The word "lense" has taken on a new meaning under Critical Race Theory (CRT). The single "lense" attributes everything to white racism. No other explanation is permissible and those that attempt to utilize other "lenses" are themselves racist. It is an intellectually bankrupt and intolerant way to analyze society.
As Professor Jonathan Haidt, a traditional liberal Democrat, noted in comparing his education in the 1980s to today:
But what do we do now? Many students are given just one lens—power. Here’s your lens, kid. Look at everything through this lens. Everything is about power. Every situation is analyzed in terms of the bad people acting to preserve their power and privilege over the good people. This is not an education. This is induction into a cult. It’s a fundamentalist religion. It’s a paranoid worldview that separates people from each other and sends them down the road to alienation, anxiety and intellectual impotence. . . .
Take this example from the front page of the May 1 edition of the Wall St Journal; "Why Black Homeownership Lags Badly in Minneapolis". For those of you unfamiliar with the Journal, its news section skews left; for instance, if you read its reporting on the disturbances in Portland, Oregon last year you would be left wondering why federal authorities were seemingly randomly assaulting peaceful protestors on the streets. However, unlike the New York Times which now enforces a Stalinist ideological unity upon everything that appears in its pages, ensuring no deviations from the Party line, the Journal's editorial page is completely independent from its news coverage.
The thesis of the Journal article is that the discrepancy between white and black home ownership in Minneapolis is attributable to racially restrictive housing covenants widely used in the early 20th century, the effects of which still resonate a century later. A quick perusal of the very lengthy article revealed no logical connection I could ascertain between those covenants and housing patterns in 2021. My review also revealed that the authors never considered any other hypothesis or possible contributing factors which is consistent with the approach of Critical Race Theory (CRT) which insists that racism, and only racism, is the cause of any statistical discrepancy in outcomes between races, and that the cause is the conspiracy by whites to maintain white supremacy. If one is not blinded by their poor vision, there are any number of other questions that spring to mind and require answering before any sensible, rational person would accept the hypothesis presented.
I was going to put together a more detailed analysis of the article because it is such a wonderful example of the pits one can fall into with bad vision but it turns out John Hinderaker of Powerline already did so, with the value-added of being a Minneapolis area resident himself.
First of all, race-restricted covenants have been unenforceable, as the article acknowledges, since 1948, and have been banned in Minnesota since 1962. The idea that somehow, 60 to 75 years later, those long-gone covenants are still preventing blacks from buying homes, is ridiculous on its face.
Further, the number of blacks who were affected by such covenants was minuscule. As the article notes, “In the early 20th century, Black residents made up just 1% of the population.” Virtually all of the Twin Cities’ black population has moved to the area after restrictive covenants were abolished.
The Journal authors purport to find a lingering impact from deeds that date back the better part of a century, for reasons that can only be characterized as mystical:
It’s clear, however, that covenants were the foundation of a disparity that was then compounded by other factors in the ensuing decades.
Really? Nothing in the article makes such a claim “clear.” The authors cite this striking data point:
In Minneapolis, a 1% increase in covenanted houses in a census block was linked to a 19% reduction in Black homeownership as of 2010, according to a draft of a study led by Aradhya Sood, a postdoctoral scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. It isn’t clear why the effect of covenants is so enduring, she said. “What did surprise me,” she said, “was just the level of the effect.”
I think I can explain it. First, though, I can’t tell whether this alleged data point refers to the city of Minneapolis, or to the Twin Cities Metropolitan Statistical Area, which extends into Wisconsin. Taking the authors at their word, I assume it is Minneapolis. This, then, is what is going on: the areas of Minneapolis that existed in the early 20th century and where there were at least a handful of restrictive covenants may or may not have amounted to much at the time, but they are now rather exclusive. Blacks are entirely welcome in South and Southwest Minneapolis, they just have to be able to afford a house that may cost $1 million. The correlation found by the authors is not with restrictive covenants of 100 years ago, but rather with today’s real estate market.
Real estate development in the Twin Cities metro area has occurred mostly since 1948 or, if we choose that date, 1962. The suburb in which I live did not exist in 1962. There have never been any restrictive covenants here, and blacks and others are welcome to buy homes. They just have to make their mortgage payments. That is true for the vast majority of the Twin Cities metro area.
Hinderaker also includes a reader comment to the Journal asking the types of questions one would normally raise but were not addressed in the article:
What is the correlation between education and home ownership, or employment by race and home ownership, how about correlation between two income families and home ownership, or other traditional factors and home ownership? This “study” appears to seek data to support a thesis – but can’t. Also, these covenants were designed to exclude Jews and other groups from home ownership in some areas. How are they doing currently? Is the impact as durable for these groups and why or why not?
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This "lense" is blinding so many and shattering our society, which is its intent. We are now instructed that hatred of Asians is attributable to white supremacy and privilege because that is what the "lense" tells us the answer must be. In reality, talented Asian students are deliberately kept out of elite schools by white progressives, K-12 gifted programs and STEM schools are being dismantled by white progressives and BLM types precisely because Asians are being too successful, and black assaults on Asians continue, as they have for years, at a disproportionate rate. But all of this is ignored once the CRT lense is applied. It is a lense that privileges theory over reality. Even worse, it demands that those who want to discuss reality should be banned from the public discourse and threatened with the loss of their jobs, careers, and educational opportunities.
Here is Asra Q Nomani, a progressive journalist and Pakistani immigrant, who is fighting the New Racism of CRT in the Fairfax County (Virginia) School District:
I spoke from my heart to the @fcpsnews school board. Watch board chair Ricardy Anderson rage at me. Didn’t she get the memo that watching the clock is “white supremacy”? She reveals the board’s true anti-Asian animus. @ricardy4Mason, YOUR time has expired. #recallFCPS pic.twitter.com/YSbrVWtO8N
— Asra Q. Nomani (@AsraNomani) May 7, 2021
"Mokita" is a word in one of the languages spoken in Papua New Guinea. Its meaning is "the truth we all know but agree not to talk about." Increasingly people of good faith recognize that CRT peddles nonsense and hate, but its advocates are counting on threats of ruin against its opponents until we agree not to talk about it.
As Philip K Dick wrote many years ago:
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
CRT says you must believe in theory, not reality. But reality still exists. Don't forget.
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