Critical Race Theory and the Decline in American Civility
Richard Gale & Gary Null PhD
Progressive Radio Network, April 22, 2024
Today’s radical wing of Critical Race Theory (CRT) wants to reimagine our society in the image of its own paradoxical disdain towards racism. Simultaneously it is embracing misanthropic hatred towards its critics thereby erasing all of the historical accomplishments to cultivate racial harmony. How is it therefore that apologizing for one’s Caucasian ancestors or the White race in its entirety will purge society from crimes committed against Blacks in the past? Is that not similar to standing up and taking full credit for achievements that were never earned? Although we can fully acknowledge the abundance of racial crimes against people of color, beginning with native indigenous cultures, how can any single person accept 100 percent of the collective guilt? It is foolish to claim that racism is the status quo of all Caucasian cultures. Yet this is in fact the conclusion of the radical wing of racial justice warriors such as Robin DiAngelo, Ibram X. Kendi, and Ta-Nehisi Coates and institutions such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, Equal Justice Initiative and NAACP. Indeed there is a moral obligation to repudiate those who commit acts of violence, physical and psychological, against any minority group. There is deep irrationality behind the barely coherent ideological antiracist manifestos such as White Fragility and How to Be an Antiracist. Take for example a recent image of four elderly women showing their forearms engraved with numbers from the Nazi concentration camps. The callousness of RCT race hustlers would categorically indict these lucky survivors of the Holocaust simply for their privilege of being born White. Of course, the majority of Caucasians are not born with any particularly unique privileges. Ask any disenfranchised Appalachian resident in West Virginia and Kentucky how privileged they feel or the later generations of indentured Irish slaves from the 17thcentury. When RCT’s leaders conflate the privilege of power gained by moguls like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerburg with the tens of millions of American Whites who are unable to write a check for $500 or who are homeless with no guarantee of a meal or shelter, are these faux intellectuals saying they all warrant equal contempt for keeping racism alive because of skin color?
The authoritative powers of government and institutional bureaucracy are delighted with the efforts of RCT’s race warriors to infiltrate and influence our leading institutions. The fools who elevate racism to the apex of the nation’s troubles serve as functional decoys to distract the public’s attention away from the far more insidious actions targeted against them. America has become a nation of a new breed of peasants who are increasingly condemned for a variety of reasons regarding power they do not possess. They are the dispossessed as millions face astronomical debt, no promising future and are burdened by fears of the lurking potential of being replaced eventually by artificial intelligence and new technologies that outperform human productivity.
The notion that all white people are individually responsible for today’s racism due to the actions of their ancestors falls flat on social, political, psychological, and scientific grounds. Simply on social and cultural issues, not everyone’s White ancestors participated in slavery or racism. Caucasians encompass a diverse array of cultures, ethnicities and backgrounds. Millions of European immigrants arrived in the United States after the abolition of slavery and have no direct connection with America’s past historical injustices whatsoever. Blanket statements about the culpability of all Caucasians ignore this diversity and oversimplify historical complexities. Equally it ignores the long history of individuals and White communities that actively opposed racism and worked towards social justice throughout American history.
Holding all Caucasians responsible for the action of their ancestors also undermines individual agency and personal responsibility. This view is deeply adolescent because it suggests that people bear collective guilt. Taking this skewed view of human nature to its full conclusion, this would be like having a legal system that charges individuals with a crime committed by a distant relative living in another part of the planet. It contradicts the essential principles of equality under the law and due process.
The very idea of collective guilt overlooks other factors such as socioeconomic status, education, and geographic location, which can significantly influence individuals’ attitudes and actions regarding racism. Those who charge the Caucasian race with inherent systemic racism are fond to point out the intersectionality of multiple forms of oppression, privilege and discrimination based upon race with other aspects of identity such as gender, class, disability, religion, etc. This doctrine of intersectionality tries to emphasize the interconnectedness of various systems of power and oppression and highlights the need to consider multiple dimensions of identity and social inequality when analyzing and addressing issues of racial justice and equity. It underscores the importance of recognizing and addressing the complexity of every individual’s lived experiences and the intersecting forms of privilege and marginalization they may face. Undoubtedly, there is a substantial amount of truth that the race, class or ethnicity holding the dominant control over the reins of government, economic and social institutions protects the sphere of privileged power for those born into it. There is a reality that millions of people of color faced of being barred from schools, neighborhoods, employment, public spaces and other social venues where even a poor Caucasian had access but a wealthy Black could not. Only when you have been in those prejudicial situations, such as in the Deep South, can you fully measure how those who have been excluded feel the burden of institutionalized social racism. It is also remarkable the cooperation between Whites and people of color working hand-in-hand in solidarity to push back racial oppression. RCT proponents seem to ignore this important history.
