The Problems with Critical Race Theory
Critical Race Theory originated as an academic theory in the seventies as an offshoot of the Marxist inspired movement of Critical Theory. While CRT can have value as an academic study in higher education, the ideological movement inspired by the analytical tool is problematic. Anti-empirical, anti-rational and illiberal efforts on the left threaten to give political power to anti-equality efforts on the right. My commitment is to racial equality through evidence-based approaches and by reaffirming liberal values.
When used appropriately by professionals, it can be useful at analyzing history and law through a racial lens. Systemic racism is also a useful concept that came out of CRT. Since the ideological movement that spawned from CRT has gone mainstream and become diluted, it’s been misused and abused by lay people, especially in online activism spaces.
CRT doesn’t allow you to see people as individuals. It reduces people to single variables. It puts social significance back into racial categories and inflames racism.
CRT claims that science, objective truth, reason and liberal values are part of a racist structure. As an analytic tool, it seeks to destroy all other analytic tools.
It’s also antisemitic, anti-asian and discriminates against people with disabilities.
We should be reaffirming liberal values and what Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement fought for: to see people for the content of their character and not the color of their skin.
Videos on CRT
Anti-Anti-Racism in U.S. Schools | Glenn Loury & John McWhorter | The Glenn Show
Glenn Loury (Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University) and John McWhorter (Columbia University, Lexicon Valley, The Atlantic). Recorded May 1, 2021.
John McWhorter on "Black Fragility" | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)
Linguistics professor and "Nine Nasty Words" author John McWhorter joins Bill Maher for a common-sense conversation about race.
'Woke utopia', the end of the West & a new cult - James Lindsay interview - BQ #33
James Lindsay is a US academic with a background in maths and physics. He co-authored the book Cynical Theories which takes a deep dive into the woke movement and its academic roots. Lindsay was also involved in the Grievance studies affair where a group of academics submitted fake papers for peer review to shine a light on poor standards and postmodernist ideas.
Critical Race Theory in U.S. Schools | Glenn Loury & John McWhorter | The Glenn Show
Glenn Loury and John McWhorter discuss the complexities of American education's new focus on race.
The New Religion Of Anti-Racism: A Conversation with John McWhorter (Episode #217)
In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with John McWhorter about race, racism, and “anti-racism” in America.
John McWhorter: America Has Never Been Less Racist
Columbia University linguist John McWhorter on the Jussie Smollett hoax, Donald Trump, and "antiracism" as a new secular religion.
Has Anti-Racism Become A New Religion? with John McWhorter (Ep.2)
In this episode, Coleman Hughes interviews John McWhorter, an American academic and linguist, on the notion of anti-racism, the Alex McNab saga, religion, and more.
Shermer with John McWhorter—Neoracists Posing as Antiracists & Their Threat to Progressive America
In episode 165 of The Michael Shermer Show, Dr. Shermer speaks with John McWhorter about his new online book on how the antiracism movement poses a threat to progressive America. Shermer and McWhorter discuss: antiracism as a religion; the 3 waves of antiracism; the antiracism trinity: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robin DiAngelo, Ibram X. Kendi; white fragility; Black Lives Matter; systemic racism (incarceration rates, housing, jobs, income, etc.); reparations; George Floyd, Tony Timpa and police violence; the N-word and language as violence; and Third Wave Antiracism catechism.
Eight Big Reasons CRT Is Terrible for Dealing with Racism
Critical Race Theory…
- believes racism is present in every aspect of life, every relationship, and every interaction and therefore has its advocates look for it everywhere
- relies upon “interest convergence” (white people only give black people opportunities and freedoms when it is also in their own interests) and therefore doesn’t trust any attempt to make racism better
- is against free societies and wants to dismantle them and replace them with something its advocates control
- only treats race issues as “socially constructed groups,” so there are no individuals in Critical Race Theory
- believes science, reason, and evidence are a “white” way of knowing and that storytelling and lived experience are a “black” alternative, which hurts everyone, especially black people
- rejects all potential alternatives, like colorblindness, as forms of racism, making itself the only allowable game in town (which is totalitarian)
- acts like anyone who disagrees with it must do so for racist and white supremacist reasons, even ifthose people are black (which is also totalitarian)
- cannot be satisfied, so it becomes a kind of activist black hole that threatens to destroy everything it is introduced into
Read more:
https://newdiscourses.com/2020/06/reasons-critical-race-theory-terrible-dealing-racism/
Essential Reading
Eight Big Reasons Critical Race Theory Is Terrible for Dealing with Racism
James Lindsay
Heterodox Academy: Resources
Who Decides What's Racist? The problem with "standpoint epistemology."
David Bernstein
Critical Race Theory: helpful or harmful?
The cognitive distortions in Critical Race Theory
The Intellectual Fraud of Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility”
Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility Is Snake Oil Masquerading As Insight by David Edward Burke
Free Black Thought
Free Black Thought: A Manifesto
To build a truly antiracist society, we need to listen to all black voices, not just those deemed "authentic." Erec Smith.
Do Black People enjoy being told they are weak and dumb? The elect hope so.
Tracing, facing and erasing what psychology titles the Victimhood Mentality will be key to, among other things, saving America's educational system. John McWhorter.
Anti-asian racism in CRT
Asian Americans Emerging as a Strong Voice Against Critical Race Theory
Helen Raleigh
CACAGNY Denounces Critical Race Theory as Hateful Fraud
The Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York (CACAGNY) delivered the most vigorous rejection of CRT yet, calling it "a hateful, divisive, manipulative fraud." CACAGNY is one of the oldest chapters of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance, which was founded in San Francisco in 1895 to respond to nationwide discrimination and violence against Chinese Americans.
Antisemitism in CRT
A letter to our fellow Jews on equality and liberal values
Jewish Institute for Liberal Values
The Flames of Anti-Semitism Are Growing Higher, Fueled by Both the Left and Right
Hannah E. Meyers February 4, 2021
Letter slams Jewish community's ‘suppression of dissent’ on racial justice
‘Way to fight racism isn’t to cease discussion and debate,’ say dozens of Jewish intellectuals and writers, assert opposition to ‘the imposition of ideology’
By Jeremy Sharon
Review: Let’s hope that for progressive readers, this book counts
David Baddiel's book looking at the left's blind spot on Jews gets a thumbs up from Jeremy Havardi, despite the comedian 'ducking the challenge' on Zionism.
CRT in Education
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Committees Have Way Too Much Power
Monica Osbourne
The 1619 Project and Uses and Abuses of History
Steven Mintz is professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin
Cynical Theories
Cynical Theories
How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody
By James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose