Category Archives: American Marxism

What Do Critical Race Theorists Believe?

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Today we continue our review and dialogue with James Lindsay, Race Marxism: The Truth About Critical Race Theory. In Chapter Two, Lindsay lays out CRT’s core beliefs under twelve headings. The precise wording is not as important as the picture they paint of the CRT worldview and agenda.

The Twelve-Part CRT Creed

Racism is the ordinary and permanent state of society. The whole system of society has been constructed to benefit white people and disadvantage people of color. In examining any situation “The question [under CRT] is not ‘did racism take place”? but ‘how did racism manifest in that situation” (Delgado and Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, p. 7; quoted on p. 32). Racism is so woven into the system that it cannot be rooted out apart from a complete transformation of society.

White people do not act to benefit people of color unless it is in their interest. This thesis was popularized by Dereck Bell in 1970 and is known as the “Interest-Convergence Thesis.” Under this thesis, school desegregation (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954) and other civil rights “advances” were enacted primarily to serve the purposes of whites. The system cannot act otherwise than to benefit those in charge of the system. The effect of this thesis is to cast a pall of suspicion over every interaction between whites and non-whites no matter how innocent it appears to those not sensitized.

Material conditions determine one’s character, values, and choices. The problems that beset minoritized communities today—crime, poverty, illiteracy, etc.— are the legacy of past racism. They are not the result of character flaws.

Race is socially constructed—not biologically given—and imposed by white people to maintain white dominance. Though CRT denies “race essentialism,” it nevertheless affirms that imposed race categories create a “structurally real” racial identity in a way that determines the lived reality and identity of minoritized groups.

Social structures—law, customs, policies, values—determine the positions of different groups within the power dynamics of a society. Lindsay explains, “While there is nothing [biologically] essential to being black or white, there is something structurally essential to being black or white in a white-dominant system” (p. 47; emphasis added). That is to say, “Whiteness” and “Blackness,” though features of an artificially constructed social order, determine the feelings, place, and identity of every black or white individual within this order as unavoidably as if they were written into the biology of each. As Lindsay points out, this belief grounds the logic of identity politics.

People of color—the oppressed, the minoritized—possess privileged access to knowledge white people do not have. One’s oppressed position within the power structure of society “brings with it a presumed competence to speak about race and racism” not possessed by whites (Delgado and Stefancic, p. 9; quoted in Lindsay, p. 49). This positionality within the system gives minorities a “unique voice of color” that “is deemed to be authoritative and beyond contradiction” (p. 49). It is impossible for a white person to disagree with CRT, because CRT claims to be the authoritative source for the authentic “voice of color.”

CRT privileges storytelling, narrative-weaving, and counterstorytelling above rational argument and fact-based reasoning. CRT uses fictional stories, allegories, and parables to create narrative realities that “challenge prevailing narratives, stereotypes, and expectations…about race” (p. 52). Though such a storytelling approach can be persuasive to a receptive audience, it can be abused. Lindsay observes, “As a result of leaning upon storytelling…Critical Race Theory often presents claims of racism in situations where the evidence doesn’t support it and then considers requests for evidence to be evidence of further racism” (p. 56).

Standard narratives of American history are written from the perspective of the dominant group and must be subverted and revised to favor minority perspectives. Quoting Critical Race Theory: An Introduction: “Revisionist history examines America’s historical record, replacing comforting majoritarian interpretations of events with ones that square more accurately with minorities’ experiences. It also offers evidence, sometimes suppressed, in that very record, to support those interpretations” (Delgado and Stefancic, p. 20; Lindsay, p. 57). This belief is clearly a subcategory of the one above. CRT constructs revised historical narratives that subvert the legitimating narratives of the dominant (white) order whether they are plausible by the standard methods developed by professional historians or not.

Such liberal principles as color blindness, individual rights, equality under law, economic freedom, freedom of speech, reinforce and perpetuate the status quo of white supremacy. In their critique of liberalism, Sensoy and DiAngelo assert that “The logic of individual autonomy that underlies liberal humanism…[keeps] the marginalized in their place by obscuring the larger structural systems of inequality. In other words, it fooled people into believing that they had more freedom and choice than societal structures actually allow” (Is Every one Really Free? p 5; quoted in Lindsay, p. 60). Liberalism provides excuses for white people to benefit from the racist system with a clear conscience and constructs convenient explanations for why inequality among racial groups persists. As long as the liberal order remains, white people will never freely give up their privileges to create racial equity. Hence CRT favors socialism above liberalism.