Nevertheless, that is where White privilege, or the privilege of any majority race or ethnicity, ends. The power dynamics of repressive interlocking structures, imposing collective guilt, have detrimental psychological effects. It fosters false feelings of shame, resentment and defensiveness among Whites and various ethnic groups who do not personally identify with or condone racism. Collective guilt, furthermore, promotes a narrative that disempowers individuals by reinforcing a sense of victimhood and perpetuates an endless cycle of blame.
Critics of the social constructionist perspective argue that racism exists across diverse cultures and historical contexts, suggesting that it may be a universal aspect of human behavior rather than a socially constructed phenomenon. However, while manifestations of prejudice and discrimination vary, the underlying mechanisms and social dynamics of racism are shaped by specific historical, cultural, and structural factors. Although some of the leading thinkers of today’s reverse-racism, such as Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X Kendi, reduce race-based discrimination to all Whites, there is no genetic basis for inheriting guilt or responsibility. A case can be made that RCT’s view of racism leans towards a belief that racism is rooted in scientific materialism and genetic determinism. However, assigning this predetermined blame to individuals based on their race ignores the fundamental principles of genetics and biology. While historical injustices can have lasting effects on societal attitudes and structures, attributing present-day racism solely to genetic inheritance ignores the multifaceted nature of human behavior. Of course there are individual psychological factors, such as personality traits or cognitive biases, that may preclude a person’s propensity towards racist views. Yet even for those who are hardened fanatics advocating for a psychological reductionism, it cannot be denied that the human brain has a remarkable capacity for change and adaptation. The brain is neoplastic. While individuals may inherit certain predispositions, environmental influences and personal choices also play significant roles in shaping attitudes and behaviors towards race. Neuroplasticity means that the brain is constantly shaped by our interactions with the world, including exposure to different races, cultures, perspectives, and experiences. This suggests that racist attitudes and beliefs can be unlearned or modified through exposure to diverse viewpoints, educational interventions and by engaging in personal introspective inquiry into the nature of one’s own thoughts and beliefs. There is a large body of clinical evidence that by actively engaging in activities such as empathy-building exercises, compassion meditation and mindful reflection, people can reshape their neural pathways and reduce implicit biases. This would be far more productive than reading endless sociological jargon about Critical Race Theory or the sophomoric logic portrayed in books such as White Fragility and then believing any fundamental constructive changes, individually or across society, will ever be made.
The downplaying of individual agency, which lends itself to a constructive view of advocating for color blindness, alternatively patronizes a systemic regime of racism. Individual agency posits that every individual has the capacity to make conscious choices and take actions that either perpetuate or challenge racial discrimination and prejudice. Indeed, a growing number of proponents in the cult of scientific materialism, especially in the neurosciences and evolutionary biology, refute that humans possess free will. This belief—which is simply conjecture and has no more sound scientific evidence than a belief in the tooth fairy and leprechauns—denies that humans have the ability to exert influence over their own thoughts, behaviors and interactions within the context of racial dynamics. By the way, this radical reductionism was shared by many of the early eugenicists and Nazi scientists who felt a moral duty to exterminate those who were biologically or mentally “inferior” to their mythical fantasy of the heroic Aryan Ubermensch.
