A Critical Look at Critical Race Theory

 A Critical Look at Critical Race Theory

The View from the Middle

 

If you look up the word “theory” in the dictionary, you will find multiple definitions, but there a couple that I think best apply to Critical Race Theory.  One definition states that a theory is “an unproven assumption or conjecture”.  A second suggests that a theory is “an abstract thought or speculation”.  So, before we start teaching this “theory” in our schools, I think it is important for everyone to understand the basic principles and even the many flaws in this theory.

The first and biggest flaw in Critical Race Theory is that it is racist at its core.  It actually turns Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech on its head.  It suggests that EVERYTHING must be viewed through a lens of race.  It insists that white people are racists and bigots and evil because of the color of their skin.  People should not be judged by the content of their character, but simply by the color of their skin.  This theory would take us all back over 200 years and simply switch the race that it deems appropriate to be ridiculed, demeaned and dehumanized.

Critical Race Theory also ignores or denies all the progress that we have made in this country over those last 200 years.  Hiram Rhodes Revels, the first black member of Congress, was elected back in 1870, over 150 years ago (FYI, he was a Republican).  Even in the 1960’s we had only four black members of Congress, but today we have 57 African American members of the House of Representative’s total of 435 members or 13% of that body.  That percentage just happens to perfectly match the African American community’s share of the country’s total population.

In 2008 we elected the first Black President in The United States and Barack Obama was then re-elected for a second term in 2012.  Today, we have our first Black female as Vice President.  I’m sure that all of these members of Congress and Obama received a high percent of the black vote, but none of these people could have been elected without the support of millions of those racist, bigoted, evil white people.

Critical Race Theory also assumes that all Black people are perfect and have never made any poor choices that have resulted in negative consequences in their lives.  Despite the fact that it is illegal to deny anyone an education on the basis of race, young black students are more that 50% more likely to drop out of high school than whites.  Also, across America, almost 40% of our births are out of wedlock.  That is a terrible number for our country, but there are tremendous differences by race.  White births in the US are out of wedlock 28% of the time, which is too high, but young African Americans have children prior to marriage a whopping 69% of the time.  That’s a choice.  There is no gun to the heads of our young people forcing them to have unprotected sex.

The only reason I bring these two stats up is because they are the two most important behaviors that enhance the chances of people ending up living in poverty.  Single parent households, for example are almost six times more likely to live in poverty than two parent households (45% vs 8%), and dropping out of high school only increases that likelihood.  And these two categories represent choices, especially the choice to have children before marriage.  And if you want to argue that public education is systemically racist and put young black children at risk, remember that public schools ARE the government and you should all support “school choice” in education.

The book Cynical Theories points out the flaws of Critical Race Theory this way.  “It is bad psychology to tell people who do not believe that they are racist – who may even actively despise racism – that there is nothing they can do to stop themselves from being racist, and then ask them to help you.”  Prager University points out another flaw with an example – “A man owns a store and two customers come in, one white and one black.  If the store owner addresses the black person first it’s because he doesn’t trust black people in his store, and that’s racist.  If he addresses the white person first it’s because he thinks that black people are second class citizens, and that’s racist.”  That is the definition of a no-win situation and is a very convenient argument for Critical Race Theorists to make.  It is, however, not based on any facts, just emotion.  Abraham Lincoln would put it this way, “If you look for racism in everything you experience, expecting to find it, you surely will.”  Now THAT is a fact, and you will also find racism in some places where it doesn’t even exist.

And now our government is planning to teach this unproven, divisive, destructive “theory” in our schools.  As if our schools aren’t struggling enough already just trying to teach the fundamentals of math and science as we fall further and further behind other countries in the world every year.  Now they intend to turn virtually all students against each other.  Half will be told that they are evil and will never deserve any success they could achieve so they shouldn’t even make the effort.  They will be telling the other half that any negative consequences in their lives are only the result of oppression by the other half whom they will undoubtedly hate.  This train of thought will suggest that they have no personal responsibility for the outcomes in their life.  What all this does is minimize the productivity of every child who will grow up to be equally unproductive adults.

The only good news in this story is that many, many Black thought leaders like Leo Terrell, Dr. Carol Swain, Larry Elder, Thomas Sowell and Pastor Voddie Baucham are vigorously opposing the basic teachings of Critical Race Theory.  And I also support two modern-day Black philosophers who recently came out against hatred and manipulation, Charles Barkley and Tyler Perry.  Charles said that he believes that most White people and Black people are “awesome” and that our politicians (and the media) are just trying to make us hate each other.  They are trying to divide and conquer us.  Tyler Perry announced at the Oscars the he is tired of the hate and he asked everyone to refuse to hate Hispanics, Blacks, White people, LGBTQ and even the police.  He even gave a plug to this blog when he asked people to meet in “The Middle”, away from the extreme fanatics on both sides of the political spectrum where he said “progress is made”.  I certainly can agree with that!

If you really want to hear the solution to Racial Disparity and Discrimination you should read my post from June of last year called "EFFE".  I will re-release that post later next week.