In CRT, whiteness is a kind of property—equivalent to “private property” in Marxism—which must be abolished if true equality is to be achieved. Whiteness—a rather diffuse concept—is the sum total of the exclusive privileges white people give to themselves along with their justifications and the mechanisms for their preservation. Whiteness is held as a kind of property justified in law by a right of exclusive use. Whiteness must be abolished. According to Lindsay,

“Critical Race Theory regards ‘whiteness as a property’ because it enables them to transition the Communist Revolution out of the economic sphere and into the racial-cultural sphere—with race made the central construct for understanding inequality. To become ‘less white’ and to ‘disrupt whiteness’ is to attempt to fulfill Marx’s Communist vision of the abolition of bourgeois private property in a new domain to which the American culture is more sensitive” (p. 67).

Intersectionality: people within oppressed groups must not be identified primarily as unique individuals but as members of intersecting groups. A person may be black and female or black, male, and gay, etc. and be oppressed from more than one angle. The point of intersectionality is to open the eyes of all oppressed groups—so different in many respects—to their common identity as oppressed and generate a common front against systemic oppression.

Antiracism is the practical strategy for implementing CRT. The first thing to get clear is that “antiracism” does not mean color blindness or race neutrality. It means replacing policies that promote inequality with policies that institute equity among groups. Ibram X Kendi proposes enacting a constitutional amendment establishing a Department of Antiracism. He describes its work as being:

…preclearing all local, state and federal public policies to ensure that they won’t yield racial inequity, monitor those policies, investigate private racist policies when racial inequity surfaces, and monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas (Interview with Politico Magazine, 2019).

The Department of Antiracism would be independent of Executive, Judicial, and Legislative oversight and would be staffed by “formally trained experts on racism” (Interview with Politico Magazine, 2019).

Kendi says elsewhere,

The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination (How to Be an Antiracist, p. 19; quoted in Lindsay, p. 75).

Two-Sentence Summary

CRT’s belief system can be summarized in three words:

White America stinks!

Summarizing its agenda takes thirteen words:

Burn it to the ground and build a Socialist order ruled by Antiracists.

What Is “Critical Race Theory”?

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Today I will begin a series of essays in review and dialogue with James Lindsay’s book Race Marxism: The Truth About Critical Race Theory and Praxis (Orlando, FL: New Discourses, 2022). This book addresses matters of great importance to the church, Christian higher education, and American society. As readers of this blog know, I try to stay away from partisan political issues. My central aim has always been to help Christian believers, individually and corporately, to think clearly about their faith and remain true to the original, biblical faith in confusing times. In so far as I touch on politically controversial issues, I do so only in service to this central aim.

My Political Philosophy

You would not believe me if I claimed to have no political philosophy. So, let me tell you where I am coming from. I believe that the American constitutional order, along with the original Bill of Rights (and most of the later Amendments) set up in 1787/90, has been a great blessing to the church and the world. I believe the liberal order thus instituted—limited government, separation of powers, the rule of law, representative democracy, individual rights, personal, religious and economic freedom, equality before the law, etc.—is the best system of government ever devised. I am instinctively suspicious of any movement toward state control of private spaces in the name of public good. I reject all dreams of humanly constructed utopias—anarchist, communist or theocratic.

Overview

As is obvious from his book’s title, Lindsay argues that Critical Race Theory (CRT) should be understood as “race Marxism;” that is, CRT is a Marxist program that makes race instead of economic class “the central construct for understanding inequality” (p. 5) in society. We cannot grasp CRT’s convoluted vocabulary, methods and aims, asserts Lindsay, unless we first understand it as a Marxist program. Lindsay supports this charge with quotes from the original writings of the movement and a thorough examination of its historical antecedents. The book contains six chapters and 297 pages:

  • 1. Defining Critical Race Theory
  • 2. What Critical Race Theory Believes
  • 3. The Proximate Ideological Origins of Critical Race Theory
  • 4. The Deep Ideological Origins of Critical Race Theory
  • 5. Critical Race Praxis—How Critical Race Theory Operates
  • 6. What Can We Do About Critical Race Theory

Defining Critical Race Theory

CRT is a belief system and an activist program, originally centered in the nation’s elite law schools (in the 1970s and 1980s) but now present in almost every college and university in America. It asserts the belief that American society is, and always has been, constructed on a foundation of white supremacy. America is racist to the core. CRT insists that the system of government that I praised above—the American constitutional order, limited government, separation of powers, the rule of law, representative democracy, individual rights, personal, religious and economic freedom, equality before the law—puts people of color at a disadvantage and was designed from the beginning with this end in mind. It cannot be fixed from within but must be replaced with a new socialist order empowered to commandeer and reallocate economic and social goods to create equity among racial groups.