Color blindness’ challenge is to encourage people to be accountable for their own individual agency because it requires being fully involved in attentive awareness of one’s beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors related to race and then actively challenge those beliefs. By de-emphasizing racial categories and identities, color blindness can help mitigate the divisive effects of identity politics and tribalism. It rather encourages individuals to form connections on shared values rather than rigid racial affiliations and group identities. Unlike RCT’s theoretical intellectual exercise, agency includes being critically reflective of one’s own biases and prejudices, and to consciously choose to reject racial stereotypes and discriminatory practices. Sadly, if the introspective psychological movement led by William James in the United States and Wilhelm Wundt in Germany hadn’t been buried by John Watson’s atheistic outlook favoring behaviorism in 1910, modern psychology may have taken a very different turn, making Americans more self-reflective and tolerable of people’s different persuasions. James was deeply concerned about defending an individual’s causal agency and opposed the ideology of determinism that now defines scientific materialism and CRT’s believers. Individual agency begins with recognizing one’s own worth and dignity as a human being, regardless of race, and asserting one’s right to be treated with respect, fairness, and equality in all aspects of life and abiding by the spiritual value of recognizing the intersection of sameness in another.
It should also not be too difficult to recognize that the emergence of CRT as a popular movement is taking place at a time when Americans, especially the younger generations, have never been less happy and less content with the quality of their lives. The psychological despair and hostility between various factions is unprecedented. Of course, there are multiple reasons. For example, experimental psychologists at Oxford University have shown a relation between the increase in personal stress and anxiety with a rising belief in the cult of scientism over religion and spirituality. Despite the large body of scientific evidence showing that faith and spiritual values help people cope with stress and anxiety far better than belief solely in cold, hard scientific principles, this trend is accelerating as young adults aimlessly forage through the chaos of the American social landscape for a deeper sense of meaning and purpose to cure the existential angst that dominates postmodernity. Following GenX, there has been a steady deterioration of mental and physical health in each succeeding generation. According to a Blue Cross Blue Shield study, the leading cause of mortality is now “death of despair”—again an indication of the increasing meaninglessness of life that CRT is further inciting.
The question is where are CRT’s leaders and proponents investing their energy? Is there any evidence whatsoever that the architects of this new faux social constructivism, building divisions between races based solely upon theoretical conceptions lacking a pragmatic psychological foundation, are contributing to people’s well-being? Or are these walls and barriers nothing more than expressive manifestations of their creators’ low self-esteem and personal guilt being forcefully imposed upon others?
Although the critical race theory movement and its dogma of Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (DIE) is largely a twisted agnostic socialism, it shares many characteristics among millenarian movements in the Middle Ages. As Norman Cohn’s brilliant 1957 classical study In Search of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages meticulously points out, radical movements with disjointed utopian ideals most often arise during periods of social unrest, economic hardship and political oppression. Likewise, utopia’s contrast found in apocalyptic movements of doom and gloom equally tend to arise under very similar overarching social circumstances of instability. Therefore it is no surprise that the CRT movement’s strangely utopian zeal would spontaneously appear as an unconscious counter force, every bit as delusional, as the current rise in millenarian exuberance and fundamentalist religious fervor in nationalist right wing Christianity and radical religious Zionism. A deep comparative investigation would find strong similarities in each.
CRT, as well as the more extremist woke factions, will ultimately fail under inherent inconsistencies in their weight, as will the apocalyptic ambitions of fundamentalist religious passion. The lofty ideals and visions of a policed DIE regime across public and private institutions as a pathway to a more perfect anti-racist society are contrary to the reality within the larger society. Eventually, the gap between its utopian vision and practical realities will lead to disillusionment and internal conflicts. But much mental suffering and disenchantment will be left in its wake.
We are already witnessing these cracks. Black Lives Matter (BLM) leader Shalomyah Bowers faces a lawsuit alleging the misappropriation of $10 million in donor funds.[1] Other BLM activists have been accused of donation theft.[2] CRT’s DIE guru Ibram X. Kendi’s ambitious The antiracism center developing DIE programs at Boston University is now plagued with scandals due to mismanagement of millions of dollars in funding.[3] Robin DiAngelo has exposed herself as an advocate for the return to racial segregation. During an interview, DiAngelo said, “People of color need to get away from White people and have some community with each other.”[4] She also champions censorship by banning people from employment if they don’t espouse her particular ideological brand of antiracism. In DiAngelo’s own confession, “What I want to do is create a culture that actually spits out those who are resistant.”[5] Moreover, CRT’s utopian ideation and the DIE dogma are increasingly becoming isolated from the broader society, due to both voluntary internal and external pressures. It is facing strong opposition from other institutions and strong elements within mainstream society. If anything, Blacks would serve themselves best by setting race aside and segregating themselves from both White and Black intellectuals’ efforts to enforce their off-kilter screeds and self-deceptive ideology.
