Critical Race Theory is currently getting a ton of attention on the national and international stage, which is long overdue, but there are also many misconceptions about it. Here are five questions that many people are asking about Critical Race Theory along with straight answers, explanations, and a raft of proofs from the Critical Race Theory literature itself. My hope is that people will be able to use these proofs to show people that Critical Race Theory is every bit as bad as its critics contend.
Since these proofs run rather long in some cases, here are the questions and answers as a summary:
- Is Critical Race Theory racist? Yes.
- Does Critical Race Theory advance the vision and activism of the Civil Rights Movement? No.
- Does Critical Race Theory say all white people are racist? Yes.
- Is Critical Race Theory Marxist? Yes and no.
- Is Critical Race Theory an analytical tool for understanding race and racism? No, not really.
Question: Is Critical Race Theory racist?
Answer: Yes.
Critical Race Theory begins by asserting the importance of social significance of racial categories, rejecting colorblindness, equality, and neutrality, and advocating for discrimination meant to “level the playing field.” These things lead it to reproduce and enact racism in practice. It also explicitly says that all white people are either racist or complicit in the system of racism (so, racist) by virtue of benefiting from privileges that they cannot renounce.
Examples:
“We all can recognize the distinction between the claims “I am Black” and the claim “I am a person who happens to be Black.” “I am Black” takes the socially imposed identity and empowers it as an anchor of subjectivity. “I am Black” becomes not simply a statement of resistance but also a positive discourse of self-identification, intimately linked to celebratory statements like the Black nationalist “Black is beautiful.” “I am a person who happens to be Black,” on the other hand, achieves self-identification by straining for a certain universality (in effect, “I am first a person”) and for a concommitant dismissal of the imposed category (“Black”) as contingent, circumstantial, nondeterminant. There is truth in both characterizations, of course, but they function quite differently depending on the political context. At this point in history, a strong case can be made that the most critical resistance strategy for disempowered groups is to occupy and defend a politics of social location rather than to vacate and destroy it.” From “Mapping the Margins,” Stanford Law Review, by Kimberlé Crenshaw, p. 1297.
“The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist. … The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” From How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi (pseud. for Henry Rodgers), p. 19.
“Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.” From Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, first edition, p. 3.
“Critical race theorists (or “crits,” as they are sometimes called) hold that color blindness will allow us to redress only extremely egregious racial harms, ones that everyone would notice and condemn. But if racism is embedded in our thought processes and social structures as deeply as many crits believe, then the “ordinary business” of society—the routines, practices, and institutions that we rely on to effect the world’s work—will keep minorities in subordinate positions. Only aggressive, color-conscious efforts to change the way things are will do much to ameliorate misery.” From Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, first edition, p. 22.
(See also below, in proofs for the question of whether Critical Race Theory says all white people are racist.)
Question: Does Critical Race Theory advance the vision and activism of the Civil Rights Movement?
Answer: No.
Critical Race Theory refers to that vision as “traditional approaches to civil rights” and calls it into question. The Civil Rights Movement called for living up to the foundational promises of the United States (and other free nations) and incrementally changing the system so that those original ideals were met. Critical Race Theory rejects incrementalism in favor of revolution. It rejects the existing system and demands replacing it with its own. It rejects the liberal order and all that goes with it as being part of the system which must be dismantled and replaced. It is therefore fundamentally different than the Civil Rights Movement (and is explicitly anti-liberal and anti-equality).
Examples:
“Crits are also highly suspicious of another liberal mainstay, namely, rights.” From Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, first edition, p. 23.
“Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.” From Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, first edition, p. 3.
“We all can recognize the distinction between the claims “I am Black” and the claim “I am a person who happens to be Black.” “I am Black” takes the socially imposed identity and empowers it as an anchor of subjectivity. “I am Black” becomes not simply a statement of resistance but also a positive discourse of self-identification, intimately linked to celebratory statements like the Black nationalist “Black is beautiful.” “I am a person who happens to be Black,” on the other hand, achieves self-identification by straining for a certain universality (in effect, “I am first a person”) and for a concommitant dismissal of the imposed category (“Black”) as contingent, circumstantial, nondeterminant. There is truth in both characterizations, of course, but they function quite differently depending on the political context. At this point in history, a strong case can be made that the most critical resistance strategy for disempowered groups is to occupy and defend a politics of social location rather than to vacate and destroy it.” From “Mapping the Margins,” Stanford Law Review, by Kimberlé Crenshaw, p. 1297.
Question: Does Critical Race Theory say that all white people are racist?
Answer: Yes.
More specifically, Critical Race Theory says that all white people are either racist or that they are complicit in a “system of racism” (so, racist) that they wittingly or unwittingly uphold to their own benefit unless they are “actively antiracist” (and usually even then). Those benefits of “whiteness” are labeled “white privilege” in general and are said to be outside of the scope of things that white people can intentionally renounce. The most they can do is “strive to be less white” and to become aware of and condemn “whiteness” as a system.
