Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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“A one hour Critical Race Theory experience disguised as a tour,” groused Mike Lapolla of Tulsa, Okla., after visiting last August.
You know, it’s just no use saying to these guys that Critical Race Theory is something else than talking about slavery at James Madison’s estate.
They want a name to associate with the weather change. We didn’t use to talk about these things. Somebody started calling it Critical Race Theory because that’s a thing, right. So it stuck.
Sigh. Human beings do this all the time. The English language was more or less created that way. Borrow words … no, mug other languages in dark alleys and strip mine them for vocabulary, while not paying too much attention to the original meaning. The Japanese do it with English words.
One of my personal least favorites is “hacker”, which used to mean “programmer doing quick and dirty solutions”. Now it means circumventing security, though it has multiple usages.
@Jay L Gischer: The drifting definition of “hacker” has been, as far as I know, the unplanned, evolving drift of language as you describe. The abuse of “CRT” as a blanket term for everything they don’t like touching on race was deliberate GOP messaging. We have quotes from Christopher Rufo saying he was doing exactly that.
@Jay L Gischer: I think that’s exactly right and agree with @gVOR08 that CRT was intentionally repackaged as an all-encompassing bogeyman. Still, I must say, this isn’t what I’d want to see when touring Montpelier.
I’ve toured Mount Vernon multiple times and there’s certainly talk of Washington’s slaves. But, surely, that they owned slaves—as most rich men did in the colonial period—isn’t the most interesting thing about the Founding Fathers and the Framers. That’s not what folks are coming to learn about.
@James Joyner: I toured Monticello a couple of years back. I thought they did a credible job of dealing with Sally Hemmings and slavery head on, without apology. But it wasn’t the main focus at all. I suspect it was the same at Montpelier. However, one mention of slavery and people who are conditioned to be on a hair trigger about those subjects with only see and hear that issue.
@Jay L Gischer: I bet Mr Lapolla of Tulsa would be grousing about all the attention given last year to the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. And also vociferously grouse about the one room dedicated to massacre and the KKK terrorism at Tulsa’s Philbrick Museum.
On the other, perhaps it ought to be something that they learn about when they visit these places. Indeed, I think we spent a lot of our history kind of pretending like slavery was an unfortunate footnote, but you can’t have Washington, Jefferson, or Madison without slavery.
I have visited these sites over the years and I was struck (to me, positively) when we were in Philadelphia and at Montpelier in 2018 that they were far more open and honest about the role slavery played than when I visited such places in the in 80s or 90s.
I know that it makes people uncomfortable, but we have an uncomfortable past and our ongoing unwillingness to acknowledge it is part of the problem.
I mean, if you are going to go to Mount Vernon, Monticello, or Montpelier I think slavery has to be up front in many ways. They were, after all, plantations that could only exist with substantial slave labor.
On the other, perhaps it ought to be something that they learn about when they visit these places. Indeed, I think we spent a lot of our history kind of pretending like slavery was an unfortunate footnote, but you can’t have Washington, Jefferson, or Madison without slavery.
100% this. If we are saying that “slavery is part of our history” then we need to actively learn about it in the same way we are told we should learn about the rest of our history.
I mean, if you are going to go to Mount Vernon, Monticello, or Montpelier I think slavery has to be up front in many ways. They were, after all, plantations that could only exist with substantial slave labor.
Not only that, but we also need to acknowledge how that (slave) labor enabled our philosopher Founding Fathers time (not to mention economic stability) to… well… found the country.
This is not unlike the hyper-successful academic or business person who doesn’t acknowledge their partner/spouse’s role in helping them clear the life decks in order to be highly productive and work long hours (especially if they have kids).
I’ve toured Mount Vernon multiple times and there’s certainly talk of Washington’s slaves. But, surely, that they owned slaves—as most rich men did in the colonial period—isn’t the most interesting thing about the Founding Fathers and the Framers. That’s not what folks are coming to learn about.
When I go on tours of historical sites, I often find more general “day in the life” stuff more interesting than repeating the big historical bullet points that I could easily get from a book.
As the descendant of numerous enslavers (including those of the Madison family) I am 100% supportive of the full story being told about Founding Fathers who enslaved others to acquire wealth and created an unrepresentative power bloc in the new federal government based upon the population of people they enslaved.
The three-fifths compromise put forth by James Madison is the source of much of the dysfunction in our government to this day. The crux of the issue was (1) not wanting to be taxed fully for the full value of property comprised of people who were enslaved, (2) not wanting to grant the franchise to vote to enslaved people, (3) but wanting numerical representation in government of based upon their large enslaved population.
James Madison’s father, Ambrose, was cruel to those he enslaved and when he died of a lingering illness, one enslaved man was hung the next day for the murder, and two enslaved females were given 29 lashes.
