Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: June 19, 2021 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, just because, U.S. Politics | Tags: Christopher Rufo, communion, Critical Race Theory, Derrick Bell, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Juneteenth, systemic racism, the Eucharist, U.S. Catholic Bishops 22 CommentsGood Afternoon!!
Two Cats and a Woman, by Peter Harskamp
Today is Juneteenth, and for the first time it is being celebrated as a national holiday and in some states as a state holiday. While this is a victory for anti-racists, it’s obviously a symbolic and cosmetic one. It’s certainly significant that a large majority of Republicans in the house supported the bill. But at the same time Republicans are making a phony issue of an academic approach to systemic racism–“critical race theory.”
At The Atlantic, Kellie Carter Jackson, a Black historian at Wellesley College, writes: What the Push to Celebrate Juneteenth Conceals.
When you are Black in America, how do you celebrate progress? How do you honor the history and memory of emancipation, liberation, and advancement? How do Black people mark a moment when a positive change transformed the trajectory of their lives, their nation? For many Black Americans that moment has been Juneteenth, or June 19, the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, received word that they were free, some two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation had taken effect. But when I think about Juneteenth, I am mostly stuck on that delay: the time it took for more than 250,000 enslaved Texans to experience what some 3 million other formerly enslaved Americans already had. Though Texan planters had long known the Civil War was over, they had hoped to get one more harvest out of their human property. In this country, hiding history has always been about maintaining control, denying concession, and delaying justice.
This spring, I have been perplexed by anniversaries meant to honor history. Memorial Day, a holiday created by Black people to honor Black veterans in Charleston, South Carolina, seemed this year to focus more on remembering George Floyd and commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa massacre. This Juneteenth also feels different, as more non-Black Americans are now incorporating it into their summer celebrations and lawmakers have pushed to observe the holiday at a federal level. Yet it seems the memory of Juneteenth is being shaped by symbolic rather than substantive gains. Moreover, the proliferation of Juneteenth events is taking place at the same time as the banning of critical race theory and curricula focused on slavery’s lasting effects. It is impossible to celebrate Juneteenth and simultaneously deny the teaching of America’s foundational legacy….
Holidays, like memories, are chosen. They are collective social agreements employed to acknowledge an event or a person. Often composed of parades, barbecues, and corporate sponsorships, the observation of a holiday is relatively low-stakes and usually distanced from the full history that compelled it. Though Black folks have honored their ancestors in meaningful ways on Juneteenth for more than a century, to many non-Black citizens it marks a day off from work and little else. But holidays cannot be divorced from history. Americans cannot discuss freedom and the Fourth of July without invoking slavery. Americans cannot celebrate Memorial Day without paying homage to those who died in service of their country. Americans cannot recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day without confronting the violence of white supremacy. Choosing to remember palatable histories over painful histories serves no one—it merely fosters fantasy.
Critical race theory, an examination of the social, political, and economic impact of racism and white supremacy in America, counters that fantasy. This is the charge of historians and educators: to make sense of the past and grapple with its implications.
Read more about the significance of critical race theory at the link.
La robe Verte, Jean Metzinger
I have to admit, I had never heard of critical race theory until Republicans started obsessing about it. Here’s a brief definition from Education Week:
Critical race theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. The core idea is that racism is a social construct, and that it is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.
The basic tenets of critical race theory, or CRT, emerged out of a framework for legal analysis in the late 1970s and early 1980s created by legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado, among others.
A good example is when, in the 1930s, government officials literally drew lines around areas deemed poor financial risks, often explicitly due to the racial composition of inhabitants. Banks subsequently refused to offer mortgages to Black people in those areas.
This article at The Atlantic that explains the history and development of CRT: The GOP’s ‘Critical Race Theory’ Obsession.
The late harvard law professor Derrick Bell is credited as the father of critical race theory. He began conceptualizing the idea in the 1970s as a way to understand how race and American law interact, and developed a course on the subject. In 1980, Bell resigned his position at Harvard because of what he viewed as the institution’s discriminatory hiring practices, especially its failure to hire an Asian American woman he’d recommended.
