Hacker News Reader

Comment by underseacables | Hacker News Reader

I think spending time discussing how one race is oppressed, and another is the oppressor, it’s not the best use of time in the classroom. I think as children enter high school, there are better ways we can go about talking about race and culture, and having respect for one another, without making it about the oppressed and the oppressor. My core conflict with this methodology is that it divides people and pit them against one another, instead of focusing on how we can all be better, kinder, and more respectful of each other in general.

View on HN

The currently still is an opressed and plenty of opressors.

If you don't recognize that the conflict is already there, you're going to have a harder time getting rid of it.

The opressed have to learn about it to survive, so it's only the bystanders that don't learn about it if you leave it off the curriculum

I am not from the US but I don't think that is correct. There are repercussions for some ethnicities because the civil rights movement is very recent history, but there is not an oppressor anymore.

On the contrary, kids should be taught that there were oppressors, but they are gone now. Then concentrate on the after effects.

As the poster said, you are just playing people against each other and the result is predictable and measurable.

I'm not sure I follow your logic. Every high school in the United States (and the rest of the Western world) teaches the history of WWII, with undoubtedly millions of both Jewish and students with German heritage and I don't think they're pitted against one another in the end.

Further, "there are better ways we can go about talking about race and culture, and having respect for one another, without making it about the oppressed and the oppressor." - How so? Why do we need to teach students to have respect for one another if not for a long history, and complex present, of one group of people oppressing another? If there was no historical and current oppression, the entire conversation wouldn't be necessary in the first place.

For starters, not making children feel like they are oppressors or the oppressed. Teach civility, respect of each other, and respect for one another’s opinions and beliefs. Don’t start off by saying this side of the classroom are the oppressors because of their skin color, and this side of the classroom are the oppressed because of their skin color. Your skin color does not make you an oppressor or the oppressed, but CRT does.

No one takes issue with teaching about the Holocaust or slavery in North America.

To cite Wikipedia: "the basic tenets of CRT include that racism and disparate racial outcomes are the result of complex, changing and often subtle social and institutional dynamics rather than explicit and intentional prejudices on the part of individuals."

This syllogism is the controversial matter of CRT:

1. Anything which has racially disparate outcomes is racist.

2. Modern society has racially disparate outcomes.

3. Therefore, modern society is racist.

Yeah this is a good starting point. Now one can debate these statements individually, and whether they should be taught in schools. For example, does point 1 mean the NBA is racist against (against white people) or Harvard is racist against non-asians?

This is just to illustrate the necessity of defining terms to finding common ground.

> Harvard is racist against non-asians

Ironically, by the classical definition, the reverse is true.

Except nobody is making the 12 year old German students get up in front of the class and admit they are oppressors simply by virtue of their race.

Oh wait, race doesn’t really exist, except when we want to insult white people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com