Study of “Critical Theory”

Examine the following terms. Consider whether they sound familiar, where you have heard them and in what context. Would you be able to defne any of them?

Institutional racism White privilege Implicit bias

Systemic racism White fragility Microaggression

Structural racism White supremacy Cisgender

Ableism Heteronormative Social justice

Marginalized groups Transphobic Intersectional

Woke Identity Politics Cancel culture

People of color Virtue signaling Hegemonic power

Familiarity with these terms will tell you the degree to which you already have some acquaintance with the subject we will be examining.

What are we studying here?

It is a popular social perception and cultural movement based on a kind of worldview. The main ideas go back to some influential thinkers who influenced areas of scholarship many years ago. Now it has moved into the popular culture and taken the form of a movement with a religious feeling, a moral cause, and energetic activism.

The emphasis of this movement is on power, oppression, identity groups, equality, justice, etc.

Other names for it:

Within “Critical Theory” are applications of it, such as “Critical Race Theory.” It has spawned new areas of study like “Queer Theory” and “Whiteness studies.”

Some call it “Cultural Marxism.”

Advocates are sometimes called “Social Justice Warriors” (SJWs) or “Wokes” (being “woke” means you “get it”). Why is it important?

Understanding this way of thinking has become urgently important because:

✭ It has a stronghold on the major areas of culture: the education system, academia, entertainment, legacy media, social media, the corporate world

✭ It is the thinking behind huge controversies and division of recent times: news stories, legislation, months of riots

✭ It is making inroads into churches.

Basic guiding concept of “Critical Theory”:

Two basic classes of people: an oppressor class and an oppressed class. The degree to which you are one or the other has to do with your identity along the lines of race, gender, class, sexual orientation, physical ability, etc.

Oppressors often do not realize that they are oppressors. They may not be so individually, but the emphasis is on systems/structures not individuals.

All inequities (unequal outcomes) are due to systems that favor or privilege some (in the oppressor class) at the expense of others (the oppressed).

The fght for “justice” in this regard is the effort to dismantle the systems or structures that perpetuate privilege for one group at the expense of oppression for others.

All of the key ideas in this description will be explained further. Main Historical Influences:

Karl Marx (1818-1883) - from a Jewish family & a line of rabbis, his father’s birth name was Herschel Mordechai Levi before he changed it to “Marx” & joined the Prussian state church (Lutheran) for professional reasons.

At Univ. of Berlin studied the hugely infuential philosophy of Hegel, who had a view of history as unfolding & the conficts of ideas (thesis - antithesis - synthesis). Marx was also exposed to urban industrialization & the plight of workers.

At age 23 he earned a doctorate & got noticed by important thinkers, but they were leery of his associations with radicals & “free thinkers.”

Marx was infuenced by another philosopher, Feuerbach, who took Hegel’s ideas & stripped them of the idealism or spiritualism. Instead, the focus was on material factors only, with higher ideas (religion) being only products of man’s desire for better material circumstances.

Chased from Prussian & German lands to Paris, Marx fell in with radicals there. He met Comte de Saint-Simon, who taught him that class confict was the source of economic determinism.

Marx formed a decisive life-long friendship with Friedrich Engels, son of a wealthy German manufacturer leading a movement on behalf of workers in England.

In 1850 Marx settled his family in London, where he would spend the rest of his life, writing & researching, while being the intellectual leader of various movements like London’s “International Workingmen’s Association,” the more militant “Social Democratic Party” of Germany and the infamous “Paris Commune” that ruled that city in the Spring of 1871.

Marx spent years working on Das Kapital, which was to be his magnum opus, while living in poverty, with minimal pay as a freelance writer (contributing to the NY Daily Tribune & others) while supported by Engels as well. He commented on popular events such as the American Civil War (defending the Union). He engaged with Adam Smith’s work, agreeing with his “Labor” theory of value.

Bad living conditions led to the ill health & deaths of his wife & daughter, then himself. His grave was modest, his funeral had only eleven people; Engels eulogized him as the greatest thinker of his age. It would be 70 yrs before the Communist Party of Great Britain would erect a grand monument & a granite bust with the ‘Manifesto’ words “Workers of the world, unite!” The Massive 20th Cent. Infuence of Marx

Marx’s ideas would become, in the 20th Cent., far more infuential & widespread than he could ever have imagined. At one point nearly a ffth of human beings on earth lived under governments inspired by them.

Though he envisioned & designed his philosophy for Western industrial nations, none of them ever adopted it (the Nazi Party echoed some aspects). Instead, it would be underdeveloped countries in other places: Russia, China, Vietnam, Korea, Cambodia, Cuba, Venezuela, etc.

Radical egalitarian thinkers & leftward economic theorists have long been enamored of Marx. University departments in the Western world have always had some level of affnity for his ideas. The U.S. had a period of great suspicion of Communist sympathizers in high places.

Marx is connected to contemporary Critical Theory as taught in institutions today. This is from the description of a course entitled “Marx and Critical Theory” offered at a prominent university:

A "critical theory" has a distinctive aim: to unmask the ideology falsely justifying some form of social or economic oppression—to reveal it as ideology—and, in so doing, to contribute to the task of ending that oppression. And so, a critical theory aims to provide a kind of enlightenment about social and economic life that is itself emancipatory: persons come to recognize the oppression they are suffering as oppression and are thereby partly freed from it. Marx's critique of capitalist economic relations is arguably just this kind of critical theory.

Key Marxist Ideas in Critical Theory

★ Class Struggle - Critical Theory (CT) highlights identity groups more than “class” but it is the same principle: oppressor groups vs. the oppressed.

The Communist Manifesto (1847) begins with these words:

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.” ★ Materialism - While some who advocate CT may have spiritual or religious backgrounds, and may use such language (even Christian language), most of the primary intellectual architects of it have followed Marx in a strictly materialist interpretation of the world, many professing to be atheists like Marx.

Recall that Marx took the views of the philosopher Hegel & made one major change: he removed all of the spiritualism. Hegel’s “dialectic” of ideas through history involved a divine-like unfolding of truth from an absolute source. Marx converted the process to one that involved only the material world & society. Marx called his view “dialectical materialism.”