Examples:
“Wildman and Davis, for instance, contend that white supremacy is a system of oppression and privilege that all white people benefit from. Therefore, all white people “…are racist in this use of the term, because we benefit from systemic white privilege. Generally whites think of racism as voluntary, intentional conduct done by horrible others. Whites spend a lot of time trying to convince ourselves and each other that we are not racist. A big step would be for whites to admit that we are racist and then to consider what to do about it.”” From Being White, Being Good: White Complicity, White Moral Responsibility, and Social Justice Pedagogy, by Barbara Applebaum, p. 15.
“The relevant point for now is that all white people are racist or complicit by virtue of benefiting from privileges that are not something they can voluntarily renounce.” From Being White, Being Good: White Complicity, White Moral Responsibility, and Social Justice Pedagogy, by Barbara Applebaum, p. 16.
“The white complicity claim maintains that all whites are complicit in systemic racial injustice and this claim sometimes takes the form of “all whites are racist.” When white complicity takes the latter configuration what is implied is not that all whites are racially prejudiced but rather that all whites participate in and, often unwittingly, maintain the racist system of which they are part and from which they benefit.” From Being White, Being Good: White Complicity, White Moral Responsibility, and Social Justice Pedagogy, by Barbara Applebaum, p. 140.
“The white complicity claim maintains that all whites, by virtue of systemic white privilege that is inseparable from white ways of being, are implicated in the production and reproduction of systemic racial injustice.” From Being White, Being Good: White Complicity, White Moral Responsibility, and Social Justice Pedagogy, by Barbara Applebaum, p. 179.
“Here we find a claim about complicity that is addressed to all white people regardless of and despite their good intentions. What I refer to as “the white complicity claim” maintains that white people, through the practices of whiteness and by benefiting from white privilege, contribute to the maintenance of systemic racial injustice. However, the claim also implies responsibility in its assumption that the failure to acknowledge such complicity will thwart whites in their efforts to dismantle unjust racial systems and, more specifically, will contribute to the perpetuation of racial injustice.” From Being White, Being Good: White Complicity, White Moral Responsibility, and Social Justice Pedagogy, by Barbara Applebaum, p. 3.
“White privilege protects and supports white moral standing and this protective shield depends on there being an “abject other” that constitutes white as “good.” Whites, thus, benefit from white privilege in a very deep way. As Zeus Leonardo remarks, all whites are responsible for white dominance since their “very being depends on it.’” From Being White, Being Good: White Complicity, White Moral Responsibility, and Social Justice Pedagogy, by Barbara Applebaum, pp. 29–30.
“Many critical race theorists and social scientists alike hold that racism is pervasive, systemic, and deeply ingrained. If we take this perspective, then no white member of society seems quite so innocent.” From Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, first edition, pp. 79–80.
“…a positive white identity is an impossible goal. White identity is inherently racist; white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy.” From White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, by Robin DiAngelo, p. 149.
Question: Is Critical Race Theory Marxist?
Answer: Yes and no.
It is accurate to say that Critical Race Theory is mostly Marxian but not specifically Marxist. It is more accurately adapted from neo-Marxism, which is in turn adapted from Marxism.
The main difference is that Marxism is concerned primarily with economic class and rejects racial categories in favor of workers’ solidarity. What this means is that Critical Race Theory operates like Marxism but using race instead of economic class as the line of “social stratification,” above which people are “privileged” or “oppressors” and below which people are “marginalized” or “oppressed.” This social order is assumed in Critical Race Theory as “the ordinary state of affairs” and analyzed in the same way Marx analyzed across class stratification. Namely, Marx’s “conflict theory” (a.k.a. “critical philosophy,” so Critical Theory of Race, i.e., Critical Race Theory) is the tool for analyzing society, which is assumed to be totally racialized (by white people).
For those who understand Marxism, where Marxism sees capitalism as a superstructure that organizes society and determines the outcomes of the privileged (bourgeoisie) and oppressed (proletariat) classes, Critical Race Theory sees “white supremacy” as a superstructure that organizes society and determines outcomes of the privileged (white) and oppressed (BIPOC) classes. From there, it is functionally identical except that it operates primarily in the realms of cultural production rather than in the realm of economic and material production.
Critical Race Theory is most accurately “critical constructivist,” which is to say a form of race-based neo-Marxism (Critical Theory) with some postmodernist (social constructivist) characteristics.
Examples:
“The critical-thinking tradition is concerned primarily with epistemic adequacy. To be critical is to show good judgment in recognizing when arguments are faulty, assertions lack evidence, truth claims appeal to unreliable sources, or concepts are sloppily crafted and applied. For critical thinkers, the problem is that people fail to “examine the assumptions, commitments, and logic of daily life… the basic problem is irrational, illogical, and unexamined living” (Burbules and Berk 1999, 46). In this tradition sloppy claims can be identified and fixed by learning to apply the tools of formal and informal logic correctly.
