What are your thoughts re Hegelian Dialectic & CRT

[GaryK]

The last couple of maps are incorrect (especially in regards to the former Indian Territory, now eastern Oklahoma). And various native peoples still hold land all throughout the Great Plains, generally, however, held privately, instead of as tribal lands.

Perhaps those maps were just made up out of thin air...

[Ken]

The last couple of maps are incorrect (especially in regards to the former Indian Territory, now eastern Oklahoma). And various native peoples still hold land all throughout the Great Plains, generally, however, held privately, instead of as tribal lands.

The textbook is a 2010 edition so it doesn't represent the recent Supreme Court cases that extended "Indian territory" to most of eastern Oklahoma. That was McGirt v. Oklahoma and decided in 2020.

In any event, McGirt v. Oklahoma didn't actually recover any Indian lands. The whole city of Tulsa is in eastern OK. No non-Indian landowners lost any land in Oklahoma as a result of that decision. It was mainly about whether Indians in those areas could be prosecuted in state courts or tribal courts.

But the larger point remains. The notion that kids learning about stolen Indian lands means they are being indoctrinated with CRT is laughable.

When we used to live in Waco TX we would frequently take our kids to the Mayborn Museum on the Campus of Baylor University where we had a membership. https://www.baylor.edu/mayborn/ It is a pretty good natural history and children's museum, the best one in the region. And right there one of the permanent displays was about the "Waco Indians" which were a band of the Wichita who made their home on the banks of the Brazos River about where the museum stands near downtown Waco. They had a replica grass hut made in the Wichita style and the kids could play in and around it and dress up like Indians and settlers. They also learned that the Waco Indians gave Waco its name. And that they were forced out of Texas to a reservation in Oklahoma in 1859. So yes, school children are learning that Baylor University was built on stolen Indian lands. Their own museum says so. Is Southern Baptist Baylor University indoctrinating school children with CRT? Hundreds of thousands of school children pass through that museum on field trips every year.

They also had some interesting natural history displays covering evolution. Including a diorama about how Waco was an inland sea during the Cretaceous period between 50 and 150 million years ago which is why one finds so many maritime fossils in the limestone all around the region. And they had an amazing skeleton of a giant sea turtle from the Cretaceous that was unearthed near Waco and Mammoth fossils unearthed at the Waco Mammoth Site a few miles away that is now a national monument.

So apparently conservative Southern Baptist Baylor University is not only indoctrinating school children in CRT, but also evolution.

[Ken]

Are you suggesting that the stolen land question is never brought up in discussions on white supremacy?

White supremacy comes up in a large number of places in US history. In the coverage of slavery for one. The Confederacy and articles of secession.
As well as Jim Crow segregation. Also the KKK and lynchings. In fact in Waco kids learn about Jesse Washington who was a 17 year old mentally disabled black boy who was lynched by a mob of over 10,000 white spectators in 1916 after being accused of killing a white woman. The mob broke into the courthouse, wrapped a chain around his neck, dragged him through the streets where he was stabbed, beaten, castrated. And then they hung his body with a chain from a tree covered him in tar and then lowered and raised his body into a bonfire until it was burnt to a crisp. Families were there with children having picnics and watching. Spectators cut off his fingers for souvenirs and local photographers took photos which were sold around town as postcards for years after.

This was a postcard of the event sold in Waco



And another one



And yes, school kids in Waco learn of this event in school. It is part of local history. Would you call that an example of White Supremacy? I would. Are Waco school kids getting indoctrinated about CRT when they learn about their own local history like this? Or about how the Waco schools used to be segregated?

You know what else they had in Waco up until 2016? A segregated cemetery where the white and black graves were separated by a fence with separate entrances. Like Faulkner said about the sout: "“The past is never dead. It's not even past.”" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pos ... years-ago/

Again, show me the evidence that they made up things to ask people out of thin air.

Read what I wrote. I'm not saying that the study authors made up facts out of thin air.

What I am saying is that you can make up just about any nonsense fact that you want that you want and get a reasonable percentage of people to agree with it just by asking it in a question. Jay Leno used to do this all the time for laughs with his "man on the street" surveys on the Tonight Show.

What this means is that when you ask a leading question, many people will agree with it just because they think it is true of that it is something that they should know, especially if it sounds plausible. Which is why the results of push polling are not meaningful. When you suggest the answer in the question some percentage of people will answer in the affirmative even if it isn't true.

[Neto]

Lots of people confuse Oklahoma Territory with Indian Territory, thinking that these are just two names for the whole of what is now the state of Oklahoma. The Land runs you've all heard about, that didn't happen in Indian Territory. It was actually the leaders of the "Five Civilized Tribes" who went to Washington D. C. and requested to join the USA as a state. All of the land granted to the tribes that had been (forcibly) resettled in Indian Territory was divided into family owned plots. (Except perhaps Osage County, which was always called Osage Nation, as far back as I can remember. (We lived just 12 miles from the county line, and drove through there every time we went to visit my paternal grandparents in western Oklahoma.) My maternal grandfather purchased the land where he farmed (and where I grew up) from a Cherokee man. The little town where I went to school, the entire area where the town was built was donated by a Cherokee woman (actually the grandmother of one of fellow students). It was an Indian town. Whites were a minority. Some of the teachers in the HS were Indians. Yes, it has changed in that area, as that little town is now a huge city, but there are still lots of native people there, now more of a mixture of different tribal peoples than back when I was attending school there.
I'm not saying that serious atrocities were not committed against native peoples. One thing I WILL say however is that exaggerating the story line is self-defeating.

