Critical Race Theory (CRT), has been “marching through the cultural institutions,” an expression often used by Marxist Antonio Gramsci, since the early 2000s.
The theory itself, according to an illuminating piece
written by Christopher
F. Rufo, draws upon
previous work done “on updated social
psychological research
on unconscious bias in order to justify affirmative action; and work relying on
law and economic methodology to examine structural inequality and discrimination in the workplace.”
CRT’s reliance on
activism and personal narration, rather than scientific inquiry and historical
research, means that it is not only a theory but an activist practice.
Political radical Will Oremus argues that "The theory [is]
radical... in the sense that it questions fundamental assumptions.... And
unlike some strands of academic and legal thought, critical race theory has an
open and activist agenda, with an emphasis on storytelling and personal
experience. It's about righting wrongs, not just questing after knowledge....
Many of their ideas are not radical today in the sense of being outside the
mainstream: Critical race theory is widely taught and studied."
Yes, but CRT has long escaped its academic prisons in major
universities and now has leeched into the cultural institutions it plans to subtly
subvert.
Some common themes in CRT may very well derive from
Gramsci’s critique of the Communist effort to replace capitalism with a
functioning socialist state in the developed West. Marxist-Leninist thought had
failed to penetrate cultural institutions in the West, Gramsci correctly
reasoned, and the saturation of Marxian theory – the “long march of communism
through the institutions” – was necessary to the success of the
Marxist-Leninist venture outside the borders of the then Soviet Union.
CTR has had a face, and has shown its face to the
institutions it has targeted, for the last 15 years at least. It is no longer a
hidden, little understood theory. Its principal enemy is not conservative
thought but the classical liberalism of the post enlightenment period, the
liberal body of ideas the founders of the United States relied upon when they
created a durable new republic.
Here are two among many other features of CRT easily
obtained from available public resources. In defending himself recently on the
floor of the state Senate against charges that the fears of his constituents
were largely imaginary, state Senator Rob Samson, noted that CRT was no
stranger to scholarly inquiry.
Wikipedia, a site sometimes used by journalists to give shape and unction to their stories, makes note of CRT’s “Critique of liberalism: “Critical race theory scholars question [and reject] foundational liberal concepts such as Enlightenment rationalism, legal equality, and Constitutional neutrality, and challenge the incrementalist, step-by-step approach of traditional civil-rights discourse;[they favor a race-conscious approach to social transformation, critiquing liberal ideas such as affirmative action, color blindness, role modeling, or the merit principle; and an approach that relies more on political organizing, in contrast to liberalism's reliance on rights-based remedies.”
It identifies Intersectional theory as an indispensable element of CRT: “The examination of race, sex, class, national origin, and sexual orientation, and how their combination (i.e., their intersections) plays out in various settings, e.g., how the needs of a Latina female are different from those of a black male and whose needs are the ones promoted.”
Such common elements, the A-B-C’s of Critical Race Theory,
are present in CRT’s assault on American jurisprudence, sternly resisted by
judges and lawyers who do not wish to throw into the trash bin of history the
centuries old, organic development of both constitutional and statutory law, in
favor of an emotion driven, post-Marxist jurisprudence that relies heavily on
personal narration and history as edited by air-brushing CRT activists.
Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner argued
as far back as 1997 that critical race theory "turns its back on the
Western tradition of rational inquiry, forswearing analysis for narrative…By
repudiating reasoned argumentation, [critical race theorists] reinforce
stereotypes about the intellectual capacities of nonwhites." And former
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Alex Kozinski lamented in the same year
that critical race theorists had raised "insuperable barriers to mutual
understanding" and thus eliminated fruitful opportunities for
"meaningful dialogue.”
Like the rain that falls on the just and unjust, CRT is now
trickling down in the education front, one of the most important of Gramsci’s
cultural institutions; neither is the media an avoidable institutional cultural
target for revolutionary change.
Samson has exposed himself to the usual contumely by waving warning flags over a partly conquered educational empire ruled more increasingly by state legislators, less and less by municipal school directors who will, despite entreaties, feel the bite of state interference in what used to be local political jurisdiction over their schools. As expected, some uncomfortable pedagogues in education schools have been forced to insist that if they walk like CRT ducks, quack like CRT ducks, and swim in CRT ponds, they are not CRT ducks.
Parents in some communities who are suspicious of the transformative nature of
a full bore CRT have voiced complaints. They have been marked as racists.
Still Samson slogs on, pointing out the supreme irony that
precisely those lawmakers who most heatedly object to racism are now, wittingly
or unwittingly, imposing upon municipal school systems a bill that forces once locally
directed schools to adopt a race based notion straight out of the CRT
playbook -- that the evils of discrimination once viciously directed at African
Americans, Catholics, Hispanics, and women, can only be reversed through
equally discrimination directed at “whites”, whatever “white” means.
White
is a color, not a race. Black is a color, not a race. Brown, when used of
Hispanics, Asians and others, is a color, not a race. Members of the court, reporters in media, and
pedagogues in schools, should be race blind, as recommended by Fredrick
Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and Rob Samson.
Comments