A Summary Of Critical Race Theory

I’ve been studying CRT. I wanted to know if CRT was politically useful. I believe that it is not.

At least, not for the left.

Left-wing activists want to build cannabis businesses by giving privilege to certain communities over others. Ok, fine. No problem with any of that. Yet as a registered Democrat, I am severely interested in CRT and have done extensive research on the topic. This article from ZeroHedge summarizes CRT well, so I’ve reprinted a portion of the ZeroHedge article that summarizes CRT:

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/backlash-against-critical-race-theory-madness-reflected-virginia-election

Given the mounting parental backlash against the theory across America, it might be helpful to summarize the CRT worldview and objections to this radicalism. 

CRT objects to how mainstream (white) Americans see themselves, their country and their history. CRT has the same objection to history as taught in Canada, Australia, and Europe.

Its solution is to teach a new kind of history.

Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard called this new history “the black armband view” in which everything before European colonialism was apparently wonderful, and everything since has been evil.

CRT argues Europeans invented race and racism to justify colonialism and slavery and effectively invented a new updated version of the old Marxist villain-victim idea. For Marxists, capitalists were villains, and workers were victims. For CRT, whites are villains, and blacks are victims.

Both models grow out of the resentments of the unsuccessful, but CRT’s answer is to tear down the successful and what they built.

The emergence of parental opposition to CRT in the schools reflects a growing realization that the theory represents a truly existential and revolutionary threat to the American way of life.

But CRT goes further than just wanting to deconstruct and reconstruct America and its way of life or take down statues. They demand all white individuals must recognize they are racists, which is built into them through language. They also demand that whites must apologize (and recompense black victims) for white racism, for white privilege, and for oppressing black people.

Within CRT logic, whites are apparently always inherently racist and inherently privileged. Blacks are always apparently oppressed and can never be racist.

If any white person points to the absurdity of these claims, this is taken a proof such a person is racist and “fragile.” CRT allows no escape from its closed circular argument.  

Re-education appears to be the only solution, according to the theory.

Whites must be taught to recognize their individual “sickness” and the pathology of their society. Then taught to “be sorry,” to take the knee, and to be co-opted into CRT’s plan to deconstruct existing American society.

This re-education will take place in schools, universities and through compulsory staff training workshops.

Conveniently, CRT activists have created many jobs for themselves by running these workshops. Apparently, revolution can be profitable for some.

CRT is a revolutionary project designed to actively disrupt and break the language we use. It is enmeshed with another left-wing project called the “decolonization” of education and the “decolonization” of society.

These projects aim to undo the so-called evil of European colonialism plus deconstruct the work of the apparently evil white men who colonized and built America, Canada, and Australia.

Building CRT’s postcolonial world is a project as profoundly revolutionary as was Stalin’s communist project of building the “Soviet Man.”

Americans need to become aware of what such a project of re-writing their culture; their history, and their language will mean for them. If Americans want to see what “decolonization” of education and society means, just look at what the African National Congress has done in South Africa.

Read the entire article from ZeroHedge: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/backlash-against-critical-race-theory-madness-reflected-virginia-election

The short version of the above ZeroHedge article is — CRT is revolutionary, anti-American, and circular in logic with no solutions. CRT is also a lie, and is worth unpacking, and challenging, head on. CRT is also an easy political win for the right.

Britannica tells us the origins of Critical Race Theory:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/critical-race-theory

Critical race theory (CRT) was officially organized in 1989, at the first annual Workshop on Critical Race Theory, though its intellectual origins go back much farther, to the 1960s and ’70s. Its immediate precursor was the critical legal studies (CLS) movement, [which is] an offshoot of Marxist-oriented critical theory.

CRT, then, is based on the Marxist-centered Critical Theory, which has at its core the doctrine of deconstruction. Richard Delgado, one of the founders of CRT, defines deconstruction as the “Intellectual approach that targets traditional interpretation of terms, concepts, and practices, showing that they contain unsuspecting meanings or internal contradictions” (Delgado and Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, 3rd Ed., p. 171).

Deconstruction is not only one of the core elements of CRT, but it is also one of the core elements of Critical Theory, explained by Britannica as a “Marxist-inspired movement in social and political philosophy originally associated with the work of the Frankfurt School.

Drawing particularly on the thought of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, critical theorists maintain that a primary goal of philosophy is to understand and to help overcome the social structures through which people are dominated and oppressed.”

https://www.britannica.com/topic/critical-race-theory

And, check out this article from Intellectual Take Out: https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/critical-race-theory-is-worse-than-marxism/?fbclid=IwAR3wbpmPM_YK6obEjXvuD4yhKMKQFtG5qyJUnaUSebIPC2VrYL9g8a3E_Wc

Finally, for a thorough reading on this overall topic in general — check out this 35 page article in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology titled “Race, Reform and Progressive Prosecution:”

https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7681&=&context=jclc&sei-redir=1&referer=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.google.com%252Furl%253Fsa%253DD%2526q%253Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fscholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu%252Fcgi%252Fviewcontent.cgi%25253Farticle%25253D7681%252526amp%25253Bcontext%25253Djclc%2526ust%253D1619574900000000%2526usg%253DAOvVaw2hII_UR1ERJMv2gUBCrkt0%2526hl%253Den%2526source%253Dgmail&fbclid=IwAR233ETF2EI2eEH7D1UYYG657kReyZtV6Ak6jKIlOOx-npB0LYTrcHylAIM#search=”https%3A%2F%2Fscholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu%2Fcgi%2Fviewcontent.cgi%3Farticle%3D7681%26context%3Djclc”

Key quote from the Race Reform and Progressive Prosecution article: “Well, let’s be unserious observers for the moment. Sometimes we have to play the role of a “weirdo or an eccentric” to conduct a thorough examination of issues.61”