Marx’ view of religion was that it satisfes the psychological need of the oppressed like a drug. Marx wrote a critique of Hegel where he famously said,

“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness.”

Infuential writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, well known & read by CT activists, was the son of a black panther & openly professes his atheism. He differs from Marxism in that his atheism leads him away from utopianism & toward pessimism.

Listen to the activists for “social justice” today & you will typically hear very little of the Christian basis of MLK Jr.’s activism in the 60s. There is no place for redemption, no desire for true reconciliation, no idea of God’s will or purpose in the events of history, nothing about forgiveness.

★ Revolution / Activism - Marx called for the “ruthless criticism of all that exists,” followed by action. In 1845 he wrote “Theses on Feuerbach,” which was eleven brief statements on how he adapted the philosopher’s views & differed from (improved) them.

From Feuerbach he got his materialistic interpretation of the world, but he believed that interpretation is not enough. Feuerbach was too theoretical, Marx wrote, & failed to see that his views must be put into “revolutionary practice.”

His last thesis reads: “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” This is why Marxist movements, right up to the present, have emphasized revolutionary activity & the forced taking of the means or tools of political/economic control.

★ Utopianism - history’s “dialectical” process, one revolution after another from more to less oppressive conditions - that process fnds a culminating goal in the overthrow of the capitalist system & a “dictatorship of the proletariat” (which is the oppressed working class).

That brief period of revolution transitions or settles into an equilibrium - a classless society that for Marx was the communism he envisioned.

The stated goals of radical leftist groups, infuenced by Marx by way of Critical Theory, are flled with this same kind of idea that the mob overthrow of all of the systems will, after a small amount of transitional chaos, lead to a wonderful society of peace, love and equality.

Problems with Marxism (in Brief)

Note: Every intelligent person recognizes some things with accuracy and insight. Marx defnitely had some important assessments of society during his time, & rightly diagnosed several issues, such as, for example, (a) abusive & dangerous work conditions in early factories in London, (b) the sense of “alienation” that many workers felt from the products of their labor, (c) detrimental elements of consumerism like “commodity fetishism,” as he called it, which is refected in our drive to shop, buy & own so much ‘stuff.’

But overall Marx got more things wrong (and more important things) than he got right. And it is those things that have had a more lasting effect on the world - for bad rather than for good. Here are some of them:

To begin with, Marx himself was a person of very poor character.

As thought-leaders go, Marx was not someone to emulate. Biographers say that he was terrible with people. In his criticism of a particular German socialist who was half black & half-Jewish, Marx wrote (to Engels) despising the man’s two racial bloodlines, using the ‘n-word’ several times.

Marx was awful to his family. He had a child with the family nurse-maid (whom he never paid for years of service), then abandoned the child. He lived off of others’ means, neglected his family’s well-being, did not take care of himself (suffered from carbuncles due to poor hygiene). Those who visited his home reported that he was often drunk and mostly idle. One Prussian revolutionary who visited him went away sorely disappointed, saying that Marx “does not have a noble heart” to match his intellect. Marx had children who died very young due in large part to these poor conditions. Two of his daughters who grew to adulthood committed suicide in despair.

Marx plagiarized phrases from others in his works. He got Engels to write several of the articles for which he was paid by the NY Daily Tribune (printed with Marx as the author). His mother once said she wished he would “accumulate capital instead of just writing about it.” He owed money he never paid. He had a dark fascination with the occult, even as he despised his own Jewish heritage and all things Christian.

Materialism is a false worldview to begin with.

The starting point & foundation of his views excluded God, revelation, universal truths, objective morality. His philosophy has no ultimate basis for why there should be justice, fairness, sharing, charity, equality. Most of those who adopted & implemented Marxism on a grand scale ruled according to this philosophy, with disastrous consequences.

Marx’s view of history is wrong.

His simplistic idea of class struggles moving history forward is not empirically substantiated, nor is it nearly adequate to really account for the vast complexities of history’s movement, development, & changes. He fails to account for numerous ideas of history that have compelled people & groups, things having nothing to do with class relations.

Marx’s view of human nature is wrong.

In a materialistic worldview, there is no “human nature” outside of biology & social factors. This gives no grounding for universal human rights or obligations. It naively supposes that if circumstances were greatly improved (for Marx, a communist system), that society’s ills would be resolved. This woefully fails to account for the sin nature of people, which is the primary root (not social circumstances) of the problems in society.

This view also presumes that people will dutifully work without incentive or a path of upward mobility, that equal pay will inspire an equally shared sense of a work ethic. That has proven false in practice.

Most dangerous is this view’s blindness to the atrocities that may be committed against populations of people once a few central planners & controllers have full control over a large state and everything in society. This mistake also led to terrible abuses within communist countries in the 20th Century.

Marx’s utopian future vision was hopelessly naive.

As already suggested, his view of humanity was faulty, thus his dreamy portrait of a great commune of man living peaceably in a context of equality and sharing of all resources - this is impossible in the present world. We might call it ‘otherworldly’ and it is rightly imagined by those who believe in another world (in the next life). PBut a materialist must sell the ridiculous notion that such a thing can be achieved in this life. Moreover a true believer in this must suppose that it can be done on a large scale, including massive populations, and can be established by force.

Lawrence Reed, President of the Foundation for Economic Education, says that some people have excused the atrocities for the sake of the utopian goal. “To make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs,” as the saying goes. “The problem,” Reed writes, “is communists only break eggs; they never, ever, make an omelet.”

Marxism’s historical results are not prety.

This leads us to the most grim & regrettable part of Marx’s ideological legacy. The scoreboard does not look good for all of the professed heirs of Marxist ideas. Marx imagined his writings in the context of Western European (industrial) nations. But it was not in those places that his name became renowned. It was primarily in underdeveloped, more distant lands that revolutions and new governments patterned on Marxism took hold. The Leninist & Maoist forms of Marxism became the dominant 20th Century expressions of his ideas put into practice on grand scales.

The histories of The Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, Korea, Cambodia, Cuba, Venezuela & others have shown certain consistencies of the worst kind. Together they are the clubhouse leaders for human atrocities on the grandest scales. We exclude the Nazi party here, even though it was in its own right a socialist party (“National Socialist” in case we have forgotten).

