Critical Race Theory — More than Intellectual Banter

Responding to The Daily Universe at BYU

On May 21, 2021, nearly two months after I published my article, “Critical Race Theory: BYU’s New Honor Code?” (https://khadlock9697.medium.com/critical-race-theory-the-new-byu-honor-code-aa26313646a4), Kristine Kim published a short article on critical race theory (CRT) in The Daily Universe, BYU’s student newspaper (https://universe.byu.edu/2021/05/21/critical-race-theory-sparks-ongoing-debate-in-utah-and-across-america/). At first read, her article seems harmless enough, and I give Ms. Kim sincere props for presenting some useful information. Unfortunately, that information gives the impression that CRT is no big deal, just a few scholarly types hanging around, talking about, you know, racial justice…and who could possibly be against talking about that, right? Nothing to see here, people. Move along.

Without reprinting her article in full, I attempt below to provide balance to several of her key comments and assertions, first by quoting from her article, and then by sharing my own observations and research.

Ms. Kim: Critical race theory is an intellectual movement…

My Observation: CRT is inherently activist, and is thus the furthest thing possible from an inert “intellectual movement.” This is revealed in countless places and by myriad sources,including the very Purdue Online Writing Lab article cited by Ms. Kim in her article: “CRT scholars seek tangible, real-world ends through the intellectual work they perform. This contributes to many CRT scholars’ emphasis on social activism and transforming everyday notions of race, racism, and power” (https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/writing_in_literature/literary_theory_and_schools_of_criticism/critical_race_theory.html).

For just two examples of how this “social activism” plays out in real life, check out the following articles…and actually read them all the way through. (If you’re a student, take some pride in actual scholarship, i.e., in digging deep and being thorough. And if your appetite is whetted, a Google search will give you many more such instances):

• The Child Soldiers of Portland (Oregon) — https://www.city-journal.org/critical-race-theory-portland-public-schools?wallit_nosession=1
• Failure Factory (Buffalo, New York) — https://www.city-journal.org/buffalo-public-schools-critical-race-theory-curriculum?wallit_nosession=1 [Interestingly, a supposed rebuttal to this article by a local Buffalo parent ended up being no rebuttal at all, but actually confirmed the original reportage and then defended the school district’s activism focus!]

If you’re still not convinced CRT is an activist movement, perhaps the following will help. A study of CRT reveals that it is just one of numerous “critical theories.” One of the early proponents of such theories was Max Horkheimer, a leader of the Marxist “Frankfurt School” in Germany beginning in 1930. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains the following in its section on Critical Theory: “It follows from Horkheimer’s definition that a critical theory is adequate only if it meets three criteria: it must be explanatory, practical, and normative, all at the same time. That is, it must explain what is wrong with current social reality, identify the actors to change it, and provide both clear norms for criticism and achievable practical goals for social transformation” (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/). In other words, one of the lead thinkers in the movement made it clear that you can’t have the intellectual side of critical theories (of which CRT is probably the most virulent and well known) without taking action at the same time. As one studies CRT’s impact on American life — both inside and outside education — it rapidly becomes clear that unapologetic activism is at its heart, and that said activism has its roots in anti-American Marxism.

Ms. Kim: Scholars Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic published “Critical Race Theory: An Introduction” in 2001 which became a work that many scholars and theorists would widely accept, according to Britannica.

My Observation: Here are just a few of the enlightening things that “scholars” Delgado and Stefancic had to say about CRT, its underpinning principles and political provenance, and (in a later interview) its explosive growth in education:

• “Unlike traditional civil rights discourse, which stresses incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.” [Say good-bye to the Magna Carta and so long to the US Constitution.]
• “Being committed to ‘free speech’ may seem like a neutral principle, but it is not. Thus, proclaiming that ‘I am committed equally to allowing free speech for the KKK and 2LiveCrew’ is a non-neutral value judgment, one that asserts that the freedom to say hateful things is more important than the freedom to be free from the victimization, stigma, and humiliation that free speech entails.” [Say good-bye to logic and liberty, and hello to linguistic straw men and cancel culture.]
• CRT advocates “are suspicious of another liberal mainstay, namely, rights… More radical CRT scholars with roots in racial realism and an economic view of history believe that moral and legal rights are apt to do the right holder much less good than we like to think… Think how that system applauds affording everyone equality of opportunity but resists programs that assure equality of results.” [If this isn’t a tip-off to the Marxist roots of CRT, then you don’t understand Marxism (or CRT).]
• “I was a member of the founding conference [of CRT]. Two dozen of us gathered in Madison, Wisconsin to see what we had in common and whether we could plan a joint action in the future… The school [University of Wisconsin] was a center of left academic legal thought. So we gathered at that convent for two and a half days, around a table in an austere room with stained glass windows and crucifixes here and there — an odd place for a bunch of Marxists (emphasis added) — and worked out a set of principles… Most of us who were there have gone on to become prominent critical race theorists.” [No commentary required.]
• “We didn’t set out to colonize, but found a natural affinity in education. Seeing critical race theory take off in education has been a source of great satisfaction for the two of us.” [So much for the claim that CRT is just a highbrow conversation among really smart people who couldn’t possibly intend consequences from their musings.]

