In Brief: Primer on Critical Race Theory
Peter Kirsanow explains the anti-white and anti-American nature of the growing fad of CRT.
Peter Kirsanow is an attorney and a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. He also happens to be black, which gives him a bit of a platform to speak out against Critical Race Theory. We’ve described CRT before as racist by design. Kirsanaw agrees, and that’s why he worries that “CRT has occupied an increasingly prominent place in public discourse.”
What is CRT? Many people think critical race theory is part of the civil rights movement, but this is incorrect. Most Americans of a certain age believe that Martin Luther King Jr.‘s hope that his children would be judged “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” is what society should strive toward, and is the practical definition of not being racist.
CRT, and the many millions of millennials, Gen Z-ers, and current school children who have been steeped in its tenets, rejects colorblindness as both impossible and inequitable.
That is indeed the opposite of MLK’s Dream.
CRT isn’t merely training, but a practice, that means it isn’t confined to one day or even one aspect of life. It’s something you do over and over again so it becomes ingrained in your way of thinking and seeing the world.
Because it’s “evolving” and “malleable,” you can never say “these are the rules” or “we have a just social system.” You can never rest, because this practice and evolution entail constantly searching for new aspects of injustice. Thus, people who ascribe to CRT are fond of phrases such as, “We have not yet reached the mountaintop,” “The arc of history bends toward justice,” and so on.
“A racial caste system that relegates people of color to the bottom tiers” implies that race is used by all white people (and only white people) to oppress all people of color. It doesn’t matter how many black CEOs, doctors, engineers, politicians, or celebrities there are. Nor does it matter that Asian students academically out-perform white students. Because whites are the single largest racial group in the country, under CRT they and anything that can be even remotely linked to white culture are considered oppressive to all non-white people.
The more “victim” categories a person falls into, the more oppressed he or she is by whites, particularly straight white men (even if the person never experiences disparate treatment). If you are a disabled black lesbian, you are oppressed because of your multiple and intersecting identities, according to CRT and closely related intersectionality theory. …
Because the United States was primarily founded by and populated by whites, and because slavery and Jim Crow were due to whites, every system in the United States is tainted by racism to this day.
CRT is thus not only anti-white but anti-American. That makes it worth opposing everywhere we find it.
