Why Critical Race Theory Makes Race Relations Worse

Why Critical Race Theory Makes Race Relations Worse

But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good.
–-1 Thessalonians 5:21

Robert Harris

I
In Need of Answers

The pace of political, legal, economic, and social change in the United States has accelerated so rapidly since the beginning of 2021 that many Americans have become confused about just what is going on. At the personal relationship level, race relations between middle class Black and White Americans continue to improve as both groups grow increasingly comfortable with each other as they work, worship, and play together. However, when asked about what they think of race relations in general, members of both groups frequently say that relationships between Blacks and Whites are suffering from a continuing decline. Members of both races, especially those who have few friends of different races, say that they are increasingly concerned about what seems to be a growing tension or even a resentment between some members of each race toward the other.

A significant issue is the breakdown in communications across racial lines. Many White people especially express a fear of negative consequences if they say hello, ask a question, or make eye contact with a Black person. (Ironically, it is just this failure—a White person looking away and failing to make eye contact—that some Black people see as an intentional affront.) Many White people have become afraid to discuss areas of conflict or disagreement for fear of being called racists and losing their jobs by offending the new, so-called cancel culture, a humorless gaggle of unforgiving fault-finders. Many Black people feel pressure to align their ideas with those of “all other Black people” and conform to the demands of the leaders of the various race-focused political movements. However, they are increasingly resentful of being treated, by both their Black leadership and the White liberals in the news media and in government, as a monolithic group that shares all the same political views, ideas and desires—and victimhood. Their leadership tells them what their hopes and aspirations should be and insists that no racial progress can be made unless the entire Black population participates in identity politics and supports the position that Black people are victims of White people.

II
Why Critical Race Theory?

For the concern of the moment, however, why is there so much excitement and enthusiasm for offering—and often requiring—“Reconciliation Training” based on Critical Race Theory for employees, K-12 and university students and now even church members? Instead of bringing Black people and White people together in friendship and harmony, unselfconsciously “reconciled” with each other, the result will be increased interracial hostility, mistrust, and antagonism between the races. This is not a claim that CRT theory or training will fail. CRT training will be a spectacular success. In spite of its claims that CRT will bring the races together in understanding and friendship, such a goal is only an advertising ploy. The actual goal of Critical Race Theory training is to create an ever-increasing animosity between Black people and White people. Such a claim might at first seem strange, even bizarre, but a look back at CRT’s origin and history will provide us with some useful context.

III
Karl Marx Sees Oppression Everywhere

In 1848 Karl Marx and his friend Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto, a pamphlet arguing that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (Ch. 1). Down through history, they said, “oppressor and oppressed” were constantly at odds, until now (which is to say, the middle of 19th century Europe), “Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat” (Ch.1). The twofold antagonism identified the workers of the world (the Proletariat) as the exploited, versus the capitalists (Bourgeoisie) as the oppressors, because they own the means of production (the machines, tools, factories). In other words, the core belief of the Marxists was that the economics of capitalism determined the power relationships in society, resulting in putting all the power (and all the money) in the hands of the capitalists, cheating the workers out of their rightful earnings.

Communist doctrine announced that, once recognized by the workers, this act of stealing the workers’ money would provoke the Proletariat into a violent rebellion against the Bourgeoise, resulting in the abolishment of private property and the takeover by the state of all land, businesses, and money. From then on, the economy would be run by central planning.

Early on, it became obvious that most of the workers of the world weren’t interested in starting a communist revolution, because they enjoyed owning things, and the proposals to abolish the family and “introduce community of women” (Ch. 2) were just too much for most workers. So the Marxists started some rebellions, and in the name of justice, freedom, and equality, took over the governments of several countries, established totalitarian regimes, murdered the dissenters, eliminated nearly all freedom, and instituted pervasive inequality.

These experiments in mandatory Marxism resulted in the deaths of more than 100 million people (mostly from violence and starvation), demonstrating fairly clearly to most observers that Marxism was just not a workable economic, social, political, and ideological system.

IV
From Marxism to Neo-Marxism

However, many of the die-hard Marxists were not convinced that their system was flawed. They soon developed a new version of the theory, Neo-Marxism, which argued that Marxism was really a great way to bring fair government to the people, but it needed some minor adjustments. The failure of the working class to rise up and throw off the hateful chains of their capitalist oppressors was not the fault of Marxist theory, the Neos said, but of the evil capitalists themselves, who controlled the dominant culture and values of the society. The result was that the workers were submerged in a manufactured reality, producing “false-consciousness” that made them think they were happy instead of realizing the truth that they were oppressed and exploited.