[Ken]

Lots of people confuse Oklahoma Territory with Indian Territory, thinking that these are just two names for the whole of what is now the state of Oklahoma. The Land runs you've all heard about, that didn't happen in Indian Territory. It was actually the leaders of the "Five Civilized Tribes" who went to Washington D. C. and requested to join the USA as a state. All of the land granted to the tribes that had been (forcibly) resettled in Indian Territory was divided into family owned plots. (Except perhaps Osage County, which was always called Osage Nation, as far back as I can remember. (We lived just 12 miles from the county line, and drove through there every time we went to visit my paternal grandparents in western Oklahoma.) My maternal grandfather purchased the land where he farmed (and where I grew up) from a Cherokee man. The little town where I went to school, the entire area where the town was built was donated by a Cherokee woman (actually the grandmother of one of fellow students). It was an Indian town. Whites were a minority. Some of the teachers in the HS were Indians. Yes, it has changed in that area, as that little town is now a huge city, but there are still lots of native people there, now more of a mixture of different tribal peoples than back when I was attending school there.
I'm not saying that serious atrocities were not committed against native peoples. One thing I WILL say however is that exaggerating the story line is self-defeating.

Yes, Oklahoma has its own complicated history and was the dumping ground for all the tribes who's land was stolen from everywhere else in the US. The Nez Perce here in the Pacific Northwest were also "removed" from their lands in Oregon and Idaho and sent to a tiny reservation in Oklahoma until they were eventually allowed to return and sent to another tribal reservation in Northern Washington. Sure you can write about how the Cherokee were "removed" from their homeland in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Lands that were guaranteed to them by treaties first signed with the British and then later the Americans. But "removal" is just a euphemism for "stolen". And admitting that isn't some example of critical race theory being taught in schools. That notion is ridiculous.

Now I actually think the recent trend of doing "acknowledgements" of stolen Indian land at Universities before seminars and such is annoying performative white nonsense. Just like the equally annoying trend of using the word Latinx. Which is another white liberal affection that actual Spanish speakers think is silly and ridiculous. But that sort of thing tends to sort itself out naturally. And eventually some new fad will come along. It isn't all some big conspiracy theory worth getting whipped into a lather about.

I remember back in the early 1970s when my 3rd grade teacher Mrs. Ostrander wrote on the blackboard "Ms. Ostrander" for the first time. And I knew right then and there that CRT was creeping into my elementary school and it was "go time" before I got turned into a socialist.

[Josh]

our own joshuabgood is a full-throated proponent of Critical Race Theory

No...that isnt accurate. While there are aspects of its critique that bear some validity, I don't see the solutions the same, re using the force of the state.

The solution is the Kingdom of God.

Nobody ever said anything about using the force of the state.

You lectured us at length a few years ago about how we all needed to see the light of Critical Theory, recommended we read Robin DiAngelo books, and told quite a few of us we suffered from “white fragility”. None of this has anything to do with Jesus’ kingdom.

[joshuabgood]

our own joshuabgood is a full-throated proponent of Critical Race Theory

No...that isnt accurate. While there are aspects of its critique that bear some validity, I don't see the solutions the same, re using the force of the state.

The solution is the Kingdom of God.

Nobody ever said anything about using the force of the state.

You lectured us at length a few years ago about how we all needed to see the light of Critical Theory, recommended we read Robin DiAngelo books, and told quite a few of us we suffered from “white fragility”. None of this has anything to do with Jesus’ kingdom.

The solutions posed by the CRT crowd always involve a faith in the force of the state. I don't share that faith as a solution.

I think there is an inherent predisposition in humanity to prefer those who remind ourselves of ourselves. I think that this is expressed in group identities, tribalism, and classroom cliques...in the fallen state of mankind.

[Josh]

I think there is an inherent predisposition in humanity to prefer those who remind ourselves of ourselves. I think that this is expressed in group identities, tribalism, and classroom cliques...in the fallen state of mankind.

I think God created the family, and he decided to make people in families look and seem like each other. I don’t think the family is part of the fallen state of mankind.

[GaryK]

Again, show me the evidence that they made up things to ask people out of thin air.

Read what I wrote. I'm not saying that the study authors made up facts out of thin air.

What I am saying is that you can make up just about any nonsense fact that you want that you want and get a reasonable percentage of people to agree with it just by asking it in a question. Jay Leno used to do this all the time for laughs with his "man on the street" surveys on the Tonight Show.

What this means is that when you ask a leading question, many people will agree with it just because they think it is true of that it is something that they should know, especially if it sounds plausible. Which is why the results of push polling are not meaningful. When you suggest the answer in the question some percentage of people will answer in the affirmative even if it isn't true.

You keep implying that Manhattan Institute did some shady stuff to get a desired result in their research on this. I'll point out again the very straight forward question they asked.

“Thinking about the school you attended, were you ever taught any of the following concepts in class or did you hear them from adults in the school you attended?”

If the 1500 people asked this straight forward question were all just led like sheep to a desired result, which is what you seem to be implying, then you must not have much faith in their ability to think and answer for themselves. Is that the kind of people public schools like the ones you have taught in are producing?

[GaryK]

I think there is an inherent predisposition in humanity to prefer those who remind ourselves of ourselves. I think that this is expressed in group identities, tribalism, and classroom cliques...in the fallen state of mankind.

Is this true of minority groups as well?