Critical Race Theory Series (Part 2): Storytelling, Intersectionality, and the Shape of Knowledge

Here in Part 2 of my series on Critical Race Theory, I am going to look at chapters 3-5 of the book Critical Race Theory. As I said before in Part 1, my goal in these first three posts about the book Critical Race Theory is simply to clearly explain what the critical race theorists who wrote Critical Race Theory say critical race theory (CRT) is. (And yes, I will not put “CRT” four times in once sentence from here on out). Chapter 3 is entitled, “Legal Storytelling and Narrative Analysis,” Chapter 4 is entitled, “Looking Inward,” and Chapter 5 is entitled, “Power and the Shape of Knowledge.” If you want to know more about what that all means, by all means, read on…

Chapter 3: Legal Storytelling and Narrative Analysis
As the title of the chapter suggests, Chapter 3 focuses on the role of storytelling to convey the experiences of minorities in America. As everyone already knows, stories have the ability to “put a human face” on historical events or figures. One can a blurb in a textbook about the Nazis’ genocide of the Jews in WWII and think, “That really must have been horrible,” but that blurb remains nothing more than a statistic. But if one reads The Diary of Anne Frank, that statistic becomes a young girl you come to love and identify with. Such is the power of stories and narratives.

When it comes to the story of race in America, CRT says there really are two stories. The majority’s story acknowledges America’s racist past, points to things like ending slavery, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights Movement of examples of racial progress and equality, and states that although there is more to be done, we have come a long way in America in regard to race relations and racial equality. The minority’s story, though, tells the story of continued struggle for minority communities (high dropout rates in schools, mass incarceration, high infant death rates, etc.), of inequity, racial bias and prejudices. According to the book, the minority’s story “dares to call our most prized legal doctrines and protections a sham” (48).

I found this point in the book to be partly right, but also partly misleading. First of all, I hardly think ending slavery and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 can be considered a “sham.” Those were vitally important and necessary steps to take. And even though the historical fact is that in America’s past, there really were actual racial laws that put racial discrimination in the books, the reality is now there aren’t. In the American judicial/legal system, those laws have been done away with. That’s not to say there isn’t any more racism, or that there still are racial problems within our judicial system. But the fact is we no longer have racial laws that legalize racist actions. Just because America is still dealing with the residual effects of those past laws doesn’t mean the advances that have been made are a “sham.”

That being said, it is true that all too often our politicians celebrate what I call “window dressing legislation/declarations” that effectively do nothing to improve the lives of struggling minorities. Let’s take the recent establishment of Juneteenth as a national holiday as an example. To be honest, it never occurred to me that America probably should have established a national holiday celebrating the ending of slavery soon after the Civil War. In that respect, making Juneteenth a national holiday now is fine, albeit a good 150 years late. Still, in light of the recent rise in racial unrest, the growing realization of the deplorable living situations in many inner-city minority communities, and the calls for police reform, the establishment of Juneteenth seems like a hollow gesture. It reminds me of a theme throughout the Old Testament prophets, where God condemns Israel’s hollow rituals of religiosity and false piety, while neglecting the practice of actual justice for the poor and needy.

Long story short, CRT is correct to point out how our politics often amount to hollow displays of piety that never address the real needs of struggling minorities, but it goes too far to call all of the racial advances we’ve made in this country a “sham.” Those minority stories should call attention to those specific areas where we as a country need to improve. They shouldn’t be used as excuses to say, “Everything America has ever done to heal past racial sins is a sham. It all needs to be deconstructed.”

Chapter 4: Looking Inward
Chapter 4 largely deals with the topic of intersectionality and the question of whether or not minorities should assimilate into American culture (Nationalism vs. Assimilation). As I mentioned in my first post, the basic concept of intersectionality is true. No person can be categorized in just one way. We are all a combination of many categories of race, sex, class, etc. The way CRT uses, intersectionality, though, is that it uses it to classify different forms of oppression by the dominate “white, patriarchal American culture.” Therefore, a gay, black, female suffers from different forms of oppression than a transgender native American man, but it is all oppression coming from that white, patriarchal…and let’s add sexist, homophobic…American culture.