I live every waking moment with the paradox of knowing, as a descendant of ancestors who were related to the classically-educated Founding Fathers, that while the Founding Fathers created a truly visionary form of self-governance, they also perpetuated an economic model that enslaved others for their personal gain and lived in fear of people of color and women having any political power.
Next they may want to tackle reports of dry spots on the ocean.
@Kathy:
Don’t tell me you believe the partisan hacks at AP over the highly credible reporting of Just the News.
You know, it’s just no use saying to these guys that Critical Race Theory is something else than talking about slavery at James Madison’s estate.
They want a name to associate with the weather change. We didn’t use to talk about these things. Somebody started calling it Critical Race Theory because that’s a thing, right. So it stuck.
Sigh. Human beings do this all the time. The English language was more or less created that way. Borrow words … no, mug other languages in dark alleys and strip mine them for vocabulary, while not paying too much attention to the original meaning. The Japanese do it with English words.
One of my personal least favorites is “hacker”, which used to mean “programmer doing quick and dirty solutions”. Now it means circumventing security, though it has multiple usages.
Human beings. What are ya gonna do?
@Jay L Gischer: The drifting definition of “hacker” has been, as far as I know, the unplanned, evolving drift of language as you describe. The abuse of “CRT” as a blanket term for everything they don’t like touching on race was deliberate GOP messaging. We have quotes from Christopher Rufo saying he was doing exactly that.
@Jay L Gischer: I think that’s exactly right and agree with @gVOR08 that CRT was intentionally repackaged as an all-encompassing bogeyman. Still, I must say, this isn’t what I’d want to see when touring Montpelier.
I’ve toured Mount Vernon multiple times and there’s certainly talk of Washington’s slaves. But, surely, that they owned slaves—as most rich men did in the colonial period—isn’t the most interesting thing about the Founding Fathers and the Framers. That’s not what folks are coming to learn about.
@James Joyner: I toured Monticello a couple of years back. I thought they did a credible job of dealing with Sally Hemmings and slavery head on, without apology. But it wasn’t the main focus at all. I suspect it was the same at Montpelier. However, one mention of slavery and people who are conditioned to be on a hair trigger about those subjects with only see and hear that issue.
@Jay L Gischer: I bet Mr Lapolla of Tulsa would be grousing about all the attention given last year to the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. And also vociferously grouse about the one room dedicated to massacre and the KKK terrorism at Tulsa’s Philbrick Museum.
@James Joyner:
On the one hand, yes.
On the other, perhaps it ought to be something that they learn about when they visit these places. Indeed, I think we spent a lot of our history kind of pretending like slavery was an unfortunate footnote, but you can’t have Washington, Jefferson, or Madison without slavery.
I have visited these sites over the years and I was struck (to me, positively) when we were in Philadelphia and at Montpelier in 2018 that they were far more open and honest about the role slavery played than when I visited such places in the in 80s or 90s.
I know that it makes people uncomfortable, but we have an uncomfortable past and our ongoing unwillingness to acknowledge it is part of the problem.
I mean, if you are going to go to Mount Vernon, Monticello, or Montpelier I think slavery has to be up front in many ways. They were, after all, plantations that could only exist with substantial slave labor.
@Steven L. Taylor:
100% this. If we are saying that “slavery is part of our history” then we need to actively learn about it in the same way we are told we should learn about the rest of our history.
Not only that, but we also need to acknowledge how that (slave) labor enabled our philosopher Founding Fathers time (not to mention economic stability) to… well… found the country.
This is not unlike the hyper-successful academic or business person who doesn’t acknowledge their partner/spouse’s role in helping them clear the life decks in order to be highly productive and work long hours (especially if they have kids).
@James Joyner:
When I go on tours of historical sites, I often find more general “day in the life” stuff more interesting than repeating the big historical bullet points that I could easily get from a book.
As the descendant of numerous enslavers (including those of the Madison family) I am 100% supportive of the full story being told about Founding Fathers who enslaved others to acquire wealth and created an unrepresentative power bloc in the new federal government based upon the population of people they enslaved.
The three-fifths compromise put forth by James Madison is the source of much of the dysfunction in our government to this day. The crux of the issue was (1) not wanting to be taxed fully for the full value of property comprised of people who were enslaved, (2) not wanting to grant the franchise to vote to enslaved people, (3) but wanting numerical representation in government of based upon their large enslaved population.
James Madison’s father, Ambrose, was cruel to those he enslaved and when he died of a lingering illness, one enslaved man was hung the next day for the murder, and two enslaved females were given 29 lashes.
I live every waking moment with the paradox of knowing, as a descendant of ancestors who were related to the classically-educated Founding Fathers, that while the Founding Fathers created a truly visionary form of self-governance, they also perpetuated an economic model that enslaved others for their personal gain and lived in fear of people of color and women having any political power.
Let truth ring!