Critical Race Theory

CRT has two very different definitions.

What do I believe Critical Race Theory is?

So when I passed my comprehensive exam in Political Theory, I used Philosophize This! as a huge part of my study guide when it came to Critical Theory. He does an incredible job explaining it over many episodes (108-114, 150-151 on Fromm, and 152-153 on Benjamin).

The short version is that the Frankfurt School for Social Research was established by Marxist intellectuals who fled the holocaust (they were targeted for being Jewish) and set up shop at Columbia University. From there they combined Marx and Freud to create Critical Theory, whose goals and methods were designed to critique Western civilization and capitalism, looking at structures and false consciousness as mental phenomena. It’s where scholars started looking at ‘systemic’ issues where structures and institutions imbedded various forces of inequality, arguing that Western capitalist democracies were cleverly hidden authoritarian systems.

Later the Gender Critical Theorists apply this to sex and gender, examining how patriarchy and cis-heteronormativity manifest, and the Race Critical Theorists take the same approach to Whiteness.

[Note A - I capitalize all words relating to race (Black, White, Asian, Latino, etc.), based on the recommendations of Dr. Kwame Anthony Appiah (2020).]

So then a bunch of other theories come and go in the same solar system as Critical Race Theory (Structuralism, Post-structuralism, Post-modernism, Hermeneutics, Queer Theory, etc.), and they influence the field. That’s super complicated and important, but it’s a rabbit hole for this article.

Somewhere in the early 2010s ideas based on these field start showing up all over society - hiring decisions, hate speech laws, K-12 curriculum, etc.

So then there begins these sub-types of definitions of Critical Race Theory, which people ascribe to largely out of partisan commitments:

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Photo by Tim Wildsmith on Unsplas

Critical Race Theory definition 1 - A formal legal theory studied in graduate school that is not taught in K-12. This theorizes how Whiteness produces unequal racial outcomes in various sectors. A bunch of people on the left told me that CRT is a hoax, perpetuated by Christopher Rufo, as a disingenuous strategy to get cheap political points. People who believe that, rightly or wrongly, would go with this definition.

That group on Twitter also told me that Rufo admitted that it was a hoax. I think this is what they were referring to:

“Rufo even admits to his CRT scheme. A March 15 tweet stated, “We have successfully frozen their brand – critical race theory – into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand strategy. The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory.’ We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire race of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans”

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Critical Race Theory 2 - Conservatives, especially White conservatives, start noticing that there’s all of this anti-Whiteness material showing up everywhere. They learn about its Marxist roots, partisan media encourages them to see it as a threat against them and their children, and they lose their shit.

[Note B - lefties got mad at me on Twitter for saying that they were likely to lose their shit about Roe v. Wade being overturned, saying that is was not a neutral term. I disagree, and here I am using to describe the right’s reaction. It’s an appropriate phrase and I’m going to keep using it.]

Enter Christopher Rufo! The whole thing gets dragged into the heart of culture war, along with transgender issues in K-12, laws get passed, fights break out at school board meetings, parents get called terrorists, and so on.

So Critical Race Theory means, to the right, anything connected to formal Critical Race Theory or anything that comes across as anti-White.

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Psychology - Social Identity Theory (Tajfel 1970).

The most important thing to know about this, as it relates to CRT, is that threat is the perception of identity based threat deepens the bonds between members of that social group.

If you threaten or demean lesbians, that’s going to cause lesbians to band together to protect themselves. If you threaten or demean Brazilians, Brazilians are going to band together to protect themselves. It’s universal human behavior.

A lot of Whites perceive CRT as a threat and that increases the saliency (strength) of White social identity, which had been in decline since the 1960s, but is now re-ascending. Schorr (2020) just wrote his dissertation at Georgetown on this. From my dissertation on his work (citations below):

Schorr’s (2020a) research suggests that Critical Race Theory’s focus on the negatives of ‘Whiteness’ is actually making White people more racist.  Schorr (2020b) explored the impact that Critical Race Theory-based articles on Whites and Whiteness, looking at articles such as “White Men must be Stopped, the Very Future of Humanity Depends Upon it,” “10 Ways White People are More Racist than they Realize,” and “21 Things White People Ruined in 2015, Besides Everything” might be having on White people.  Schorr’s research suggests that the steadily increasing salience of White social identity is due in part to this kind of antagonism towards Whites, saying,” Insofar as white identity polarization is a reciprocal process, critical race theory and company likely advance the cause of white nationalism:” (Schorr 2020b)

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Because of partisan media and social media, there is a market for the right for stories about how Whites, males, Christians, Western values, capitalism, etc. are under attack at universities. Two outlets, The College Fix and Campus Reform, put out about a dozen stories per day that portray universities in a very poor light. So when an article like this gets out, it’s Christmas for these guys:

Donald Moss’s (2021) ‘On Having Whiteness’ (words bolded by me for emphasis):

“Whiteness is a condition one first acquires and then one has—a malignant, parasitic-like condition to which “white” people have a particular susceptibility. The condition is foundational, generating characteristic ways of being in one’s body, in one’s mind, and in one’s world. Parasitic Whiteness renders its hosts’ appetites voracious, insatiable, and perverse. These deformed appetites particularly target nonwhite peoples. Once established, these appetites are nearly impossible to eliminate. Effective treatment consists of a combination of psychic and social-historical interventions. Such interventions can reasonably aim only to reshape Whiteness’s infiltrated appetites—to reduce their intensity, redistribute their aims, and occasionally turn those aims toward the work of reparation. When remembered and represented, the ravages wreaked by the chronic condition can function either as warning (“never again”) or as temptation (“great again”). Memorialization alone, therefore, is no guarantee against regression. There is not yet a permanent cure.”

And that’s what conservatives are reacting to when they lose their shit about CRT.

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Citations for Schorr:
Schorr, Christopher. 2020a. “White nationalism and its challenge to the American right.” PhD diss., Georgetown University.

Schorr, Christopher. 2020b. “Research shows Critical Race Theory is making people more racist.” The Federalist, October 19. https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/19/research-shows-critical-race-theory-is-actually-making-people-more-racist/

And in case you’re interested in reading the literature from pro-CRT people, here is Colorado State University’s ‘Continuing Education Resources for Inclusive Excellence’ reading list:

https://inclusiveexcellence.colostate.edu/continuing-education-resources/