As I read this section, I found myself thinking, “Okay, so what is your point?” Sure, one can argue that means that every single person is bound to face challenges in his/her life based on the various “categories” that person identifies with, but CRT doesn’t really provide any evidence that proves the “system” is the one inflicting that “oppression.” In fact, in CRT, it seems the “system” is always used in this nebulous, generic way, but there are rarely any specifics given. Therefore much of CRT’s criticisms about the “system,” quite frankly, ring hollow. For example, the “system” didn’t rape the women Harvey Weinstein raped—Harvey Weinstein did. And when Rose McGowan and other women finally came forward to accuse him, those charges were brought within our legal system, and he was found guilty.

This highlights what I think is a major flaw with CRT. It points to various things in life that are admittedly unfair and wrong (i.e. racism, sexism, etc.), but instead of laying the blame at the feet of the specific people do say/do racist or sexist things, it blames the “system,” more specifically, the American Constitutional legal system and capitalism, and argues that if we just “changed the system” that problems like racism and sexism would just vanish. Now obviously, CRT doesn’t literally make that specific statement, but it certainly implies it. Ironically, the book acknowledges that CRT has been criticized for “excessive negativity and failure to develop a positive program” (48), but then ignores that criticism and doesn’t put forth any positive program. Well, that’s a pretty important criticism. If you are going to “blame the system” for all of society’s ills, you’d better prove it, and you’d better offer a good alternative. But the fact is, at least in this book, CRT does neither.

Instead, the rest of the chapter simply highlights more criticisms of CRT of the system. CRT “takes liberalism to task for its cautious, incremental quality” (64). Upon reading that, I found myself thinking, “Are you saying you want a revolution?” CRT also criticizes classical liberalism for being “overly caught up in the search for universals” in terms of things like admission standards or sentencing guidelines (65) and calls for more “individualized treatment.” Well, I’m sorry, but in terms of practicality, if someone cannot read or write even at an 8^th grade level, that person should not be admitted into college. The fault does not lie with the college’s basic standards, it lies with the failure of the school system from which that kid comes. Instead of saying there should be no general standards for college admission, perhaps the focus should be on improving failing schools. Simply put, in this area, CRT’s criticism seems to be wholly misplaced.

The final thing Chapter 4 addresses is whether minorities should even assimilate into the larger American culture, or whether they should embrace their own culture. CRT says there are basically three groups of minorities on this issue. First there are those who want to assimilate—basically, minorities who want to be part of America and who are proud to call themselves Americans. Then there are those whom CRT calls nationalists/separatists who don’t want to assimilate at all: “Nationalists are apt to describe themselves as a nation within a nation and to hold that the loyalty and identification of black people, for example, should lie with that community and only secondarily with the United States” (69). Nationalists like Derrick Bell (a leading proponent of CRT) tend to push for segregated schools, because they don’t want to have anything to do with white people. Thirdly, there is the middle position that says minorities should work within the “white system” in order to transform the system to where it helps black causes.

Chapter 5: Power and the Shape of Knowledge
The basic gist of Chapter 5 is the argument that in America, white, European culture sets the basic standards of things like beauty, literature, knowledge, and culture itself. Now, given the fact that the United States was founded by Englishmen who broke away from the British Empire, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that, just like with every people group throughout world history, they built a society based on their given culture. CRT, though, states that this is racist.

For example, CRT argues that “Anglocentric standards of beauty” are oppressive because they divide Mexican and Black communities, because lighter-skinned women are often considered more beautiful. That is one example how “white America” pits minorities against each other to maintain power. Therefore, CRT asks, “Will minority groups learn to put aside narrow nationalisms and binary thinking and work together to confront the forces that suppress them all?” (84).

