It would seem a dereliction of duty to attempt a serious newsletter about current events and not delve into Critical Race Theory. Yet, identifying what Critical Race Theory even is can be difficult. CRT has morphed over the decades (originally, by most accounts, it was a legal theory that claimed laws were enacted to keep Blacks down and protect the White power structure, much as Marxists have argued that laws are passed in bourgeois societies to protect vested interests and keep workers and peasants down), but today it more broadly seeks to explain the many poor outcomes and low overall socioeconomic status for Blacks.
Proponents of CRT as well as other anti-racism advocates often identify the Atlantic slave trade (which arguably was based on white supremacy, not merely enslaving a conquered people as the ancient Romans might do); Jim Crow; and de facto segregation for much of the 20th century as root causes for the continued oppression of Blacks. It’s an argument that looks like cause and effect, but perhaps only in the sense of the old Latin saying, post hoc ergo propter hoc, meaning “after this, because of this.” The expression once was taught in philosophy departments not as an example of truth, but as fallacy. Just because one event occurs before another is no proof that the first event caused the latter. Or, as many scholars in the physical sciences would say today, correlation is not causation.
Still, the history of racism is a fact, and exposing weak rhetoric is not itself a refutation of the thesis.
CRT today also claims that America was built on slave capitalism (see The 1619 Project, for example) and some iterations allege that all of Western civilization is irredeemably racist, imposing its own, white European values on others, such as achievement, the rule of law, and the rights of the individual over group rights for the purposes of keeping people down. It’s not my intention here to challenge whether such claims are even historically accurate, or consistent, but this broad-based contempt for the West, most notably in Communist, post-Colonial and New Left thinking of the ‘60s, clearly motivated Niall Ferguson’s well-documented rebuttal in “Civilization: The West and the Rest.” Ferguson was, of course, condemned on the Left for underplaying the West’s many sins, even though he did no such thing.
At an even more contentious level, CRT seems to have elevated “Blackness” to a status on par with, if not the same as, “proletariat.” This point should not be missed: Black and White interests can never be the same, any more than the bourgeoisie and the proletariat can share interests.
I’ve been reading a long John McWhorter piece on CRT, which I commend, but you’ll have to subscribe to his Substack newsletter to get his full views. I do want to add to his analysis, though. McWhorter writes of “Electism,” referring to an almost religious experience of those who must inform us of their new revealed religion, but I’d look more closely at The Academy and all the speculative and interpretive “studies” programs there, including Black Studies, Women’s Studies, Gender Studies, Post-Colonial Studies, Middle East Studies, American Studies, Gay and Lesbian studies and maybe more – it’s intersectionality more than Marxism per se because we all have a common enemy, most notably white heterosexual male neo-Liberals.
Of course, there is the data. Plenty of data show that Blacks, at birth, are more likely to be disciplined in school, end up on welfare, or be shot by police as compared to a White cohort. That’s the main empirical evidence to show that CRT is valid. But that argument is no better than post hoc ergo propter hoc. Why? Because actual White supremacists use the same data to “prove” their point, as well. The data don’t actually prove anything, of course. At best, they’re just consistent with this or that hypothesis.
When will CRT and anti-racism go away? When outcomes for Blacks and Whites are normalized statistically, I suppose. And when will that be? I don’t know, but CRT is not going to bring that day any closer.
#CriticalRaceTheory
This strikes me as a truly insightful piece, the best short treatment I've read on the subject. My only additional thought is that I suspect how one views race in America depends a lot on one's vantage point. I can only imagine that for many Black people American history has had different underpinnings, a different trajectory than that perceived by their White fellow citizens. The key to arriving at a common perspective, a new and shared national narrative, is for each group to be able to step out of its own narrative, to see how it looks from the other's vantage point, and to strive for a synthesis at once broader and deeper than either group had previously held individually.