The norm in all of the communist regimes of the contemporary era was large scale injustice, corruption, desperate poverty, terrible living conditions, mass starvation, mass incarceration, “reeducation” camps (“gulags”), state domination, intimidation of a fearful citizenry, full-scale state propaganda, zero personal liberties (speech, assembly, religion, arms), thought-police, Orwellian control of language, forced confessions, show-trials, incentive for suspicion & informants, population control (including forced abortions), and a larger collective body count than was achieved in all of the centuries of recorded history combined up to that time. The famous Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression is a recognized authority on this dark history. Its editor Stephane Courtois estimated some 94 million people killed by the communist governments of the 20th Cent.

Again, Lawrence Reed: “Without exception, wherever Marxist ideology found root, it grew into monstrous depravity.”

Main Historical Influences:

The “Frankfurt School”

In 1923 two Marxist scholars, Carl Grunberg & Felix Weil, founded the Institute for Social Research at the Univ. of Frankfurt (aka Goethe Univ. at Frankfurt), in what was then the Weimar Republic. It would be very active & infuential in the time between the world wars.

Grunberg had taught law at Univ. of Vienna, Weil had been a student focused on Marxist implementation. Ironically, Weil’s father was successful in the grain business & thus his family’s wealth funded the project of the Institute.

In 1930 Max Horkheimer became director (and would remain for nearly 3 decades), a position again endowed by a wealthy businessman. Horkheimer widened the focus from strict traditional Marxism to interdisciplinary Marxist studies within psychology, sociology, media & mass culture. He is thought to have coined the term “critical theory” as understood today. He recruited some of the most famous members of the school. Psychoanalyst Eric Fromm was part of the early school who would later become active in socialist politics in the U.S.

The rise of the Nazi Party forced the Institute to consider relocation. They moved frst to Geneva (1933), then to New York City (1935), where they maintained affliation with Columbia Univ.

Important Ideas from the Frankfurt School

These scholars of various disciplines wanted to fgure out why capitalism had not “dug its own grave,” as Marx predicted, and had not inspired worker revolutions to transform capitalist societies. They also wanted to understand how the “socialist” party of Germany (the Nazis) had produced a fascist-style leader like Hitler. While Marx had focused narrowly on class struggle & economics, these “neo-Marxists” applied his ideas to all areas of culture. This would later be called “cultural Marxism” by some. ⛯ “Critical Theory” - Horkheimer’s Traditional & Critical Theory (1937) was pivotal for the term and the idea of critical theory. “Traditional” theory was what sociologists had typically done, which is merely describing and explaining society. But “Critical” theory is the Marxist-type in which you critique and challenge all of the guiding assumptions and systems of society, with a view toward changing them for the better.

⛯ “Cultural Hegemony” - Infuenced by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, this is the idea that it isn’t just the wealthy capitalists or government offcials who control a population, it is the dominant ideas, perspectives, norms, customs, values, etc. Horkheimer was very interested in “mass culture,” a relatively new phenomenon (in his time) in which large numbers of people take in the same ideologies embedded in culture, passively letting it “wash over” them. It represents the narrative of the ruling class. Even “common sense,” Gransci had said, is part of a system of thinking that reinforces and justifes those who beneft from it.

⛯ “Repressive Tolerance” - This is the title of an essay by Herbert Marcuse, who had joined the Institute in 1933. After becoming an American, Marcuse never left. During the war he was a leading intelligence expert on the Nazis, working for the U.S. government. For years after he continued working for the State Dept. while teaching at Columbia, Harvard & others. He remained always a Marxist tied to the Frankfurt School, blending Fruedian ideas into this thinking. During the movements of the 60’s he wrote and gave speeches, his infuence leading many to call him the “Father of the New Left.”

The important thing about this essay in particular is that it challenged the notion of unfettered free speech. Marcuse said that the dominant system of thought is so ingrained that the playing feld isn’t level. Thus “indiscriminate tolerance” leaves some voices marginalized by allowing a totalitarian dominance of the pro-capitalist point of view. He advocated “discriminate tolerance” or “liberating tolerance.”

Marcuse argued that the fght against “organized repression & indoctrination … may require apparently undemocratic means. They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements that promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, …” He explained even more bluntly: “Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.” Postmodern Writers

There were other very infuential thinkers, not part of the Frankfurt School, but whose ideas are along the same lines. Most are rightly described as postmodern. Two prominent examples:

Jacques Derrida - His main contribution is the idea of “deconstruction.” It is similar to the

“critical” approach already discussed. To “deconstruct” an idea or a text is to dissect, to take it apart, question every assumption or presupposition in it, seek its internal contradictions or subtle ways it undermines the things the reader values. The reader becomes an authority on the text’s meaning, more than mere interpreter. For some, deconstruction allows a text new possibilities of meaning - what it means to me.

Michel Foucault - French philosopher often cited by Critical Theorists, focused on “power.”

The following is from theologian Millard Erickson’s summary of Foucault’s main ideas:

➽ Power is primarily political & cultural power to control thoughts & norms. Those with power determine what is history, truth, morally good, praiseworthy, scientifcally valid. “System is a sign of the exercise of power, organizing all truth into an integrated whole.”

➽ “Reality is not simply reported by discourse, but is constructed by it.”

➽ Foucault wrote what he called “fctive history,” a term borrowed from Nietzsche, whose writings were an inspiration to him. History cannot be objectively known, but is shaped by the narratives of those with power. He admittedly wrote fctionally about history, but insisted that this did not mean they were “outside of truth.”

➽ Pleasure is to be prioritized as having very high value.

➽ “The way to alter truth is not by intellectual argumentation … but by changing the political conditions that produce truth.” A Few Things Worth Noting …

* Some of these writers were correct to identify early problematic consequences of mass culture and mass media. The irony is that presently all of the negative elements they described are operating on behalf of the point of view they held as opposed to against it.

* The Frankfurt School and Postmodern thinkers did not talk about race. It was simply not a major factor in their critical analysis. They certainly recognized racial problems in societies, but race was not the centerpiece for them that it has become for so many contemporary writers in the area of Critical Theory.

