"In the war of racism, we don't want scouts, we want soldiers."

That's a comment, from Washington Blogger, that was emailed to me after I noted the absence of any Critical Race Theory analysis in the New York Times story about the West Point cheating scandal. 

The "scout"/"soldier" terminology harks back to a post 5 days ago about the "tech elite's favorite pop intellectual Julia Galef." As NY Magazine put it:

"Galef argues for what she calls 'scout mindset,' which she contrasts with 'soldier mindset.' The idea is that evolution has wired our minds to be soldiers (focused on winning) instead of scouts (focused on ensuring our mental maps accurately reflect the territory of reality). To adopt a scout mindset is to resist falling prey to 'motivated reasoning,' in which we distort our thoughts to achieve a desired outcome."

Here's the graphic comparing the 2 mindsets:

I read Washington Blogger's statement — "In the war of racism, we don't want scouts, we want soldiers" — as satirizing the present-day "woke" pose. And I want to add that I think that mentality is at odds with Critical Race Theory as it was originally understood and used by legal academics in the 1990s. Based on personal contact, I believe that these scholars were — to use Galef's model — scouts, not soldiers. 

The phrase "war of racism" is a bit confusing. I'm assuming the commenter means "war on racism." Obviously, there is room to say that there once was a war on racism but those fighting racism used racism too and, at this point in the evolution of the war, with racism on all sides, "of" is more accurate than "on."

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