February 23, 2021
Dear Friends and Family,
This is Segment 2 of the series Nihilism: Good or Bad? titled “Critical Race Theory.” This is the theory behind most of the challenges to American tradition, values and beliefs. As background, the following are the beliefs underpinning the Theory.
From: Critical Race Theory by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefanic (2017)
Racism is ordinary, an everyday experience of most people of color in this country. Our system of white-over-color ascendancy serves important purposes, both psychic and material for dominant groups. Because racism advances the interests of both white elites (materially) and working-class whites (physically), large segments of society have little incentive to eradicate it. Race and races are products of social thought and relations. Races are categories that society invents, manipulates, or retires when convenient. [Note: The primary author Richard Delgado in one of the founders of the Critical Race Theory].
From: Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay (2020)
Critical race theorists and social scientists hold that racism is pervasive, systemic, and deeply ingrained.
My Takeaways:
The following is a listing of challenges the Critical Race Theory has to traditional beliefs and values as determined in this segment. [Note: The points asterisked (*) are from the book Critical Race Theory].
Critical Race Theory has been expanded into many other Critical Theories like those of the LGBTQ community and together they are the heart of the Social Justice movement. The mantras above are becoming more prevalent throughout our society, but they are particularly prevalent on college campuses. Each are expanded upon in the long set of excerpts.
Next:
Segment 3 begins the revisionists history section of the series that will consist of segments 3 thru 9. Most of the history that critical theorists desire to rewrite concerns human rights history. Segment 3 will present an overview of the traditionalist perspective on U.S. human rights history as well as an overview of the Social Justice movement’s perspective. You judge what is good and what is bad.
Happy Learning,
Harley
Dear Friends and Family,
This is Segment 2 of the series Nihilism: Good or Bad? titled “Critical Race Theory.” This is the theory behind most of the challenges to American tradition, values and beliefs. As background, the following are the beliefs underpinning the Theory.
From: Critical Race Theory by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefanic (2017)
Racism is ordinary, an everyday experience of most people of color in this country. Our system of white-over-color ascendancy serves important purposes, both psychic and material for dominant groups. Because racism advances the interests of both white elites (materially) and working-class whites (physically), large segments of society have little incentive to eradicate it. Race and races are products of social thought and relations. Races are categories that society invents, manipulates, or retires when convenient. [Note: The primary author Richard Delgado in one of the founders of the Critical Race Theory].
From: Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay (2020)
Critical race theorists and social scientists hold that racism is pervasive, systemic, and deeply ingrained.
My Takeaways:
The following is a listing of challenges the Critical Race Theory has to traditional beliefs and values as determined in this segment. [Note: The points asterisked (*) are from the book Critical Race Theory].
- *Current U.S. history needs to be rewritten to more accurately reflect interpretations of history by minority communities.
- *Equality of opportunity needs to be changed to equality of results throughout our society.
- *Minorities of color should not try to fit in to the current flawed economic and political system, but instead should transform it.
- *Racism is pervasive, systemic, and deeply ingrained in our society.
- *American society prefers to place its citizens into boxes based on physical attributes and culture.
- *The disproportionate criminalization of African Americans is because of the way crime is defined which favors the white population.
- *The Theory advocates for hate speech regulations and multiple languages be used throughout the country versus just English.
- *Immigration laws and enforcement reflects how little white society thinks of its citizens of color.
- *Since people of color do not yet represent the majority of voters steps should be taken to make up the difference.
- *White people introduced and pushed for desegregation not to aid black people, but to further their own interests.
- *Racism is embedded in our culture, we can’t escape it. White people are inherently racist. Only white people can be racist. Only people of color can effectively talk about racism, white people just need to listen. Not seeing people in terms of their race (being color blind as Martin Luther King, Jr. advocated) is racist and is an attempt to ignore pervasive racism that dominates society and perpetuates white privilege.
- All white people benefit from racism regardless of their intentions.
- Racism is ordinary and permanent.
Critical Race Theory has been expanded into many other Critical Theories like those of the LGBTQ community and together they are the heart of the Social Justice movement. The mantras above are becoming more prevalent throughout our society, but they are particularly prevalent on college campuses. Each are expanded upon in the long set of excerpts.
Next:
Segment 3 begins the revisionists history section of the series that will consist of segments 3 thru 9. Most of the history that critical theorists desire to rewrite concerns human rights history. Segment 3 will present an overview of the traditionalist perspective on U.S. human rights history as well as an overview of the Social Justice movement’s perspective. You judge what is good and what is bad.