Lindsay quotes CRT insiders Richard Delgado and Jean Stefrancic (p. 26):

What is Critical Race Theory? The critical race theory (CRT) movement is a collection of activists and scholars interested in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power…Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law” (From Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, NYU Press, 2001).

Lindsay provides his outsider definition of CRT:

Critical Race Theory is a revolutionary and broadly neo-Marxist mode of activism based upon the belief that the fundamental organizing principle of society is “systemic racism,” which it asserts was created and is maintained by white people in order to preserve a social structure that provides a multitude of unjust advantages over people of color, especially blacks (p. 16, bold and italics original).

Academic Interest Only?

I hope you will stick with me as I take you through Lindsay’s argument. He argues that CRT is not just another kooky academic theory. It is of a piece with the Marxist utopian visions that can be implemented only by totalitarian regimes, which have murdered hundreds of millions only to fail time and again. CRT must not be mistaken for liberalism or progressivism. It is intolerant and regressive. It is not compatible with Christianity or belief in God. It is a replacement for God and Christ. It is not truly antiracist but racist. Indeed, Lindsay finds the “Iron Law of Woke Projection” to be true every time: Of whatever crime or sin CRT accuses its opponents, you can be sure that it is guilty of the same.

Race and Radical Politics: A Review of Christopher Rufo, America’s Cultural Revolution (Part Two A)

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Today I will continue my review of Christopher F. Rufo: America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything (Broadside Books, 2023).  In Part II, Rufo deals with race and develops the narrative with constant reference to Angela Davis (b. 1944). As in the previous essay, I will follow Rufo’s chapter divisions.

1. Angela Davis: The Spirit of Radical Revolt

Davis’s story is fascinating and well worth reading, but I want to focus on one thread, that is, how in her life Marcuse’s theory of revolutionary violence was put into practice. Angela Yvonne Davis was born on January 26, 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama. A very bright child, with school-teacher parents, she read vociferously. At age 15, she won a scholarship to Elisabeth Irwin High School, a private school in New York City. Many of her teachers were members of the Communist Party; they introduced her to the writings of Marx and Engels. At Elisabeth Irwin, Davis became fascinated with the Communist Manifesto’s vision of the abolition of capitalism and institution of a classless society. She studied next at Brandeis University where she met Herbert Marcuse, who became her mentor and life-long inspiration. After a brief stay in Frankfurt, Germany where she studied “Critical Theory” at the Institute for Social Research, she followed Marcuse to the University of California, San Diego.

The brainy and highly educated Davis soon became impatient with theory and pursued ways to get involved in the practical struggle. She joined the Black Panther Party but found it too unorganized. She then joined the Communist Party USA. Applying the Communist oppressor/oppressed theory to race, Davis interpreted the American judicial, law enforcement and penal systems as instruments of white oppression of black people. Within this ideological framework, criminal acts such as theft, property destruction and murder, when committed by poor black people, become legitimate acts of resistance to the structural and legal violence built into the white capitalist system. Putting this theory into practice on August 7, 1970, Davis participated, albeit at a distance, in a dramatic, failed prison escape that began in the Marin County Hall of Justice. A shootout followed at the end of which four people were dead including Judge Harold Haley. Davis had purchased the guns used in the attack and her finger prints were found on the gun manuals discovered at the crime scene. After a period of hiding, Davis was arrested and charged with murder. Instantly, she became world famous. At her trial, she and her lawyers turned the tables on the State of California, claiming that she was a political prisoner and that the prison break was a “slave insurrection.” Amazingly, despite the evidence, Davis was acquitted on all charges.

2. “Kill the Pigs”: The Black Revolution Explodes”

This chapter tells the story of the Black Panther Party and its founder Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver minister of information. The Party’s “Ten-Point Program” (1966) includes demands for black people to be granted full employment or a guaranteed income, free housing, exemption from military service, self-determination, and reparations for past injustices. The Panthers assassinated police officers and engaged in shootouts with the authorities. In the early 1970s Newton and Cleaver parted company, with Newton remaining on the West Coast and Cleaver on the East Coast. The East Coast faction, the Black Liberation Army, eventually became little more than another gang. Newton descended into drug addiction and in 1989 was murdered outside an Oakland drug den. Cleaver, too, became a drug addict and in 1998 died of a heart attack in Oakland. The militant revolution was dead.

