MYTH: Critical Race Theory isn’t divisive or racist. It’s also not rooted in Marxism. These claims are just right-wing conspiracy theories.

REALITY: This is false. Critical Race Theory (CRT) is rooted in Marxism and is both racist and divisive.

CRT was created by radical left-wingers and is based on Critical Theory, a neo-Marxist concept developed by academics at the Frankfurt School. CRT encourages for the restructuring of our economics, government, and institutions. Most of the changes that CRT supporters make would be detrimental to our society.

CRT is a form of identity politics that separates people into two distinct groups— oppressed and oppressor. Those from minority groups (Blacks) are oppressed, and those from majority groups (Whites) are the oppressors.

CRT labels all white people privileged and racist; while labeling all black people victims of institutional racism. This creates a “them versus us mentality,” leading to a form of ideological segregation that leads to significantly more problems than it solves.

Racism is evil. CRT claims that white people are inherently racist. Therefore white people are inherently evil. That is the takeaway message from CRT.

The major problem is that any objections to CRT gets you labeled as a racist.

The positive news is that a majority of Americans reject CRT and its racist teachings.

(Check below for more information)

CRITICAL RACE THEORY IS RACIST

Christopher Rufo, a Harvard graduate and an expert on the dangers of CRT, explained, “Critical race theory is an academic discipline that holds that the United States is a nation founded on white supremacy and oppression and that these forces are still at the root of our society. Critical race theorists believe that American institutions, such as the Constitution and legal system, preach freedom and equality, but are mere “camouflages” for naked racial domination. They believe that racism is a constant, universal condition: it simply becomes more subtle, sophisticated, and insidious throughout history.”

According to Richard Delgado, one of the founders of CRT, “Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces 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.”

CRT advocates believe that any disparity that black people face in this country is because of systemic racism. They believe systemic racism is responsible for the disparities in police shootings, being arrested, median household income, and loan requirements. This is false, most large-scale academic studies have not found that any of those disparities are caused by racism. (Read my article “White Privilege Myth” for more information)

CRT suggests that racism is not a voluntary action but a subconscious action. CRT suggests that all white people are born with privilege; because of this privilege, white people develop a subconscious bias and racism against minorities. It further states that there is nothing white people can do about their subconscious racism.

CRT advocate, Barbara Applebaum, author of “Being White, Being Good, said, “All white people are racist or complicit by benefiting from privileges that are not something they can voluntarily renounce.”

Richard Delgado said, “Many critical race theorists and social scientists alike hold that racism is pervasive, systemic, and deeply ingrained. If we take this perspective, then no white member of society seems quite so innocent.”

CRT advocate, Robin DiAngelo, said, “Racism is unavoidable and…it is impossible to completely escape having developed problematic and racial assumptions and behaviors.” She also said, “White identity is inherently racist; white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy.”

According to Readings for Diversity and Social Justice, by Adrienne Davis and Stephanie Wildman, “All whites are racist … because we benefit from systemic white privilege. Generally, whites think of racism as voluntary, intentional conduct done by horrible others. Whites spend a lot of time trying to convince themselves and each other that we are not racist. A big step would be for whites to admit that we are racist and then to consider what to do about it.”

Christopher Rufo has documented numerous examples of CRT being taught in education, at companies, and even government agencies. Here’s what he said about CRT being taught at government agencies, “I uncovered a series of critical race theory-based training at more than a half dozen, actually at this point more than a dozen government agencies. Where in one case at the Sandia National Nuclear Laboratories they held a segregated training session, a segregated re-education camp for white male executives, where they took them away for a weekend and they were teaching them how to deconstruct their white male culture, how to accept their complicity in white supremacy, and then force them to write letters including some letters of apology to women and people of color all under this idea of denouncing their whiteness and doing better to join this critical race theory, honestly an indoctrination cult. And other examples were similar, they were expounding on the most toxic and divisive elements of critical race theory, singling out people based on race, and judging people based on race. In some cases, even harassing people based on race is not only awful and distasteful but it’s also likely illegal as a violation of the Civil Rights Act.”