Happy Learning,
Harley
NIHILISM: GOOD OR BAD? – SEGMENT 2
CRITICAL RACE THEORY – EXCERPTS
WHAT IS CRITICAL RACE THEORY? The critical race theory (CRT) movement is a collection of activists and scholars engaged in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism and power. Unlike traditional civil rights discourse, which stresses incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality, theory, legal reasoning, enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law. After the first decade, critical race theory began to splinter and now includes a well-developed Asian American jurisprudence, a forceful Latino-critical contingent, and now a Muslim and Arab caucus. Although the groups continue to maintain good relations under the umbrella of critical race theory, each has developed its own body of literature and set of priorities.
WHAT DO CRITICAL RACE THEORISTS BELIEVE? First, racism is ordinary, an everyday experience of most people of color in this country. Second, our system of white-over-color ascendancy serves important purposes, both psychic and material for dominant groups. Because racism advances the interests of both white elites (materially) and working-class whites (psychically), large segments of society have little incentive to eradicate it. Third, race and races are products of social thought and relations. Races are categories that society invents, manipulates, or retires when convenient.
CRITICAL RACE THEORY THEMES
FRONT BURNER ISSUES
WHAT IS CRITICAL RACE THEORY? Critical Race Theory is, at root, an American phenomenon. So thoroughly is this the case that although its ideas have been used outside the U.S. for some time, they are highly flavored by U.S. racial history. Critical Race Theory holds that race is a social construct that was created to maintain white privilege and white supremacy. This idea originated with W.E.B. DuBois circa 1903, who argued that the idea of race was being used to assert biological explanation of differences that are social and cultural, in order to perpetuate the unjust treatment of racial minorities, especially African Americans.
CRITICAL RACE THEORY HISTORY: The word critical here means that its intention and methods are specifically geared toward identifying and exposing problems in order to facilitate revolutionary political change. The late Derrick Bell, regarded as the progenitor of critical race theory, considered that white people had introduced desegregation, not as a solution to black people’s problems, but to further their own interests. Because of his beliefs in a pervasive and irreparable system of white dominance in U.S. society, he argued that such changes lead to a whole new raft of problems through which white superiority would continually assert itself over the interests of black people. The materialist critical race theorists frequently advocate Black Nationalism and segregation over universal human rights and cooperation. Also, their supposedly empirical analyses of material reality, which usually finds that racism and discrimination are not decreasing at all, can look a great deal like cherry-picking and generalizing from the worst example.
A POLITICAL PURPOSE: Critical race Theory has a political purpose, which is not limited to deconstruction or disrupting metanarratives. The core tenets unambiguously assert what is going on in critical race Theory – racism is present everywhere and always and persistently works against people of color, who are aware of this, and for the benefit of white people, who tend not to be, as is their privilege. Other Theorists and educators include a fundamental distrust of liberalism, and rejection of meritocracy, and a commitment working toward Social Justice.
THE SPREAD OF CRITICAL RACE THEORY: Critical race Theory has expanded out of legal studies and into many disciplines concerned with Social Justice. Critical race Theory takes an unapologetically activist stance: “Unlike some academic disciplines, critical race theory contains an activist dimension. It tries not only to understand our social situation but to change it, setting out not only to ascertain how society organizes itself along racial lines and hierarchies but to transform it for the better.” As a result, we hear the language of crucial race Theory from activists in all walks of life. We are told that racism is embedded in culture and that we cannot escape it. We hear that white people are inherently racist. We are told that racism is “prejudice plus power,” therefore only white people can be racist. We are informed that only people of color can talk about racism, that white people need to just listen, and that they don’t have the “racial stamina” to engage in it. We hear that not seeing people in terms of their race (being color-blind) is racist and an attempt to ignore the pervasive racism that dominates society and perpetuates white privilege. We can hear these mantras in many spheres of life, but they are particularly prevalent on college campuses.
Source: Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay.
INTERSECTIONALITY: “Intersectionality” means the examination of race, sex, class, national origin, and sexual orientation and how their combination plays out in various settings. These categories – and still others – can be separated disadvantaging factors. What happens when an individual occupies more than one of these categories, for example, is both gay and Native American or both female and black? Individuals like these operate at an intersection of recognized sites of oppression.
