The Danger of Critical Race Theory
January 15, 2024
Most of us have heard of “critical race theory” (CRT) and know that it’s a bad thing, but few know exactly what it is. It’s imperative that we understand this grave danger, and what I would like to do in this week’s column is to make readers thoroughly acquainted with it and to set forward some objections to it.
The basic tenet of CRT is that “it’s all about race.” There is no such thing as a biological race. “Race” is purely a social construct, designed to oppress blacks. Almost all laws oppress blacks, even civil rights laws that claim to “help” them. Sound ridiculous? There’s even more. Women are also oppressed, especially black women. If someone is a black woman, she is doubly oppressed. This is called “intersectionality.”
As you would expect, CRT isn’t supported by evidence. To ask for evidence would also be oppressive. Instead, advocates of CRT tell stories in which their account of things turns out true. Fiction becomes fact.
CRT’s reduction of everything to “race” parallels the Marxist reduction of history to class oppression. In an excellent article, David Brady, Jr. explains this parallel. He analyzes in particular the work of Ibrahim X. Kendi, a leading contemporary defender of CRT:
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“Kendi is not an original thinker so much as a wannabe-philosopher who repaints bunk ideas to drum up societal conflict. Kendi’s general philosophical thesis could be summed up simply as “Everyone is racist, and that extends to all of society. History can be understood as a white supremacist culture getting better at hiding its underlying racism.”
Kendi and other critical race theorists theorize that, throughout history, so-called advancements in the welfare of racial minorities are merely a white supremacist culture’s success at better hiding its racism. One can summarize it best with a quote from the thriller The Usual Suspects: “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
The devil, for Kendi, would be “white supremacy” in culture. Every so-called advancement—from the outlawing of slavery to the end of Jim Crow laws—is simply this devil getting better at hiding itself.
This is not an original idea on Kendi’s part in any respect. One can trace these ideas back to the philosophical ancestor to critical race theory: Karl Marx. When one analyzes critical race theory, it becomes abundantly clear that it is a portrayal of Marxist conflict and power theory but with the dimensions of race applied rather than class. Rather than the bourgeoise class oppressing the proletariat, it is the white class oppressing the nonwhite classes of society.
A fundamental aspect of Marxist theory is that of the substructure, or base, and the superstructures of society. Marx posited that the fundamental relations in society are economic ones, between the working class and the exploitive capitalist class. The base creates the superstructure, which includes art, politics, religion, and other social relations that supposedly exist to reinforce the base. This is where Marx’s famed line “Religion is the opiate of the masses” comes from. Religion, as an aspect of the superstructure, exists to draw eyes away from the social relations that matter in the minds of Marxists.
The critical race theory about the “white supremacy inherent in culture” is much the same. The base for the theorists is race relations. These theorists believe that the oppressive white class has constructed society to necessarily maintain a power dynamic over the nonwhite classes. Political achievements, no matter how much they may benefit racial minorities, belong as part of the superstructure, and thus they must be some protective shell over the true social dynamics.
The Emancipation Proclamation, for example, would be seen as a means of preserving the base of society. Any and all political results short of revolution against the base are simply adaptations of the superstructure to protect the base. Kendi’s ideology ultimately becomes a revolutionary one. There cannot be a true advancement against “white supremacist culture” unless there is a true revolution, according to the critical race theorists.
Kendi posits that the solution to racism is “antiracism,” or active discrimination against the “oppressor class.” This reeks of Joseph Stalin’s extermination of the kulaks or of Maoist reeducation. Mao Zedong’s goals may be the most aligned to the goals of Kendi. “Diversity, equity, and inclusion” seminars, taught for much the same reasons as Kendi’s “antiracism,” reek of Maoist struggle sessions.
The modern kulaks of Kendi’s Marxist revolution are the “white supremacists.” According to Kendi, discrimination is needed to overthrow the base structure. The ideas of Kendi and the critical race theorists boil down to Marxist power dynamics, with a mixture of gnosticism and postmodernism. It is violent egalitarian ideology that attempts to paint history under one dynamic. It turns out that history is far more complex than that.
So, one should not be surprised at the squandering of millions of dollars by Kendi and his “antiracist” center. Marx has been repudiated by economists, philosophers, and history itself. All the critical race theorists seek to do is repaint Marxist power dynamics under a new lens. There is no sound backing to their ideas so it is no wonder they continue to fail, even in academia.
Kendi laments in a March 23 article: “The traditional construct of the intellectual has produced and reinforced bigoted ideas of group hierarchy—the most anti-intellectual constructs existing. But this framing is crumbling, leading to the crisis of the intellectual.”
Marxism can be best understood as the unproductive of society demanding a place at the top of a new hierarchy. They prey upon the productive members of society and redistribute the success of others to themselves through violent revolution. It is an ideology of envy and failure. Kendi is one such unproductive citizen, one who would have no reinforcement in any sane “marketplace of ideas.”
The great Paul Gottfried is a scholar of Marxism. Although he is of course a firm anti-Marxist, he has some respect for Marxism as an intellectual edifice. He has utter contempt for CRT:
“The swear words “Marxist” and “revolutionary” are now thrown around by conservatives, such as those at Heritage, the New York Post, and Fox News, with the same abandon with which the left speaks about “human rights” or “marriage,” particularly in relation to the concept of Critical Race Theory (CRT). But as someone who has studied Marxism extensively, I believe it’s necessary to state that CRT is most definitely not Marxist, nor is it in any sense revolutionary. Instead, it is an instrument of repression brandished by those in power against those whom it is feared might resist them, and those labeling this instrument as Marxist misdiagnose the problem to their detriment.