“Critical pedagogy begins from a different set of assumptions rooted in the neo-Marxian literature on critical theory commonly associated with the Frankfurt School. Here, the critical learner is someone who is empowered and motivated to seek justice and emancipation. Critical pedagogy regards the claims that students make in response to social-justice issues not as propositions to be assessed for their truth value, but as expressions of power that function to re-inscribe and perpetuate social inequalities. Its mission is to teach students ways of identifying and mapping how power shapes our understandings of the world. This is the first step toward resisting and transforming social injustices. By interrogating the politics of knowledge-production, this tradition also calls into question the uses of the accepted critical-thinking toolkit to determine epistemic adequacy.” From “Tracking Privilege-preserving Epistemic Pushback in Feminist and Critical Race Philosophy Classrooms,” Hypatia, by Alison Bailey, p. 881.
“Our analysis of social justice is based on a school of thought known 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 (because of this, this body of scholarship is sometimes also called “the Frankfurt School”). These theorists offered an examination and critique of society and engaged with questions about social change. Their work was guided by the belief that society should work toward the ideals of equality and social betterment.
“Many influential scholars worked at the Institute, and many other influential scholars came later but worked in the Frankfurt School tradition. You may recognize the names of some of these scholars, such as Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Jürgen Habermas, Walter Benjamin, and Herbert Marcuse. Their scholarship is important because it is part of a body of knowledge that builds on other social scientists’ work: Emile Durkheim’s research questioning the infallibility of the scientific method, Karl Marx’s analyses of capitalism and social stratification, and Max Weber’s analyses of capitalism and ideology. All of these strands of thought built on one another.” From Is Everyone Really Equal?, by Özlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo, second edition, p. 50.
“As the reader will see, critical race theory builds on the insights of two previous movements, critical legal studies and radical feminism, to both of which it owes a large debt. It also draws from certain European philosophers and theorists, such as Antonio Gramsci and Jacques Derrida, as well as from the American radical tradition exemplified by such figures as Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Black Power and Chicano movements of the sixties and early seventies.” From Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, first edition, p. 4.
Question: Is Critical Race Theory an analytical tool for understanding race and racism?
Answer: No, not really (there’s a tiny sliver of yes here, in a misleading sense).
Critical Race Theory describes itself as a movement of activists and scholars. This is not exactly what one would expect from a mere “analytical tool.”
More accurately, Critical Race Theory is a worldview, not a means of analysis. Critical Race Theory begins from the underlying operating assumptions that race is constantly being imposed by a “white supremacist” society (“systemic racism”) and that racism is therefore the ordinary state of affairs in society. It believes further that racism is effectively impossible to eradicate within the existing “white supremacist” system and therefore that it has merely hidden itself better, when it seems to be diminished or less impactful. Critical Race Theory is the tool that allows the people who have awakened to a “Critical Consciousness of race” (i.e., Critical Race Theorists) to detect hidden racism in everything. This is a way of viewing the world, however, not a way of analyzing the world as it is.
Examples:
“Racism exists today, in both traditional and modern forms. All members of this society have been socialized to participate in it. All white people benefit from racism, regardless of intentions; intentions are irrelevant. No one here chose to be socialized into racism (so no one is “bad’). But no one is neutral – to not act against racism is to support racism. Racism must be continually identified, analyzed and challenged; no one is ever done. The question is not ”did racism take place”? but rather “how did racism manifest in that situation?” The racial status quo is comfortable for most whites. Therefore, anything that maintains white comfort is suspect. If you are white, practice sitting with and building your stamina for racial discomfort” -Robin DiAngelo (Link)
“The critical race theory (CRT) movement is a collection of activists and scholars interested in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power. The movement considers many of the same issues that conventional civil rights and ethnic studies discourses take up, but places them in a broader perspective that includes economics, history, context, group- and self-interest, and even feelings and the unconscious.” From Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, first edition, pp. 2–3.
“First, [most critical race theorists assume] that racism is ordinary, not aberrational—“normal science,” the usual way society does business, the common, everyday experience of most people of color in this country. Second, most would agree that our system of white-over-color ascendancy serves important purposes, both psychic and material. The first feature, ordinariness, means that racism is difficult to cure or address. Color-blind, or “formal,” conceptions of equality, expressed in rules that insist only on treatment that is the same across the board, can thus remedy only the most blatant forms of discrimination … The second feature, sometimes called “interest convergence” or material determinism, adds a further dimension. Because racism advances the interests of both white elites (materially) and working-class people (psychically), large segments of society have little incentive to eradicate it.” From Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, first edition, p. 7.
