Reasonable Critiques of Progressive Racial Rhetoric

What Do Conservatives Fear About Critical Race Theory?

When I spoke with Terry Stoops, a conservative education-policy expert at the John Locke Foundation who had been appointed to a task force on “indoctrination” in public schools by the conservative lieutenant governor of North Carolina, he told me that he wasn’t sure how long the outrage of some grassroots conservatives would ultimately last. But he did think their anger had been misunderstood. “I’ve seen so much discussion about the fact that conservatives are advancing these critical-race-theory bills because they don’t want the truth of slavery or racism to be taught, and I haven’t seen that at all. I think parents want their children to learn about the mistakes of the past in order to create a better future,” Stoops said. “They don’t want their children to be told that they are responsible for the mistakes of their ancestors, and that unless they repent for those mistakes then they will remain complicit.” The debate isn’t about history, exactly. It is about the possibility of blamelessness.

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Whatever birthday it chooses to commemorate, origins-obsessed history faces a debilitating intellectual problem: it cannot explain historical change. A triumphant celebration of 1776 as the basis of American freedom stumbles right out of the gate—it cannot describe how this splendid new republic quickly became the largest slave society in the Western Hemisphere. A history that draws a straight line forward from 1619, meanwhile, cannot explain how that same American slave society was shattered at the peak of its wealth and power—a process of emancipation whose rapidity, violence, and radicalism have been rivaled only by the Haitian Revolution. This approach to the past, as the scholar Steven Hahn has written, risks becoming a “history without history,” deaf to shifts in power both loud and quiet. Thus it offers no way to understand either the fall of Richmond in 1865 or its symbolic echo in 2020, when an antiracist coalition emerged whose cultural and institutional strength reflects undeniable changes in American society. The 1619 Project may help explain the “forces that led to the election of Donald Trump,” as the Times executive editor Dean Baquet described its mission, but it cannot fathom the forces that led to Trump’s defeat—let alone its own Pulitzer Prize.

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GOD Shines Forth! said:

Why not start with Derrick Bell, one of CRT's Founders?

Bell and other legal scholars began using the phrase "critical race theory" (CRT) in the 1970s as a takeoff on "critical legal theory", a branch of legal scholarship that challenges the validity of concepts such as rationality, objective truth, and judicial neutrality. Critical legal theory was itself a takeoff on critical theory, a philosophical framework with roots in Marxist thought.

"Racism lies at the center, not the periphery; in the permanent, not in the fleeting."[36]

"The traditions of racial subordination are deeper than the legal sanctions."[37]

"Progress in American race relations is largely a mirage, obscuring the fact that whites continue, consciously or unconsciously to do all in their power to ensure their dominion and maintain control."[38]

"Viewing Racism as an amalgam of guilt, responsibility and power- all of which are generally known but never acknowledged- may explain why educational programs [about race] are destined to fail."[39]

Derrick Bell - Wikipedia

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*Starlight* said:

I don't think the majority of criticism of CRT is made in bad faith.

Most people who criticize it tend to associate CRT with new racist concepts like "white fragility". CRT gets associated with racist views, so people who are against racism criticize CRT. If there is actually no association between CRT and that kind of racist ideology, then criticizing CRT when you actually want to criticize racism is a mistake, not acting in bad faith.

Personally, I think for that reason people shouldn't really criticize CRT, but rather these new racist concepts directly.

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