Ibram X. Kendi: There Is No Debate Over Critical Race Theory

You don’t really grasp Critical Race Theory (CRT).

It is not opaque garbage which is one of many branches of critical theory (see also queer theory) which styles itself as “antiracist” but in fact is racist against Whites and which is mostly concerned with the law and argues that blacks are oppressed by “structural racism” embedded in the law.

The Atlantic:

“The United States is not in the midst of a “culture war” over race and racism. The animating force of our current conflict is not our differing values, beliefs, moral codes, or practices. The American people aren’t divided. The American people are being divided.

Republican operatives have buried the actual definition of critical race theory: “a way of looking at law’s role platforming, facilitating, producing, and even insulating racial inequality in our country,” as the law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, who helped coin the term, recentlydefined it. Instead, the attacks on critical race theory are based on made-up definitions and descriptors. “Critical race theory says every white person is a racist,” Senator Ted Cruz has said. “It basically teaches that certain children are inherently bad people because of the color of their skin,” said the Alabama state legislator Chris Pringle.

There are differing points of view about race and racism. But what we are seeing and hearing on news shows, in school-district meetings, in op-ed pages, in legislative halls, and in social-media feeds aren’t multiple sides with differing points of view. There’s only one side in our so-called culture war right now. …”

Kendi’s complaint here is basically “you haven’t read me.”

I have read his book Stamped From the Beginning. I understand his point of view. My view is that we live under structural antiracism due to federal and state civil rights laws and Supreme Court decisions. The system that we have today and which we have been creating since the 1940s was designed to uplift blacks and to promote equity at the expense of other races. Affirmative action and disparate impact and racial inequity in taxing and spending are only the most obvious examples of this.