Tag Archives: criticalracetheory

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Daily Broadside | CRT is the Politics of Envy, Greed and Self-Pity

Daily Verse | Leviticus 19:18
Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.

Wednesday’s Reading: Leviticus 21-23

Wednesday and I thought I’d take a moment to look again at Critical Race Theory, or CRT, because it has severely damaged our national discourse and culture and is contributing to the division that has us fighting each other. Knowing something about it in a simplified form and being able to discuss why it’s a corruption of the American ideal is important in standing firm against the woke scolds who demand that we bow to the new orthodoxy.

I’ve written about CRT in previous posts here and here, and dedicated a whole series to the background of CRT (i.e. cultural Marxism). But I’ve recently come across some helpful essays that make CRT easier to understand and wanted to pass some of it along to you.

Without repeating too much of what I’ve already covered elsewhere, CRT finds its roots in Marxism and, more specifically, in the philosophy of Max Horkheimer who, in the words of Andrew Breitbart, “coined a term that would embody the whole corrupt philosophy of his fellow travelers’ mission to destroy society and culture using the Marxist dialectic: critical theory” (Righteous Indignation).

“Critical theory … was, quite literally, a theory of criticizing everyone and everything everywhere. It was an attempt to tear down the social fabric by using all the social sciences (sociology, psychology, economics, political science, etc.); it was an infinite and unending criticism of the status quo, adolescent rebellion against all established social rules and norms.”

Critical theory’s practitioners eventually realized that competing with the success of America’s capitalist system was a failing strategy. Most Americans were satisfied with their economic station in life, most recognized that anyone who put their mind to it could succeed in American society, and most preferred improving their country to overthrowing it, as Christopher F. Rufo writes in “Critical Race Theory: What it Is and How to Fight It.”

Critical theory then morphed into what we know today as critical race theory. Rufo explains,

Critical race theory is an academic discipline, formulated in the 1990s, built on the intellectual framework of identity-based Marxism.

So we know that it is a formal discipline based in Marxism, but can someone define it? Abe Greenwald offers this description:

There’s much confusion and obfuscation about what CRT is, but it’s very simple. CRT maintains that all the systems that undergird the functioning of the United States are racist by design and produce inequitable results for people of color. All systems—social, governmental, legal, financial, educational, medical, you name it. In practice, this means teaching white children that they are, above all else, oppressors and teaching black children that they are, first and foremost, victims. 

I quoted Seth Grossman a few days ago and he’s worth repeating here:

That [CRT] narrative goes like this: until about 600 years ago, most people in the world lived peaceful, comfortable, and environmentally sustainable lives.

Then, in the 1400s, a bunch of white men in Europe went crazy.  While abusing their women, they built ships and weapons to attack and exploit the rest of the world. These crazy white men exterminated Native Americans, enslaved black Africans, and impoverished Asians. They also started wars and polluted the planet to cause the catastrophic “climate crisis” we have today.

At its core, CRT is an economic scheme that redistributes wealth and reconfigures the societal hierarchy to create equity. Not equality, which is the American ideal, but equity, which is something altogether different. Rufo writes,

There are a series of euphemisms deployed by [CRT’s] supporters to describe critical race theory, including “equity,” “social justice,” “diversity and inclusion,” and “culturally responsive teaching.” Critical race theorists, masters of language construction, realize that “neo-Marxism” would be a hard sell. Equity, on the other hand, sounds non-threatening and is easily confused with the American principle of equality. But the distinction is vast and important. Indeed, equality—the principle proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, defended in the Civil War, and codified into law with the 14th and 15th Amendments, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965—is explicitly rejected by critical race theorists. To them, equality represents “mere nondiscrimination” and provides “camouflage” for white supremacy, patriarchy, and oppression. In contrast to equality, equity as defined and promoted by critical race theorists is little more than reformulated Marxism.

He goes on to explain,

An equity-based form of government would mean the end not only of private property, but also of individual rights, equality under the law, federalism, and freedom of speech. These would be replaced by race-based redistribution of wealth, group-based rights, active discrimination, and omnipotent bureaucratic authority. Historically, the accusation of “anti-Americanism” has been overused. But in this case, it’s not a matter of interpretation—critical race theory prescribes a revolutionary program that would overturn the principles of the Declaration and destroy the remaining structure of the Constitution.

