People against Critical Race Theory, what is your definition of it?

Basically it's saying race is the end all, be all of all interracial human interaction micro and macro. This is how those who came up with it essentially defined it. I don't think that's true. I also think that's very different from not teaching about racial injustice. But racial injustice is an aspect of society, it doesn't define society. We should have the proper context. Few examples:

Yes, the United States had slavery. But in context, that wasn't radical at all for the time in which the North America was settled by Europeans. In fact as a nation the U.S. got rid of slavery pretty quickly, most nations who had it, had it for much, much longer. Of course it's evil by today's moral standards but in the context of the time it was pretty normal. We should obviously still teach children about it in schools, but this idea that America or Europeans were uniquely terrible is wrong.

Yes, Europeans did horrible things to Native Americans. But they didn't do anything to Native Americans that they weren't already doing to each other. Native Americans were not the peaceful, one with nature trope that we've invented. Tribes were constantly at war with each other, and the fought with the most brutal, cruel means imaginable. That's just how the world was back then. Until like a century ago, pillage, plunder, conquer, rape and brutality was the way of the world. You can't really judge what went on back then by today's moral standards.

We can afford our moral standards because we have the material comfort that allows us too.

/r/AskReddit Thread