Rufo also documented several examples of CRT training in education. Here’s him going over some of the examples, “In Cupertino, Calif., an elementary school forced first-graders to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities and rank themselves according to their “power and privilege.” In Springfield, Mo., a middle school forced teachers to locate themselves on an “oppression matrix,” based on the idea that straight, white, English-speaking, Christian males are members of the oppressor class and must atone for their privilege and “covert white supremacy”…. And in Seattle, the school district told white teachers that they are guilty of “spirit murder” against black children and must “bankrupt [their] privilege in acknowledgment of [their] thieved inheritance.”

CRT advocates don’t just believe white people in the United States are guilty of systemic racism, they believe every white person in every Western country is guilty.

According to Robin DiAngelo, “White people raised in Western society are conditioned into a white supremacist worldview because it is the bedrock of our society and its institutions.”

This is false and the data shows the opposite conclusion. According to a 2020 study by the World Values Survey, the United States and other Western countries have the most tolerant people in the world. The study was conducted in over 80 countries and the results were based of a survey questions related to your ideal neighbor. Participants who didn’t want a neighbors “of a different race” were deemed racially intolerant. The study results showed that North America, along with most of South America, Australia, and Europe were among the least intolerant places in the world. The Middle East, China, and Africa are considered the most intolerant. So, the data illustrates that Weste societies have produced the most tolerant people.

Over the past several decades, racism has significantly decreased throughout all of the United States. Even in the South, there has been a dramatic decrease of racism over time. According to a Gallup poll, from the 1950s to the 1990s, the portion of white Southerners who said they would be willing to vote for a black president increased from 8% to 95%.

All of this was done with a message that was the opposite of CRT. The message was to judge people by their character, not their skin color. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

CRITICAL RACE THEORY IS ROOTED IN MARXISM

CRT is rooted in Marxism, or neo-Marxism to be specific. Christopher Rufo explains, “In simple terms, critical race theory reformulates the old Marxist dichotomy of oppressor and oppressed, replacing the class categories of bourgeoisie and proletariat with the identity categories of White and Black. But the basic conclusion is the same: to liberate man, society must be fundamentally transformed through moral, economic, and political revolution.”

According to Mike Gonzalez and Jonathan Butcher, for the Heritage Foundation, “All strains of CRT are of Marxist origin, a fact that would be better known to the wider public if the press did its job. CRT is based on Critical Theory, a concept developed in the 1930s by a neo-Marxist European group of academics housed in the Institute for Social Research, though better known as the Frankfurt School because it was originally part of the University of Frankfurt, in Germany. The media never mentions the connection between CT and Marx—or between CRT and CT, for that matter. Yet, CT’s link with Marxism is clear in the very first essay in which Critical Theory was introduced to an unwary world.”

Here’s an excerpt from “Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement (1996)”: “Organized by a collection of neo-Marxist intellectuals, former New Left activists, ex-counter-culturalists, and other varieties of oppositionists in law schools, the Conference of Critical legal Studies [where Critical Race Theory was developed] established itself as a network of openly leftists law teachers, students, and practitioners committed to exposing and challenging the ways American law served to legitimize an oppressive social order.”

Here’s an excerpt of a 2021 essay published on the World Socialist Web Site, titled “The Ideological Foundations of Critical Race Theory”: “Critical race theory is a broad current, with many tributaries flowing into it and many offshoots flowing out of it…. In characterizing this whole current, it is therefore useful to begin at the most basic level with its fundamental philosophical conceptions, the heritage of which can be traced to postmodernism and the conceptions advanced by the Frankfurt School. This is the “critical theory” from which “critical race theory” emerges.… Critical race theory takes the rejection of the Enlightenment from the Frankfurt School and postmodernism and adds a racial spin.”

One of the Marxist suggestions CRT advocates make is for the removal or alteration of capitalism and redistribution of wealth and property.

Cheryl Harris, a CRT advocate and author of “Whiteness as Property,” said, “In challenging the property interest in whiteness, affirmative action [in support of property redistribution] could facilitate the destruction of the false premises of legitimacy and exclusivity inherent in whiteness and break the distorting link between white identity and property … Existing distributions of the property will be modified by rectifying unjust loss and inequality. Property rights will then be respected, but they will not be absolute and will be considered against a societal requirement of affirmative action.”

Robin DiAngelo said, “Capitalism is so bound up with racism. I avoid critiquing capitalism — I don’t need to give people reasons to dismiss me. But capitalism is dependent on inequality, on an underclass.“

Sociologist W.E.B. Dubois, whose philosophical teachings heavily contributed to the development of CRT, said, “Capitalism cannot reform itself; it is doomed to self-destruction. No universal selfishness can bring social good to all.”