“Many critical race theorists and social scientists alike hold that racism is pervasive, systemic, and deeply ingrained. If we take this perspective, then no white member of society seems quite so innocent. The interplay of meanings that one attaches to race, the stereotypes one holds of other people, and the need to guard one’s own position all power- fully determine one’s perspective. Indeed, one aspect of whiteness, according to some, is its ability to seem perspectiveless, or transparent. Whites do not see themselves as having a race, but being, simply, people. They do not believe that they think and reason from a white viewpoint, but from a universally valid one—“the truth”—what everyone knows. By the same token, many whites will strenuously deny that they have benefited from white privilege.” From Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, first edition, pp. 79–80.
55 comments
this is what white privilege looks like https://nation.foxnews.com/who-is-hunter-biden/
Aaron Copland – Fanfare for the Common Man.
https://youtu.be/4NjssV8UuVA
We are all the same.
Criticism race theory…. That’s all it is.
“The main difference is that Marxism is concerned primarily with economic class and rejects racial categories…” and therefore is not Marxist.
James, I don’t know why you hate CRT so much. If it didn’t exist, you wouldn’t have a career.
You could say the same about oncologists, and cancer. In fact, the comparison is very apt.
The exact same facile logic could be far more convincingly applied to the ever-growing ranks of the multi-billion dollar per year CRT-steeped equity and diversity industry. Race grifter/cult leaders like Kendi and DiAngelo routinely suck up obscenely huge speaker fees and multi-million dollar book deals for pushing astonishingly anti-intellectual and rationally incoherent tripe in the guise of legitimate academic scholarship. If CRT should completely disappear tomorrow, I assume that James could easily revert back to being a PhD-level mathematician. On the other hand, most of the CRT cultists know nothing other than race-hatred.
This is such a stupid comment that I can’t be bothered to read any of your other comments on this topic.
The biggest problem with CRT in my opinion is that it “makes your problem my problem” and the hurt feelings and jealousies of black racists are foisted on white children and whites in general.
Does CRT address the fact that blacks have had one hundred and fifty years to educate themselves and improve their lot in life? No, they are terrified that they may have to actually work to achieve something, finding it easier to complain and get “free stuff” by guilt filled whites.
What you outline is EXACTLY the intent: power.
I agree totally.
Wow! I can see why you people don’t want CRT. It reveals how racist you are!
Contrary to widely held belief, critical race theory is really NOT rooted in Marxism, even partly. Anybody can call themselves a Marxist and many have, but going to the source, Marx argued often and passionately that everything in the world can be objectively known. On the contrary, Critical Race theory (like all so-called Critical Theory) scorns objective truth, holding the post-modernist view that all statements, even the conclusions of physical science, are just expressions of the power of various identity groups.
For Critical Race theory, Marx’s belief in objective truth is a white supremacist expression of the ideology of whiteness. (Example: when I have quoted statistics that show whites are killed by police proportionally more than blacks once you take into account the unfortunate fact that blacks are guilty of proportionally many more violent crimes than whites, and therefore have proportionally more confrontations with police, CRT advocates have told me I am citing racist facts. Not wrong facts. Facts that are on the wrong side.)
Critical Race theorists LIKE to be linked to Marx, because it gives them a certain intellectual credibility (especially among the young) that they do not deserve. Thus the imbecile co-founder of Black Lives Matter, Patrisse Cullors, said she was a “trained Marxist.” (Is that like a trained seal?) Her supposed training came from her Los Angeles mentor, Eric Mann. Mann is a former leader of the Weatherman faction in the old, leftist student movement, SDS, against which faction I fought 50 years ago. The Weathermen had a three finger salute, symbolizing the prongs of a fork – namely, the fork that the Manson family stuck in the pregnant belly of Sharon Tate. This is maniac nihilism, which Marx loathed and opposed. Saying CRT is rooted (even partly) in Marx may appeal to conservatives, but it just ain’t true.
I think you’ve misunderstood the point of CRT. You’re seem to have a very shallow way of looking at the world.
Example: “once you take into account the unfortunate fact that blacks are guilty of proportionally many more violent crimes than whites”. OK… now we need to ask “WHY are blacks are guilty of proportionally many more violent crimes than whites”.
There’s multiple reasons I can think WHY this is true.
Black people are simply more savage than white people.
Black people don’t have access to the same level of legal representation and are found guilty more often.
Is violence linked to poverty and then to crime, are more black people living in poverty? What happens when you account for social and economic factors do the numbers match up?
Are black communities more over policed that other communities.
CRT doesn’t say that fact is racist. It seeks to understand why it’s a fact in the first place.
I did notice though that you said “when I have quoted statistics”. I wonder what context you quoted those statistics in. Maybe it’s not the facts that people are calling racist.
Of course all of these things must be considered when trying to understand the high Black crime rate.
Some people consider them, and reject them as major causes of it, and propose other explanations. Others believe that these facts can explain it.
The intellectual validity of these two viewpoints can be assessed in various ways, but a good hint as to who is afraid of the truth can be seen by asking: which side seeks to prevent the other from airing its views?
