Reports that critical race theory is over have been greatly exaggerated. CRT is very much still around, although it has been so discredited since some states took measures to ban it that few social justice activists, if any, will now admit to being critical race theorists. They know that describing themselves as critical race theorists will not be favorably regarded, and so they will often deny that there is even such a thing as CRT. This makes them even more dangerous, because they continue promoting the destructive tenets of CRT disguised as social justice. It may therefore be helpful to consider in more detail what is meant when an argument is described as CRT.
A helpful analysis is offered by Jeffrey J. Pyle in his article “Race, Equality and the Rule of Law: Critical Race Theory’s Attack on the Promises of Liberalism,” published in the Boston College Law Review. For context, as readers might expect from a Boston law review, the author is broadly sympathetic with the aims of CRT but believes it has failed because, instead of aligning itself with the principles of liberalism, it attacks the foundations of liberalism. Pyle believes the “race-crits,” as he calls them, have erred by being so irrational that even their sympathetic liberal friends are reluctant to help them. He complains that the excesses of the race-crits “alienate potentially helpful whites.” He adds that “my disagreement with race-crits has less to do with their long-term goals than with their diagnoses and solutions.” If they would only avoid these errors, they might have more white allies. Thus, as reflected in the title, his main aim is to defend liberalism from the CRT attack:
“Critique,” however, never built anything, and liberalism, for all its shortcomings, is at least constructive. It provides broadly-accepted, reasonably well-defined principles to which political advocates may appeal in ways that transcend sheer power, with at least some hope of incremental success. Critical race theory would “deconstruct” this imperfect tradition, but offers nothing in its place.
Keeping that context in mind, Pyle’s analysis is nevertheless very helpful for purposes of identifying CRT. To be clear, the aim here, in drawing upon his analysis, is not to “debunk” or “debate” CRT but to outline its main attributes for purposes of identifying a race-crit when you encounter one in the wild.
Racial Subordination
First, CRT is always concerned with some form of “racial subordination.” The main blame for subordination is not placed on anyone in particular, but on what are often described as institutions, systems, or structures.
CRT does not attribute racism to white people as individuals or even to entire groups of people. Simply put, critical race theory states that U.S. social institutions (e.g., the criminal justice system, education system, labor market, housing market, and healthcare system) are laced with racism embedded in laws, regulations, rules, and procedures that lead to differential outcomes by race.
As Pyle explains, race-crits believe racism “lies at the very heart of American – and Western – culture.” Racism is pervasive and immutable, and “everyone is either an ‘outsider’ or an ‘insider,’ a ‘victim’ or a ‘perpetrator’” of racism—not necessarily through anything they have thought, said, or done, but based on the status they occupy in the system. Race-crits “view American society as a zero-sum conflict between powerful white males and powerless minorities.” How do the race-crits know this? Well, knowledge is “socially constructed,” so they know this by having constructed a theory that explains it. As their knowledge is derived from their theory and not from empirical observation, the truth of their tenets is not dependent on any objective evidence or proof. They believe all knowledge is “inherently subjective, contingent and immune to objective evaluation.” Further, all knowledge derived from the application of this theory is “autobiographical and group-based.” Race-crits see “objective evaluation” as merely the subjective preference of white people or—if performed by black people—the subjective preference of the black face of white supremacy as reflected in the infamous “Uncle Tom.” For example, Clarence Thomas is described by Derrick Bell in his article “Racial Realism” as follows:
The addition of Judge Clarence Thomas to that Court, as the replacement for Justice Thurgood Marshall, is likely to add deep insult to the continuing injury inflicted on civil rights advocates. The cut is particularly unkind because the choice of a black like Clarence Thomas replicates the slave masters’ practice of elevating to overseer and other positions of quasi-power those slaves willing to mimic the masters’ views, carry out orders, and by their presence provide a perverse legitimacy to the oppression they aided and approved.
If there is no such thing as objective analysis, what happens when one person’s subjective knowledge meets that of another? In that case the role of the adjudicator is simply to identify who represents the “perpetrator” group. Since all knowledge is identity-based, if someone from an oppressor group (or an Uncle Tom) challenges any argument put forward by an “oppressed” person, that amounts to an attack on the identity of the oppressed. As Pyle explains, “Questioning the race-crits’ grip on reality, then, is not just disrespectful, it is oppressive.” Disagreeing with race-crits is always “deeply racist.”
White Supremacy
The second key indicator of CRT is the role played by “white supremacy” in explaining all political, social, and economic problems. As Lew Rockwell has observed, the Marxist theory “of the substructure, or base, and the superstructures of society” has been loosely incorporated into critical race theory to explain the role of white supremacy in racial oppression:
The critical race theory about the “white supremacy inherent in culture” is much the same. The base for the theorists is race relations. These theorists believe that the oppressive white class has constructed society to necessarily maintain a power dynamic over the nonwhite classes. Political achievements, no matter how much they may benefit racial minorities, belong as part of the superstructure, and thus they must be some protective shell over the true social dynamics.
Pyle points out that even Martin Luther King “colorblindness” is deemed in CRT to be “racist” because it forms part of the powerful “white supremacy” superstructure. CRT, being an explicitly collectivist theory which holds that “we can achieve real freedom only collectively, through group self-determination,” understands freedom and justice as the dismantling of white supremacy. Similarly, CRT approaches the regulation of free speech as a matter of constraining white supremacy. The speech of oppressors “is not speech, but ‘conduct’ which ‘constructs the social reality that constrains the liberty of non-whites because of their race.” Merit, likewise, is “just another culturally- and racially-contingent means by which whites replicate their own hegemony.” Black racism is benign because it is “not tied to the structural domination of another group” and, therefore, absolute free speech applies to black people. When black people speak, all speech is free speech. When white people speak, that is white supremacy which is “harmful conduct.” Nor can race-crits be accused of hypocrisy or double standards—as they see it, the standards applied to black and white are not meant to be the same in the first place. Indeed, the idea that law should vary based on racial identity is central to CRT. We are now at an impasse in which rational debate is impossible, because rationality itself is “white supremacy.”
How is this impasse to be resolved? Pyle explains that race-crits believe the problem cannot be resolved: “Racism, to race-crits, is all-pervasive and all-controlling; nothing can be done.” In any case, racism is often unconscious and invisible, being embedded as it is in the prevailing systems and structures, and what cannot be seen cannot be resolved. All that can be done is to get perpetrators to pay a penalty to their victims for causing them harm: “Accordingly, judges should not question whether the perpetrator had racist motives, but should focus only on the harm done to the alleged victim.” As moral guilt and responsibility are collective, the odd individual member of an oppressed group who might dissent from this outcome is irrelevant in determining the group interest. Given the emphasis in CRT on being “critical” and insisting that there are no solutions to racism, CRT is above all a destructive ideology—all it seeks to do is “critique” the system, point out harms to the races it favors, and dismantle Western civilization.
