It's not hard to find. The Southlake controversy was one example, but a lot of schools jumped on the CRT and "anti-racism" bandwagon after the George Floyd protests.
Is there a non-Christopher Rufo link on the Southlake controversy? Not that I'm steeped in CRT incident research but the only place I've seen it referenced is here. I'd like to read up on this incident before accepting the scenario as relayed here.
I'm curious to see something moderate to come out of Kendi's mouth. What I've seen the guy advocate is pretty radical starting with the anti-racism department he endorses. That's the core of his agenda, and it's pretty much an undemocratic dictatorship. He really doesn't hide the ball. He's not a liberal in any sense. He's a totalitarian. He's more erudite and less inflammatory than Louis Farrakhan, but the agenda is every bit as radical.
I haven't read any Kendi books but in the short-form interviews I've seen/heard him on PBS/NPR and a podcast or 2 he didn't come off as the militant he's being portrayed here. Extremist, yes but totalitarian? From my perspective he's an activist. Activists have a long history of taking more extreme positions to both get attention and with a goal of simply moving the needle of public policy in their direction. That's what I take from his Department of Anti-Racism proposal. I also concur with some of his critics that his arguments often tend to be facile.
Free education is designed to enable upward mobility. That's really the main point. It's supposed to teach marketable skills, which translate into productive work and upward mobility. Obviously it's possible to slip back both through bad luck, bad decisions, or a combination thereof. However, it's miles above medieval Europe when there was virtuality no upward or downward mobility (even with bad decisions). That was the comparison.
The reason memes hit home is because they take a thread of reality and hyperbolize it. Yes, there is absolutely more upward mobility now than medieval Europe. I'd argue that current economic policy has us moving in the wrong direction of upward mobility. "Trickle Down" economics is a farce. You need only look at the ever widening income gap as an example and that is what will be the downfall of our economic system if we don't take more aggressive stances to reconcile it.
I'm ok with that example. Sure, he had plenty of privilege. I don't question that or diminish its significance. However, there's a reason why very few rich kids turn into Bill Gates. Something else made the big difference. Furthermore, the Gates's family money (which though substantial was pennies compared to what he built) didn't come from nobility or title as it did in medieval Europe. Becoming successful as his parents did required hard work. That isn't given to someone.
"Hard work" has been a mantra to my kids since a young age. As a said previously, Bill Gates maximized the advantages he was given. Of course, the advantages I'm talking about are
only economic. Preston, Gates and Ellis was pivotal in Microsoft's early stages in legal fights with IBM, Apple and others. These are what I'd call
systemic advantages. Bill Gates had a built-in rolodex for outstanding legal advice as well as a host of other guidance. Gate is NOT at fault but he also went to a secondary school that admitted it's first AA
while he was there. These
systemic advantages aren't as pronounced as they once were but still exist. I coached an AA young man in football who Dad (VP of Diversity at a large Pharm company) chose to pay for his son to go to Lakeside rather than our local public HS (which is ranked in the top 25 in the nation per USNWR). His son lasted 2 years there because as wealthy as this father was it wasn't commensurate with the Lakeside students, most of which were picked up in towncars driven by hired drivers. Meanwhile, his son was taking an hour long ride on the public bus to get to school each morning.
Here's the other more crucial point - one doesn't have to become Bill Gates to be successful. In the US, one can come from very modest means and background, take full advantage of the free education and make wise career decisions (major in something scientific or business-oriented rather than lesbian dance theory) and become reasonably successful. Even without that, one can start a business without asking the king/government for permission and become successful. None of that was true in medieval Europe. If you were born poor, you generally had no opportunity to be anything but poor.
You're right. Measuring oneself against Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg hardly seems fair. Of course, if you were to take Bill Gates and that young boy who attended Lakeside (who was smart and a hard worker) you'd be hardpressed to win an argument that they had equal opportunity to achieve what Bill Gates achieved. This is
not a slam on Bill Gate but rather the generations before him that set him up with advantages. It will be generations into the future until there are more AA versions of Bill Gates. In the entire history of the US only 2 AA have ever been CEO's of Fortune 500 companies (actually a 3rd was recently hired). Why? First, you need to recognize that AA's only make up ~14% of the population while White's are ~50-60%. So, you'd expect a much lower % of AA. Still...2-3...total since 1929, when the Fortune 500 was first introduced. A difference is that the AA community didn't have many individuals start with Bill Gate's advantages. That's changing but takes time. These are generational changes. From my perspective Kendi and others are simply tired of waiting for these generations to pass.
Also, I've never heard a conservative say any of this was easy. It's not. It takes hard work and initiative, and even with that people can struggle. For example, my dad became fairly successful in his mid-40s with his violin teaching business, but from about 1969-1984, our family struggled. I remember the power and water getting shut off when I was a kid. In 1982, we came very close to losing our home. But dad busted his ***, took whatever work he could find, and made things work. And 3 out of his 4 kids became successful, despite two of them not finishing college. The one who failed (who did finish college) only did so because she spent 30 years making big, stupid decisions - getting pregnant out of wedlock, banging loser guys, acting inappropriately at work, getting busted for DWI, and taking drugs. Nobody can idiot-proof the system that much.
Hard work is a fundamental characteristic of the American ethos. It's what makes our nation the best nation in the world. It has a ceiling though. It also can have a floor. That ceiling and floor or established for most at birth. Yes, it's possible to circumvent your limitations but that's the exception rather than the rule. If you're Donald Trump and you start with $100M then you can easily overcome a string of bankruptcies, divorces, affairs, lawsuits and become POTUS! That ceiling was unlimited despite crappy grades, questionable business ethics and rampant mysogyny. He failed
up in nearly every way imaginable. If his name was DeAntrey Washington starting with nothing that ceiling is much lower and the floor is prison. That's where the prior generational wealth and advantages are still impacting minorities (and some whites) today.
The solution is
not reparations. There really isn't an easy solution. Starting with understanding our own racial biases seems to be to be a solid starting point. The move to cast any diversity training as CRT or some abhorrent mechanism towards totalitarianism or reverse racism against "whites" is not helpful, IMHO. The diversity training I've participated wasn't any "look at our views of blacks" training but rather looking at your views of anyone not like you...from your own background, from your own economic class, traditional and/or non-traditional family structures.