Since CRT is utter tosh, its proponents, like their Nazi forbears, have to use force and violence to prevent their opponents from even entering the debate.
Mr. Heffron, you ignored the content of my point about blacks and crime. I was explaining why the fact that blacks are shot by police out of proportion to their percent of the population does NOT mean they are specially targeted by police.
As to WHY blacks are over represented in FBI crime statistics: it is NOT because of poverty. Taking the most horrendous crime — murder — even if you posit that all murders are committed by poor people (which is not true), when you adjust for the disproportionately large number of poor blacks, blacks are still twice as likely to commit murder as whites.
I certainly don’t believe the difference is genetic. I believe it has to do with social influences, such as crime-promoting music, father-absent households (the overwhelming majority of blacks were raised in two parent households in the 60s; now the majority are raised in father-absent homes, often with teenage mothers), and other factors. As for your suggestion that the figures might reflect excessive focus on, or disproportionate conviction of blacks, in the vast majority of cases, the people blacks are convicted of murdering are black, killed in overwhelmingly black neighborhoods. The FBI figures are consistent with (black) victim accounts. So regardless of the possibility of false convictions, it was black people who killed these people. As for too many cops in black neighborhoods, you are living in a dream world. Black people are the MOST opposed to cutting back on police, for the good reason that ordinary black people are plagued with parasitic criminals.
The evidence is everywhere. One need only look at the epidemic of shootings this year. The victims are overwhelmingly blacks, who live in black neighborhoods. Currently (as opposed to 40 years ago) the media bends over backwards to AVOID stating the skin color of killers when they are black — but the location and color of the victims makes it obvious the killers are black.
Crtical Race propagandists do not try to UNDERSTAND why there is so much black on black crime. They try to spin it — like every other social dysfunction — as resulting from toxic whiteness., which is simply ludicrous. And it is no favor to black people. Really, the only blacks it helps are —- criminals.
Black people commit more acts of violence because of our roots in the south. Blacks adopted the culture of southern rednecks who were descendants of the lawless immigrants from northern Great Britain. You heard of the Hatfields and the McCoys? Black gangster culture is a cultural descendant of that. White people who were backward and violent were always behind more civilized people. Why should black people be any different.? White people who were backward changed their ways and benefited. Black people would have too, but we were seduced by the lies of race hustlers and the like. Many people who claim to fight for social justice profit from the fight, not justice. Black involvement in crime spiked 100 years after slavery so it wasn’t the effects of slavery. Culture and identity is the problem.
Wow! I can see why you people don’t want CRT. It reveals how racist you are!
CRT doesn’t seek to understand anything. It has already made up its mind and broadly asserts its beliefs.
This is exactly correct. Marx believed that social class was key to understanding, and changing, society. He believed that the class which did not own the productive forces — regardless of its race — would develop socialist consciousness. The Communist Manifesto asserts that “the workers do not have a country” and for “country” we may add “race” and any other non-class division.
However, later Marxists — genuine Marxists — extended or modified Marx’s views in various ways that do, somewhat, approach today’s “intersectionalists”. For one thing, some of them explained the failure of the European proletariat to develop socialist consciousness on the influence of its more privileged layers, who had been ‘bought off’ by imperialism. The concept of appealing to the ‘specially oppressed’ — women, racial minorities, the people of the colonies — was also brought to forefront of revolutionary Marxist tactics: subordinate to but in support of the class appeal.
Marx, by the way, was very politically incorrect and would be instantly cancelled on most American campuses today.
“Saying CRT is rooted (even partly) in Marx may appeal to conservatives, but it just ain’t true.” I was told that in an interview Derrick Bell said that CRT had very little to do with Marxism.
This is why James’ answer to “is CRT marxist?” was “yes, and no”.
It’s obvious that they, like radical feminists, borrowed their basic model of societal stratification and structural power disparities from Marx: the oppressed/oppressor dyad. Bourgeoisie/proletariate, Man/woman, White/poc.
CRT’s epistemic methodology is squishy, self-contradictory postmodernism. There is no objective truth. At the same time, society is objectively white supremacist. How do they know? Because it’s the presupposition upon which all their other assumptions are based, so it HAS to be true, otherwise the entire theory falls apart.
You can see conflict between the postmodern methodology and the model borrowed from Marx this in the quote: “The question is not ”did racism take place”? but rather “how did racism manifest in that situation?”” Postmodernism posits that nothing can be objectively known, yet the above suggests that the first question need never be asked, because they objectively know the answer will always be yes.
The embrace of subjectivity over objectivity is merely a tool that can be applied in any number of ways., most typically to tell people like you that your alleged objective facts are not helpful, but harmful. Congratulations, your statistics have just been problematized, a process by which the listener asks:
Who is making this statement?
For whom is it intended?
Why is this statement being made here, now?
Whom does this statement benefit?
Whom does it harm?
