

[TwiceHorn 31268]

7 minutes ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

I am 51 years old and I grew up steeped in Confederate bullshit. For five years I attended a school where the principal would walk the halls in full Confederate uniform. We had rebel flags on our football helmets and Dixie was our fight song and all that shit, and little by little, year by year, I had to deprogram myself from all that bullshit, and now when I think about fucksticks like Jefferson Davis I want to go back in time and kill them. (I never did much care for him even when I was brainwashed, lol.) They should have known better but their greed destroyed their humanity and their logic. 

Somewhere I picked it up, too.  I don't think I was taught it in school expressly.  There was no particular celebration of it as I grew up.

I was a war freak as a little kid, I guess in part because of my Dad's experiences in WWII.  I read a lot of Civil War stuff when I was 9-10-11 years old.  This was my favorite book, some cool ilustrations.

 

My Mom's family was here before the war and fought for the CSA, but hardscrabble dirt farmers that may have accepted the lie and passed it down.  I can't really remember any discussions with my parents on that issue.  Probably something to the effect of "yes, people in our family fought for the Confederates, but we never owned slaves."

 

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

17 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Somewhere I picked it up, too.  I don't think I was taught it in school expressly.  There was no particular celebration of it as I grew up.

I was a war freak as a little kid, I guess in part because of my Dad's experiences in WWII.  I read a lot of Civil War stuff when I was 9-10-11 years old.  This was my favorite book, some cool ilustrations.

 

My Mom's family was here before the war and fought for the CSA, but hardscrabble dirt farmers that may have accepted the lie and passed it down.  I can't really remember any discussions with my parents on that issue.  Probably something to the effect of "yes, people in our family fought for the Confederates, but we never owned slaves."

 

That's what I thought too, but the more you dig...

I think that Golden Book had those amazing color birds-eye views of the major battles.

[bad_teammate 13132]

Some people, let's say (randomly and apropos of nothing) of largely Scandinavian descent, are STILL are offended at the concept of being lumped into the same racial category as the Irish and Italians.

"Who voted to allow this nonsense??" those hypothetical people might say.

Not ME, of course...

I would never say that.

Edited June 15, 2021 by bad_teammate

[DonkeyCigars 144]

1 hour ago, bad_teammate said:

Some people, let's say (randomly and apropos of nothing) of largely Scandinavian descent, are STILL are offended at the concept of being lumped into the same racial category as the Irish and Italians.

"Who voted to allow this nonsense??" those hypothetical people might say.

Not ME, of course...

I would never say that.

You can say it…”Vikings”.

Edited June 15, 2021 by DonkeyCigars

[TwiceHorn 31268]

12 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

That's what I thought too, but the more you dig...

I think that Golden Book had those amazing color birds-eye views of the major battles.

The more I think about it, I think I just "picked a side" as a little kid, without  wisdom, and as a southerner with some history with it.

Then became willing, because of that, to accept spurious arguments that made "my side" OK.

[Bama Chick 28596]

lol

AL.com is so lucky to have someone like Kyle Whitmire calling out the rot in this state.

Fucking Fox News Brain.

[Captainant 27447]

7 minutes ago, Bama Chick said:

lol

AL.com is so lucky to have someone like Kyle Whitmire calling out the rot in this state.
 

 

Fucking Fox News Brain.

 

Lmao, that conversation with the Alabama rep reads just like the bullshit being propagated here by PHLAggy and Donkey and the like.

from the article:

Quote

 

“It basically teaches that certain children are inherently bad people because of the color of their skin, period,” Pringle said.

That sounded very serious, indeed. Nazi-like, even. So I asked Pringle if there were any critical race theorists he could point to who have been spreading such toxic garbage?

“Yeah, uh, well — I can assure you — I’ll have to read a lot more,” he said.

I began to get the feeling that Pringle didn’t know as much about critical race theory as I had hoped. Were there other examples he could give me where critical race theory was being put into practice?

“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 said.

Pringle was a little difficult to follow but this sounded serious. These people — whoever they were— sounded terrifying, and if there were reeducation camps operating in America, that would be big news someone like me should get to the bottom of. I asked Pringle, who were these people?

...

“Here’s an — it doesn’t say who it was, it just says a government that held these — these training sessions …”

Pringle trailed off and I told him that, if he liked, he could send me a link to the article, but then he began to speak again.

“The white male executives are sent to a three-day re-education camp, where they were told that their white male culture wasn’t their —” he trailed off again.

I was worried that we’d lost our connection. These sorts of conversations sometimes end abruptly, but Pringle was still on the line and after a little more hemming and hawing he retreated to a common safe-space of politicians who’ve crawled too far out on a limb: He just wanted to start a conversation, he said.

