Critical Race Theory (Part 3): CRT Today, and Other Pressing Issues (…and is it Marxist? Well…Sort of!)

Here in Part 3 of my series on Critical Race Theory, I am going to look at the last three chapters of Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic’s book, Critical Race Theory. Chapter 6 is entitled, “Critiques and Responses to Criticism,” Chapter 7 is entitled, “Critical Race Theory Today,” and Chapter 8 is simply, “Conclusion.” Again, like I said before, I am mostly trying to just make clear what CRT is, although I will make a few comments and personal observations along the way.

First though, here are the links to the previous two posts: Part 1, Part 2.

Chapter 6: Critiques and Responses to Criticism
The book divides the various critiques of CRT into the two categories of External Criticism and Internal Criticism. “External” critics of CRT accuse it of “hiding behind personal stories and narratives” and not providing a whole lot of statistics and evidence to prove their assertions that the system is rigged against minorities are actually true. These external critics point to the statistics of various minority groups like Asians and Jews to show that if the system was really rigged, those minorities wouldn’t be able to succeed either.

This reminds me of a short Jordan Peterson video when he was discussing with two other men a certain Sociology book related to CRT that claimed that math and notions of objectivity were racist. The two men expressed shock how it could claim such a thing and how the book really contained no actual research, but only a lot of the writers’ personal stories. Peterson wasn’t surprised at all and told them that the entire field of Sociology had essentially become “all anecdotal” without any real scientific scholarship (Think of Peggy McIntosh’s “46 examples of white privilege” that she pretty much made up at her desk as she thought about her own life).

So, what is CRT’s response to such a charge that it is primarily anecdotal, without any real solid evidence for its claims? Well, it says that such critiques are problematic because they view things with “conventional criteria,” and thus miss things. In other words, CRT says, “Yep, it is primarily anecdotal. We question the very conventional criteria that you are critiquing us with.” That goes back to that fundamental assumption that such things like appeals to objectivity and facts are part of the “oppressive system.” CRT says that just because some minority groups (like Asians and Jews), indeed many minority individuals (be they black, Latino, Asian, Jewish, etc.), might be able to succeed within the system, the system is still oppressive.

The more activist “internal” critics say that CRT isn’t doing enough to try to actively change the system, the book says, “they are indeed at work developing a vision to replace it” (106), and list things like reforming “electoral democracy,” developing a “new theory of hate speech,” and arguing for “linguistical pluralism.” Still, the book doesn’t bother to explain things any further.

Another “internal” criticism of CRT is that it needs to take more adequate account of “economic democracy.” As the book states, “If racism is largely economic in nature—a search for profits—and hyper-capitalism is increasingly showing itself as a flawed system, what follows for a theory of civil rights?” (108). The chapter ends with an appeal for American critical race theorists to take up more “lively exchanges with Marxist scholars” (109). It seems to me fairly clear what this means (and it is implied throughout not only this book, but in the others I’ve read as well). It indicates that a major plank in CRT is the view that capitalism itself as fundamentally oppressive and racist and Marxism is a valid alternative economic system that could bring about racial justice.

Any rudimentary knowledge of the genocidal impact of 20^th century Marxism should make this a non-starter for everyone. As I said in an earlier post, Nikole Hannah-Jones, the founder of the 1619 Project, spoke glowingly of Cuba (a Marxist/Socialist system), saying that it had least amount of racial inequality in the western hemisphere. Well, yes, that may be true, insofar that both black and white Cubans equally have been impoverished by Castro’s regime and have equally risked their lives trying to flee Cuba for the past 60 years. I’m sorry, I am never going to accept a Marxist solution to racial inequality. That’s not the kind of equality anyone should want. To be clear, I do not think this means that CRT “is Marxist.” But it does seem pretty clear to me that CRT, or at least considerable sections of CRT, is, shall we say, “open to considering” Marxism—and that should be very disconcerting to everyone.

Chapter 7: Critical Race Theory Today
Chapter 7 is a large chapter that touches upon how CRT is connected to many current social and political issues. Politically-speaking, CRT as a whole seems to view the Republican party as a “right-wing” racist and white supremacist party, and the Democrat party as a largely feckless party that has compromised too much with the right-wing racists of the GOP. In any case, the issues touched upon in this chapters are the following:

• Redistribution of Material Benefits and Wealth: CRT wants to maintain or increase things like a progressive income tax, public education, the welfare safety net, and affirmative action, because they see those things as helping to prevent poor minorities from slipping further into permanent poverty. It doesn’t want to see affirmative action being changed from being based on race to be based on economic need (thus a more “color blind” approach to addressing poverty), though, because it would end up helping more poor whites.
• Policing and Criminal Justice: CRT questions the way society sometimes defines and polices crime. In addition, there are things like racial profiling, the mass incarceration of black men, privately-owned prisons, unequal sentencing for crimes between blacks and whites. CRT feels the justice system should seek to be more rehabilitative than punitive with prisoners. Now, there certainly are a number of specific problems in our prison system that need to be addressed, but the book is rather thin on putting forth any solutions. The only solution it lays out is a proposal by one scholar who says, “the values of hip-hop music and culture could serve as a basis for reconstructing the criminal justice system so that it is more humane and responsive to the concerns of the black community” (124). I’ll be honest—I really don’t know what that means.
• Hate Speech Legislation, Language Rights, and School Curricula: CRT seems to favor more rigorous hate speech regulations, even the criminalization of certain types of speech. It favors college campuses provided “safe spaces” for minority students to protect them from white students. It promotes “the rights of non-English speakers to use their native languages in the workplace, voting booth, schoolhouse, and government offices” (128) and objects to requiring the teaching of English for non-English speakers in schools.
• Affirmative Action and Color-Blindness: When it comes to jobs applications and school admissions, CRT is against using standards of merit and standardized testing. CRT thinks hiring and school admissions should not be colorblind and should not be based on merit and achievement…or at least merit and achievement alone.
• Globalization and Immigration: Again, CRT states that capitalism and “free market ideology” is fundamentally racist and oppressive. It also says that since the United States has helped “murderous regimes” and has “plundered their resources,” it should rethink its immigration policy, specifically in terms of our southern border with Mexico.
• Voting Rights: CRT feels that minorities are under-represented in the voting process and is against requiring photo ID to vote. The book highlights one “solution” called cumulative voting put forth by a leading critical race theorist that I honestly do not understand, so I will just provide the quote: It would allow “voters facing a slate of ten candidates, for example, to place all ten of their votes on one, so that if one of the candidates is, say, an African American whose record and positions are attractive to that community, that candidate should be able to win election” (139). Is he saying African Americans should be allowed to vote ten times for the candidate of their choice? I really don’t understand.

In any case, the chapter ends by stating that among critical race theorists, some do not feel change is happening fast enough and want more radical change, while others “point out that many of our chains are mental and that we will never be free until we throw off ancient restrictions and demeaning patters of thought and speech and create the discourse to talk about necessary new concepts” (141). Again, though, that seems rather ambiguous to me.

Chapter 8: Conclusion
Much of what is in chapter 8 really just sums up what the previous seven chapters have been saying. Still, there are a few things worth mentioning. First, CRT says that a peaceful transition to a more humane system “may not take place—the white establishment may resist an orderly progression toward power sharing, particularly in connection with upper-level and technical jobs, police agencies, and government.” Therefore, “the change may be convulsive and cataclysmic. If so, critical theorists and activists will need to provide criminal defense for resistance movements and activists and to articulate theories and strategies for that resistance” (154-155).

That quotation actually helped me gain a better understanding of much of the racial turmoil we’ve seen over the past year. I could not understand those who justified the looting of businesses by saying it was reparations, or the groups that established fundraisers to help bail out rioters and looters who had been arrested, or certain district attorneys in certain cities deciding not to bring any criminal charges against looters and rioters. It just did not make any sense to me. How could our American society and system withstand those actions?

Yet now I see that from the perspective of this particular strand of CRT, that was the point. Those riots were seen as the beginnings of that “convulsive and cataclysmic change,” and were therefore necessary to bring an end to the “white oppressive system” and to pave the way for a new system. And so, the calls to end all cash bail and those district attorneys who chose to drop all charges against the rioters and looters were seeking to do the very thing this quote says will need to be done—namely, come to the defense of those bringing about that “convulsive and cataclysmic change.”

Secondly, CRT calls for economic boycotts of any language, books, movies, articles, etc. that they think portray minorities in any demeaning way. Thirdly, CRT advocates for open borders, particularly on America’s southern border. Fourthly, at the same time, CRT is against requiring the larger flow of people into the United States to assimilate into the culture. Fifthly, CRT states that the larger flow of unassimilated people coming into the United States should be allowed to “pursue zealously the goal of economic democracy” (156)—which I commented on earlier in chapter 6.

Conclusion Thus Far
There you have it. Within three posts I was able to walk you through the book, Critical Race Theory. Hopefully it has helped clarify some of the main stances and goals of CRT. I am interested to know anyone’s thoughts and responses to these first three posts are. In my next few posts on CRT, I will look first at Robin Diangelo’s book, White Fragility (2 posts), then at Ibram X. Kendi’s book, How to be an Anti-Racist (2 posts). After that, I might write one final post in which I flesh out my view and understanding of CRT as a whole.