Why Critical Race Theory Is Dangerous
Ideas such as systemic racism and enthusiastic consent were once confined to the fringes of college campuses and academic theory. Today, the university has expanded its reach to your doorstep.
Marxist theories form in many colleges and universities all across the country. They’re increasingly becoming more mainstream. These theories have infiltrated many workplaces, and they’ve found their way into school curriculum across the country.
One of the most pernicious is Critical Race Theory.
Critical Race Theory originated in several law schools in the late 1980s. Many of its premises and perspectives have roots in Marxism.
When we look back at the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, there was an emphasis on equal rights and treating people as individuals. There was opposition to the idea of a racial collective. Martin Luther King famously spoke the words, “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Have we forgotten his message?
Critical Race Theory, in stark contrast, seems to dwell on inequalities of outcome. In this theory, believers forthrightly judge white people by their skin color, prejudging them as racist by virtue of their race.
Isn’t this, by definition, racist?
Critical Race Theory inherited its DNA from Marxism. It reinterprets the Marxist oppressor and oppressed dialectic through the lens of race. Instead of the poor vs. the rich, it’s essentially white people vs. “people of color.” That’s the heart of critical race theory.
Almost everything can be boiled down to one particular collective’s diabolical domination: capitalist hegemony for Marxism, white supremacy for Critical Race Theory. Just as Marxism demonized capitalists, Critical Race Theory vilifies white people. Both ideologies try to foment resentment, envy, and a victimhood complex among the oppressed class it claims to champion. Traditional Marxists insisted that bourgeois thoughts were inescapably conditioned by class interest. Those who subscribe to Critical Race Theory tenets push the notion that virtually all white people contribute to racism due to their whiteness.
Marxism was doomed to fail, so is Critical Race Theory. Marxism ultimately defined all history and human interactions as a perpetual racial conflict. The class war rhetoric of Marxism was divisive and toxic for economic relations. It led to mass poverty, devastating famines, and staggering inequality between the elites and the masses. The neo-Marxist ideology of Critical Race Theory will contribute to damage race relations and will harm the interests of those it claims to serve.
Critical Race Theory was once an esoteric academic pursuit. Now it has become mainstream. Ordinary Americans can mostly avoid participating in identity politics, but that is rapidly changing. These culture-war skirmishes are becoming unavoidable. Over the years, it has migrated from the academy to the nonprofit sector, into the education sector, and now into most American cultural institutions.
Today, we are in an era of re-education. Diversity training sessions have been a mandatory part of many workplaces and school curricula over the years. Critical Race Theory is repackaged and presented in diversity training, academic literature, and human resources programs.
One should cast a meticulous eye to things that fall under the guise of diversity training. The new re-education on race requires that its participants not merely attend such activities but actively parrot the arguments presented. Mandatory diversity training sessions are often mandated and require attendance, expressions of agreement, and obeisance to a set of ideologically radical ideas. These ideas undermine rather than reinforce the principles of freedom and equal opportunity.
Examples of this theory are everywhere.
Schools and colleges are ridding themselves of the SATs and abolishing the idea of merit. The Smithsonian supported the idea that working hard, showing up on time, and perfecting a task are functions of “whiteness.” Many employees are hounding corporations who haven’t publicly committed themselves to be woke. Racial sensitivity training is akin to political indoctrination sessions. Schoolchildren are being taught that the United States Of America is irredeemably racist.
For those concerned about the spread of theories like this, one must begin paying attention to school boards responsible for shaping the curriculum content in classrooms across America.
A third-grade teacher in California hosted a lesson in which students were required to identify aspects of their identity that were privileged or oppressed. Parents were outraged once they discovered the school was reportedly making the young students engage in critical race theory and identity exercises where they had to confront their own “privilege” in a math class.
Journalist and filmmaker Christopher F. Rufo broke the news of the allegations, writing in his blog and the City Journal about the controversy.
The teacher at Meyerholz Elementary School in Cupertino, California — which has an Asian-American majority and a median home price of $2.3 million — instructed the young children to create “identity maps” listing their “race, class, gender, religion, family structure, and other characteristics.” The third-graders were forced to deconstruct their racial identities, then rank themselves according to their “power and privilege.”
The teacher explained that the students live in a “dominant culture” of “ white, middle class, cisgender, educated, able-bodied, Christian, English speaker[s],” who, according to the lesson, “created and maintained” this culture in order “to hold power and stay in power.”
After reading the children a book on critical race theory (‘This Book is Antiracist’ by Tiffany Jewell), the teacher allegedly made them “circle the identities that hold power and privilege” and put them into a hierarchy.
The practice was reported to have shut down after a group of shocked Asian-American parents at the school protested to the principal — with one parent of Chinese background comparing the teacher’s lesson to the communist Cultural Revolution they were forced to study as children.
Following this discussion, the teacher had the students deconstruct their own intersectional identities and “circle the identities that hold power and privilege” on their identity maps, ranking their traits according to the hierarchy. The students were also asked to write short essays describing which aspects of their identities “hold power and privilege” and which do not.
According to the critical race theorists, oppression hasn’t been abolished. It has merely become more sophisticated, subtle, and more insidious. They claim we live under a system today that is akin to slavery, but it’s more implicit, subconscious, and hidden. Racism and white supremacy are constant. It’s ubiquitous and everywhere at all times.
Teaching this theory will perpetuate inequalities and create a culture of hate and victimization. Society is far from perfect, but instead of painting the world with optimism, this theory paints it as perpetually unfair and unjust. Critical Race Theory reduces people to a racial essence, segregates them, and judges them by their group identity rather than individual character, behavior, and merit.
Those who genuinely wish to see racial harmony should dump the neo-Marxists and learn more about classical liberalism.
Clayton Craddock is an independent thinker, father of two beautiful children in New York City. He is the drummer of the hit broadway musical Ain’t Too Proud. He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from Howard University’s School of Business and is a 29 year veteran of the fast-paced New York City music scene. He has played drums in several hit broadway and off-broadway musicals, including “Tick, tick…BOOM!, Altar Boyz, Memphis The Musical, and Lady Day At Emerson’s Bar and Grill. Also, Clayton has worked on: Footloose, Motown, The Color Purple, Rent, Little Shop of Horrors, Spongebob Squarepants, The Musical, Evita, Cats, and Avenue Q.
Originally published at https://claytoncraddock.substack.com.
