Just when I thought I had finished posting about critical race theory they drag me back in. I didn’t want Clarence Page’s Chicago Tribune column questioning whether “the left” supports critical race theory or just hates those who criticize it to pass without taking note of it. He opens with an observation that deserves a reply:
CRT, in short, is an academic framework for looking at racism as systems, not an individual flaw.
which is true as far as it goes but, as John McWhorter has noted, it’s more than that. Like Keynesianism or Modern Monetary Theory there is both a formal version and a folk version and practically all of those promoting it, especially those in government and education, are promoting the folk version. As Dr. McWhorter has noted, Mr. Page’s observation is primarily a way of dismissing the concerns that have been raised about CRT rather than dealing with them in a serious fashion.
Mr. Page then makes a very good observation:
Many of the left’s most intelligent writers, he argues, are reacting to the anti-CRT movement with loud opposition to its conservative opponents without bringing up their own reservations about the excesses of the pro-CRT movement.
The “anti-anti-CRT,†as he somewhat awkwardly calls them, are making a mistake as big as “the folly†of Republicans who became “anti-anti-Trump in order to avoid calling out the obscenity of the man himself.â€
He makes a good point. I am a strong enough believer in the Constitution to appreciate how, despite what some have called its “birth defect†of slavery, its text also contains the mechanism through the amendment process for its improvement.
And there are intelligent ways to improve the document as well as self-defeating ways. CRT scholars tend to call attention to those historical flaws to undermine other American values that I would just as soon leave alone.
For example, leading CRT scholars such as Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic in their book, “Must We Defend Nazis? Why the First Amendment Should Not Protect Hate Speech and White Supremacy,†argue for curtailment of “dangerous†speech. I don’t have to be a legal scholar to believe that’s a very dangerous idea.
but that is precisely the view that those promoting the folk version of CRT propose and I believe that persons of good will need to push back on it. As far as I’m concerned they are simply Marcusists and enemies of genuine liberalism. That’s what distinguishes liberals from progressives.
In addition I would like those who favor promote CRT, especially the folk version, to be very explicit about the actions they wish to be taken. I’m afraid that’s too much to ask.
I read critical theory analysis in Constitutional Law classes about thirty years ago, and it was clearly a type of postmodern theory. But the context was that when you are studying “by the case,” there is a tendency to assume that the analysis offered by the justices reflect the natural and expected outcome, even if that outcome seems disappointing from today’s vantage point because that’s what one could expect to happen during that era. A liberal education in legal theory involves examining a variety of viewpoints and challenges to those assumptions, and critical theory was one.
So, for example, we would read Brown v. Board of Education for day one and discuss its holding and background. For day two we would have to read a selection of essays or snippets criticizing Brown. There would be a critical race theory analysis that would involve a fairly significant departure from any shared assumption that the court was doing what it purported to be doing. Brown would be entirely an exercise in speech, by which the Court created its own reality, including creating its own self-imposed limitations. I don’t think this was Marxist, in that Marxist have views of history and a focus on materialism. A Marxist can easily and credibly claim that courts enforce the status quo through the prism of the class of its members. Critical theory was not materialist at all from what I could ever tell, and unlike Marxist, did not make strong claims to historical analysis.
The discussions among students in class did not really absorb much if any critical theory. If judges are operating under self-imposed restraints and not dealing with any respectable notions of objective truth, how is it practical to persuade judges to one’s case? And the liberal nature of the discussions, sharing and engaging with different points of view was completely at odds with the illiberal assumptions of critical theory. A true critical theory class would not have accepted opposing views.