The truth is that no one is born a racist. Racism is an acquired conceptual belief, a mental affliction, with the capacity to stir reactive emotions similar to fanatic allegiances to other acquired dogmas including CRT and scientific reductionism. People are indoctrinated in acquired beliefs via their communities, upbringing, educational institutions, the media and other venues of social discourse. Therefore, if racism is learned, it can be unlearned. There is certainly a place for moral indignation against the idolatry of irrational doctrines that advance a perverted kind of racial absolutism that inflicts undue suffering. If you witness injustice, if you witness evil, it is correct to feel moral indignation. The criteria to make such a determination are simple. Does a belief or doctrine, despite whatever its good intentions, perpetuate destructive emotions and actions or not? In our estimation, the ideology of an imaginary inherited White privilege, coercive DIE indoctrination, and the policing of collective White guilt are aberrations of imbalanced psyches.
Finally, we have to ask why gratitude and forgiveness have become foregone values in American society. On the one hand, gratitude for all the collective accomplishments made in the past to advance improvement in the livelihoods and opportunities for minorities; and, on the other hand, the postmodern understanding of forgiveness has become hackneyed. Witnessing medieval acts of penitential self-flagellation performed by groups of White men and women is frankly pathetic. This pathology implicit in Robin DiAngelo’s book Nice Racism, proselytizes the need for Whites to seek “absolution” and to accept their “need to be racially forgiven.”[6] Philosophically, the Western idea of forgiveness largely lacks the more reconciliatory nuances in the Eastern traditions regarding seeking forgiveness, which properly requires a reciprocal call-and-response between the perpetrator and the victim to restore harmony in relations. For example, the Chinese for forgiveness kuānshù (literally, “wide forgiving”) implicitly conveys the idea of broad-mindedness or magnanimity in forgiving others along with seeking forgiveness that together restore harmony. Similarly, the Indian Sanskrit word kṣamā encompasses both the act of forgiveness but with additional layers of being virtuous that contributes to spiritual growth and the cultivation of inner peace. But these higher ideals are completely absent in the lamentable adolescent spectacles performed on behalf of the White Fragility and CRT cults.
The other dimension for advocating color blindness over racial divisiveness on sociological grounds is spiritual. It seeks to discover that interconnectedness of all human beings thereby transcending the conditional and often superficial differences of race and ethnicity. All of the great spiritual traditions emphasize a fundamental unity that connects life. Approaching race with a color blind perspective is an acknowledgement of this oneness beneath the external physical differences. There is an element of color blindness that asks us to challenge our ego-based perceptions and attachments to racial identity and issues of superiority. By transcending ego-driven tendencies towards prejudice and discrimination, people of all races can cultivate a deeper awareness and humility that opens up to recognizing the inherent dignity of every person. These are crucial ideals that are utterly lacking in the CRT manifestos and therefore this popular fad will have no success in healing racial divisions.
This is not a band aid approach to cover over wounds but rather an effort to foster healing, harmony, cooperation and mutual understanding among diverse communities, ultimately leading to a more peaceful and compassionate society, which is sorely lacking at this moment in history. In a spiritual context, practicing color blindness may be seen as a practice to cultivate a greater altruistic unconditional love and compassion, rooted in the recognition of the divine spark within each person. If there is to be possibility to transform the wounds from the past, and that are being further perpetuated in the present, the path of becoming more color blind is a journey in self-discovery, leading to great harmony and wholeness that has the great potential to uplift others. But this will never be found in the citadels of education that have become stale toxic pools of critical race theory.
[2] https://www.yahoo.com/news/former-atlanta-blm-activist-accused-170154327.html
[5] Ibid
Deworthen https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/dehumanizing-condescension-white-fragility/614146/