“I introduced a very brief version of the bill to start the conversation, but it’s very difficult in this cancel society to have a frank discussion about racism in this country and this country’s history,” he said. “I mean, history is being rewritten and I’m not exactly sure of the accuracy of what’s there now and what they’re trying to change it into.”

 

He's "just asking questions" and "just wants to start a conversation" about a topic that he has no fucking idea what he's actually mad about past his narrow worldview and white supremacy talking points

[HornOnTheBayou 8881]

24 minutes ago, Bama Chick said:

lol

AL.com is so lucky to have someone like Kyle Whitmire calling out the rot in this state.
 

 

Fucking Fox News Brain.

 

 

Everyone needs to read that.

[wildcat09 29234]

13 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Lmao, that conversation with the Alabama rep reads just like the bullshit being propagated here by PHLAggy and Donkey and the like.

from the article:

He's "just asking questions" and "just wants to start a conversation" about a topic that he has no fucking idea what he's actually mad about past his narrow worldview and white supremacy talking points

"I wanted to start having a conversation about race so I introduced a bill that would make it illegal to have conversations about race."

[jimmyjazz 45554]

15 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Lmao, that conversation with the Alabama rep reads just like the bullshit being propagated here by PHLAggy and Donkey and the like.

from the article:

He's "just asking questions" and "just wants to start a conversation" about a topic that he has no fucking idea what he's actually mad about past his narrow worldview and white supremacy talking points

It's worse than that.  There is no skepticism.  When the new talking points come down. seemingly ex cathedra, these dipshits lap them up and regurgitate them.  There is no thought behind it whatsoever.  I guarantee that the average right wing bigot hears "race" and immediately kneejerks into a defensive position, because they are wholly aware of their own racist tendencies.  They may or may not have a nagging doubt that those tendencies are wrong (mostly they don't), but they for damn sure know where they stand.

Edited June 15, 2021 by jimmyjazz

[Pancho 44466]

2 hours ago, Bama Chick said:

lol

AL.com is so lucky to have someone like Kyle Whitmire calling out the rot in this state.
 

 

 

Pretty much sounds like numerous posters in this thread.  Let’s make a sweeping generalization about CRT and proclaim that it’s bad and shouldn’t be taught K-12 schools so I’m going to not send my kids to public school because that’s what they are doing there and it’s only applied to America and not any other country and it teaches that White folks are the devil and that my great-great-great grandpa whipped his slaves so hard that one of the legs fell off of the slave and they used that leg like a ham hock when cooking greens for the slave owners on Sundays.  That is what CRT is and that’s why it’s bad.

 

Everyone else:  No, that’s not what CRT is at all.  You’re 100% incorrect in everything you’ve stated. 

Those same posters: WELL IT’S STILL BAD AND SHOULD BE OUTLAWED!

[mchookem 16206]

18 hours ago, HenryJames said:

CrItIcAl RaCe ThEoRy

this.is.incredible.

i mean, i know it's LA and the south and all...but holy shit is that some bullshit 😳

 

[NWBuck 8547]

This. This is my surprised face.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/critical-race-theory-invades-school-boards-help-conservative-groups-n1270794

"Conflicts like this are playing out in cities and towns across the country, amid the rise of at least 165 local and national groups that aim to disrupt lessons on race and gender, according to an NBC News analysis of media reports and organizations’ promotional materials. Reinforced by conservative think tanks, law firms and activist parents, these groups have found allies in families frustrated over Covid-19 restrictions in schools and have weaponized the right’s opposition to critical race theory, turning it into a political rallying point.

While the efforts vary, they share strategies of disruption, publicity and mobilization. The groups swarm school board meetings, inundate districts with time-consuming public records requests and file lawsuits and federal complaints alleging discrimination against white students. They have become media darlings in conservative circles and made the debate over critical race theory a national issue.

Virtually all school districts insist they are not teaching critical race theory, but many activists and parents have begun using it as a catch-all term to refer to what schools often call equity programs, teaching about racism or LGBTQ-inclusive policies."

Edited June 15, 2021 by NWBuck

[Js1 85104]

2 hours ago, Bama Chick said:

l

 

Gotta rile up the culture wars!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[DonkeyCigars 144]

This is getting absurd!

[Js1 85104]

 

[Pancho 44466]

 

[elguapo 4583]

 

[Neonmoon 38127]

I mean…they’re saying it out loud 

 

[jimmyjazz 45554]

1 hour ago, Neonmoon said:

I mean…they’re saying it out loud 

 

"And I am wholly against doing that."

