The Critics of Critical Race Theory Are its Proof
Anti-intellectualism and racism have always combined to glorify ignorance and hate
US history and world history have always been heavily infused by the justification of the mistreatment and bondage of different people. Jews, Armenians, Cambodians, Tutsis, Greeks, Poles, Bangladeshis, Serbians, Romanis are some of the more recent examples in world history (over the past 110 years) who have endured genocides because of leaders promoting hate and ignorance.
The elements of the greatest human failing - the desire to exterminate fellow humans - share common traits. The first and most important is the conviction that the targeted group is subhuman and is therefore ineligible for human rights and ultimately life itself. Second is the belief that one race, religion, ethnicity or political ideology is so vastly superior to all others that the superior should reign supreme and everyone else can be eliminated.
In place of logic, reasoning, compassion, empathy, there is only propaganda by the leaders of the dominant population and in every instance, those leaders are morally corrupt, evil and a danger to all - including their followers and supporters.
Propaganda is the deadliest tool in human history, deadlier than nuclear arms so far in terms of the loss of life that has occured with its use. And if you can’t grasp that, your remedial education is advisable and necessary. Not because some government wants to re-educate you, but because repeating the worst failing of humans always repeats tragedies and the perps are viewed as the worst by the greater majority of the world. It’s useful to know stuff that helps you avoid the appeals of propagandists.
Demonizing others with that degree of viciousness always ends up with the perps as the greatest demons.
What Most Don’t Know: what critical race theory is
It’s an offshoot of Critical Theory, which diverged from traditional historical review that merely aimed to define what occurred. Critical Theory advocates sought to define what happened but also pursued means to prevent the reoccurence of past events. As the sociologist/philosopher Max Horkheimer explained, it sought "to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them.”
From that Wikipedia link:
Critical Race Theory emerged in the 1970s from a group of legal scholars who felt that racism manifests itself as an institutionalized legal construct which is more complex and difficult to counter than if it were a mere collection of individual biases.
From Wikipedia: “The theory emphasizes how racism and disparate racial outcomes can be the result of complex, changing and often subtle social and institutional dynamics, rather than explicit and intentional prejudices by individuals.[9] In the field of legal studies, critical race theory emphasizes that merely making laws colorblind on paper may not be enough to make the application of the laws colorblind; ostensibly colorblind laws can be applied in racially discriminatory ways.[4] Intersectionality – which emphasizes that race can intersect with other identities (such as gender and class) to produce complex combinations of power and disadvantage – is a key concept in critical race theory.[11]”
Why is it now being attacked by some media outlets? Because people in power in government and business believe the institutions as they are serve their needs best and changing those things could make things worse… for them. It’s understandable as people with money and influence create most of the laws and institutions that aid their efforts to acquire more wealth and influence.
Scholars advocating for CRT typically believe that the whole of society can benefit if that institutionalized bias can be identified and rooted out, rather than a few benefiting from the institutionalized restrictions on the many. Many of those scholars aren’t certain it can be removed without far more research into the subtle ways it gets entrenched, especially when further complicated by the intersecting divisions based on gender and class, etc.
Logically and visibly, CRT makes sense. The only actual place it’s controversial is that some argue that proof of each nuance is hard to identify so sometimes anecdotal evidence should suffice. If one experiences bias against them, they know it’s there even if it can’t meet the standard of proof that jurists require. But that’s not the reason some media outlets are now fighting CRT. Their real motivation is they don’t want things changed because the status quo either benefits them directly or benefits powerful people who they wish to serve.
So they utilize populist appeals to serve up propaganda. They may use legal arguments, tinge their opposition with words that trigger predictable responses rooted in religion, folklore, class bias, gender bias, or anything that’s demonstrated effectiveness at triggering people.
I’ll repeat my former contention: all propaganda can be the deadliest tool in the bigot’s arsenal.