Dr. Voddie Baucham agrees. In discussing “social justice” (one of the CRT euphemisms cited above), note how what he describes as the mission of the social justice movement echoes the CRT mission.

Baucham proceeded to break down the mission of the social justice movement:

1. Identify disadvantaged groups.
2. Assess group outcomes.
3. Assign blame for disparate outcomes (i.e. if a group is experiencing a negative outcome, the next step is to determine who is to blame).
4. Finally, there needs to be a redistribution of power and resources in order to redress the group’s grievances.

Baucham offered an important qualifier, which is that the disadvantaged group is never to blame for its own problems — the group is perpetually the victim, always to be believed and sympathized with.

This is why CRT is such a poisonous ideology. It seeks to divide the populace along racial lines with the object being the transfer of wealth and power to the “oppressed” class. The problem is that it is all based on lies. Not that there hasn’t been injustice in America—there has—but that injustice is built into the system and the only way to fix it is to remove those in power and replace the system. Those who are removed from power are replaced with—you guessed it—the aggrieved and the system is replaced with one that favors the aggrieved.

CRT promotes three ideas: race essentialism, collective guilt, and neo-segregation (Rufo). These ideas directly contradict the American principles of equality and justice at the individual level. In essence, CRT adherents seek to destroy American exceptionalism to benefit themselves.

Don’t let them do it.

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DAILY BROADSIDE | Has CRT Already Peaked? Don’t bank on it.

Daily Verse | Ecclesiastes 2:24
A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God.

Wednesday and because my day job is demanding more of me this week, this morning’s offer is going to be quick.

Victor Davis Hanson wrote a solid piece last week that’s been making the rounds in which he examines The American Descent into Madness. He writes,

In the last six months, we have seen absurdities never quite witnessed in modern America. Madness, not politics, defines it. There are three characteristics of all these upheavals. One, the events are unsustainable. They will either cease or they will destroy the nation, at least as we know it. Two, the law has largely been rendered meaningless. Three, left-wing political agendas justify any means necessary to achieve them.

He then addresses Citizenship as Mere Residency, Crime as Construct, The Campus Con, Commissars and Jacobins, Inflation Is a Mere Construct, Our People’s Military, Keep Cuba Castroite? and The United Nations Über Alles. While I encourage you to read the whole thing, the one I want to call attention to is the fourth: Commissars and Jacobins. Here’s what VDH writes (with my emphasis):

The critical race theory craze is reaching peak woke, or is already on the downslope. No complex and sophisticated society is sustainable with a Maoist creed of cannibalizing citizens for thought crimes. Commissars do not produce anything or serve anybody, but only monitor thoughts and speech to ascertain the purity of diversity, equity, and inclusion. They are not just a drain on the productive sector but will insidiously destroy it, since their currency is to ensure a timid, obsequiousness and banal orthodoxy.

We know from the failed Soviet system and from the French Revolution that the most mediocre in society became its most eager auditors of correct behavior. The arbiters of proper thought—the self-righteous paid toady, the perpetual victim employed in service to government payback, the freelancing snitch—were always the villains of freedom, productivity, and humanity, whether we read of the killing off of Alexander the Great’s inner circle, the forced suicides of the Neronian circle, the Jacobin murder spree, or the nightmarish world described by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

That the Biden Administration has now joined with Silicon Valley to hunt down on social media any dissenters from this month’s official policy on vaccinations and mask-wearing was not so shocking as to be expected from a media that banned coverage of Hunter Biden’s laptop. In Cuban-fashion, millions of judge-jury-executioner online snitches, with government encouragement, will help root out incorrect thoughts at light speed.

I hope he’s right about CRT. But knowing the Left, once CRT has outlived its usefulness to them, they’ll find something else to push on us and scream about. In my opinion, the way to defeat these jackals is to stand up to them by saying, “No.” As in, “No, I don’t accept your premise that I’m racist or that a man can be a woman. And you’re nuts to believe those things.”