* The Frankfurt School and Postmodern thinkers did at times discuss sexual identities and orientations, although it did not occupy the towering place contemporary writers have given it. The early scholars included Freudian influence, and thus many of his sexual speculations. Foucault later advocated a very open sexual ethic, being gay himself, emphasizing pleasure as a highest good.

* The primary importance of these writers is that for more than one generation their works were circulated among people in academic disciplines, helping to shape the way many subjects were taught, and sowing into student populations the ideas of Marxism as applied to all areas of culture. Critical Theory would, in time, morph into the race, gender, and sexual identity-centered “grievance studies” of today.

Intersectionality

When we come to contemporary forms of Critical Theory, we have to understand the central role of a more recent phenomenon in the culture: the concept of “intersectionality.”

Recall that traditional Marxism was materialistic in that the only factors that matter for people are physical ones, namely class or economic status. Intersectionality expands the physical/material factors that matter for a person’s identity (the reason some call it “Identity Politics”), moving the primary focus to a group of identity categories that include prominently: race, gender (and gender-identity), sexual orientation, or economic status. Sometimes the categories also include able-bodied vs. disabled, citizen vs. immigrant, thin vs. “fat-bodied,” majority religion (i.e., Christian) vs. minority religion.

History of the term and the idea:

The word and the concept originated within feminist scholarship, and are attributed to UCLA Law Professor Kimberle Crenshaw, who for many years has taught on “Critical Race Studies.” She used the word “Intersectionality” in the title of a Stanford Law Review article in 1991. She had introduced the concept as early as a 1989 paper for the Univ. Chicago Legal Forum. As a black female, she said that she faced two overlapping forms of oppression and discrimination due to the intersection of these two key features of her identity.

The idea caught on, and by 2015, the Oxford English Dictionary added “Intersectionality” with this defnition: “The interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.”

Meanwhile Webster’s added it with this defnition: “the complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, and classism) combine, overlap, or intersect especially in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups.”

The word became so mainstream that in 2018 NY Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, while running for the Democratic nomination for President, tweeted that the future is “female” and “intersectional.” Not long after that, the word was used in nearly the same way by an actress from the stage at the Oscars.

The idea of intersectionality became a natural ft within Critical Theory, since it laid out so many ways that people’s identities could ft into the oppressed vs. oppressor narrative. “Privilege” could be enjoyed not just on account of economic class (traditional Marxism), but along many other lines. One could be an oppressed “minority” racially, sexually, physically, culturally, etc.

Further study and exploration of this idea produced books, articles and course studies within universities. Corporations began inviting diversity experts to train employees in these matters. Below is a chart that is commonly re-printed in books, articles and seminars on this topic. Writers on “Intersectionality” often explain that a person can be privileged with regard to some aspects of her identity, and marginalized with regard to others.

The focus on subjective “lived experience” is important in this construct, since it is thought that nobody can speak about an issue like racism, sexism, etc., unless the person has the experience of the right identity(ies).

It is common for people to introduce an opinion or point of view by prefacing it with their intersectional descriptors, e.g., “As a trans woman of color, …”

The charts sometimes differ in the categories they include. Many would not have the Jew/Gentile categories, for example. A lot of them have “dominant religion” vs. “minority religion.” The Efect of Intersectionality on Critical Theory, esp. in Academia

Many colleges and universities have increasingly added courses and even programs infuenced by CT and intersectionality, with names like: Gender Studies, Critical Race Studies, Black Studies, the Black Experience, Whiteness (or Critical Whiteness) Studies, Queer Theory, Chicano Studies, Intersectional Theory / Studies, Transgender Studies, courses with LGBTQ or “Queerness” in the titles, etc. A course description at Brown Univ. discusses CRT “offshoots” such as “TribalCrit, LatCrit and AsianCrit.”

Among academics in certain felds, the infuence of these perspectives has led to the most bizarre studies and papers. Consider, as one famous example, the 2016 paper on “feminist glaciology,” as explained it is abstract: “Merging feminist postcolonial science studies and feminist political ecology, the feminist glaciology framework generates robust analysis of gender, power, and epistemologies in dynamic social-ecological systems, thereby leading to more just and equitable science and human-ice interactions.”

Some scholars have realized the problems with this, and have sought to go against the trend. Back in 1996 a NY Univ. physicist named Alan Sokal wrote a mock paper using “feminist and poststructural critiques” to conclude “that physical ‘reality,’ no less than social ‘reality,’ is at bottom a social and linguistic construct.” It was published, and later came to be known as the “Sokal Hoax.”

In 2018 three scholars repeated this exercise, but submitted multiple papers to different academic journals, which they later explained here. Among those that were published was a paper on canine rape culture entitled, "Human reactions to rape culture and queer performativity at urban dog parks in Portland, Oregon,” as well as a paper on “Breastaraunt Masculinity” that was basically about Hooters.

When this was revealed, the three were mobbed in print and online by angry social justice advocates of the woke variety. But as they wrote in the above mentioned (and linked) explanation of their project:

Why did we do this? Because we’re racist, sexist, bigoted, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, transhysterical, anthropocentric, problematic, privileged, bullying, far right-wing, cishetero straight white males (and one white female who was demonstrating her internalized misogyny and overwhelming need for male approval) who wanted to enable bigotry, preserve our privilege, and take the side of hate?

No. None of those apply. Nevertheless, we’ll be accused of it, and we have some insights into why.

Two of these scholars wrote the book Cynical Theories on the importance of this disturbing trend toward nonsense and gibberish within certain large pockets of academic life. Mainstream Critical Theory Today

To recap: Take the long intellectual history of Marxism, fltered through various applications by later Marxist scholars. Add a complicated history of race issues, shake up the society with the sexual revolution, inject postmodernism across many academic felds, and let the culture drift further and further from its historic foundations (rooted in Christian ideas and the classic liberal Western tradition). Then bring into the mix the new “intersectional” view of human identity.

That is something like the recipe that has led us to the popular version of Critical Theory as it is seen in contemporary best-selling books today.

The following is from the book, Is Everybody Really Equal?: An Introduction to Key Concepts in Critical Social Justice Education, which received both the American Educational Studies Association Critics Choice Book Award (2012) and the Society of Professors of Education Book Award (2018).