The name itself - critical race theory - is easily mocked because the word ‘theory’ suggests it can’t be proven. Scholars in the 1970s were invested in the pursuit of truth and weren’t fortune tellers capable of predicting the internet age with social media requiring scanworthy simplistic messaging. It matters not that complex problems require complex solutions, which remains true. Ridicule is easy and is regularly employed against anything that sounds too intellectual. Anti-intellectualism is one of the intersecting biases that make institutionalized racism difficult to counter.
At last count, 8 state legislatures have banned the teaching of CRT in their schools, though I’m not aware of any grade school or high school actually teaching it or trying to. So just like the threat that sharia law might supplant our justice system, it’s a solution in search of a non-existent problem.
Logic often gets contorted when propaganda is employed. A good example can be drawn from things that occurred in the US in the 1960s. We had second amendment purists back then. But when the leaders of the Black Panther Party started advocating that ‘Negroes should carry guns’ our FBI responded by infiltrating them, sometimes convinced some members to break some laws so they’d end up in prison (entrapment) and ultimately enough were murdered or imprisoned that the group as a whole was ultimately destroyed. Even though they were actually engaged in a lot of civic-minded community projects and most weren’t engaged in destroying anything. Gun rights groups joined in the applause as they also felt threatened that adult Negroes might carry guns.
Proven examples of institutionalized racism abound in history. Redlining when buying property. Segregation in schools and neighborhoods. The high unemployment rates for young black males. Housing discrimination by landlords. Store detectives following Black shoppers. The higher rates of incarceration for POC. The exclusion of POC from corporate boards and/or the scarcity of POC in positions of power. Almost any time a way is found to counter such racism, the response is swift and tries to keep the deep seated racism in place. Anti-CRT propaganda is just the latest example of the exact same thing.
That does not mean that every proponent of CRT is flawless. Some can’t message well, some go to extremes that sound a bit foolish. But all CRT is is a school of thought. Its essential premise is that racism is real, deep seated and complex and can’t be easily countered. Who gets harmed by anyone discussing and exploring those ideas? Nobody.
For a year, after the murder of George Floyd, the BLM movement has brought racial violence by some police forces to the forefront of public attention. Along the way, fresh cases of wrongful deaths and use of excessive force by police have caused brief periods of rage from community members fed up with the constant threat of danger. Some arson has occurred. Some looting has occurred, though, as with all riots in recent decades, most looters are exploiting the general situation and aren’t actively engaged in the protests, which have been largely peaceful.
It’s easy to display a dozen anarchists pounding on a federal building in Portland, OR night after night and for some in the media to paint the tens of thousands of peaceful protestors as equally culpable. But it’s wrong. It’s pure propaganda. The hotheads and extremists are and always have been a tiny fraction of the crowd on display. It gets ignored that many Black protest leaders tried to dissuade the tiny few from using vandalism and arson in those situations.
Have you heard about this longterm in-depth study of the BLM protests that determined “96.3% of events involved no property damage or police injuries, and in 97.7% of events, no injuries were reported among participants, bystanders or police” ?
The report found:
“The overall levels of violence and property destruction were low, and most of the violence that did take place was, in fact, directed against the BLM protesters.
First, police made arrests in 5% of the protest events, with over 8,500 reported arrests (or possibly more). Police used tear gas or related chemical substances in 2.5% of these events.
Protesters or bystanders were reported injured in 1.6 percent of the protests. In total, at least three Black Lives Matter protesters and one other person were killed while protesting in Omaha, Austin and Kenosha, Wis. One anti-fascist protester killed a far-right group member during a confrontation in Portland, Ore.; law enforcement killed the alleged assailant several days later.
Police were reported injured in 1% of the protests. A law enforcement officer killed in California was allegedly shot by supporters of the far-right “boogaloo” movement, not anti-racism protesters.
The killings in the line of duty of other law enforcement officers during this period were not related to the protests.”
So, one person killed by anyone who was part of any BLM protest out of millions of protesters nationwide. And that guy was white. The anti-black and white nationalist groups in this country - far fewer in number and representing hateful views of a tiny percentage of the citizens in this country - killed more people, including cops.