I strongly encourage you to study up on CRT and its Marxist roots. You need to know your enemy.

And, if you don’t regularly read VDH, you should.

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Daily Broadside | How To Defeat Uncertainty Between the Races

Daily Verse | 2 Chronicles 12:14
King Rehoboam did evil because he had not
set his heart on seeking the Lord.

Happy Monday my friends. I’ve only met one person I wanted to spend my whole life with.

It’s no secret that our country is being torn apart by Critical Race Theory, which posits that power is based on race, rather than personal character, skill or achievement. In today’s narrative, if you’re white, you’re inherently racist and therefore an oppressor; if you’re a person of color, and especially if you’re black, you’re a victim of a power imbalance that is the result of a rigged system.

This ideology has swept colleges, corporations and, unfortunately, even churches. Not all churches, not all corporations, not all colleges, but enough to further erode our culture. We’ve seen with blazing clarity this last year the effect it’s had through Burn Loot Murder and antifa’s destructive marauding through our cities. We’ve seen it with companies like Coca-Cola that tell us to “try to be less white.” And we see it with “woke” majority-white churches that abase themselves before black brethren for sins they didn’t commit against them and preach a gospel of social justice.

I realized recently that while I completely reject CRT and the nonsense it espouses, I’ve nonetheless been affected by it personally. And by that I mean that I have become hyper-aware of race. Because of the constant drumbeat of “white supremacy,” “white privilege,” “systemic” or “institutional” racism and how aggrieved blacks are portrayed in the media, I find myself second-guessing interactions I have with someone of another color—especially blacks.

Last week an Amazon delivery truck pulled into my driveway while I was outside doing some yard work. Since I was there, I walked over to the truck to take the parcel from the driver, figuring I could save him some time. As I approached the truck, I saw that the driver was a young black man.

Normally I’d walk up, say “Hi” and complete the transaction without giving it a second thought. But this time my brain started asking questions even though I hadn’t asked it to.

“Does he think I’m a racist?”

“I wonder if he resents delivering packages to white people in the suburbs?”

“I wonder if he’s angry at me?”

“Will wishing him a good evening once I’ve got the package be interpreted as I think I’m superior to him?”

“Does anything I say even matter to him?”

These questions all floated, unwelcome, through my mind as I walked over to the truck. Note that I couldn’t possibly answer any of them—they all depended on what he thought, and I couldn’t possibly know what he thought unless he told me.

In the end, I greeted him, he said “Hey,” he gave me my package, I thanked him and said, “Have a good one.” He wished me the same. No sign of contempt from him. Just a guy doing his job.

But the experience deeply bothered me. I have never been so conscious of race and have always treated everyone the same, no matter their skin color or national origin. I can’t claim to have done so perfectly but, frankly, I’d be surprised if anyone can. Motivated by my Christian faith, I keep in mind that I’ve never locked eyes with anyone who didn’t matter to God. As the old children’s song goes,

Jesus loves the little children,
All the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black and white,
They are precious in His sight,
Jesus loves the little children of the world.

I leaned on that knowledge and brushed the other thoughts away from my mind. But that’s evidence of the damage being done to our society. The few people I’ve shared that story with have immediately recognized themselves in it. CRT activists are causing whites to second-guess themselves, creating uncertainty. Uncertainty leads to division and demoralizes those who can’t sort it out.

Over the weekend I flew to Atlanta and stayed overnight in a hotel in Marietta, Georgia. I shared the elevator several times with black men and women. It never got wonky, it was always friendly and the only vibe I got was from a young black guy wearing a “Black Lives Matter” facemask. He didn’t say anything or acknowledge my presence even though we were the only two in the elevator.

But so what? Everyone else was friendly. I took some encouragement from that. Maybe most blacks are cool with whites; maybe they don’t buy what BLM is selling. Most whites I know are cool with blacks and are horrified to be thought of as racist.

Me, I’m going to keep going back to the scriptures. That’s my foundation. If I do what God calls me to do, then I’ve done what is right—even if those questions present themselves—and the grievance mongers can complain to Him if I don’t go along with the program.