{"id":188164,"date":"2021-07-05T12:00:30","date_gmt":"2021-07-05T11:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=188164"},"modified":"2021-07-03T09:49:37","modified_gmt":"2021-07-03T08:49:37","slug":"the-battle-over-critical-race-theory-heats-up-observations-and-lessons-learned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/07\/the-battle-over-critical-race-theory-heats-up-observations-and-lessons-learned\/","title":{"rendered":"The Battle over Critical Race Theory Heats Up: Observations and Lessons Learned"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The latest ideological battle in the U.S. \u201cculture wars\u201d pits the right-wing opponents of Critical Race Theory (CRT) against its left-wing and liberal supporters, with the majority of Americans, who know very little about the theory, leaning for or against it according to their pre-existing biases.<\/p>\n

Two topics need to be kept distinct: the current controversy, which involves a highly selective and distorted version of the theory publicized by its opponents, and CRT itself, which is a general, multifaceted, not always consistent approach to U.S. race relations that originally grew out of the anti-racist scholarship of the 1960s and the Critical Legal Studies (CLS) movement of the 1970s.<\/p>\n

At this writing, 24 states have introduced legislation to ban the teaching of certain alleged elements of Critical Race Theory in their public schools, and six state legislatures have passed such laws. The critics\u2019 underlying objection is that the theory teaches Americans to be ashamed of being American and white people to be ashamed of being white.\u00a0 An example of the objections that arrived in my email a few days ago is this notice from Hillsdale College, a conservative school in Michigan whose most famous alumnus is Erik Prince, the founder of the notorious Blackwater organization that supplied the CIA in Iraq and elsewhere with mercenaries and spies. The letter, addressed to \u201cFellow American,\u201d states:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a growing movement to teach young Americans that our nation\u2019s history is\u00a0oppressive\u00a0and\u00a0shameful\u2014that the essential fact of American history is not freedom but slavery.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cTo counter this false and destructive narrative, Hillsdale College has produced a new free online course, \u201cCivil Rights in American History,\u201d which is now available in a special DVD box set.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThis course covers the Founders\u2019 understanding of equality, natural rights, and civil rights; the quest for justice in America through the Civil War, during Reconstruction, and in the 20th century; and the danger posed to freedom and civil rights today by identity politics.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The same point is made more subtly and expansively by analysts like Christopher F. Rufo of the Manhattan Institute, who complains in \u201cThe Battle over Critical Race Theory\u201d (Wall Street Journal Opinion<\/em>, 6\/27\/21) that,<\/p>\n

Since the murder of George Floyd last year, critical race theory\u2019s key concepts, including \u201csystemic racism,\u201d \u201cwhite privilege,\u201d and \u201cwhite fragility,\u201d have become ubiquitous in America\u2019s elite institutions. Progressive politicians have sought to implement \u201cantiracist\u201d policies to reduce racial disparities, such as minorities-only income programs and racially segregated vaccine distribution.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to Rufo, who has advised state legislatures on the language of the anti-CRT laws, it is necessary to stop public school teachers from promoting \u201ccritical race theory\u2019s core concepts, including race essentialism, collective guilt, and racial superiority.\u201d\u00a0 In the same vein, he argues that businesses and other adult organizations must stop conducting anti-racist workshops and trainings designed to make white executives and administrators feel guilty about their racial heritage and unconscious biases.<\/p>\n