Notice another contradiction here? The problematization of your statistics is based largely on your inferred intentions. “Why is this statement being made here, now?” being the most obvious, though they all have a subtext of inferring intentions. And yet one of the above quoted passages says flat out that intentions do not matter.
No fact is objective, except for the fact that structural white supremacy permeates all of society’s institutions, and therefore every situation, interaction or transaction, every cultural text, every custom, tradition, philosophy (except for CRT) contains a racist element. Intentions don’t matter, except when they can allow someone to problematize an inconvenient set of facts.
I’m no fan of Marx, but I agree that postmodernism and all its bastard stepchildren are internally inconsistent, woo nonsense. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t build all that woo on top of the marxist foundation of the oppressed/oppressor dyad.
The term “racism” or “Racist” is an antiWhite slur!. Its not a serious word, and should never be tolerated in a conversation. It is the R-word. Just like no one woudl stay for a conversation that included the n-word, no one should stay for the r world.
CRT is not “racist” its just antiWhite.
It’s curious. I am white and I can’t ever recall being called a racist.
I wonder if there is a correlation between people saying ““Racist” is an antiWhite slur” and them actually being a racist?
CRT might help us discover that.
How could it do that? CRT rejects empirical investigation. But here’s an experiment. Let you, and genuine white racist, take a stroll through South Chicago one Saturday evening. See if you’re treated differently because of your virtuous views.
Of course, this will have to remain a thought experiment, because both you and the white racist know perfectly well what would happen.
Do you think there might be correlation between people saying “You can’t criticize Israel without being called an anti-semite” and them actually being a Jew-hater?
My mom lived with, then married, a black man, in a small southern town in the late 60’s. I am white. We were poor. I’ve dealt with and fought society imposed shame and racism all my life, defending my mom and step fathers right to love and be together. Now I’m viewed as a racist because I’m ‘white’. CRT is a lie, and hurts people of all races and skin tones. Thank you for your article.
But you’re not viewed as a racist because you’re white. The only people I hear saying that “white people are all racists” are people criticizing CRT. Something that, when you ask them to describe in any depth, they usually get wrong.
Mr. Heffron: You wrote: “the only people I hear saying that “white people are all racists” are people criticizing CRT.”
Then you know nothing at all about CRT, and should stop commenting until you read a little. (A revolutionary thought.)
Here is CNN, which is NOT hostile to CRT, describing the views of best selling White Fragility author, CRT guru Robin Di Angelo:
“(CNN)If you’re a white person in America, social justice educator Robin DiAngelo has a message for you: You’re a racist, pure and simple, and without a lifetime of conscious effort you always will be.”
The mental gymnastics involved here is Olympian.
great article – please also look at “critical ROLE theory” it is a diametric opposite of “critical RACE theory” and can be easily explained. the “race” stuff focus exclusively on what an individual “is” or claims to be, based on their birth DNA and so on. the “role” stuff focus on what a person can “do” or accomplish because of their skills training ability and so on. So really which theory is more useful to society ? what a person “is” or claims to be – or what a person can actually “do” or accomplish in life
Truth exists. Our words like “fingers pointing at the moon” serve to direct attention. The problem is, as Talleyrand observed (paraphrased) “humans invented language in order to conceal their thoughts from each other” – many, many, many words have objectives other than attaining truth. I think Critical Theorists are onto something regarding the use of power in manipulating people with rhetoric. Social location does matter and dominant narratives do dominate in groups of people. Something an attractive person says is valued more than an ugly person. Something a tall, attractive black male says is valued more than something a short, ugly white female says. It is a human condition. And power corrupts.
Humans are not nice apes. We are nasty, powerful, aggressive apes who are constantly at war with each other as we divide into groups. The language of warfare is all about dehumanizing the enemy as justification for killing them – after all we are not killing humans, we are ridding the world of vermin. The more flowery and powerful-sounding our language is the more we can attain social locations that give us status. CRT proponents are no different from any other groups seeking power. But their ideas about that have merit – even though they are power-seeking hypocrites, like all those who are seeking power but trying to appear virtuous while doing so.
As Jonathan Haidt says in “The Righteous Mind” (paraphrased – fuck, I’m just typing this from my flawed memory, I’m not going to go look things up, it’s a fucking comment) – “We are all selfish hypocrites so skilled at appearing virtuous that we fool even ourselves.”
That’s why laws and the separation and balance of power are so crucial to maintaining our civil society. The Constitution is important. Truth is important. It’s not just words. Madison – “If men were angels they wouldn’t need government” (paraphrase – for fuck’s sake).
A good comment! Of course the fact that Race X has built the institutions that both Races X and Y live in, will affect everything, because their viewpoint will dominate, including in subtle ways. The same goes for sex. If that were all the CRT people were saying, it would be a valid point.
Here’s an exercise: apply the ‘CRT’ approach to the Jewish experience in Christian Europe.