It is co-written by Robin DiAngelo & Ozlem Sensoy, two white female Professors of Education, at Univ. Washington & Simon Fraser Univ. (Vancouver BC), respectively.

● DiAngelo says on her website, “My area of research is in Whiteness Studies and Critical Discourse Analysis.” She is the author of the popular best-selling book White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism (2018). She claims to have coined the term “white fragility,” which will be defned later.

● Sensoy teaches in the Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies of SFU and lists among her research interests: social justice education, multicultural education, critical pedagogy, cultural studies, and feminist postcolonial theory.

In the book they explain Critical Theory as follows:

“Our analysis of social justice is based on a school of thought known as Critical Theory. Critical Theory refers to a body of scholarship that examines how society works, and is a tradition that emerged in the early part of the 20th century from a group of scholars at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany” (p. 25).

“Efforts among scholars to understand how society works weren’t limited to the Frankfurt School; French philosophers (notably Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, …) … This work merges in the North American context of the 1960s with antiwar, feminist, gay rights, Black power, Indigenous peoples, The Chicano Movement, disability rights, and other movements for social justice” (p. 26). They apply it in terms of systemic oppression & intersectionality:

“A critical approach to social justice refers to specifc theoretical perspectives that recognize that society is stratifed (i.e. divided and unequal) in signifcant and far-reaching ways along social group lines that include race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability. Critical social justice recognizes inequality as deeply embedded in the fabric of society (i.e. as structural), and actively seeks to change this. The defnition we apply is rooted in a critical theoretical approach.” (p. xx)

“Intersectionality is the idea that identity cannot be fully understood via a single lens such as gender, race, or class alone — what legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989) called a ‘single axis framework’.” (p. 175)

“For every social group there is an opposite group. The primary groups that we name here are: race, class, gender, sexuality, ability status/exceptionality, religion, and nationality” (p. 44)

“All major social group categories (such as gender) are organized into binary, either/or identities (e.g. men/women). These identities depend upon their dynamic relationship with one another, wherein each identity is defned by its opposite… Not only are these groups constructed as opposites, but they are also ranked into a hierarchy” (p. 63)

This chart is provided to illustrate the point: They write that knowledge isn’t objective, but constructed socially by those in power:

“One of the key contributions of critical theorists concerns the production of knowledge…. An approach based on critical theory calls into question the idea that objectivity is desirable or even possible. The term used to describe this way of thinking about knowledge is that knowledge is socially constructed. When we refer to knowledge as socially constructed we mean that knowledge is refective of the values and interests of those who produce it.” (p. 29)

(This view) “challenges the belief that knowledge is simply the result of a rational, objective, and value-neutral process, one that is removed from any political agenda. The notion of value-free (or objective) knowledge was central to rationalizing the colonization of other lands and peoples that began in the 15th century” (p. 25)

“Language is not a neutral transmitter of a universal objective or fxed reality. Rather, language is the way we construct reality” (p. 70).

“Critical theory challenges the claim that any knowledge is neutral or objective, and outside of humanly constructed meanings and interests.” (p. 187)

“Critical social justice perspectives:

● There is no neutral text; all texts represent a particular perspective ● All texts are embedded with ideology; the ideology embedded in most mainstream texts functions to reproduce historical relations of unequal power. ● Texts that appeal to a wide audience usually do so because they reinforce dominant narratives and serve dominant interests.” (p. 210)

Knowledge & understanding are dependent on one’s social position:

“Positionality asserts that knowledge is dependent upon a complex web of cultural values, beliefs, experiences, and social positions.” (p. 29)

“Who we are (as knowers) is intimately connected to our group socialization (including gender, race, class, and sexuality)… ‘what you know’ is connected to ‘who you are’ and ‘where you stand.'” (p. 29-30)

“It is diffcult for dominant group members to see oppression, or to believe accounts of it happening to others. In addition to the structural barriers, there are psychological and social investments in not seeing oppression… These investments cause us to resist pressures to acknowledge oppression; where we are dominant, we generally don’t like to have our privilege pointed out” (p. 87-88)

“Our inability to think with complexity about racism, as well as our investment in it, makes Whites the least qualifed to assess its manifestations… Very few Whites believe that structural racism is real or have the humility to engage with peoples of Color about it in an open and thoughtful way.” (p. 149)

Part of structural oppression is that some ideas are favored over others.

“Hegemony, Ideology, and Power. Hegemony refers to the control of the ideology of society. The dominant group maintains power by imposing their ideology on everyone.“(p. 73)

“Power in the context of understanding social justice refers to the ideological, technical, and discursive elements by which those in authority impose their ideas and interests on everyone.” (p. 73)

“From a critical social justice perspective, privilege is defned as systemically conferred dominance and the institutional processes by which the beliefs and values of the dominant group are ‘made normal’ and universal.” (p. 80)

“Because dominant groups occupy the positions of power, their members receive social and institutional advantages; thus one automatically receives privilege by being a member of a dominant group (e.g. cis-men, Whites, heterosexuals, the able-bodied, Christians, upper classes).” (p. 81)

“Oppression is ideological. Ideology, as the dominant ideas of a society, plays a powerful role in the perpetuation of oppression. Ideology is disseminated throughout all the institutions of society and rationalizes social inequality... Oppression is embedded within individual consciousness through socialization and rationalized as normal; once people are socialized into their place in the hierarchy, injustice is assured. Oppressive beliefs and misinformation are internalized by both the dominant and the minoritized groups, guaranteeing that overall each group will play its assigned role in relation to the other” (p. 68)

Patriarchy:

“Patriarchy is the belief in the inherent superiority of men and the creation of institutions based on that belief. Examples of patriarchal ideology worldwide are: a male god; the father as the head of the household; males as authority in all social realms such as law, government, religion and culture; women as inherently inferior to men and the property of men.” (p. 103) Racism:

“Critical scholars defne racism as a systemic relationship of unequal power between White people and peoples of Color. Whiteness refers to the specifc dimensions of racism that elevates White people over all peoples of Color.” (p. 142)

“White power and privilege is termed White supremacy. When we use the term white supremacy, we do not mean it in its lay usage to indicate extreme hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan or the dozens of others like it. Rather, we use the term to capture the pervasiveness, magnitude, and normalcy of White privilege, dominance, and assumed superiority.” (p. 143)

