Critical race theory

A totally not-racist CRT protester in 2021^{[note 1]}

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Not to be confused with CRT monitors.

Critical race theory (CRT) is an analysis of how society views race and how it intersects with systemic institutions in the United States. This in turn became the perfect new boogeyman for the far-right to scare white people with in the early 2020s. It has also become a Republican campaigning point in many states, with five states actually banning it in schools, and others at least trying to push for the same in their own states.^[2] In Florida, the people voting for it to be banned couldn't even define what it was to begin with.^[3] Now, the far-right is using it to claim that any acknowledgement of white privilege is "racist" as a form of "virtue" signaling.^{[note 2]} White Christian fundamentalists in the United States (who of course have aligned themselves with the right) say it "divides people" and is "against the gospel", alienating non-white Christians.

What it is[edit]

In academia, especially in the Humanities and Sociology, "theory" can be thought of as a lens through which one can make sense of the world. Critical Legal Studies is one such theory, where researchers review the effects of laws based on a person's wealth or status. We generally hold that the ideal Law should be one that applies to everyone equally. However, some laws are inherently biased towards or against people based on wealth; both poor and rich people are required to respect anti-vagrancy laws, but for obvious reasons, rich people tend to be mostly unaffected by such laws.

An offshoot of CLS is Critical Race Theory, swapping wealth for race. Just because a law is written in a way that is not prejudiced in regards to race doesn't necessarily mean it actually is unbiased in application. A classic example would be laws regarding crack versus powder cocaine, or most historical drug laws for that matter. Crack and powder have the same active ingredient, and while there are some actual differences in their effects,^{[note 3]} the sentencing guidelines for each were nowhere near to being in line with these differences. No points for correctly guessing that the version more popular with Black people received harsher sentences than the version more popular with White people.

Conversely, methamphetamine, a drug mostly associated with "white trailer trash", has even harsher guidelines for punishment than crack.^[4] Because apparently "E pluribus unum" is Latin for "Fuck the poor".^{[citation NOT needed]}

The question of whether poverty or racism is the bigger issue in society does not negate the fact that both are problems that need to be solved, especially since they are often intertwined to the point where working on one tends to solve the other.

Background[edit]

The seeds of critical race theory was developed in the late 1970s to the early 1980s by professors such as Derrick Bell (the first tenured Black professor of law at Harvard Law School) and other law professors such as Richard Delgado and Kimberle Williams Crenshaw. These professors emerged from the turbulent civil rights battles of the 1960s believing that the advances of the civil rights movement at the time did not, unfortunately, fully address the heart of the inequality of African-Americans. In particular, they came to see desegregation and other programs enacted during the 1960s designed to increase minority participation in various institutions meaning little to the cause of racial equality as long as whites retained full power and control over decision making processes.^[5][6] Although many of the most visible problems of racism (eg "Whites Only" signs in establishments) had disappeared by the late 1970s, the proponents of critical race theory believed (not unreasonably) that racism was still very prevalent in American society, and (more controversially) that the civil rights ideology of liberal advocates of the 1950s and 1960s, that a colorblind society could be advanced using litigation and legislation, ended up largely being a failure.^[6]

During the Ronald Reagan era, the legal climate shifted away from the Earl Warren court era, which was known for rulings backing civil rights causes, to a more formalism oriented approach,^[6] best exemplified by Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia and his "originalism" legal philosophy.^[7] In the eyes of the critical race theorists, Reagan-era formalism had at its core a racist and white supremacist agenda bent upon undermining the gains of the liberal civil rights movement, simply because the supposed "color-blind" formalist and originalist legal frameworks that were being advocated in reality maintained a status quo that was oppressive to minorities.^[6] This viewpoint was reinforced by various legal decisions in the 1980s and onward that the "race-crits" saw as oppressive to minorities. For instance, some of these professors were working on laws to regulate hate speech on campus. These laws were not only derided as "political correctness" by opponents, they tended to be struck down by courts for violating the First Amendment guarantee of free speech.^[5][6]

In summary, although the principles of critical race theory are somewhat nebulous, the basic overall arc is to examine how seemingly neutral laws might have a disparate impact on minorities.^[5] (The extent to which some CRT proponents have done so, however, has troubled some critics.) Law professor Douglas E. Litowitz paraphrased some of the key tenants of critical race theory, as advanced in an introductory essay to a book written by Delgado called Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, as follows:^[8]

1. Racism is "normal" in our society. Racist assumptions about minorities pervade our mind-set and are reinforced in the media and popular culture. Race is encoded not merely in our laws, but in our cultural symbols such as movies, clothes, language, and music. Our commonsense assumptions about people of color are biased - "we are all racists."
2. Liberalism has failed to bring about parity between the races, for the simple reason that formal equality cannot eliminate deeply entrenched types of racism (sometimes called "microaggressions") which are encountered by minorities on a daily basis. Liberal solutions to affirmative action and free speech are white compromises which fail to significantly advance minority interests. Although liberalism professes to value equality, it actually prevents the radical reforms necessary to achieve true equality between the races.
3. CRT posits an "interest-convergence theory" which holds that the dominant white culture can tolerate minority successes only when these successes also serve the larger interests of whites. Major civil rights advances occur rarely, and only in situations where whites stand to benefit as well. Every movement toward change is a struggle against the dominant white culture. People of color can only achieve limited success under the current system.^{[note 4]}
4. CRT issues a "call to context" which rejects the formal perspective taken by white male scholars who subscribe to the "dominant narrative" of the law, whereby the law is seen as clear and neutral. CRT advocates a situated perspective which brings out the nuances of life as experienced by historically oppressed minorities. The dominant type of legal scholarship should be countered with techniques such as storytelling, science fiction, sarcasm, and parody.