What is<\/em> the relationship of the doctrines described by such critics to the theory itself?\u00a0 In some ways, Rufo\u2019s caricature of CRT (actually, a form of ideological \u201cessentialism\u201d) reminds one of Nietzsche\u2019s description of Christianity as a philosophy designed to make people ashamed of being human \u2013 but Nietzsche\u2019s oversimplification was closer to the mark than Rufo\u2019s.\u00a0 Critical Race Theory is above all structuralist.\u00a0 Its fundamental principle, which most historians and social scientists have long accepted, is that racial inequality in the United States is not just a product of anti-Black prejudice, but is rooted in the ways that American political, economic, and cultural institutions are organized and operate.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the primary conclusion of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Kerner Commission), established to report on the causes of the urban racial uprisings of the 1960s, was that twentieth-century America was \u201cmoving toward two societies, one black, one white \u2013 separate and unequal.\u201d[i]<\/a>\u00a0 This meant that the subordination of Black people that began with chattel slavery did not end with the antislavery amendments to the U.S. Constitution or with subsequent civil rights legislation, court decisions, and changes in popular thinking about race relations.\u00a0 It continued \u2013 and continues still \u2013 in the form of systemic, institutionalized inequality.<\/p>\n

A number of related doctrines related to this basic structural approach are well summarized by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic in their Critical Race Theory: An Introduction<\/em>, first published two decades ago (3d Ed., NYU Press, 2017).\u00a0 Most CRT theorists believe that race is a social construction, not a biological fact, and that institutionalized discrimination in the U.S. defines the normal experience of most people of color.\u00a0 Legal and political reforms, while welcome, do not alter the fundamental tendency of the system to bestow relative advantages on whites and disabilities on non-whites. \u00a0Even genuine advances in popular attitudes toward minority groups are undermined by the tendency to replace old negative stereotypes with new ones (e.g., the happy, ignorant \u201cdarkie\u201d is replaced by the \u201cwelfare queen,\u201d the violent criminal, the fraudulent voter, etc.)<\/p>\n

Furthermore, CRT theorists generally insist that the experiences of individual members of minority groups are determined by \u201cintersectionality\u201d; that is, the individual\u2019s membership not only in a racial group but also in a particular economic class, gender, sexual preference group, religious group, and so forth.\u00a0 Finally, some theorists argue that people of color are uniquely qualified to speak and to tell stories about their experiences of racial oppression and attempted liberation.<\/p>\n

Considering how many of these ideas are considered old hat by students of U.S. race relations, what has produced the sudden explosion of controversy noted earlier?\u00a0 The answer, it seems clear, is rooted in the development of the Trump movement, with its appeal to white resentment, itself a product of resistance to threatening cultural changes, class-based grievances, and fears of being demographically swamped by non-white populations and voters.\u00a0 Right-wing activists understand that what most enrages white people, particularly in conservative and rural states, is the accusation that their history and culture have been irredeemably polluted by racial violence and oppression, and that they must spend the rest of their days atoning and making recompense for these social sins.<\/p>\n

To whites nurturing a host of grievances against a host of established authorities but clinging to traditions of religious orthodoxy and patriotic nationalism, the most infuriating idea of all is that America itself is corrupt at the core and racism a collective form of original sin.\u00a0 One of the events that first drew attention to this theme was the publication in 2019 by The<\/em> New York Times<\/em> of the 1619 Project<\/em>, a piece of long-form journalism created by Nikole Hannah-Jones to commemorate the 400th<\/sup> anniversary of the first importation of slaves to America. \u00a0The project, which later won a Pulitzer Prize award, drew fire at first not from conservatives but from liberal historians who believed that Hannah-Jones had overstated the extent to which the American Revolution against Great Britain was motivated by slave owners\u2019 desire to maintain their \u201cpeculiar institution\u201d at a time when Britain was moving toward abolition of the slave trade.\u00a0 Hannah-Jones later made a number of changes in her language that mollified most of the historians, but right-wingers like Rufo smelled blood.<\/p>\n

