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.