CRT argues that the white American “system” associates “whiteness” with innocence and goodness, and “blackness” with evil and menace. The problem with this claim is that a basic knowledge of cultures across the world throughout history (not just “white” cultures) use this same literary association. Needless to say, I find this criticism rather weak.

CRT also says that literature, pop culture, and the legal system all “reinforce white supremacy” (86). It even equates Aryan skinheads with the Tea Party Movement. Again, though, it never gives anything specific to show this. Are there some movies that depict the bad guys as black gang members? Sure. But then there are other movies that depict the bad guys as white neo-Nazis. So how CRT can make that claim is rather baffling to me. And I’m sorry, but regardless of what one thought of the Tea Party Movement, equating it with Aryan skinheads is, let’s be kind, just a bit much.

As I was reading this chapter, I really was baffled by how CRT could make claims like that, but as I got to the end of the chapter, when it started taking about white privilege, it became clearer to me how CRT could make those claims. For clarity’s sake, CRT defines “white privilege” as “the myriad of social advantages from being the dominant race” (90), and it cites Peggy McIntosh’s list of 46 privileges of white people. It comes from an article she wrote back in 1989 entitled, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” in which she lists 26 instances (I don’t know where the book got “46”) of “white privilege” she felt she had in her life. These 26 things were not conclusions she came to based on any research, mind you. They were things she just thought up on her own. To be quite honest, I found them rather flimsy. She came up things like that she can go into a store and hear “music of my race,” or turn on the TV and see people of her own race, or expect that “the person in charge” will be from her own race. She also cites being able to get “flesh” colored band-aids that match her skin as an instance of white privilege. It may sound shocking to hear (it certainly was to me), but this flimsy article is often cited as being an insightful critique of white privilege. I’m sorry, it’s not.

In any case, here is what I realized regarding CRT’s claim that American literature, pop culture, legal system and flesh-colored band-aids all “reinforce white supremacy.” It is working from the assumption that the American Capitalist Liberal Democracy “system” is irrevocably racist at its core, therefore everything within American culture—that system—must be reinforcing white supremacy. Therefore, since CRT sets up this particular lens through which it then interprets everything within American society, the inevitable conclusion is always going to be that virtually everything within that American system is racist and oppressive…and therefore the entire system needs to go, because it is the system that produces racism and oppression. Consider the following quotes that illustrate this:

When it comes to social reform, “everything must change at once. Otherwise, change is swallowed up by the remaining elements [of the white system], so that we remain roughly as we were before” (91).

“Many critical race theorists and social scientists hold that racism is pervasive, systemic, and deeply-ingrained. If we take this perspective, then no white member of society seems quite so innocent” (91).

“Many whites will strenuously deny that they have benefited from white privilege, even in situations like the ones mentioned throughout this book (golf, summer jobs, extra-credit assignments, merchants who smile)” (92).

Conclusion Thus Far
I’ll flesh out my conclusions in the next post, but at this point I just want to re-emphasize the main thing I’ve seen in this book. When CRT talks about racism, it really isn’t talking about what individuals might say or do. The main argument is that the American Constitutional Law/Capitalist system itself is racist and seeks to oppress minorities and maintain “white” supremacy. Therefore, it is irrelevant to CRT that there are many successful minorities, and indeed many minorities who have risen to positions of political power within the American system—the system itself is racist and will always be racist, no matter how many minorities become successful. The only “non-racist” system is one that ensures equity—equal outcomes across the board to everyone, regardless of their skin color.

Just to be clear, the central issue that I believe everyone must think about regarding CRT isn’t whether or not racism still exists in America or whether or not certain minorities are still suffering and feeling the effects from America’s racist past. The answer to that question is an obvious “Yes.” I have to believe almost every American agrees on that point. Rather, the issue is whether or not CRT’s assertion that the very Constitutional/Capitalist system in America is racist at its core and therefore needs to be upended, torn down, deconstructed and replaced by an entirely different system (one which CRT doesn’t really articulate or flesh out).