According to Critical Race Theory advocate, Ibram X. Kendi, “To truly be anti-racist, you also have to truly be anti-capitalist…. And to truly be anti-capitalist, you have to be antiracist, because they’re interrelated.”

Kendi also said, “I’m a historian and so I track — particularly in my last book — the origins of racism cannot be separated from the origins of capitalism. The origins of capitalism cannot be separated from the origins of racism. The life of racism cannot be separated from the life of capitalism and vice-versa.“

This of course is nonsense. Racism has been around since the beginning of written history, while capitalism has only existed since the 16th century. Shortly after the implementation of capitalism in the Western world, slavery was eliminated, despite slavery existing for thousands of years. I’m not saying capitalism is responsible for the elimination of slavery; but property rights, economic growth, and voluntary transactions definitely contributed.

According to the 2018 Global Slavery Index, the top 10 Countries with the highest rate of modern slavery were North Korea, Eritrea, Burundi, Central African Republic, Afghanistan, Mauritania, South Sudan, Pakistan, Cambodia, and Iran. All of these of countries also have extremely low levels of capitalism. According to the 2022 Index of Economic Freedom by the Heritage Foundation; North Korea, Eritrea, Burundi, Central African Republic, Sudan, Pakistan, and Iran are on the list of countries with the least capitalism/economic freedom in the world. Mauritania and Cambodia had mostly low levels of capitalism/economic freedom. Afghanistan wasn’t ranked in 2022, but in 2021 it was listed as having mostly low levels of capitalism/economic freedom.

• North Korea (repressed)
• Eritrea (repressed)
• Burundi (repressed)
• Central African Republic (repressed)
• Afghanistan (mostly unfree)
• Mauritania (mostly unfree)
• Sudan (repressed)
• Pakistan (repressed)
• Cambodia (mostly unfree)
• Iran (repressed)

Countries that have removed or limited capitalism have significantly more slavery than countries with capitalism. This data contradicts the arguments CRT advocates make.

CRT advocates encourage the removal of capitalism. Of course, the removal of capitalism would have devastating effects. Various studies show that the more capitalism a country has, the less poverty it has. (Read my article “Capitalism Is Bad Myth” for more information) Their false belief has convinced them that lowering economic freedom would be beneficial to society, even though it would lead to a significant increase in poverty.

(Read my article True Communism Death Toll for more information on the devastating effects of Marxism)

BACKLASH FOR OBJECTING TO CRITICAL RACE THEORY

The major problem is that if you have any legitimate criticisms of CRT, then you are labeled a racist.

Ibram X. Kendi said, “Another misnomer about critical race theory, or even antiracism, is that it’s anti-white or racist. I don’t think people realize that that is one of the oldest and most vile white supremacist talking points.”

Christopher Rufo explains, “Critical race theorists have constructed their argument like a mousetrap. Disagreement with their program becomes irrefutable evidence of a dissenter’s “white fragility,” “unconscious bias” or “internalized white supremacy.” I’ve seen this projection of false consciousness on their opponents play out dozens of times in my reporting. Diversity trainers will make an outrageous claim — such as “all whites are intrinsically oppressors” or “white teachers are guilty of spirit murdering black children” — and then, when confronted with disagreement, adopt a patronizing tone and explain that participants who feel “defensiveness” or “anger” are reacting out of guilt and shame. Dissenters are instructed to remain silent, “lean into the discomfort” and accept their “complicity in white supremacy.”

AMERICANS REJECT CRITICAL RACE THEORY

The good thing is that a majority of Americans reject CRT. According to the results of a YouGov/Economist poll, 58%, expressed an unfavorable view of critical race theory, while 38% expressed a favorable view.

A majority of Americans also support capitalism. According to a 2018 Gallup poll, capitalism is viewed favorably by 60% of the nation. Only Democrats view capitalism unfavorably. Democrats approve of socialism more than capitalism. The poll shows that only 47% of Democrats approve of capitalism, while 57% approve of socialism.

Still, some advocate for CRT and support its divisive and racist message. They are completely okay with the removal or radical change of our economic system, institutions, and culture; even though those beliefs and systems lead to the prosperity of the Western world. Hopefully, people will wake up to the dangers of CRT.

SOURCES

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