It might also be instructive to include here a comment by Duncan Kennedy, a co-founder of the Critical Legal Studies movement (a conceptual predecessor of CRT), and an influencer of Delgado and Stefancic: “The specific enemies [of critical theory, extreme leftism, and socialism generally] have been the central ethical/theoretical concepts of bourgeois culture, including God, the autonomous individual choosing self, conventional morality, the family, manhood and womanhood, the nation state, humanity” (http://www.duncankennedy.net/documents/The%20Critique%20of%20Rights%20in%20cls.pdf). Sounds harmless enough, right? Don’t see any of these “enemies” under withering attack today, do we? Delgado and Stefancic largely adopted Kennedy’s worldview. I guess that’s what makes them ‘widely accepted’ scholars…

Ms. Kim: Steven Leach, a BYU history, Japanese language and literature student, said as a white male, it seems that any contribution to critical race theory he makes academically or by any other means is unwanted. “Any majority/minority interaction promotes a power imbalance, and therefore, to rid our society of systems of racism, I feel incentivized to avoid those interactions altogether,” Leach said.

My Observation: Since Mr. Leach sees himself as an “oppressor” by virtue of his whiteness, and since “any majority/minority interaction promotes a power imbalance,” he apparently is admitting that he refuses to talk or deal with black people anymore. Where in the world did he learn such mumbo jumbo and how did his white privileged sense of logic allow him to arrive at such a ridiculous conclusion? How could anyone possibly believe that this nonsense could ever lead to racial healing and equality? It’s not Mr. Leach’s fault, really. Welcome to the dishonest, dystopian, upside down world of CRT. This is a prime example of that maliciousness in action. CRT is inherently segregationist, it promotes the falsehood that blacks are incapable of interacting on equal ground with whites, and it claims that whites are irredeemably racist and therefore cannot hope to have anything but an oppressor/oppressed relationship with a black person. Thank you, Mr. Leach, for so succinctly revealing the damage CRT inflicts and the divisions it causes, willfully and intentionally.

Ms. Kim: Loyola Law School professor Priscilla Ocen told Time magazine she believes critical race theory is an important theory that addresses and explains a history of inequality. It also explains the changes that can be made to counteract the inequality. “Critical race theory ultimately is calling for a society that is egalitarian, a society that is just, and a society that is inclusive, and in order to get there, we have to name the barriers to achieving a society that is inclusive,” Ocen said.

My Observation: This is an outright lie. CRT explicitly calls for a society that is NOT egalitarian, but, rather, seeks to assign everyone equal outcomes (equity) as implied by Delgado and Stefancic, knowing full well that doing so requires abandoning colorblindness, objectivity, merit, standards, and achievement, while insisting on state-sponsored segregation and racism against whites. That’s what Professor Ocen means when she says CRT “explains the changes that can be made to counteract inequality.” And, again, she’s being overtly disingenuous when she puts CRT and equality in the same thought. Surely, she knows that CRT disavows equality, and discards equal opportunity and treatment in the name of the Marxist concept of equity.

Ms. Kim: BYU communications alum Joseph Carson said the critical race theory is like any other moral panic. “Critical race theory doesn’t exist in all the way that many opposed to it think it does. Any article about critical race theory is barely controversial or radical, all of this is just more culture war fodder fueled by (usually) right-wing pundits,” Carson said.

My Observation: It has become a common defense mechanism by those who support or disregard CRT and its activist role in our schools to claim that any opposition to it is an unwarranted moral panic. Yet, even cursory research makes clear that CRT exists in negative ways that some choose to ignore. Confronted with ideas that some may call “barely controversial or radical” (like, say, black people are incapable of achievement and all white people — even three-month old infants — are irredeemably racist just ’cause they’re white), parents all over the country — left and right, black and white — are justifiably up in arms over it, precisely because of how it hurts their children and divides their families, and the fact that they’re aggressively stigmatized for not falling in line. Their reaction is a logical and long-overdue response to the culture war that progressives have been waging for years.