Where is the broad coverage of this new study? It doesn’t serve the interests of the beneficiaries of the institutionalized racism, so it gets modest attention for a few hours then disappears behind drummed up propaganda stories.
It’s also true throughout world history that the victors usually are successful at keeping the real history hidden, so the victims get painted as the bad guys. If Hitler and Hirohito had won WW2, we all would have grown up thinking the Holocaust was necessary to stop the evil Jews.
But historians, through the years keep digging out uncomfortable truths. Consider these:
1) It’s a demonstrated fact that our federal government system originated in part from a centralized system used by Iroquois tribes. Our distribution of Senators, at 2 per state, was designed to get smaller population states to agree to the Constitution and many had smaller populations because they counted Blacks as 2/3rds of a person. The Electoral College was also created to get slave states to agree to sign the Constitution. None of this is openly disputed anymore.
2) The vast majority of the country supported passage of the ERA. The few mostly smaller states that opposed it represented less than 20% of the adults in this country. Most of the fears the opponents raised to oppose it have come to pass. Women are active participants in war zones. Unisex bathrooms are increasingly common. More women are working outside the home than ever before. And the biggest fear, that more abortions would occur, has not proven so devastating to our country as abortion has been legal for over 47 years. Republicans trying to outlaw it have failed repeatedly. Mainly, they’ve limited access to it by poor women in a few states. Middle class women can afford to travel to wherever they need to to obtain an abortion.
So why don’t we have the ERA today? I’ll leave it to others to define that.
3) Next to ‘how’s your wallet doing?’ race has been the biggest issue in the most elections since our country was founded. Nearly every election between 1789 and 1900 was impacted heavily by race considerations. This was also true from 1968-1980 (in response to major Civil Rights legislation) and from 2008-2020. A major reason Truman was highly unpopular was because he desegregated our military.
4) Slavery has been practiced across many nations throughout human history. In modern history (the past 500 years) European colonizers like Great Britain have caused a lot of conflicts in the Americas, Asia and the Middle East that continue to this day (and consider that the US and Australia are GB offshoots with similar histories of race based exclusion and race based violence). Great Britain and Portugal were the leading slave traders impacting the Americas and Africa till the trade was officially banned in the 1800s. And GB paid reparations to the slaveowners - not the slaves - till 2015.
5) The US Supreme Court has on numerous occasions, provided legal justification for blatant racial discrimination.
6) You’ve heard all about the Battle of the Alamo but you were duped. The reality behind the official narrative was pretty bad.
7) The GI Bill was a major factor in creating a large middle class in this country. For many years, Black servicemen couldn’t use it.
8) There are numerous guys in our history once considered heroes who have seen their reputations crumble in the wake of the reality of their various bigotries. Some maintain some heroic cred like George Washington, as he did successfully lead us to independence from England against overwhelming odds. But he was a slaveholder, along with Jefferson and Madison and many founders. Andrew Jackson was huge in the destruction of Indian tribes. Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford were big admirers of Hitler. And even birth control advocate Margaret Sanger (who supported eugenics) and womens’ rights champs like Susan B Anthony and Elizabeh Cady Stanton made several racist pronouncements, upset that Black people gained suffrage before white women did.
9) The Second Amendment likely had racist roots too.
1) Anti-majority-vote bills seeking to instititutionalize minority rule in future elections are rife with examples of eliminating the votes of POC.
I could provide far more examples, but the central point remains. CRT is about learning about how institutionalized racism works with the aim of ending it. And while some in the media and some in politics attack it, no matter what they claim is their reason, the reality is that anyone who supports leaving things as racist as they are, are, in fact, racists. They oppose equal rights for some people. Individual racism is harder to eliminate than institutional racism
And the people opposing CRT while denying they are racists are also either liars or they’re in such deep denial about their own motivations that they definitely should seek counseling to fix what’s broken upstairs. And I’m quite confident that instead, I’ll be branded a racist by the racists fighting CRT.
Today’s videos carry on similar themes. Please share these messages.
This one likely needs a raise in volume.
Now lower the volume.
And here’s a powerful new take on Sam Cooke’s Civil Rights anthem.