The necessary “minor adjustment” to Marxism was elaborated by Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, who argued that instead of fomenting the violent overthrow of capitalist governments, the Neo-Marxists should first defeat the capitalist oppressors by undermining their culture. The obvious way to do this, Gramsci said, was first to attack the existing norms, cultural foundations, values, and sources of authority by showing them to be illegitimate and oppressive.

If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?”
–Psalm 11:3

V
From Neo-Marxism to Postmodernism

Taking Gramsci’s advice, the Neo-Marxists, now identifying themselves culturally as postmodernists and politically as progressives, quickly flooded into the areas where they could have the largest impact promoting their new worldview and therefore destroying American (and Western) culture: colleges and universities, the news media, entertainment media (books, film, television, the arts), and other institutions such as scholarly societies and government agencies. The attack on Western culture began in the law schools and in departments of literature at the universities, where new ways of reading, understanding, and writing about literature (and the law and all the arts) was taught.

The method of Deconstruction, as the interpretive approach was called, focused on exposing contradictions and “illegitimate hegemonies” (universal value claims supported by nothing other than te word of the patriarchy), and “problematizing texts” (finding internal contradictions and errors in every literary work) as a way to strip them of their power. In order to “undermine the culture” of the West, literary (and philosophical—and legal) interpretation celebrated whatever was anti-tradition, anti-authority, anti-patriarchal, anti-Western, anti-religion (especially anti-Christian), anti-objective (critics called deconstruction “relativism on steroids”), anti-reason, and anti-truth. (Well, you could have your “truth” and I could have mine. Just don’t pretend that “true truth” exists.) There was no longer such a thing as a “correct” interpretation, only “privileged readings” in need of “decentering.” There were no longer novels and poems and plays; there was no longer fiction and nonfiction; there were only “texts”: The entire literary catalog was up for attack, and the deconstructionists gleefully ripped apart every traditional work they could get their theory on. Statements formerly described as “good,” or even “normative,” were now labeled as merely “hegemonic,” (dominant). Traditionally valued literary works were denounced as oppressive, patriarchal, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, classist, colonial, and capitalist.

Those who believe that truth does not exist are more likely to believe that it is all right to lie.
–Axiom of Human Nature

 VI
Postmodernism Gains a Foothold

From about 1968 to perhaps the 1980s, the postmodernist project slowly gained steam, with some dramatic changes. The film industry made more and more films about the evils of America (crime, injustice, racism, spiritual emptiness, hopelessness), the news media ran an endless crusade against America, criticizing the nation’s role in the Vietnam War, while much of the professoriate trained their university students in the principles and practice of anti-government (that is, anti-American) protest. (When the Vietnam War ended, new objects of protest were discovered, because it is axiomatic that everything valued by America deserves exposing, denouncing, and protesting.)

In the law schools, postmodernist theories were applied to laws and especially to the U.S. Constitution, where the students learned that any sentence or phrase in the document—that is, “text”—could be interpreted in many different ways, none of which could be legitimately “privileged” over the others.

VII
Postmodernism Goes Mainstream

The postmodern deconstructionists had exposed what they saw in the literary canon as an injustice: there were too few works by women, racial minorities, homosexuals, Marxists and others. These groups were all being victimized by the “totalizing narratives” and “hegemonic structures” of the West. The classic works of literature, traditionally so honored and prized by the West for their ideas, not for their racial or gender characteristics, were, according to these Neo-Marxists turned postmodernists, overwhelmingly the products of dead, white, European men (DWEMs). “Heteronormativity” (the belief that heterosexual relationships are normative) became a badge of shame for many of the classics because their authors valued the nuclear family, marital fidelity, and even civic responsibility. English departments everywhere imputed intentional ill will—bias, racism, misogyny, and discrimination–to those who had played a role in selecting and perpetuating the old, formerly treasured “great books.”

Race, class, and gender became the focus and the measuring standards in the literature departments. As a result, a scavenger hunt began, where new, non-traditional authors were sought, and many long-forgotten works, previously judged of less significance esthetically, historically, morally, or intellectually were suddenly touted as of great merit. The fact that they had been forcibly suppressed by White men (that is, racist bigots) only enhanced their perceived value when rescued by the Woke–those with enough superior wisdom to become Neo-Marxist postmodernists. The process of dumping the old, traditional works and elevating the newfound works also provided the opportunity to bring in politicized works previously labeled as left wing propaganda, now relabeled as literature.