Source: Critical Race Theory by Ricard Delgado and Jean Stefancic
THE CONSEQUENCES OF CRITICAL RACE THEORY:
The Mindset: Critical race Theory’s hallmark paranoid mind-set, which assume racism is everywhere, always, just waiting to be found, is extremely unlikely to be helpful or healthy for those who adopt it. Always believing that one will be or is being discriminated against, and trying to find out how, is unlikely to improve the outcome of the situation. In can be self-defeating. If we train young people to read insult, hostility, and prejudice into every interaction, they may increasingly see the world as hostile to them and fail to thrive in it. Critical race Theory and intersectionality are centrally concerned with ending racism, through the unlikely means of making everyone more aware of race at all times and places. They proceed upon an assumption that racism is normal and permanent, and the problem is primarily that people – particularly white people – are failing to see, acknowledge, and address it. The question is not “Did racism take place?” for that is to be assumed, “but rather ‘How did racism manifest in that situation?” That is, we are to assume that racism is always taking place and our job is to examine the situation for evidence of it. That follows from the beliefs that “all members are socialized to participate in the system of racism, albeit in varied social locations,” and that “all white people benefit from racism regardless of intentions.”
The core problems with critical race Theory are that it puts social significance back into racial categories and inflames racism, tends to be purely Theoretical, uses the postmodern knowledge and political principles, is profoundly aggressive, asserts its relevance to all aspects of Social Justice, and begins from the assumption that racism is both ordinary and permanent every where and always.
Source: Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, 2020.
Is Black or Gay A Political Ideology? In April 2018 Kanye West praised the black conservative commentator and activist Candace Owens. In a clip that went viral Owens said:
CRITICAL RACE THEORY – EXCERPTS
WHAT IS CRITICAL RACE THEORY? The critical race theory (CRT) movement is a collection of activists and scholars engaged in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism and power. Unlike traditional civil rights discourse, which stresses incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality, theory, legal reasoning, enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law. After the first decade, critical race theory began to splinter and now includes a well-developed Asian American jurisprudence, a forceful Latino-critical contingent, and now a Muslim and Arab caucus. Although the groups continue to maintain good relations under the umbrella of critical race theory, each has developed its own body of literature and set of priorities.
WHAT DO CRITICAL RACE THEORISTS BELIEVE? First, racism is ordinary, an everyday experience of most people of color in this country. Second, our system of white-over-color ascendancy serves important purposes, both psychic and material for dominant groups. Because racism advances the interests of both white elites (materially) and working-class whites (psychically), large segments of society have little incentive to eradicate it. Third, race and races are products of social thought and relations. Races are categories that society invents, manipulates, or retires when convenient.
CRITICAL RACE THEORY THEMES
- Revisionist History: Revisionist history examines America’s historical record, replacing comforting majoritarian interpretations of events with ones that square more accurately with minorities’ experiences.
- Critiques of Liberalism: Critical race scholars are discontented with liberalism as a framework for addressing America’s racial problems. Think how the system applauds affording everyone equality of opportunity affording everyone equality of opportunity but resists programs that assure equality of results. Moreover, rights are always cut back when they conflict with the interests of the powerful. In the end, the minority group is left little better than it was before, if no worse.
- Nationalism vs. Assimilation: Nationalists are apt to describe themselves as a nation within a nation and to hold that the loyalty and identification of black people would lie with that community and only secondarily with the United States. A middle position holds that minorities of color should not try to fit into a flawed economic and political system but transform it. It is not worthy pursuing improvement if the system itself remains unworthy and unjust.
- Black-White Binary: On issues of identity, American society prefers to place its citizens into boxes on the basis of physical attributes and culture. No science supports this practice, it is simply a matter of habit and convenience. Will minority groups learn to put aside narrow nationalisms and binary thinking and work together to confront the forces that suppress them all? It would seem they have much to gain.
- Critical White Studies: Many critical race theorists and social scientists hold that racism is pervasive, systemic, and deeply ingrained. If we take this perspective, then no white member of society seems quite so innocent. The interplay of meanings that one attaches to race; the stereotypes one holds of other people; the standards of looks, appearance, and beauty; and the need to guard one’s own position all powerfully determine one’s perspective. Indeed, one aspect of whiteness, according to some scholars, is its ability to seem perpectiveless or transparent. Whites do not see themselves as having a race but as being, simply, people.