The underlying assumption of those who have made CRT a Trumpite cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre<\/em> is an either\/or based on moral essentialism<\/em>.\u00a0 Either one\u2019s history and culture are essentially good, sanctified by sacrifice, and representing legitimate sources of collective pride, or they are essentially evil: a collective existence polluted by the violent abuse of power, oppression of the innocent and selfish interests run amok.\u00a0 As soon as structural analysts of phenomena like persistent racial inequality point out that the origins and potential cures for this sort of social problem are systemic, moral essentialists (especially if they have been previously wounded by insults to their cultural traditions) conclude that this means total condemnation of their history, social values, and ways of life.\u00a0 They have little or no tolerance for systemic ambiguity \u2013 the idea that collective virtue and sin, vastly beneficial social ideas and practices and vile, degrading ideas and activities, can be sides of the same coin.<\/p>\n

At times, I am sorry to say, this problem has been exacerbated by some analysts and activists who, under the banner of CRT, have demonstrated their own intolerance for systemic ambiguity.\u00a0 To them, the fact that Thomas Jefferson was a slaveholder who had a long term illicit sexual relationship with a slave makes Jefferson\u2019s egalitarianism (\u201call men are created equal\u201d) nothing more than a shameful mockery.\u00a0 Final judgment is passed on Jefferson and his liberal ilk: guilty as charged!\u00a0 What analysts like Marx and Hegel understood, by contrast, is that social systems are founded on and driven by contradictions<\/em>, including the contradiction between past oppression and future liberation. Thomas Jefferson betrayed his own ideals, but his dream sustained Martin Luther King.\u00a0 Moral judgments are inescapable, but final judgment (as St. Paul recognized) demands a universal, timeless perspective that belongs to none of us.<\/p>\n

To resolve the conflict between the advocates and opponents of Critical Race Theory, therefore, it seems that two steps need to be taken, one immediate and the second more long term.\u00a0 Immediately, the theory needs to be restated in terms understandable to non-academics that make it clear that the point of the theory is not to condemn white people because of their race or cultural heritage or to sit in final judgment on America.\u00a0 It is to demonstrate the structural sources of America\u2019s most beneficial and<\/em> most destructive ideas and practices, and the need for thoroughgoing changes in a system that generates such deep contradictions.<\/p>\n

Over a longer time period, we must eliminate the real grievances and taboos that generate white resentment and that produce a search for scapegoats. This will involve serious changes in social policy, of course, but also a sustained effort to oppose moral essentialism as a habit of thought in ourselves and others.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t an easy task; we in the field of peacemaking are as inclined as anyone else to pass final judgment on our adversaries.\u00a0 But I think that we can learn something useful from both the successes and the vicissitudes of Critical Race Theory.<\/p>\n

NOTE:<\/strong><\/p>\n

[i] Report of National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders <\/em>(Bantam Books, 1968)<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Richard E. Rubenstein is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a> and a professor of conflict resolution and public affairs at George Mason University\u2019s Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution. A graduate of Harvard College, Oxford University (Rhodes Scholar), and Harvard Law School, Rubenstein is the author of nine books on analyzing and resolving violent social conflicts. His most recent book is <\/em>Resolving Structural Conflicts: How Violent Systems Can Be Transformed (Routledge, 2017).\u00a0 His book in progress, to be published in fall 2020, is <\/em>Post-Corona Conflicts: New Sources of Struggle and Opportunities for Peace.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To resolve the conflict between the advocates and opponents of Critical Race Theory, it seems that two steps need to be taken, one immediate and the second more long term.\u00a0 Immediately, the theory needs to be restated in terms understandable to non-academics that make it clear that the point of the theory is not to condemn white people because of their race or cultural heritage or to sit in final judgment on America.\u00a0 It is to demonstrate the structural sources of America\u2019s most beneficial and most destructive ideas and practices, and the need for thoroughgoing changes in a system that generates such deep contradictions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[867,2436,2095,120,1778,2579,103,1334,249,70,498],"class_list":["post-188164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial","tag-anglo-america","tag-black-america","tag-black-lives-matter","tag-conflict","tag-conflict-analysis","tag-critical-race-theory","tag-racism","tag-social-conflict","tag-trump","tag-usa","tag-white-supremacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}