Black students—including the future legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, who enrolled at Harvard Law in 1981—felt the void created by his departure. Bell had been the only Black law professor among the faculty, and in his absence, the school no longer offered a course explicitly addressing race. When students asked administrators what could be done, Crenshaw says they received a terse response. “What is it that is so special about race and law that you have to have a course that examines it?” Crenshaw has recalled administrators asking. The administration’s inability to see the importance of understanding race and the law, she says, “got us thinking about how do we articulate that this is important and that law schools should include” the subject in their curricula.
Crenshaw and her classmates asked 12 scholars of color to come to campus and lead discussions about Bell’s book Race, Racism, and American Law. With that, critical race theory began in earnest. The approach “is often disruptive because its commitment to anti-racism goes well beyond civil rights, integration, affirmative action, and other liberal measures,” Bell explained in 1995. The theory’s proponents argue that the nation’s sordid history of slavery, segregation, and discrimination is embedded in our laws, and continues to play a central role in preventing Black Americans and other marginalized groups from living lives untouched by racism.
Now Republicans have suddenly decided to attack this 40-year-old academic theory even though they likely have no idea what it is all about. The same Republicans who voted for the largely symbolic Juneteenth national holiday are spending lots of energy trying to prevent children from learning about America’s ugly history of slavery, Jim Crow, and systemic racism.
Cat Behind a Tree, by Franz Marc
The Washington Post: Republicans, spurred by an unlikely figure, see political promise in critical race theory.
The decision, made public on Friday afternoon, is aimed at the nation’s second Catholic president, perhaps the 
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I’m all for people saying the truth out loud. Todd has just said that in his world might makes right. Pretty much how he’s been behaving all along, so not exactly a surprise, but now maybe more obvious to all.
And since journalism is supposed to be about truth-telling (I know. Hah.) maybe now finally at long last they could flush him down the memory hole? He’s never understood the first thing about his supposed profession.
If only
Oh no. :sniff:
That’s so sad.
Very sad. What a fine dog. And it’s good to have a POTUS who has a heart.
I have to say, pleased as I am to see Juneteenth recognized at last, I’m put off by the lack of intersectionality. (Not meaning your piece, bb! Meaning the media and the electric bird machine.) People should at least note that we still have a lot of work to do against sex based discrimination as well as race.
The laws didn’t call women slaves, but what is it when you can’t own anything (by law, see couverture), and you can be tortured (by law, wife-beating and rape in marriage which were both A-OK). And somebody else owns your labor.
Plus, as with blacks on a more subtle level, it’s still going on. As the second half of the piece points out, the bishes are pissed they can’t just own women’s bodies. Biology is always what’s used to control slaves. Murder, beatings and food controlled black slaves. Murder, beatings and food and reproduction are still used to control women of all races. Not calling it slavery doesn’t change the pain.
It’s good that white society has at very long last recognized that we ought to be celebrating the end of slavery. Even though there’s still work to do to reach the end.
The older I get, the more pessimistic I am about women ever being liberated from patriarchy. Sex stereotypes are more prevalent than ever, girl children are sexualized younger than ever, and trans-identified males demand that women sleep with them because they think “girldicks” exist, and they call lesbians who are oriented to women “transphobic” and whine about the ‘cotton ceiling.’ Rapey as fck. It’s so bad in some jurisdictions that a rape victim has to call her trans-identified male rapist “she” as it’s considered ‘misgendering’ to refer to a person by their real sex. Some gays are waking up after hearing about the ‘boxer ceiling’ — about time. Too many women are libfems who think ‘sex work’ and dressing for the male gaze is empowering. Internalized misogyny is a helluva drug.
And the amazing thing (I’m easily amazed) is that there’s barely any recognition of that steaming pile. Forget even the concept of getting away from it.
Please report in and let us know your ok Florida sky dancers!!!
Terrible. Driver needs to be charged with 1st-degree murder.
Horrible.
It looks like it just might be a horrible accident.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/two-people-struck-vehicle-pride-parade-south-florida-n1271485
I’ve been so disgusted with current affairs, and busy with work, that I’ve stayed off social media except I couldn’t stay away from Twitter sometimes. Now I have lots of Sky Dancing posts to catch up on!
I’m glad you’re back.
Thank you!
BB, I love your cat illustrations, especially the Franz Marc, with kitty snoozing under a tree.
Thanks Luna