FRONT BURNER ISSUES
- Race, Welfare, and Poverty
- Policing and Criminal Justice: Critical race theory shows that the disproportionate criminalization of African Americans is a product, in large part, of the way we define crime. Many lethal acts, such as marketing defective automobiles, alcohol, or pharmaceuticals; or waging undeclared wars, are not considered crimes at all. By the same token, many things that young black and Latino men are prone to do, such as congregating on street corners, cruising in low-rider cars, or scrawling graffiti in public places, are energetically policed, sometimes under new ordinances that penalize belonging to a gang or associating with a known gang member. Figures show that white-collar crimes, including embezzlement, consumer fraud, bribery, insider trading, and price fixing, cause more deaths and property loss, even on a per capita basis, than does all street crime combined.
- Hate Speech: One of the first critical race theory proposals had to do with hate speech – the rain of insults, epithets, and name-calling that many minority people face on a daily basis. An early article documented some of the harms this type of speech can inflict. A second speech-related issue concerns the rights of non-English speakers to use their native languages in the workplace, voting booth, schoolhouse, and government offices.
- Immigration: The resulting harsh treatment of people fleeing poverty, gangs, death squads, or repression in their home countries offers what one critical race theorist has called a “magic mirror” into the heart of America. This mirror shows how American society really thinks of its own citizens of color and would greet them if it were not for the courts.
- Voting Rights: In most elections, except for those of mayors in certain large cities, people of color will be in the minority. Even if they vote as a bloc, if the white vote that way as well, minorities are apt to be outvoted. Until the country’s demographic makeup shifts efforts must continue to counter minority underrepresentation.
WHAT IS CRITICAL RACE THEORY? Critical Race Theory is, at root, an American phenomenon. So thoroughly is this the case that although its ideas have been used outside the U.S. for some time, they are highly flavored by U.S. racial history. Critical Race Theory holds that race is a social construct that was created to maintain white privilege and white supremacy. This idea originated with W.E.B. DuBois circa 1903, who argued that the idea of race was being used to assert biological explanation of differences that are social and cultural, in order to perpetuate the unjust treatment of racial minorities, especially African Americans.
CRITICAL RACE THEORY HISTORY: The word critical here means that its intention and methods are specifically geared toward identifying and exposing problems in order to facilitate revolutionary political change. The late Derrick Bell, regarded as the progenitor of critical race theory, considered that white people had introduced desegregation, not as a solution to black people’s problems, but to further their own interests. Because of his beliefs in a pervasive and irreparable system of white dominance in U.S. society, he argued that such changes lead to a whole new raft of problems through which white superiority would continually assert itself over the interests of black people. The materialist critical race theorists frequently advocate Black Nationalism and segregation over universal human rights and cooperation. Also, their supposedly empirical analyses of material reality, which usually finds that racism and discrimination are not decreasing at all, can look a great deal like cherry-picking and generalizing from the worst example.
A POLITICAL PURPOSE: Critical race Theory has a political purpose, which is not limited to deconstruction or disrupting metanarratives. The core tenets unambiguously assert what is going on in critical race Theory – racism is present everywhere and always and persistently works against people of color, who are aware of this, and for the benefit of white people, who tend not to be, as is their privilege. Other Theorists and educators include a fundamental distrust of liberalism, and rejection of meritocracy, and a commitment working toward Social Justice.
THE SPREAD OF CRITICAL RACE THEORY: Critical race Theory has expanded out of legal studies and into many disciplines concerned with Social Justice. Critical race Theory takes an unapologetically activist stance: “Unlike some academic disciplines, critical race theory contains an activist dimension. It tries not only to understand our social situation but to change it, setting out not only to ascertain how society organizes itself along racial lines and hierarchies but to transform it for the better.” As a result, we hear the language of crucial race Theory from activists in all walks of life. We are told that racism is embedded in culture and that we cannot escape it. We hear that white people are inherently racist. We are told that racism is “prejudice plus power,” therefore only white people can be racist. We are informed that only people of color can talk about racism, that white people need to just listen, and that they don’t have the “racial stamina” to engage in it. We hear that not seeing people in terms of their race (being color-blind) is racist and an attempt to ignore the pervasive racism that dominates society and perpetuates white privilege. We can hear these mantras in many spheres of life, but they are particularly prevalent on college campuses.
Source: Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay.