I want a crt theorists to explain WHY discrimination on the whole is wrong? Is it wrong because we have a moral duty to treat one another with decency and respect or is it wrong because its happening to you? It goes back to the philosophical conversation, do objective moral duties exist or right and wrong matters of personal preference. If moralality is simply a matter of preference then CRT theorists has no more right to impose themselves or their ideas on society/culture then any other worldview has. It also means the interpretation of history CRT uses is also a matter of preference. If, however, objective morals DO exist, who decides what they are? How are we supposed to treat each other?
This is quite simple really. If you were told you were going to reincarnate when you died but you didn’t know if you were coming back as a man or woman, black or white, gay or straight… would you want a society that discriminates on characteristics people have no control over?
Mr. (or Ms.) ‘R’: you wrote: “I want a crt theorists to explain WHY discrimination on the whole is wrong?”
You misunderstand CRT. It does NOT oppose discrimination. It requires discrimination – in favor of blacks. It does NOT advocate equality of opportunity. It requires equality of OUTCOME (which it calls “equity.). It blames all differences between blacks and non-blacks in achievement or quality of life as caused by racism and demands policies geared to eliminating those differences, by whatever means necessary.
To that end, CRT super-guru Prof. Ibram X. Kendi has called for a constitutional amendment to require the creation of a CRT-staff commission to oversee and when necessary veto ALL laws and ALL policies on ALL levels, with power to punish. Here is a quote:
” To fix the original sin of racism, Americans should pass an anti-racist amendment to the U.S. Constitution that enshrines two guiding anti-racist principals: Racial inequity is evidence of racist policy and the different racial groups are equals. The amendment would make unconstitutional racial inequity over a certain threshold, as well as racist ideas by public officials (with “racist ideas” and “public official” clearly defined). It would establish and permanently fund the Department of Anti-racism (DOA) comprised of formally trained experts on racism and no political appointees. The DOA would be responsible for preclearing all local, state and federal public policies to ensure they won’t yield racial inequity, monitor those policies, investigate private racist policies when racial inequity surfaces, and monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas. The DOA would be empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas.”
NO CRT people have objected to this call for the transformation of the US into a fully totalitarian society – a kind of CRT 1984. The head of Twitter gave this maniac $10 million.
It is simply ASTOUNDING that Kendi is not pariahed. More astounding still that he is not only promoted, but propped up as a scholar, ‘expert’, and authority on ANY policy. Utterly vile, and is as evil a person as could ever be….and I mean this in the most UNhyberbolic terms.
Thanks James. This is so timely, as there have been a slew of articles lately attempting to perform what appears to be damage control around the narrative about CRT, coming from the left wing news media. For example:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/27/us/critical-race-theory-lens-history-crt/index.html
The purpose of these articles appears to be to assert that
(1) CRT is all about refusing to deny the impact of obviously racist policies (e.g. African slavery, Jim Crow) on present day life, and that there is still racism today.
(2) CRT does not say things like one race is good, and one race is bad
(3) Not wanting CRT to be the moral framework with respect to which assess our own behavior and educate our children is nothing short of an effort to “shut down all conversation” about the source of racial inequality (Crenshaw says basically this in the video in the CNN article).
The video in the CNN article says, verbatim:
“to be clear, critical race theory does not say someone is racist because of the color of their skin”
Then it shows a white woman crying about CRT in schools (ostensibly to signal to the viewer that only a “Karen” would oppose it)
The above is clearly an example of Motte and Bailey argumentation, and over the last couple of weeks it has been significantly ramped up, at least as far as Google News’s recommendation algorithm wants me to believe.
The “11 ways to look through the CRT lense” proposed by CNN are all non-controversial observations about racist laws and cultural practices in US history – that’s the Motte.
The Bailey (CRT says all white people are racist, it’s not Marxian, it’s not used to deny the validity of scientific inquiry, it doesn’t try to shut down any and all debate, etc.) is barely presented at all, only through a couple of quick quotes (Trump and DeSantis). One would have to look outside of CNN et al to find it. In this way even people who are not so susceptible to this kind of argumentation may not be aware it’s being used on them in these articles.
What do you say to those CRT proponents who say, “you misunderstand CRT. Its not what you say it is”, much like this opinion piece, https://www.yahoo.com/news/opinion-ive-critical-race-theorist-033128257.html ?
You invite the CRT “expert” to explain CRT in terms of its essentials, fundamentals, and principles, demonstrate how they are derived from reality, and thereby prove that you misunderstand it.
Well, you could say:
Gosh, it turns out that I’ve fallen for the latest boogieman that the right wing spin machine has invented. Now that Republicans are out of the White House, we’re falling back on the culture war as the thing to be aggrieved about. Since Joe Biden hasn’t immediately been embroiled in scandals like his predecessor and that on a political level we literally have NO policies other than to “agree with whatever Donald Trump says and disagree with whatever Biden says”* we’re picking a niche issue and blowing it totally out of proportion.