Naturally, these stances attracted criticism even before it became a manufactroversy in 2021. A few more populist barbs emerged on occasion in the media prior to 2021 — George Will, for instance, unsurprisingly dismissed the concept as "racial fatalism" in a 1996 column.^[9] However, the ideology attracted similar criticism in academia, even from Black academics. One criticism advanced was that "race-crits" have a tendency to ignore the economic and political progress of Black Americans since the civil rights reforms of the Great Society era, and have a tendency to advance a pessimistic view of society where racism is all-pervasive, without specifying many solutions to the problem.^[10] Critical race theory has also been criticized for attacking liberalism with way too broad of a brush, and for a tendency to overemphasize "storytelling" instead of the doctrinal solutions that are the foundation of legal study.^[8][11]

That being said, a key difference between the modern manufacturoversy and academic criticism is that, although a few academic critics completely dismissed CRT as meritless "radical multiculturalism",^[12] other critics of critical race theory acknowledged that, while they disagree with some of the more pessimistic and over-generalized aspects of CRT, they nonetheless agreed with the general concept that racism was deeply ingrained in American society, and legal scholarship should be more proactive in considering the perspectives of the disadvantaged.^[8]

What it isn't[edit]

Right-wingers whenever they hear about critical race theory

Given the happenings of certain events, right-wing politicians, pundits, and white Christian fundamentalists have made CRT a major enemy in their fight against the recent wave of progressivism. This mainly involves making people think that children are being taught to hate white people, and that they're all racist.

As espoused by Republican politicians, the denouncements of critical race theory are basically a disinformation campaign, that acts as a dog whistle to signify resistance towards racial justice.^[15][16] The target of critical race theory attacks certainly isn't the advanced academic-level legal framework developed at Harvard Law School.^[17] In fact, a common feature demonstrated on surveys on critical race theory, and even shown in discussions with the pundits and politicians that decry it, is just how little people know about what it really is. Far from being a "bug", however, the obscurity is a key reason why the theory is being utilized by Republicans as a tool to generate outrage and anger among those that subscribe to white identity politics.^[18][19][20]

In practice, the Republican-style "critical race theory" targets grade-level public school teachers, and pressures them not to bring up social justice subjects such as diversity, anti-racism, and inclusiveness (and the umbrella concept diversity, equity, and inclusion). Essentially, the core of the bills is the desire to prevent discourse about racism in America's history, and much more.^[21] (In October 2021, one superintendent in Texas even suggested that in order to comply with recently passed anti-CRT legislation, teachers should teach "opposing views" of the Holocaust.)^[22] As advocated by Republicans, "critical race theory" laws act as "educational gag orders", which, at its core, violates the principles of the First Amendment guarantee to free speech,^[23] and can ironically be seen as a Republican push to embrace the very sort of "cancel culture" that many of its "populist" pundits decry.^[24] What makes this even more insidious is that it's a blatant attempt to hijack the intellectual development of children and turn them into useful idiots whose only purpose in life is to vote Republican and perpetuate the toxic memeplex of bigotry.^{[citation NOT needed]}

Unsurprisingly, "critical race theory" also is being used as a flimsy excuse by some racists to demand that books written by and about people of color should be pulled from school libraries.^[25] Similarly unsurprising, "critical race theory" is also being used by some bigots to target school library books that are entirely unrelated to race, but still fall afoul of the conservative culture war, such as books dealing with LGBT issues.^[26] In one Tennessee county, an astroturf group deceptively-named Moms for Liberty even used "critical race theory" to bizarrely target books written about seahorses and Galileo.^[27][28]

Before Republicans started pushing the critical race manufactured outrage, practically no grade level teacher was teaching the academic framework (naturally, since the framework is aimed at the graduate/postgraduate level).^[29] Ironically, however, some grade school level teachers, having looked at the framework after the Republicans chose to howl about it, have chosen to incorporate elements of actual critical race theory into their classroom.^[21] After all, despite the manufactured controversy, a vast majority of Americans still approve of teachers teaching about the ongoing effects of racism and slavery in the United States.^[30]

I don't know what it's about, but I'm MAD AS HELL about it![edit]

In the summer of 2021, the manufactured controversy (which was an obsession with Fox News in particular)^[31] led to many incidents at school boards where a select few loudmouths, egged on by critical race theory disinformation, attended meetings to nonsensically yell at school board members about the subject (at least, what they thought the subject was about), sometimes even issuing death threats or getting arrested for disorderly conduct.^[32][33][30] This merely continued a trend in America of unruly school board meetings, that also was amplified by misinformation-fueled loudmouths getting outraged at school board members over face masks and other COVID-19 public health measures.

Even though teaching CRT is generally restricted to the post-graduate level at colleges due to its high reliance on abstract and complex concepts that aren't appropriate for most grade-school students, it hasn't stopped perpetrators of the moral panic from targeting about 900 school districts in the United States.^[34] The effect of such targeting is not to remove something that isn't there (CRT), but to try to politicize and control the history curriculum.^[34] For example, 46% of Republicans, the main perpetrators of the panic, oppose the teaching of the history of racism.^{[34][note 5]}

See also[edit]

• The 1619 Project
• Anti-CRT Bingo
• Manhattan Institute, where Rufo started the manufactroversy.^[35]
• Manufactroversy
• Privilege

Notes[edit]

References[edit]