[GRHorn 105]

Not directly CRT related, but interesting passage from prominent “anti-racist” 

 

[Satchel 6908]

2 minutes ago, GRHorn said:

Not directly CRT related, but interesting passage from prominent “anti-racist” 

Why do you find the passage interesting?

 

[Neonmoon 38127]

One side: Here are reputable news sites, quotes from congressman, policy papers. 

GRHorn: Here is the crazy fucking blog I found

[GRHorn 105]

55 minutes ago, Satchel said:

 

If it takes courses, books, podcasts, lectures, tv specials, and/or rallies to explain the effect of racism to its victims, then perhaps “institutional racism” isn’t as pervasive or as costly today as it’s made out to be? 
 

But there’s no money to be made by Mr Kendi and others from embracing progress or unity, thus all of the above modalities used to help white liberals and others “do the work”. 
 

Yawn 

Edited June 16, 2021 by GRHorn

[TwiceHorn 31268]

1 hour ago, GRHorn said:

Not directly CRT related, but interesting passage from prominent “anti-racist” 

 

What that demonstrates is that anti-racism, or CRT, is not some monolith capable of being described and brushed off in a sentence or two.  Kendi, I don't believe, really calls himself a CRT scholar, but rather relies on the ostensibly milder "anti-racist" label.  However, Kendi seems to be a bit of a bomb-thrower, meaning he tends to make controversial public statements, likely as a means to increase his own profile and to draw attention to the "anti-racist" movement.

Edited June 16, 2021 by TwiceHorn

[TwiceHorn 31268]

19 minutes ago, GRHorn said:

If it takes courses, books, podcasts, lectures, tv specials, and/or rallies to explain the effect of racism to its victims, then perhaps “institutional racism” isn’t as pervasive or as costly today as it’s made out to be? 

Not at all.

As demonstrated by Trump idjits, huge swaths of the American public don't understand how American institutions, like elections, the Senate, the judiciary, the electoral college, and so on and so forth work.  They understand very little about the Constitution or its history.  If they're educated in Lousiana, it appears they don't know a goddamn thing about the Civil War.

If you have no inkling how those systems really work, then you can't begin to understand how they're set up to be, or have become, racist in operation if not intent.

And to apply a sort of tenet of CRT, if poor to average whites don't know how America works, that probably goes double for poor to average minorities.

There's "obvious" racism, that anyone can point out.  Then there's more subtle racism, that is far less obvious, and that includes "systemic" or "institutional" racism.  CRT is devoted to ferreting out and explaining the less obvious racism.  

 

Edited June 16, 2021 by TwiceHorn

[Pancho 44466]

1 hour ago, GRHorn said:

Not directly CRT related, but interesting passage from prominent “anti-racist” 

 

This might come as a surprise to both GRHorn and Zaid, but no that not what the author is saying.

[Dahobbs 17444]

30 minutes ago, GRHorn said:

If it takes courses, books, podcasts, lectures, tv specials, and/or rallies to explain the effect of racism to its victims, then perhaps “institutional racism” isn’t as pervasive or as costly today as it’s made out to be? 
 

But there’s no money to be made by Mr Kendi and others from embracing progress or unity, thus all of the above modalities used to help white liberals and others “do the work”. 
 

Yawn 

By all means, let's apply this same thinking to other subjects like physics, medicine, and economics. Since it takes a substantial amount of education to appreciate the effects of things like general relativity, quantum dynamics, the vascular system, the brain, and market dynamics, clearly none of those things are real. 

[TwiceHorn 31268]

9 minutes ago, Pancho said:

This might come as a surprise to both GRHorn and Zaid, but no that not what the author is saying.

Also, it appears that Zaid Jilani is not a "prominent anti-racist."

[956 Worldwide 34428]

On 6/15/2021 at 2:21 AM, Neonmoon said:

More textbooks 

 

The 1920s text is crap. But I read through the 1950s one and it’s not as bad as I expected, depending on the age level.

Quote

By this time many people knew slavery was wrong. But the planters did not know how they could free their slaves and keep their plantations going. Some people in the North said Southern people had to free their slaves no matter what happened to the plantations. The South said the North had no right to tell them what to do….So the North and South quarreled about the rights each state had.

- No pulled punches: People knew slavery was wrong but the planters didn’t give a shit, they cared about their business.

- States rights placed in context— its not abstract, it’s about the right to have slavery 

I mean, it’s definitely not GOOD, especially some of the stuff not in this paragraph, but it’s honestly better than more recent stuff I’ve seen pushed by the loony right. 

