Critical Race Theory

Critical Race Theory is related to Critical Theory, a Marxist approach oriented towards destructive criticism of the main elements of Western culture. The key to understanding Critical Race Theory and Critical Theory is their destructive agenda: criticize, dismantle, and destroy.

Critical Race Theory and Marxism

 

The following article explains the history of Critical Race Theory. Excerpts are included below, and the entire article is well worth reading.

Critical Race Theory: What It Is and How to Fight It, by Christopher F. Rufo, Imprimis, Hillsdale College, March 2021:

... Originally, the Marxist Left built its political program on the theory of class conflict. Marx believed that the primary characteristic of industrial societies was the imbalance of power between capitalists and workers. The solution to that imbalance, according to Marx, was revolution... and usher in a new socialist society.

During the 20th century, a number of regimes underwent Marxist-style revolutions, and each ended in disaster. Socialist governments in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Cuba, and elsewhere racked up a body count of nearly 100 million of their own people... In practice, Marx’s ideas unleashed man’s darkest brutalities.

By the mid-1960s, Marxist intellectuals... came to realize that workers’ revolutions would never occur in Western Europe or the United States, where there were large middle classes and rapidly improving standards of living...

Abandoning Marx’s economic dialectic of capitalists and workers, they substituted race for class and sought to create a revolutionary coalition of the dispossessed based on racial and ethnic categories...

Critical race theory is an academic discipline, formulated in the 1990s, built on the intellectual framework of identity-based Marxism...

There are a series of euphemisms deployed by its supporters to describe critical race theory, including “equity,” “social justice,” “diversity and inclusion,” and “culturally responsive teaching.” Critical race theorists, masters of language construction, realize that “neo-Marxism” would be a hard sell. Equity, on the other hand, sounds non-threatening and is easily confused with the American principle of equality..

The editors of The American Mind oppose the spread of this pernicious ideology, stating:

As Americans concerned for the common good of the nation, we reject the following tenets of “Critical Race Theory” as directly opposed to the fundamental principles of American government and political order:

• That any human being simply by virtue of being born in a given racial category (e.g., their “whiteness”) is inherently evil or bears guilt for actions committed by others in the past or present.

• That the principle of the inherent equality and dignity of all human beings insofar as they are human enables racism instead of serving as the firmest bulwark against it.

• That those who oppose replacing the equality of all citizens under the law with a system of “equity” that treats people unequally based on racial categories are complicit in racism or white supremacy.

• That establishing a legal regime of racial hierarchies is equitable or just.

Art Keller writes that sociologist Bradley Campbell, author of The Rise of Victimhood Culture, explains:

In my own work I’ve called it a “moral culture” rather than a religion, and I think that’s probably more accurate. We could call it “social justice culture,” or as Jason Manning and I called it, “victimhood culture,” but in any case, it’s a worldview that places a certain conception of social justice as the highest value...

Drawing from critical theory, those who embrace this moral culture tend to view various social identities as the most important thing about people, and they see those identities as oppressor or victim identities. To be white, male, Christian, or straight, for example is to have a privileged position in a system of oppression, and to be a person of color, female, non-Christian, or LGBT is to be disadvantaged...

... interpreting everything in terms of oppression and in elevating those concerns above all others seems to have led many of the activists to disregard liberal values such as due process and free speech.

Dan Proft signifies the destructive agenda of Critical Race Theory in his April 21, 2021 American Greatness article, It’s Not a Race War. It’s Something Much Bigger - Do not confuse the tactic for the strategy:

The Left wants a race war in America because they cannot otherwise win the ideological war they are waging.

The former is a cover for the latter...

Today’s Marxists’ ideological pursuit of tyrannical control transcends race, which is merely a stealth bomber in their fleet. This is not a race war. It’s something much bigger.

How to counter Critical Race Theory?

This 5 minute PragerU video describes Critical Race Theory and what you can do to stop it: What Is Critical Race Theory?, by James Lindsay.

"Refuse to accept it. Don't be intimidated by the "heads I win and tails you lose" logic of this self-destructive, America-hating, anti-reality idea. Don't be bullied into thinking that you're a racist when you know you're not. Or that you're a victim when you know you're not."

The editors of the American Mind contend that:

• Human beings are fundamentally equal insofar as they are human and citizens and must be treated as such by law.

• Blaming groups of citizens for evils they did not commit based on their race, color, or ethnicity is morally wrong and will result in civic disorder and balkanization.

• A system based on “equity”, in which equity means rejecting equality under the law and distributing goods and services on the basis of race alone is neither equitable nor just.

• Government and public institutions must not discriminate against or grant preferential treatment to persons on the basis of race, color, or ethnicity.

