xzcvzxvc wrote:
Cite an actual text from "Critical Race Theory" to that effect or retract your remark. Critical Race Theory is nothing more than a movement within critical legal studies to examine the history of race in American law. So, you will see, for instance, descriptions of Supreme Court decisions involving race. It is not a theory about what society is or about one race being superior to another or anything like that. Nor does critical race theory focus on the treatment of African Americans alone. The subject matter in the anthology I taught about twenty years ago includes Supreme Court cases involving Japanese internment camps in World War II, the arguments against permitting citizenship to a Japanese man and an Indian man (each of whom claimed he was white or belonged to the white race according to 'race science' and thus qualified to be a citizen of the U.S.), and the question of whether the child of a female slave was herself or himself a slave.
CRT has infused many fields since it's inception, most notably education, where it is not just a theory about how race operates. It is also adopted as a pedagogical approach. This pedagogical approach leads to things like progressive stack exercises, where students are asked to step forward or backward if they do or don't have a particular "privilege." It's also led to the creation of "racial affinity groups" in some classroom settings. See Gloria Ladson-Billings' work for an early example of CRT in education. She is sometimes referred to as "The Mother of Critical Race Theory in Education."
More importantly, CRT is not simply a critique of racial inequality; it argues that political liberalism is an elaborate smokescreen for white supremacy. As a critical theory it borrows the bourgeois/proletariat (oppressor/oppressed) dialectic from Marx (who borrowed it from Hegel's Master-Slave dialectic) but replaces it with race. You can see this is Cheryl Harris' 1993 paper in Harvard Law Review titled "Whiteness as Property."
The heavy focus on race intensifes with more recent scholars, particularly people like Robin DiAngelo, who I quote several times below. I'll start with Ladson-Billings. Here you see the idea that racism is built into the structure of American society and promoted through liberalism. Note also the critique of positivism (criticism of scientific approaches to knowledge, often ending in an argument that non-white people have special knowledge about the world and should be deferred to when questions about inequality arise; asking for evidence of racism is an affront to this tenet of CRT and is often deemed white supremacist. Science and legal reasoning are replaced or supplemented with "storytelling").
"Critical race theory (CRT) first emerged as a counterlegal scholarship to the positivist and liberal legal discourse of civil rights. This scholarly tradition argues against the slow pace of racial reform in the United States. Critical race theory begins with the notion that racism is normal in American society. It departs from mainstream legal scholarship by sometimes employing storytelling. It critiques liberalism and argues that Whites have been the primary beneciaries of civil rights legislation. Since schooling in the USA purports to prepare citizens, CRT looks at how citizenship and race might interact. Critical race theory’ s usefulness in understanding education inequity is in its infancy. It requires a critique of some of the civil rights era’s most cherished legal victories and educational reform movements, such as multiculturalism" (Gloria Ladson-Billings).
"Because whites built and dominate all significant institutions, (often at the expense of and on the uncompensated labor of other groups), their interests are embedded in the foundation of U.S. society" (DiAngelo in White Fragility).
"This systemic and institutional control allows those of us who are white in North America to live in a social environment that protects and insulates us from race-based stress. We have organized society to reproduce and reinforce our racial interests and perspectives. Further, we are centered in all matters deemed normal, universal, benign, neutral and good" (DiAngelo in White Fragility).
"Socialized into a deeply internalized sense of superiority and entitlement that we are either not consciously aware of or can never admit to ourselves, we become highly fragile in conversations about race. We experience a challenge to our racial worldview as a challenge to our very identities as good, moral people. It also challenges our sense of rightful place in the hierarchy" (DiAngelo in White Fragility).
"First, drawing principally from Bell’s Racism as Permanent Thesis, CRT argues that racism is pervasive and represents ‘a normal fact of daily life in US society’ (Bell
1995; Taylor 2009, 5). Supporting this idea are the ideologies and
assumptions of white supremacy which are ingrained in the political, legal
and educational structures in ways that make them almost unrecognizable
(Bell 1995; Delgado 1995, as cited in Taylor 2009). Second, CRT views the
structure of white supremacy as having a profound effect on the world and
representing an ‘all-encompassing and omnipresent’ (4) system of privilege,
power and opportunities that are often invisible to its own beneficiaries
(Taylor 2009). Third, oppositional scholarship is seen as a desirable outcome
of CRT research and teaching. CRT challenges traditional notions of
scholarly objectivity by promoting a radical scholarship that goes beyond
the experience of whites as the normative standard and instead grounds its
conceptual framework in the distinctive historical context that places an
emphasis on the experiences of people of color (Taylor 1998).
In conducting this type of research, scholars of CRT often use ‘non-traditional’ methods of research such as narrative and storytelling as a means to
challenge the existing social construction of race (Ladson-Billings 1998,
2013). Fourth, CRT advocates a strong critique of liberalism as a supporting
ideology for a just and equal society. CRT offers a sustained critique of the
belief that traditional government institutions can create an equitable and just
society. CRT advocates are skeptical that the current paradigms utilized by
government institutions can be catalysts for social change given the emphasis
on incrementalism that is ingrained in these institutions (Ladson-Billings
1998)" (Lynn, Jennings, & Hughes summarizing he influence of Derrick Bell).
I could go on and on. There are literally thousands of papers in academic journals that promote these ideas. Arguing that all white people are socialized to believe they are superior is an argument about moral inferiority, while the argument that non-white people have special access to the truth is about moral superiority. These ideas create hostility and division. Still, the most important and awful aspect of this theory is the attack on liberalism itself. Liberalism is not perfect and can obviously be critiqued, but CRT critics have it exactly backwards. Liberal ideas made longstanding social instutions like slavery repugnant, not the other way around. Imagine the fire department running around with gasoline and matches lighting houses on fire, then pointing to increased arson as evidence of just how needed they are. This is what CRT proponents are doing with race.