Racism “occurs at the group level and is only perpetuated by the group that holds social, ideological, economic, and institutional power. ... Each of us does have a choice about whether we are going to work to interrupt and dismantle these systems [of injustice] or support their existence by ignoring them. There is no neutral ground; to choose not to act against injustice is to choose to allow it.” (p. xxiv)

“Antiracist education recognizes racism as embedded in all aspects of society and the socialization process; no one who is born into and raised in Western culture can escape being socialized to participate in racist relations. Antiracist education seeks to interrupt these relations by educating people to identify, name, and challenge the norms, patterns, traditions, ideologies, structures, and institutions that keep racism in place… To accomplish this, we must challenge the dominant conceptualization of racism as individual acts that only some bad individuals do, rather than as a system in which we are all implicated. Using a structural defnition of racism allows us to explore our own relationship to racism as a system and to move beyond isolated incidents and/or intentions” (p. 142)

The Presumption of Total Oppression:

“Work from the knowledge that the societal default is oppression; there are no spaces free of it. Thus, the question becomes, ‘How is it manifesting here?’ rather than ‘Is it manifesting here?'” (p. 203) Concerning DiAngelo’s other huge best-selling book White Fragility:

She defnes this concept as “a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress … becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves” (p.103). White fragility produces feelings of being “singled out,” “attacked,” “silenced,” or “judged,” behaviors such as “physically leaving,” “emotional withdrawing,” “denying,” or “seeking absolution,” and claims such as “I already know all this”, “You are generalizing” or “I disagree” (p.117).

Whites can also display white fragility by insisting on certain rules of engagement such as “feedback must be given calmly,” “you need to allow me to explain myself,” “Assume good intentions,” and “[Be] respectful” (p.123-126). DiAngelo insists that the true function of these rules is to “obscure racism, protect white dominance, and regain white equilibrium” (p.124). If whites claim that they are color blind, they are assured that “no one can actually be color blind in a racist society… [Therefore] the claim that you are colorblind is not a truth; it is a false belief” (p.127).

The book is essentially a defense of Critical Race Theory that relies completely on characterizing any doubt, questioning, disagreement or pushback as “white fragility,” and thus the very evidence of the doubter’s guilt (as a privileged participant in the system of oppression). In this way it is a “Kafka Trap,” making itself impervious to criticism.

It should not go unnoticed that this industry makes its purveyors quite wealthy. For all of the talk of privilege, and the woke idea that the rich are evil, people like DiAngelo are piling up riches on the backs of the people she’s duping with the corrosive message of her book and seminars. For a good review, see John McWhorter’s review here.

Concerning Ibram X. Kendi’s best-selling book How to Be an Anti-Racist:

This writer, who was born “Henry Rogers” and raised by activist parents steeped in Liberation Theology, has also become a wealthy, celebrated advocate of Critical Race Theory.

His book claims that racism is not about personal beliefs but political support for policies that produce or sustain unequal outcomes. The book presents two choices: you are either actively working to dismantle the “racist policies” (and are thus an “anti-racist”) or you are not. It is not enough simply to be “not racist.” You must be an anti-racist.

The book presents a false dilemma: either outcomes in black communities are (a) due to their inherent inferiority, a la old-school white supremecist doctrines, or (b) the systems or structures are racist. This argument fails to account for numerous other factors, as spelled out in Thomas Sowell’s book Discrimination & Disparities, which addresses this issue directly. I wrote an article explaining this further here. Evaluation of All Things “Critical Theory” Related

It’s not a single, monolithic movement, not a single ideology. It may be focused on race, or on gender identity, or on “income inequality.” It may turn up in a discussion of abortion, or taint a study of history. Increasingly its reach is into seemingly innocuous things like brand names, common words, relatively non-controversial historical fgures, and anything else. Elements from Marxist Critical Theory, applied and adapted across many areas of life throughout several decades, are pervasive in the culture.

Positives:

Are there areas of positive evaluation of contemporary “social justice” activists inspired by Critical Theory? We can certainly say that human history and experience reveals the terrible problems with which CT is concerned. People abuse and oppress other people. Men mistreat women. One racial/ethnic group persecutes or makes war on another.

The urge or impulse to right wrongs, to bring balance where there are blatant inequalities, or to confront abuses of power are clearly good, noble, and worthy of pursuit. The desire for a world without exploitation or mistreatment of people is praiseworthy. This is no doubt a big part of the attraction a lot of people have toward the books and other materials that promote this framework inspired by Critical Theory.

They are also correct when they describe the potential “hegemony” that can be exercised by cultural ideas, norms, beliefs, and ideology. There can be no denying the power that culture has, particularly in the age of big media, social media, and pervasive entertainment, to shape the minds of people and inculcate conformity to certain values and perspectives.

Numerous Problems:

The philosophy that is described in the preceding pages includes a number of serious errors. What follows is a list of many of the important reasons that Critical Theory and the modern “social justice” approach should be rejected and repudiated.

Any group (organization, political party, religious institution) should be judged primary by: (a) their most fundamental beliefs (their worldview, philosophy, doctrines, policies), and (b) their actions, along with the consequences of implementation of their views/policies.

The list below, then, is organized into those two categories. Problems in the Area of Basic Beliefs:

☭ no transcendent source or ultimate foundation for the worldview they advocate. The Marxist philosophy of physical materialism means that God and ultimate realities do not factor into their worldview. Thus there is no basis for universal human rights or fundamental human dignity. There exists no grounding for any moral declarations, including their own. This leaves us with no ultimate reason to think all people are fully equal or ought to be treated this way or that.

Undoubtedly there are many who believe and adhere to the CT approach who also hold some kind of religious beliefs, but this is an adaptation and not the rule. The philosophical roots of this system of thought trace back through scholars in the U.S. (Dewey, Marcuse, etc.), across Europe (Foucoult, Gramsci, the Frankfurt School) and ultimately to Marx. All of them shared the same atheistic worldview.

Their materialist framework dismisses traditional religious claims out of hand. This is why the entire enterprise is an intellectual failure from its inception. It is metaphysically paper-thin. It cannot fnd depth of meaning after building its edifce on the sands of materialism.

