When you "just analyze" you come to the conclusion that the people in power were right all along, because those in power tend to control the means to disseminate information.

Criticality is necessary for a meaningful analysis in most fields. Imagine if we just took a scientist at their word when they published that cigarettes don't cause cancer. We can analyze their data and see that what they wrote down supports their conclusion. That's analysis, but it's not a very useful one. If we critically analyze their work we would look at their data, see that it contradicts other data, see that they got a bunch of funding from tobacco giants, and see that their wife is on the board of one of the tobacco giants, and now we have a much fuller picture that leads us to disregard their findings as likely tainted by bias.


That's the kind of analysis that critical theory wants to do. Where you look at power structures, question the power structures, and look critically at interactions. Critical race theory is looking at those kinds of power interactions and including race as a factor in how society is shaped.

So for instance if we "just analyzed" the North Carolina voter law that was shut down in 2016 by an appeals court, we would come to the conclusion there was nothing racist about it. It didn't say "black" or "race" anywhere in the law and the author didn't say it was racist, so it can't be racist.

But when we apply a critical lens and see that he requested demographic breakdown of voter data, specifically shut down voter IDs that were used by certain demographics, shut down polling locations that affected the same demographics, etc. etc. it becomes clear that the law was created to make it more difficult for specific racial demographics to vote.

This post was edited by NetflixAdaptationWidow on Jun 28 2021 03:06pm

Marx is a satanic figure that died a hobo because he was worthless.

It's just a buzzword. A completely unneeded adjective.

The idea is that you would be critical of the structure, that you would be willing to look for and point out it's flaws that more powerful people would like to be swept under the rug.

The only thing it's critical of is Caucasian peoples.

Cool story bro.

Orwell is certainly turning in his grave.

Critical theory is literally the opposite of Orwell. It is active questioning of the authority.

You are describing Structuralism, which predates this conversation by more than a century.

TIL concepts can't overlap

Also I am not a sociologist so my verbiage is not going to be precise

This post was edited by NetflixAdaptationWidow on Jun 28 2021 04:31pm