3. From Black Liberation to Black Studies

The failure of black radical street violence to bring positive change provoked Angela Davis and others to retreat to the universities to begin the “long march” through the institutions. Davis worked to establish various forms of black studies programs in the university. She argued that marginalize members of society understand the true nature of freedom whereas the dominant classes do not; and the black woman is doubly marginalized, at the bottom of the heap of the oppressed. People of marginalized identities are sources of knowledge unavailable elsewhere. These special sources of knowledge, therefore, should be institutionalized in departments and studies programs. According to Rufo, “Davis’s theoretical work on identity had an enormous impact on the development of left-wing politics throughout the era” (p. 103). Of great significance for the future of identity politics is the Combahee River Collective Statement (1977) made by a group of black lesbian activists. Drawing on Davis’s theory of the privileged access of marginalized identities to certain types of knowledge, the Statement coined the term “identity politics” and laid out the logic of what came later to be called “intersectional identity.” “This focusing upon our own oppression,” explains the Statement, “is embodied in the concept of identity politics. We believe that the most profound and potentially radical politics come directly out of our own identity.” Rufo describes the significance of the Statement:

The activists eschewed the masculine inclinations toward violence…and created a uniquely feminine program that marshalled identity, emotion, trauma, and psychological manipulation in service of their political objectives. The Combahee Statement recast left-wing politics as an identity-based therapeutic pursuit (p. 104).

It worked. Today most universities contain “studies” programs for almost every recognized ethnic or gender identity.

4. BLM: The Revolution Reborn

The Black Lives Matter organization was founded in 2013 by Alicia Garza (b. 1981) and Patrisse Cullors (b. 1983). It burst onto the national scene in the aftermath of the 2014 death of Michael Brown at the hands of a police officer in Ferguson, MO. BLM’s guiding principles tracks almost perfectly with the Black Panthers’ Ten Point Plan. According to Rufo, BLM “can be best understood as a synthesis of the major lines of the black liberation movement—the racialist dialectic of Angela Davis, the identity first orientation of the Combahee River Collective, the Marxist-Leninist vision of the Black Panther Party—resurrected for the digital age” (p. 115). BLM’s innovations are in the way it packages its message. It appeals to (white) emotions of guilt and shame rather than fear. Using social media to highlight individual incidents of “police brutality” (such as that used against George Floyd in May 2020) as proof of systemic racism and the pervasive influence of white supremacy. According to the narrative created by BLM, police were conducting a slow genocide of unarmed black men. Is the number, 10,000 or 1,000 per year, as many people think? According to Rufo’s reading of the Washington Post database for police shootings, the actual number was 14. [According to my reading of the appropriated filtered database for the year 2021, the number was 12. I don’t know how to reconcile these two numbers.].

5. Mob Rule in Seattle

In this chapter, Rufo details the disasters that befell Portland, OR and Seattle, WA in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing in the long summer of 2020. BLM leader Nikkita Oliver (b. 1986) became the most visible figure of the “abolitionist” movement, which pressed for the abolition of police departments, courts, and jails. Weeks of protest and street violence roiled the city. Then, on June 8, 2020 the police department stationed in the East Precinct abandoned their headquarters. That evening armed men from Antifa and other militant leftist groups set up the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) bereft of police, courts, and jails. The new order followed the rule of “identity politics.” The bottom became the top and the top the bottom. Black, indigenous and trans women became the privileged and white male heterosexuals were shamed and urged to pay reparations to Black people. Division, chaos, and killings ensued. CHAZ lasted from June 8 to July 3, 2020. Rufo concludes:

The truth is politically impolite but factually unassailable: the real problem in America, from the Black Panther Party to Black Lives Matter, is not police brutality, but the brutality of the American streets…Like their historical predecessors, the new abolitionists are not seeking to achieve reforms within a given social order; they are seeking to overturn that social order altogether…The revolution is, after all, the relentless application of the negative dialectic: to subvert, to shift, to unmask, to destroy” (pp. 140-141).

It takes less than five minutes to cut down an oak tree that nature took 300 years to grow.

To be continued…