At this point, around the turn of the century, a recap of the goals and methods of these Neo-Marxists reveals that, while their original aims remained the same (the destruction of the West, the rejection of Western values, and the complete erasure of Western culture, especially of the United States), there was a dissatisfaction with the scope and pace of change. True, they still believed that the fastest, most effective destruction would be achieved by attacking the formerly accepted norms and values that were responsible for building the hated culture and to use weaknesses in the culture against the culture itself. But now they realized that success would come by attacking the bedrock supports of civilized society (morality, freedom of speech, religion, justice, equality, and so on).

VIII
Replacing the Content of Your Character

The path from Marx through Gramsci to the racial unrest of the 20th and 21st centuries brought the realization among the Neo-Marxists that the shortest journey to anarchy and civil war—the most powerful social method for the destruction of the West–is to inflame racial differences and highlight disparities. Perhaps the most significant change in the attempt to destroy Western society and its historical culture was to apply two pieces of ancient military wisdom: “Divide and conquer,” and, “To beat your enemy while you sleep, make your enemy fight himself.” That is, find groups that can be divided from other groups and pitted against each other. Rich versus poor, capitalist versus worker, upper class versus lower class—none of these got off the ground to the point of mass self-disintegration of society. But Black versus White, that (with the help of the media and the activist universities) took hold and ballooned. Soon, its advocatess thought, it will be possible to tribalize the nation, where the country will descend into warring factions, and eventually destroy itself.

However, the media and the academy soon found themselves watching with chagrin as Black Americans and White Americans in the middle class quietly continued to grow together instead of apart. The protests, the fevered lectures from the universities, and the latest gritty movies about racial mistreatment produced too low a level of violence needed for revolution. So the Neo-Marxists raised the intensity of racial protests, taking advantage of the Neos’ influence over the news media (which will cover a burning dumpster in New Jersey with great attention and urgency if it can be presented as a racist action). So, researchers dug into the history of the United States and developed a list of White atrocities committed against Black Americans, from the days of slavery to the present. These stories were publicized and regularly re-emphasized, and became a part of the story of constant oppression, all laid at the feet of White people, even those who immigrated  to the United States last week.

IX
From Postmodernism To Critical Race Theory

The Neo-Marxists had noted with great satisfaction how effectively the USA had been weakened and compromised in the 1960s and 1970s by demonstrations that attacked traditional American culture as oppressive, and vociferously condemned the United States as unjust, unfair, war-mongering, genocidal, and imperialistic. They took a lesson from the old Soviet Union’s billion-dollar Psy Ops investment in US Anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, noting that only a few paid activists could lure a much larger crowd to march, demonstrate, riot, loot, and kill, and that once the tinder was lit, the fire would sustain itself. The United States’ Motto, “E Pluribus Unum,” “Out of Many, One,” they observed, ran in reverse easily enough when sufficient media distortions and activist race baiters fomented, accelerated, and sustained, racial discontent.

Never give up, never back down, never compromise.
 And soon your opponent will give you everything.
(And if he doesn’t, call him a racist.)
–-Advice from the Far Left

X
Everyone’s a Racist

Also noted was the recent history of labeling opponents of Neo-Marxist progress as “homophobic, xenophobic, misogynistic, transphobic, extremist” and so on, keeping disagreement and criticism at levels manageable for continued progress. But now the most powerful word was loaded into the Neo-Marxist canon: racist.

So the Neo-Marxists refocused their aim from a shotgun attack on everything American to a laser assault on the race issues already troubling the nation. Critical Race Theory (CRT) emerged as a powerful vehicle for destroying American culture:

  • CRT is simplicity itself to understand, while remaining sufficiently amenable to allow trendy intellectuals to adumbrate and pontificate endlessly. Even better, CRT is built on the Marxist framework of oppressor versus oppressed, modified by Neo-Marxism to identify the oppressors as all White men and the oppressed as all people of color (but especially, Black people). Identifying the two enemy camps in this straightforward, simplistic way focuses the struggle and gives it energy. Pitching two races against each other offers a much larger pool of combatants than would, say, landlords versus small business owners.
  • CRT takes advantage of White liberal guilt, expecting the academy, corporations, and government agencies to support organizations that are advertised as committed to helping Black people gain their rights and their entitlements. (Black Lives Matter or BLM, for example, received $90 million in donations in 2020.)
  • CRT-based racial reconciliation programs, instead of improving racial harmony or even “racial reconciliation,” produce greater division and hostility among the participants. White participants feel humiliated, shamed, and unfairly blamed and criticized. They are required to apologize for the crimes of people they have never met, are not related to and who have been dead for many years. Black people are encouraged to feel resentful and angry toward White people, who are required to ask for forgiveness.
  • CRT teaches that the United States is “structurally racist,” and needs dramatic remedies—which just happens to involve dismantling the entire culture. Importantly, anyone who disagrees with either the analysis or the remedies proposed by the CRT experts is a “White-supremacist,” “racist,” “blinded by White privilege,” compromised by “White fragility,” and so on. Black people who object to the caricature of race relations and the simplistic CRT paradigm are said to have “internalized Whiteness.”

 

Retributive racism will only cause an endless cycle of back-and-forth hatred
and further degrade our society.
—Armstrong Williams

 XI
“Racial Reconciliation” Training Based on Critical Race Theory

Now we can get a clear idea about how well training in “reconciliation” based on CRT can be expected to work.

Using training or instructional materials based on the ideological foundation of Critical Race Theory produces several results not foreseen by the uninitiated.

  1. As we have seen, Critical Race Theory is philosophically and structurally Neo-Marxist and postmodernist, casting White people as oppressors and Black people as oppressed victims. Much of the old “Diversity Training” and “Multicultural Training” that was offered from a similar, though milder, point of view, instead of aiding racial harmony, often increased negative feelings each group had toward the Other. The results of CRT training, with its antagonistic, oppressor/victim relationships and stereotyped (racist) views of humans, will be received with all the more resentment.
  2. There will be much confusion and pushback when the White participants of CRT training are informed that they are not meeting with a group of Black people to learn together as equals, both interested in developing better relationships. Instead, the White people discover that they must apologize to the Black people for their past and present racism as well as the racism of their ancestors. And when they are informed that they have benefited from “White privilege” and racial discrimination (in their favor) all of their lives, they will object. The facilitators will then say that the objection is proof that the Whites have “internalized” their “White supremacy,” and have become “racism deniers,” whose jobs might be affected if they do not become Woke and embrace the correct beliefs. This is not a scenario for developing racial harmony.
  3. As the facilitators of the CRT training share lengthy accounts of atrocities and horrors perpetrated by White people against Black people, the White participants will feel ever more unjustly accused and the Black participants will be more and more likely to develop an increasing bitterness toward the White participants. The White participants will feel increasingly shamed and guilty until they rebel at having to listen to more than they can process, and the Black participants will grow more and more resentful and angry when hearing in fresh detail about the abhorrent behavior White people have displayed toward their ancestors and relatives in the past. In short, the mutual hostility resulting from this “reconciliation training” built on CRT theory will produce an interracial disaster. It will preprogram the Black participants into believing that White people are evil and never do anything to help or befriend a Black person unless there is an ulterior motive to harm, betray, mislead, or blame them for something. And that is exactly the desired outcome that CRT-based training is designed to produce.
  4. CRT presents a false view of American society. Racism (at least before CRT training becomes widespread) has diminished dramatically in the past 50 years. Black people and White people are already enjoying multiracial workplaces, friendships, recreational activities, Church attendance, even marriages. Many people, in fact, are a little confused over the advertised animus the races supposedly feel for each other. They reject the almost completely false picture of race relations they see on television news and entertainment.

Friendship either finds, or makes, an equality.
–Proverb

XII
Now You Know Why

For years, the Neo-Marxists have been employing increasingly strident and demanding mechanisms to create enmity between Black people and White people (in the guise of relationship training!). Have they had any success? Which of the following accomplishments would have been scandalous and illegal in the United States 50 years ago but today are celebrated as victories by the Neo-Marxists every day?

  • Black-only college dormitories at integrated universities
  • Black-only college cafeterias at integrated universities
  • Black-only college graduation ceremonies at integrated universities
  • Black Studies college majors at integrated universities
  • Afro-Centrism courses in high schools and universities
  • Afro-Centric history books

The separatist self-definitions that Black and White people are adopting, if they continue down the race road, will work against harmony, profitable communication, friendship, and happiness. Seeing others as unrealistic, cardboard stereotypes–or worse, as enemies to be hated and expunged from society–not only plays into the hands of the CRT peddlers, but also does permanent harm to many people of every race as they avoid others they would otherwise reasonably expect to enjoy and learn from.