An ideology does not become Marxist because it launches an attack on white Americans for being white, or on white men as intrinsically evil human beings. Nor is feminism a form of Marxism because it attacks gender differences or the assignment of distinctive social roles to men and women. One does not change established meanings by assigning one’s own invented descriptions to whatever the media and academics decide to extend them to. Marriage is between men and women, even if the state decides to extend marriage licenses to homosexual pairs and throws pastors in jail for disagreeing with this policy. Likewise, something does not become Marxist simply because it is socially dangerous and features the term “struggle.”
True Marxism focuses on socioeconomic distinctions and the struggle by which the working-class overthrows and replaces the bourgeoisie and establishes a socialist economy, presumably by force. It has nothing to do with downgrading whites, heterosexuals, or males, and even less with supporting transgender activists in combat with cisgender bigots. It must fit other criteria than these cultural issues in order to be genuinely Marxist; and the advocates of CRT do not escape this labeling problem by claiming to have come up with a more advanced form of Marxist ideology while rejecting “vulgar Marxism.”
It is the “vulgar,” or more traditional form of Marxism which is the
only real one. Transgender crusaders or black nationalists going after
“prejudiced” Americans or destroying their property have nothing to do
with a Marxist class struggle, as understood by Karl Marx and his
socialist followers. Nor do AOC or other members of her Squad calling
for higher taxes together with the teaching of CRT make them true
Marxists. If anyone thinks Joe and Kamala are going to inflict huge pain
on the corporations that brought them to power, that person is
suffering from self-delusion “bigly,” as the Donald used to say. Mark
Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Jeff Bezos, and the corporate managers of
American Airlines and Coca Cola do not have to worry about being
expropriated in an American Marxist revolution carried out by the Biden
administration.
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The intersectional left has gained social control because it is allied to government administrators and corporate oligarchs, a fact which both political commentator Pedro Gonzalez and I have written about. Yet this power constellation is no more revolutionary than the sclerotic Soviet nomenklatura that fell with the dissolution of the Soviet empire. These oligarchs pulled out all stops to get rid of the Trump interregnum and are now making sure that no effective opposition remains to combat their rule. Gonzalez is correct that what we are witnessing is the ruling class striking back.”
Naturally, brain-dead Biden favors CRT. He is the willing tool of those who seek to subvert America for their own nefarious purposes. He thinks CRT is objective history. It’s wonderful;. What’s the fuss about?
“White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki repeated her spin on the controversial teaching of critical race theory in schools as teaching “history” during a press briefing on Friday.
“The president is obviously a big fan of education. The first lady is a teacher. She’s a union teacher. I’m wondering, what are the president’s thoughts on anti-racism curriculum in the classroom,” RealClearPolitics White House reporter Philip Wegmann asked.
Psaki replied that the U.S. still has “systemic racism” that needs to be acknowledged and addressed through government schools.
“The president believes that in our history, there are many dark moments. And there is not just slavery and racism in our history, there is systemic racism that is still impacting society today,” she said.
Psaki also capitalized on the concerns of parents around the nation who are wary of leftist indoctrination in their children’s schools by reaffirming that she and President Joe Biden are parents who believe “that kids should learn about our history.”
“As a spouse of an educator and as somebody who continues to believe that children should learn not just the good, but also the challenging in our history, and that’s part of what we’re talking about here, even as it’s become politically charged,” Psaki said.
What can be done about CRT? As usual, our greatest living American Dr. Ron Paul has the answer. We must fight to restore parental control of education. In that way, the schemes of government bureaucrats to impose CRT on our children will be thwarted:
“Parents across the country are fighting to stop government schools from indoctrinating their children with Critical Race Theory. Critical Race Theory is a form of Marxism that focuses on the “oppression” of racial minorities. Central to Critical Race Theory is the belief that free markets are a tool of racial oppression that must be abolished and replaced with socialism.
This is dangerous nonsense. History shows that governments, not free markets, are and always have been the instruments of racial oppression. For example, legislators passed Jim Crow laws because private businesses refused to voluntarily segregate their customers.
Numerous
scholars have documented how the welfare state and the war on drugs, as
well as minimum wage laws, occupational licensing laws, and other
anti-liberty laws, disproportionately harm minorities. Some of these
laws were passed with the explicit goal of protecting white workers from
competition with minorities.
Public outrage over teaching children that the only way to overcome racism is to sacrifice liberty helped build efforts to pass laws banning the teaching of Critical Race Theory. Some of these efforts are accompanied by advancing mandates that schools promote a “positive” or “patriotic” view of America. This can replace one form of indoctrination with another.
A “patriotic” curriculum could teach children that the change from a constitutional republic to a welfare-warfare state was a victory for liberty. It could also teach that the American government is morally justified in, and capable of, managing the economy at home and spreading democracy abroad. It could teach children lies like capitalism caused the Great Depression.
Instead of arguing over what form of statism government schools should indoctrinate children in, liberty activists should work to replace government control of education with parental control.”
Let’s do everything we can to fight CRT! It will destroy our children if we don’t stop it.
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