☭ A false and destructive view of human identity and value. A person’s primary value is not in his or her membership in the shallow and superfcial intersectional categories. Obviously things like physical features of race, cultural elements of ethnicity, and gender are all traits people bear, just like physical size, hair color, high or low voice, etc.

But all of those traits are secondary to the deeper and more signifcant things that make each person unique and gives him or her inherent dignity. Self-worth and self-image, from a Christian point of view, begin with the assurance that you are made in the image of God, that you are a genuine “self”, a soul, far more than a biological machine. “In Christ,” the apostle wrote, all of the physical and social distinctions fade (“neither male nor female, Jew or Gentile, slave nor free”), & all are united as equals where it matters.

The CT social justice doctrine teaches people that they are primarily and essentially their categories (white, gay, able-bodied, etc.), & that each person should, on that basis alone, either feel permanent guilt (for being an oppressor) or permanent victimhood. This is a warped distortion that confuses people and shackles them with a skewed and unhealthy sense of self-worth and identity. ☭ The denial of truth itself. Logically this is a show-stopper. It’s a self-inficted mortal wound to any argument. To deny the possibility of objective truth reduces all claims, including every claim in every book or seminar advocating CT social justice, to mere statements of preference.

The problem is “self-referential” as philosophers say. That is, a statement that is about all statements must logically include itself (it refers to itself in the feld of “all” or “no” statements). For example, if I say, “Every proposition uttered by a person is false,” then I just said that this very claim (as a proposition uttered by a person) is itself false. So then, when the social justice author says that all claims about history or morality are nothing more than the speaker’s exercise of power over the thinking of his audience, then this applies to the historical claims and moral admonitions of the social justice author too.

The blindness of this popular postmodern mentality is that it fails to account for the logical extension of its claims to itself. It does not notice that it is sawing off the limb on which it is sitting. What such authors likely mean is that “everything that others say is just their subjective opinion.” Those who push subjectivism or relativism (of truth and morality) nearly always make exceptions for their own claims, which they expect to be read as objectively true and not just the personal whims or tastes of the writer.

To put it in the simplest terms, if all truth-claims (about God, man, morality, history, etc.) are nothing more than subjective displays of hegemonic power, then why should I take seriously the subjective displays of the social justice advocates of critical studies, since they are merely seeking to assert their own hegemony?

☭ The denial of nature and basic reality. First there is the denial that people have natures, that there is teleology (built-in purpose) in humanity just as in the natural world. Writers will thus pretend that things like heterosexuality, the traditional nuclear family, or being “cis-gender” (identifying with your own biology) are merely the constructs of cultural hegemony. They assert this over against all human experience, science and common sense, not to mention revealed truth.

This amounts to a war on reality. They are protesting God and the world as He made it. Human existence is inevitably fraught with imperfect circumstances and a million inequalities. This view acts as if raging against that reality can, almost through the power of our emotions, make it change.

Another area of denial is human sinfulness. False belief in the perfectibility of man fails to account for our true (sin) nature. This naive and stubborn blindness has led, time and again, to terrible abuses and oppression of the most evil kind in communist societies. Any protest that demands moral perfection across vast populations may as well demand an immediate abolition to all sickness and death. It is a foolish denial of reality, and an inability or reluctance to deal with it like sane, responsible people. ☭ Abuse of language. This movement plays games with words, changing defnitions of words to suit their interest, without explanation or justifcation. They have spawned a vocabulary of their own invention, hijacking an altering the meanings of existing words. Consider these words related to Critical Theory’s application to contemporary race issues:

➢ Racism - actual meaning is belief in the inferiority of a given race or the mistreatment of a person or group based on their race. The new critical race theory (CRT) meaning is everything around us, all of society, all of the “systems” or structures of civilization, as well as every statistical disparity, lots of words, references, images, slogans, concepts, facts, stories, facial expressions, etc. Anything and everything is very possibly (even very likely) racist in some way by this meaning, and every disparity between groups is seen as evidence.

➢ Anti-racism - being against racism as it has always been understood. The new CRT meaning is anything that falls short of full agreement, acceptance and embrace of CRT. If you aren’t totally on board and actively trying to tear down all of the systems, you are not anti-racist.

➢ Whiteness - could have many meanings in different contexts; racially it would simply refer to the state or condition of having light (caucausian) skin. The new CRT meaning is an all-pervasive oppression within the entirety of Western Culture, including nearly every feature of civilization that characterizes the West. It pervades art, philosophy, literature, government, history, math, ethics, and so much else.

Names of organizations also represent a clever but dishonest use of terminology. “Antifa” is short for “anti-fascism,” which is a false and self-serving designation. Those who actively participate in their protests believe and act in accordance with the dictates of fascism.

Similarly “Black Lives Matter” (BLM) is strategically named to curry favor and support, even though by its stated beliefs and activities it is mostly a conglomerate of pro-Marxist and LGBTQ activists, the majority of whom are not black and have little history or understanding of the issues and challenges within black culture.

☭ It has become a false religion. Though Marxism banished traditional religions, its social justice-oriented descendant has developed into a quasi-religion all its own. The intersectional version of CT, for example, teaches special knowledge, like the ancient Gnostics, based on your identity markers. It has original sin (slavery, colonialism, etc.), preachers and missionaries (activists, protestors, social justice warriors), conversion (getting “woke”), repentance/penance [only for those in the oppressor categories] in which you confess your sin (your privilege or whiteness), and work toward your salvation by becoming an activist yourself. But of course the point here is that it is a false religion. A more detailed explanation of this is given by John McWhorter, a prominent black scholar who teaches linguistics, literature, philosophy and other subjects at Columbia. You can look up his articles about the “new religion of anti-racism” or the “church of social justice.” Also see Voddie Baucham on “Ethnic Gnosticism” for a fuller explanation of that concept. It should be noted, also, that founders of “Black Lives Matter” openly practice tribal ancestor worship, claiming to commune with the spirits of those killed by police.

☭ Suspiciously vague. A frst principle of clear thinking is to be specifc and explain the terms you use. The advocates for CT social justice make constant use of important terms, which they fail to explain with specifcity.

