>sent this article to my dad--an immigrant from a Muslim country who has supported Democrats since Carter--and he expressed concerns about "critical race theory."
Not sure how far this is the case in this instance, but immigrants (and many Americans) generally have a blind spot where race and law intersect in US history. Most have only consumed the prevailing narrative of US history promoted by the dominant society which is heavily sanitized to say the least.
After studying what would be considered heterodox US history (much of which can be verified by economic history) and becoming aware of the how gears have really worked in the US, I wonder how much of this "general ignorance" reality that I'm describing applies to your anecdata.
I would argue that what you call a “blind spot” is actually a fresh perspective: we judge for ourselves what America is like now, without our view being excessively colored by what happened in the past.
There’s lots of “data” you can bring to bear on this—poor asian children are more than twice as likely as poor white children to become affluent as adults. Hispanics (who mostly come here in poverty) have similar economic mobility to whites and converge economically with whites within a couple of generations. Etc.
My dad remarked the other day that, after more than 30 years in the US (in a county that was solidly red for the first 15 years we lived there, including right after 9/11), he was pleasantly surprised by how he had encountered almost no racism. My family members, who have immigrated all over the country, most recently to Texas, have had the same experience. And I don’t think these experiences are unrepresentative: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/09/16/miss-americ...
Why do we need some history course to tell us that we’re oppressed?
For the people just arriving (post 1970 immigrants), ignoring this history can have little personal cost, atleast in the short term.
For the people that fought for the rights of non-European (Asian, African, South/Central American) immigrants including your Dad, to come here and also fought for the seemingly non-racist present your Dad enjoys, ignoring history is a betrayal of their sacrifices.
This ignorance is also used as a tool to attack their valid claims about extensions of the racist past that leak into the present and their long term losses as the earliest uncompensated investors in the US project.
Not sure how far this is the case in this instance, but immigrants (and many Americans) generally have a blind spot where race and law intersect in US history. Most have only consumed the prevailing narrative of US history promoted by the dominant society which is heavily sanitized to say the least.
After studying what would be considered heterodox US history (much of which can be verified by economic history) and becoming aware of the how gears have really worked in the US, I wonder how much of this "general ignorance" reality that I'm describing applies to your anecdata.