INTERSECTIONALITY: “Intersectionality” means the examination of race, sex, class, national origin, and sexual orientation and how their combination plays out in various settings. These categories – and still others – can be separated disadvantaging factors. What happens when an individual occupies more than one of these categories, for example, is both gay and Native American or both female and black? Individuals like these operate at an intersection of recognized sites of oppression.
Source: Critical Race Theory by Ricard Delgado and Jean Stefancic
THE CONSEQUENCES OF CRITICAL RACE THEORY:
The Mindset: Critical race Theory’s hallmark paranoid mind-set, which assume racism is everywhere, always, just waiting to be found, is extremely unlikely to be helpful or healthy for those who adopt it. Always believing that one will be or is being discriminated against, and trying to find out how, is unlikely to improve the outcome of the situation. In can be self-defeating. If we train young people to read insult, hostility, and prejudice into every interaction, they may increasingly see the world as hostile to them and fail to thrive in it. Critical race Theory and intersectionality are centrally concerned with ending racism, through the unlikely means of making everyone more aware of race at all times and places. They proceed upon an assumption that racism is normal and permanent, and the problem is primarily that people – particularly white people – are failing to see, acknowledge, and address it. The question is not “Did racism take place?” for that is to be assumed, “but rather ‘How did racism manifest in that situation?” That is, we are to assume that racism is always taking place and our job is to examine the situation for evidence of it. That follows from the beliefs that “all members are socialized to participate in the system of racism, albeit in varied social locations,” and that “all white people benefit from racism regardless of intentions.”
The core problems with critical race Theory are that it puts social significance back into racial categories and inflames racism, tends to be purely Theoretical, uses the postmodern knowledge and political principles, is profoundly aggressive, asserts its relevance to all aspects of Social Justice, and begins from the assumption that racism is both ordinary and permanent every where and always.
Source: Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, 2020.
Is Black or Gay A Political Ideology? In April 2018 Kanye West praised the black conservative commentator and activist Candace Owens. In a clip that went viral Owens said:
What is happening now in the black community … There is an ideological civil war happening. Black people that are focused on the past and shouting about slavery. And black people focused on their futures. What you’re seeing is victim mentality versus victor mentality.
Equality: Equality in the eyes of God is a core tenet of the Christian traditions. But it has translated in the era of secular humanism not into equality in the eyes of God but equality in the eyes of man. And here there is a problem, which is that many people realize, fear or intuit that people are not entirely equal. People are not equally beautiful, gifted, equally strong or equally sensible. They are certainly not equally wealthy. They are not even equally lovable. And while the political left talks constantly of the need for equality and even equity, the political right responds with a call for equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. In fact, both claims are almost certainly impossible locally and nationally, let alone globally.
In March 2019 Professor Robin DiAngelo of the University of Washington gave a speech at Boston University. DiAngelo specialized in “whiteness studies” and has written a book, White Fragility. To her audience in Boston, she explained how white people who see people as individuals rather than by their skin color are in fact “dangerous.” Meaning that it took only half a century for Martin Luther King’s vision to be exactly inverted. [“I dream of the day when we are judged not by the color of our skin, but by the color or our character”]. Today there appears to be a return to a heightened level of rhetoric on race and a great crescendo of claims about racial differences – just when most of us hoped that any such differences might be fading away. Some people in a spirit of resentment, others in a spirit of glee, are jumping up and down on this quietly ticking ground. They can have no idea what lies beneath them.
Source: The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race, and Identity by Douglas Murray, 2019
WHAT IS CRITICAL RACE THEORY? The core of critical race theory (CRT) lies in the propositions that racism is ordinary and permanent; that whiteness and property coincide; that history is told only by dominant groups and requires a counternarrative; and that color-blindness is a myth, and that the notion of quality of rights is itself a reflection of color hierarchy. The net result is that the system itself must be torn down, and that all the promises of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution are lies. As Derrick Bell, a founder of critical race theory wrote, “the concept of individual rights, unconnected to property rights, was totally foreign” to the founding fathers, and thus, “despite two decades of civil rights gains, most Blacks remain disadvantaged and deprived because of their race.” Victimization can never be alleviated under the current system. Only the disintegration of that system will rectify the modern imbalance that simply mirrors the sins of the past.
Source: How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps by Ben Shapiro, 2020
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
| 2_nihilism_critical_race_theory_--_segment_2.pdf |