The belief that CRT is a benign, harmless, intellectual exercise (which is the tone of Ms. Kim’s entire article) is misguided. You see CRT’s negative effects all around you, and, like Mr. Carson, you want to believe it’s no big deal; and then you hear first-hand from multiple pre-teenagers how they’ve been taught in school that they should feel guilty for their white privilege and that, simply because they’re white, they are personally responsible for the slavery that ended in the US more than 140 years before they were born…and then they seem confused and turn emotional when you try to carefully explain the obvious illogic of that drivel. Please! Just as with these youngsters, listening to some Cougar students and faculty, one wonders what’s being taught at BYU and what value it could possibly have after graduation, at least in this regard…because it does NOT reflect what is actually happening in the real world, especially to our children.

Indeed, CRT’s attempt to inculcate in youngsters a new reality has been admitted to by more than one devotee as a means of separating children from their parents and furthering the movement. In this, they echo the words and tactics of no less than Adolf Hitler, who said, “When an opponent declares, “I will not come over to your side,” I calmly say, “Your child belongs to us already…What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.”

Parents’ CRT worries today are well founded. Once indoctrinated by oft-repeated lies and spoon-fed guilt, children may take years to be brought back, if they can be brought back at all. For example, as reported in a History Channel article in 2018 (https://www.history.com/news/how-the-hitler-youth-turned-a-generation-of-kids-into-nazis), a member of the Hitler Youth named Alfons Heck found it almost impossible to shed the propaganda, so completely had he internalized it. “Alfons Heck’s experience was typical. As he told the Boston Globe in the 1980s, he couldn’t wait to become a full-fledged Hitler Youth member and relished marching, singing and attending rallies. “I belonged to Adolf Hitler, body and soul,” he recalled. It took him years to step away from that indoctrination after the end of World War II (emphasis added).”

If you’re one of those who honestly believes CRT is some kumbaya intellectual theory that just hypothesizes, almost imperceptibly, about how we might all be a little nicer to each other, here’s a list of examples you can read to disabuse yourself of that pretense. I challenge you to honestly read these articles and then ask yourself if CRT is really the nothing burger you may presently believe it is:

• Loudoun County (Virginia) — https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/mar/17/loudoun-county-teachers-blacklist-dox-parents-crit/ [the divisiveness and acrimony here have gotten much, much worse since this article was published]
• Subversive Education (North Carolina) — https://christopherrufo.com/subversive-education/ (note the logo on the “EdCamp Equity” materials)
• Democracy Prep (Las Vegas) — https://www.nevadacurrent.com/2021/01/21/las-vegas-charter-school-sued-for-curriculum-covering-race-identity/
• Pre-university Prep Schools (California and New York) — https://www.city-journal.org/the-miseducation-of-americas-elites
• California’s Recommended Ethnic Studies Curriculum for K-12 — https://www.city-journal.org/calif-ethnic-studies-curriculum-accuses-christianity-of-theocide [this proposed curriculum has been formally adopted in California since the publishing of this article]
• Illinois Teachers Shamed for Color of Their Skin in Taxpayer-Sponsored ‘Antiracist’ Training — https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/05/illinois-teachers-shamed-for-color-of-their-skin-in-taxpayer-sponsored-antiracist-training/
• Princeton Theological Seminary Separates Students by Race to Create ‘Safety’ in Mandatory Anti-Racism Training — https://www.yaf.org/news/video-princeton-theological-seminary-separates-students-by-race-to-create-safety-in-anti-racism-training/

And it gets worse. With the above under your belt, let it sink in for a moment that the National Education Association (the largest teachers’ union in America) just voted to make the teaching of CRT in all of the country’s K-12 schools its highest priority (https://nypost.com/2021/07/05/embracing-critical-theory-teachers-union-says-they-control-what-kids-learn/). As you contemplate how the NEA just voted to, among other things, fight against parents who oppose CRT — in concert with overtly fighting against capitalism while wholeheartedly supporting the deep-seated communist teachings of the Zinn Education Project — make a mental note to go to cpusa.org (the website of the American Communist party) and soak in some of that monstrosity. Then ask yourself just how much daylight there is between the positions of the NEA and those of the Communist party. (Then, for a really fun and enlightening experience, research — if you really need to — which political party in the US marches in lockstep with the NEA.) But, hey, these America-hating “educators” are just having an “intellectual” conversation, right?

Now more than ever, an even slightly inquisitive mind that is open and balanced quickly sees that CRT is an intentionally divisive, inherently racist, boldly segregationist, brazenly Marxist cult, one that is active, demands confession and obedience, damages its enemies emotionally and psychologically, and works to upend the American system (that’s the “systemic” part of “systemic racism”, by the way, not whether more whites graduate from college than do blacks). CRT demeans everyone, both black and white, in the so-called quest for Marxist-style equity. As much as some might wish it to be so, CRT is no benign intellectual movement.

And, surprise, the only thing it has to do with race is to use it as a wedge that creates acrimony and divisions. Given its roots, you know why. And it has nothing at all to do with racial healing or advancement of the BIPOC community.