To DiAngelo, individuals can possess race prejudice but racism can only occur at the group level. She fails to logically understand that, for example, going by CRT, how can generationally poor white Appalachians oppress at a group level, when a law firm could be owned entirely by blacks and as a group could have a majority of individuals who are racists and thus exert group oppression against whites in hiring. And the second part about “only perpetuated by the group that holds social, ideological, economic, and institutional power” is a Gross Generaluzation per “only” and an absolutist statement.
“...each of us does have a choice about whether we are going to work to interrupt and dismantle these systems [of injustice] or support their existence by ignoring them. There is no neutral ground; to choose not to act against injustice is to choose to allow it.” (p. xxiv).
She structures this to prevent the possibility of a neither for/nor for position.
“Mainstream culture prevents us from understanding a central tenet of social justice education: Society is structured in ways that make us all complicit in systems of inequality; there is no neutral ground. Thus an effective critical social justice course will unsettle mainstream perspectives and institutional discourses” (p. 4).
This borders on the conspiratorial, almost akin to some sort of “Matrix.”
“All knowledge is taught from a particular perspective; the power of dominant knowledge depends in large part on its presentation as neutral and universal (Kincheloe, 2008)...all knowledge understood by humans is framed by the ideologies, language, beliefs, and and customs of human societies. Even the field of science is subjective” (p. 15)
All knowledge? She would have to possess all knowledge in order to posit that all knowledge is taught from a particular perspective.
“All knowledge understood by humans...” In order to know this she would have to possess all knowledge.
Math, Chemistry, etc, aren’t subjective.
“Practicing thinking critically helps us see the role of ideology in the construction of knowledge about progress. It challenges the belief that knowledge is simply the result of a rational, objective, and value-neutral process, one that is removed from any political agenda. The notion of value-free (or objective) knowledge was central to rationalizing the colonization of other lands and peoples that began in the 15th century” (p. 25)
“Our analysis of social justice is based on a school of thought know as Critical Theory. Critical Theory refers to a body of scholarship that examines how society works, and is a tradition that emerged in the early part of the 20th century from a group of scholars at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany” (p. 25)
“One of the key contributions of critical theorists concerns the production of knowledge…. These scholars argue that a key element of social injustice involves the claim that particular knowledge is objective, neutral, and universal. An approach based on critical theory calls into question the idea that objectivity is desirable or even possible. The term used to describe this way of thinking about knowledge is that knowledge is socially constructed.” (p. 29).
1.) The central argument of Critical Theory is that everything is political in nature, even science has been shaped by human interests, and does not stand objectively independent from those interests.
2.) If even science is affected, then Critical Theory must also be affected, has also been shaped by human interests, and does not stand objectively independent from those interests.
3.) Thus what is posited by Critical Theory is suspect and not reliable. One cannot say that all objectivity is equal but some is more equal than others or something else along those lines as even that is subject to #2.
4.) To bolster the contentions of #1, CT must transcend the confines of 1 and #2; since CT made an assertion in #1, the burden of proof is upon it.