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Many of you have noticed that more people than ever are presenting the stock Critical Race Theory ideas. Do not be alarmed. This is correct. Critical Race Theory mainstreamed during the BLM protests following Ferguson in 2015. You don't need to despair. https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-critical-race-theory/
Critical Race Theory is definitely mainstreaming more than ever now, but on the other hand, not only do more people know what it is now than in 2015 and before, more people than ever are also connecting the dots that something in it is leading not to healing but to harm.
There is an opportunity here to educate clearly about Critical Race Theory and why, while it points to important problems, it diagnoses them incorrectly and prescribes poisonous solutions that will only make the problem worse. And there are resources to do this now.
Many of us have seen the very compelling footage of one black man talking down another very angry one and instructing a younger black teenager to find a better way because what people are doing now isn't working. Finding that better way is now. It isn't Critical Race Theory.
I'm not going to tell you we know for sure what the better way is, but we have some clear hints about what it looks like and what it doesn't look like, and we can set to building it together. What we take from Critical Race Theory is the request to listen more and better.
What we reject from Critical Race Theory is its poisonous view of the world, which is very cynical and paranoid and more importantly denies the individual "content of character" that we know moved racial mountains just 60 years ago. Dividing by group identity is the wrong way.
Critical Race Theory proceeds on a number of assumptions. First: racism is ordinary in society, sometimes also said to be permanent. Second, "interest convergence," that white people only care/help out of self-interest. Third, that liberalism is racism. We shouldn't believe these
Critical Race Theory explicitly also urges an "identity-first" approach to race. It holds up race as a core feature of one's identity and then says you have to be that race to know what it is to be that race, and one's politics must go from that place. This is divisive poison.
Critical Race Theory teaches that one's identity MUST be political, so it radicalizes people and then blames "white society" or "white dominance" for being the real radicalizer. No, there are other ways. We can talk about them. We can go back and improve. https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-identity/
Critical Race Theory doesn't allow or forward black voices. It only forwards those black voices that it considers authentic, meaning ones that speak into the dangerous politics Critical Race Theory advocates. There are better ways. https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-authentic/
Critical Race Theory is pessimistic, cynical, and paranoid to the core, and it teaches these as though they're virtues, filling young black people especially with a belief that society is against them. This is utter poison. Learning to see problems is good; dwelling on them isn't
Critical Race Theory is utterly against colorblindness. Part of this is good: with it sometimes comes a real problem, racism-blindness -- not seeing racism because we don't see race. Part of this is just selfish: it's meant to grab power for the activist. https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-colorblind/
Critical Race Theory sees racism as everywhere and multidimensional, unsolvable without tearing down the system entirely (and replacing it with what? Seriously, what? A totalitarian regime? What? It never says, but vaguely points to "liberation"). No wonder it doesn't work.
Is there systemic racism? Maybe. Let's have a conversation about it, but see if you can get Critical Race Theorists to nail down what they mean by the system. It's effectively "everything that happens," and solutions are just to rip it apart. Do better. https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-racism-systemic/
Is there institutional racism? Maybe. But we try HARD in liberal societies not to have it, and we honestly may have a lot less of it than inflammatory narratives make us believe. Critical Race Theorists know this as they've halfway abandoned it. https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-institutional-racism/
The hot topic in Critical Race Theory from 2004-2010 or so was "the new racism," which is "cultural racism," which is roughly "white culture not liking black culture." But come off it. If white people do like it, that's cultural appropration. Forbidden. https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-cultural-racism/
As we can plainly see now, some Critical Race Theorists are trying to urge peace and talk about the systems. Good for them. Bad method, but good. Others are acting as undeniable totalitarians who aren't interested in the least at solving problems. Just breaking things and hate.
And I'm not talking about the rioters. Forget them for half a second, though much of their rage has been incensed by Critical Race Theory narratives. I mean journalists, activists, and scholars who are filling Twitter with how every race needs to bow to blacks, even other POC.
Over the last two days, I've retweeted voices straight out of Theory, both black and whichever relevant race in each case, saying white people, Latinos, Arabs, Asians, and Jews are all complicit in or adjacent to whiteness and need to interrogate their anti-blackness. Stop it.
We've seen thousands and thousands of people of many not-black races flagellating themselves over their "complicity" in systemic racism, beating themselves up and throwing each other under the bus. This cannot heal a hurting nation. This cannot help. https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-complicity/
Critical Race Theory holds that an intrinsic property of whiteness is anti-Blackness. It spills over to other white-adjacent races, which is everyone else. It's impossible to heal our society if most of us believe this poison. Impossible. We can do better. https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-anti-blackness/
I'm not saying that Critical Race Theory isn't pointing at real problems that exist. It is. I am saying it is terrible at interpreting them, worse at prescribing solutions (it gets these perfectly backwards), and excellent at inflaming interracial hate that can't solve problems.
I watched that video. I heard that man's pain. I know he's right. A better way to deal with whatever racism may be is needed, and having read a God-awful lot of it, I can tell you for certain, it isn't to be found in Critical Race Theory. There are ways, but not that way.
And don't pretend that people aren't willing. Damn near everybody is willing. Critical Race Theory WON'T LET people help. If you sign on, you're going to get WRECKED for how problematic your allyship is (it can't be done right), for being a "good white." https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-good-white/
We are a nation FULL of people of all races who want to help, who want racism to be wholly a thing of a past, but Critical Race Theory won't let them. Everything they do is wrong. Critical Race Theory says we have to focus on race all the time and then it's always done wrong.
This is no way to solve a problem. Critical Race Theory is not the only poison in our society that perpetuates racism, but it's among the worst, not least because it positions itself as the only cure (like Wormtongue whispering poison in Lord of the Rings). There are others.
Rejecting Critical Race Theory isn't racism. It isn't silencing black voices. It isn't denying the "realities" of racism. It's the opposite of all of these. It's rejecting bad Theory to learn the real realities and lift up voices, not just those on script. https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-realities/
We can do better than Critical Race Theory. We can do better than divisive grievance politics that treats people as props for politics that benefit the elite grifters who know the Theory at everyone else's expense. And we already know a lot of how to do it.
We need to listen better. When a black man, or anyone else, says "I can't breathe," people need to listen. When people say there are problems, we need to listen. But we also need to see past race, not focus on it. We need to work together, shared goals, shared vision.
These things work. We know they work. So we throw out the little tyrants who are going to tell black people they have to stay on script to be black and who are going to reject any attempt to help or understand. They're the problem, or their THEORY is the problem. Do better.