You could say that.
*https://ballotpedia.org/The_Republican_Party_Platform,_2020
No, you couldn’t. This crap has been poisoning the minds of young people and the woke for some time now. Now that CRT has been publicly revealed a lot of insanity from the last few years have been explained. Try imagining a world without hard work, rational thought, scientific methods, math, objectivity, or civilized behavior and understand that this is the world that the Crits want to destroy. Everything that separates civilized people from hunter gatherers is seen as white and bad. That is not just the Bogieman. This is the road to hell
I am no fan of Trump and I take it you are not either. I’m assuming you agree with elements of CRT. Its writers mean exactly what is quoted above in the article. They seem to believe white people are terminally flawed and irredeemable. Even if they “do the work” which sounds scientology or some other kind of cult, they will always be racist. If thats true why should anyone bother “doing the work”? If it never changes anyone, whats the point?
Crt proponents come off as the kind of parent, boss or partner who is never satisfied with anything you do. You are always wrong and can never argue with them. Many gaslight and silence reasonable questions or critiques. Th fact they respond with “oh you got it wrong.” or “you’ve made it the boogie man.” when their own words quoted accurately and with contextual honesty support the critic’s point, shows the incredible hubris of many of these theorists.
Heffron wins clown of the week award
By their own definition, the words of all white ‘crits’ should be memory-holed. As Marx, Engels, and Lenin—each one a son of the bourgeoisie—promoted a system that caused great harm to millions of proletarians, so the ‘crits’ are promoting a worldview that causes great harm to Persons of Color.
In their faux zeal to level the playing field, they promote illiteracy, innumeracy, and ignorance among those who do not sunburn easily.
When the ‘errors’ all line up in the same direction, it’s intentional.
By leading the charge against systemic racism and white cisheteronormative oppressive supremacy they self-absolve themselves of all charges of having unearned privilege. Hypocrisy is their calling card.
They promote illiteracy, innumeracy and ignorance for all, no matter you sunburn easily or are natural born suntanned. It is a sequel of the Khmer Rouge cultural revolution. If your argument is reasonable and you are white, the very over-intellectual character of your argumentation is the proof you are racist because all those who in the past prided of argue that way were white. If you happen to be black like me but argument in the same way, it is worse, you are playing white, you are performing cultural misappropriation.
When people throw out ad homiminen attacks it suggests they have nothing intelligent to say in response. Its like children who, when they encounter an opponent they can’t easily beat or intimidate, they resort to name calling or other dismissive tactics. Very narcissistic.
An idiot is an idiot, and one can point that out while also having plenty that is intelligent to say. Pontificating about other people’s style of responding is very narcissistic.
Cary, you missed my point. When either side responds with name calling/degrading comments they show themselves to be immature, narcissistic children. I’ve just heard way too many CRT/woke people respond with “you’re racist” or “you’re just a Trumper”, when criticized or questioned. There is no consideration that they may be wrong or the other person has a point. They demonstrate they cant or won’t actually argue with the idea/question presented but instead they dismiss or demean the speaker. Look a Lori Lightfoot of Chicago. She claims she’s being criticized because of her ethnic identity. Yet, crime has soared in her city. Criticism about her leadership and fitness for the job based on performance is warranted, criticism unrelated to those are unwarranted.
You could make the argument — I do not — that the TRULY privileged whites — at the very top of society, the multi-millionaires — are happy with CRT, since it allows them, by making a few token ‘woke’ gestures, to continue in their positions of privilege. It also means that Black people, by being effectively denied real education, will never compete with these people.
For an example of real education for non-white young people that propelled them into the top levels of educational achievement, normally reserved for white children in private schools, Google on “Michaela School” “Brent”. A remarkable achievement, although it was pre-figured decades ago by Marva Collins in Chicago (also worth Googling on.)
I love the people who are concerned about harm being caused to People of Colour. Who also phone the police if they saw one walking through their neighbourhood.
Of course you’re talking about white liberals here, who make sure they live as far away as possible from People of Color. And when the actual consequences of the Left’s “level down and dumb down” crusade hits’ their own privileged children, are very quick to show what their real feelings are, as we saw in New York City. And speaking of New York City, it’s interesting that CRT and its notion of ‘white privilege’ cannot handle ‘Asian privilege’: when merit-based admissions are destroyed, it’s Asians even more than whites who are hurt:
https://brooklyneagle.com/articles/2019/01/28/parents-fight-de-blasio-effort-to-change-elite-school-admissions/
Oh please. You are making ad hominem attacks and speaking from a very tired weak script. Did it ever occur to you that some of us are POCs? Of course not. All you know is that we are not woke, so you project false narratives instead of actual arguments.
James – thank you for the useful citations. I am currently contending mandatory anti-racist training at my work and these (along with essentially your whole body of work on the subject) will prove useful in defending my stance. Keep up the good fight!