[956 Worldwide 34428]

On 6/15/2021 at 2:33 AM, MaybeACoordinator said:

cross posting from earlier this year:

Nah, they knew [about what they were being tricked into fighting for]. Just before he died my great-grandfather took down his dad's life story. The old guy had to speak it because he was illiterate. Came up a sharecropper, then was an overseer, and then made money enough to get a Mississippi tanyard and bought two slaves -- a married couple. He was doing pretty well when the war broke out and he lost almost everything. Anyway, he told his son he hated slavery, and not only because guys like him had to compete against free in the labor market, but also because if you did not own slaves you were ipso facto trash.

Before the war his younger brother married up into a slaveholding family and was thereby enough a big shot to captain a company of home guards, and drafted his older brother -- my gg-grandfather, who was then in his 40s -- into service. He tromped around Mississippi for a few weeks and then deserted. He explained that, while he was a Southern man, and loved the South, he was not a "hot-headed partisan" for slavery, because he hated the system that had kept him down for so long and then bankrupted him. (Which, I am sad to say, is not to say he was woke; he frankly stated that he moved his family to the edge of the Texas frontier in 1869 to "get away from the Negroes" who were then briefly in control of Reconstruction Mississippi.)

There were hundreds of thousands of men like him who fought out of some combination of peer pressure, a sense of being invaded, at the barrel of a gun (after 1862, desertion was potentially a capital offense), or just because they wanted adventure.

Some, like the Irish-born General Patrick Cleburne, actually believed it was about states rights and put that to the test -- he drafted a proposal to arm and enlist the slaves, whose service would grant them freedom. After all, he said, are we or are we not defending our confederation of states against a tyrannical union?  

He and about dozen co-signers had the balls to send it up the chain of command all the way to Jefferson Davis's desk. He was lucky to escape the gallows. All the way up and down the chain of command people thought Cleburne had gone insane, and Davis and subordinates are on the record as saying that arming and freeing the slaves would defeat the whole purpose of the war. (It's a great trump card in arguments against stubborn Lost Causers.) Cleburne was a complete badass in the field -- he'd earned the nickname Stonewall of the West -- but he started getting passed over for promotions by less-qualified officers after that, one of whom ordered him and his men into a foolish charge at the Battle of Franklin where Cleburne died at the head of his men.

But yeah, there were some idiots who fought believing that some day they might be Mr Bigshot Plantation Owner, but probably nothing like the majority. Hell, Lee said that as early as the Battle of Antietam, 30 percent of his army was AWOL. 

It didn't help that everyone knew that owners of 20 or more slaves were exempted from military service. Rich man's war, poor man's fight. 

The Confederacy was a giant con on most whites and an ongoing human rights atrocity for all Black people. And many whites knew it, desertion was endemic, most of the army was forcibly drafted, and gangs of home guards had to enforce the draft in lots of places. 

[sidis 9742]

2 hours ago, GRHorn said:

Not directly CRT related, but interesting passage from prominent “anti-racist” 

 

i am surprised you have heard of CRT.

[GRHorn 105]

34 minutes ago, Pancho said:

This might come as a surprise to both GRHorn and Zaid, but no that not what the author is saying.

What’s he saying?

[wildcat09 29234]

1 hour ago, GRHorn said:

If it takes courses, books, podcasts, lectures, tv specials, and/or rallies to explain the effect of racism to its victims, then perhaps “institutional racism” isn’t as pervasive or as costly today as it’s made out to be? 
 

But there’s no money to be made by Mr Kendi and others from embracing progress or unity, thus all of the above modalities used to help white liberals and others “do the work”. 
 

Yawn 

This may come as quite a surprise, but it actually takes time and study to learn a lot of things.

[wildcat09 29234]

42 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Also, it appears that Zaid Jilani is not a "prominent anti-racist."

Zaid Jilani is one of the token IDW minorities who use their own identity as a shield for the rest of the group so they can all pretend they're all perfectly rational thinkers and not just racists doing phrenology.

[elfenix 34171]

 

52 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

By all means, let's apply this same thinking to other subjects like physics, medicine, and economics. Since it takes a substantial amount of education to appreciate the effects of things like general relativity, quantum dynamics, the vascular system, the brain, and market dynamics, clearly none of those things are real. 

i'm reminded of the story on the sideboard of r/badEconomics:

Quote

A friend of mine once said: You know what the problem is with being an economist? Everyone has an opinion about the economy. Nobody goes up to a geologist and says, 'Igneous rocks are fucking bullshit.'

 

[SmokeyTheBear 5562]

Wait a sec. Is GR Rocko? Did I miss something? 

Question @GRHorn, what's the going rate for a Thai hooker? 

[Captainant 27447]

8 minutes ago, SmokeyTheBear said:

Wait a sec. Is GR Rocko? Did I miss something? 

Question @GRHorn, what's the going rate for a Thai hooker? 

he didn't say he was Rawdog Raydog