Those who agree with the above points and disagree with Critical Race Theory (CRT) are labeled with "unconscious bias," "white fragility," or as "white supremacists." In other words, defense of CRT amounts to a hollow tautology that attempts to intimidate and silence those who disagree with it. The invective "You're not a racist, are you?" sounds strikingly like "You don't still beat your wife, do you?"

It takes a bit of courage and stamina to stay the course against this societal delirium.

Christopher F. Rufo states:

No longer simply an academic matter, critical race theory has become a tool of political power...

Critical race theorists must be confronted with and forced to speak to the facts...

There are three parts to a successful strategy to defeat the forces of critical race theory: governmental action, grassroots mobilization, and an appeal to principle.

Similarly, in addition to pointing out the dishonesty of the historical narrative on which critical race theory is predicated, we must promote the true story of America...

References

Critical Race Theory is a Victimization Cult, by Art Keller, June 29, 2020.

Institutionalizing Critical Race Theory - How Marxists in America expect to seize power completely, by Claire Lopez, Frontpage Mag, April 30, 2021. An excellent article on CRT. Part 1 of a 3 part series. Part 2: Critical Race Theory in America’s Classrooms - What parents and other citizen patriots need to understand. .

Book: The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and the New Culture Wars, by Bradley Campbell, 2018.

Book: Political Correctness: A Short History of an Ideology, Edited by William Lind, November 2004. Read the entire book (pdf).

The Truth About Critical Race Theory, Christopher F. Rufo, Wall Street Journal October 5, 2020.

Cultural Marxism, Political Correctness, and Critical Theory, CAIRCO research.

It’s Not a Race War. It’s Something Much Bigger - Do not confuse the tactic for the strategy, by Dan Proft, American Greatness, April 21, 2021

Coordination and Decomposition, by Gregory Hood, American Renaissance, April 9, 2021

Standing Against Critical Race Theory, by Christopher Rufo, American Mind, April 21, 2021.

Recommended video: Why Identity Politics Cannot Tolerate Free Speech, Center for the American Way of Life, February 24, 2021: Arthur Milikh, Director of the Center for the American Way of Life, joins Jan Jekielek on American Thought Leaders to discuss the real goal behind the criminalization of hate speech. At 4:07, Milikh discusses Critical race theory, identity politics, and hate speech laws.

 

A White-Out of Whites: Ignoring the Albino, Dhimmi Elephant In the Room, by Ilana Mercer, American Renaissance, May 29, 2021:

Strictly speaking, Critical Race Theory is not even traditionally racist; it’s exclusively anti-white. It is pro all races other than white....

Critical Race Theory’s central project is to make whites accept dhimmitude, not socialism....

NC Lt. Governor Mark Robinson: Critical Race Theory Mirrors Teachings Of The KKK (VIDEO), Gateway Pundit, June 1, 2021:

 

Five tips for debating Critical Race Theory, by Joseph E. McIsaac, American Thinker, June 16, 2021.

Frederick Douglass Versus the 1619 Project - Critical Race Theory's big lie about American history, by Dinesh D'Souza, Frontpage Mag, July 16, 2021:

... Brockell recalls Douglass’s famous July 4 address (pdf), delivered in Rochester, New York, to the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. The first part of the speech does indeed support Brockell’s account, because Douglass gives a savage indictment of how American independence looks to a black man...

Already one can see Douglass’s speech as a masterpiece of rhetoric, each phrase building on the previous one, almost like a wave gathering force before crashing down on the audience. Yet as the speech moves on, Douglass makes a sharp and surprising turn. Far from denouncing the Fourth of July, far from scorning the Declaration of Independence as a charter of hypocrisy, far from blaming the Constitution for making an unholy pact with slavery—this is precisely what the critical race theorists do today—Douglass roundly affirms the founding as a “glorious liberty document” that launched “forces in operation” that “must inevitably work the downfall of slavery.”...

Douglass ended his speech on a patriotic note that vividly contrasts with the way he began, and shows why he had no problem, in the end, with celebrating the Fourth of July and what it represented. Of the Constitution, Douglass later said, “Abolish slavery tomorrow, and not a sentence or syllable of the Constitution needs to be altered.” That’s because the document gives no support, no sanction, to slavery....

The Deceptions of "Systemic Racism," "Antiracism," and "Critical Race Theory" - A compilation of online resources on the ongoing unpleasant dumbing down and racialization of society, Compiled by Stuart H. Hurlbert, Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, May 6, 2021, updated June 28, 2021.

Cynical Minds - a review of the book Cynical Theories, by Fred Elbel, June 21, 2021.