Consider, for example, their frequent use of the phrase “systemic (or structural) oppression,” without specifying what is meant. It is always, everywhere assumed to be so obvious that everyone simply knows what is meant. If asked for explanatory specifcs or evidence, the response is often simply to assail the character of the questioner, or at best to offer either an anecdote of someone who was mistreated, or perhaps list statistics that refect disparities in different groups (for ex. In education, income levels, health outcomes, etc.). None of this comes close to explaining how all of the “systems” are themselves oppressing groups of people.

Many of the dramatic overstatements commonly heard from protestors are similarly vague. They will say things like “We’re literally dying,” and “We’re fghting for our lives.” They will say that those who do not agree with their views are “denying” their “humanity,” or “erasing” them somehow. None of these hyperbolic statements are ever explained or defended.

☭ Grand, sweeping claims that are to be taken on faith. Similar to the point above about vagueness, popular writers make all-encompassing claims as if they are ‘givens’ and not to be questioned. To say that oppression or racism is everywhere, deeply ingrained in every system, is the kind of assertion that should carry a certain burden of proof.

CT social justice writers do not bother with that. Recall that the DiAngelo/Sensoy book tells readers to presume and “work from the knowledge that the societal default is oppression. There are no spaces free of it.” They make a habit of declaring things authoritatively about entire races, histories, societies, and systems, expecting them to be taken as articles of faith. Because they make no effort to argue for or defend these beliefs, these texts read like the pamphlets of a cult or religious sect.

Every discerning person, upon hearing a sweeping assertion about an entire class, or industry, or nation, should expect & ask for good reasons to believe the claim. ☭ Authority of Identity and Emotions over evidence. Claims without evidence are taken on faith, and this requires authority. It is the question of “Who says?” When it comes to CT writings today, we are supposed to take it on their authority that the systems are corrupt and oppressive. Serious critics have shown that the evidence for oppression in the systems or structures of law enforcement, education, healthcare, etc., is scant at best. One study of police shootings by the National Academy of Sciences found “no evidence of anti-black or anti-Hispanic disparities across shootings.”

But these studies and their statistics are often met with hostility by those who expect their assertions to be believed on the basis of the speaker’s intersectional attributes or strong emotions. In the place of good arguments for their claims, the CT thought-leaders appeal to the feelings of their audience. Many writers in this movement have claimed that “lived experience” is equal to or greater than objective facts or the dictates of reason. This is simply foolish and plainly false. Subjectivism of this sort is not even believed by those who espouse it, nor can it be. It is an unsustainable epistemology.

☭ Dishonest and confusing concept of “Inequality.” This word is often used, but there is a good deal of equivocation (the sneaky use of different meanings for the same word) - sometimes it is referring to statistical disparities, but other times it is used as a moral term that implies intentional discrimination. Because intellectual honesty is not a priority in this movement, the different meanings are applied interchangeably to suit the immediate point the writer or speaker wants to make.

But it is a fallacy of false cause (Latin non causa pro causa) to presume that every disparity between groups is the result of oppression in the system or structure. If you can’t show the causal connection, you cannot make that case. The great economist (and preeminent black scholar) Thomas Sowell has shown that many disparities between groups are the results of more complicated factors that do not amount to a corrupt and oppressive systems. See also Sowell’s books Discrimination and Disparities and The Quest for Cosmic Justice.

Another way to understand this problem is to note a confation of “inequality” with “inequity,” leading to the equivocal use of “inequality” (to mean either or both) described above. If we were accurate, we would recognize that inequalities are inevitable, unavoidable, and not necessarily the result of human injustices in the political or legal sphere. Inequality is a morally neutral term, technically speaking. It is descriptive. What social justice writers today mean to address is actually “inequity,” which is basically unfairness within rules, laws or policies. Inequity is a morally relevant term; it can and should be avoided. Inequity is wrong. But again, the claim that all inequalities in society are the result of inequities in the system needs to be supported. ☭ The Rewriting of history. The facts of history are presumed to be malleable and subjective along with other truth-claims. The intellectually dishonest have no problem forming history to suit their causes. Thus we get the hopelessly dark portrait of a terrible past riddled with evil oppression leading up to the present moment. This narrative is required to provide full justifcation for tearing everything down.

A perfect example of this can be seen in the ahistorical reworking of American history known as The 1619 Project. The project is the work of a faction at the New York Times that adheres to Critical Race Theory, and casts nearly all of American history and culture in its shadow. The title refers to the central tenet of the project, which is that the ‘true’ origin of America is in that fateful year in which the frst Africans were brought onto North American shores. It then proceeds to shoot every conceivable facet of history through the prism of American’s ‘original sin’ of slavery.

The project was roundly criticized by leading historians from across the political and ideological spectrum - names like James McPherson, Gordon Wood, Victoria Bynum, James Oakes, and Sean Wilentz. Twelve prominent historians wrote an open letter to the NY Times expressing their serious concerns. The project’s initial essay, for example, made the absurd and patently false claim that Americans fought the Revolutionary War in order to preserve slavery. The author later amended that claim with some reluctance.

Historians point to several glaring issues. The U.S. did not exist in 1619. European colonies were importing slaves and indentured servants to many places. Long before that, Africans had enslaved Africans for centuries. Arabs had traded for Africans generations prior to Europeans doing so. The ship that brought the Africans to Virginia in 1619 few under the Dutch fag. It had intercepted a Portuguese slave ship bound for Mexico. They were brought to Virginia and sold as indentured servants, not lifelong slaves. Slavery would not be legally recognized in the colonies for four more decades.

One of those servants was Anthony Johnson who, after serving his term, gained freedom and land. He and other Africans gained servants themselves, including Africans. It was Johnson who frst argued that a particular servant of his had been a slave his whole life in Africa, and therefore had no basis for gaining freedom. The court ruled in Johnson’s favor, making a freed black man, technically speaking, the frst slave owner on American soil.

Also forgotten are other facts: slavery was practiced in many parts of the world, Africans were not the only people subject to it (many Irish were bougt and sold as slaves), freed blacks in America continued owning slaves throughout the Civil War, many Native Americans from the major tribes also bought and used slaves, slaves were worth much more and therefore better treated overall in the American states than in South America and the Carribean. ☭ No redemption, no forgiveness, no reconciliation. While this movement is uniquely religious in some respects, it is distinctly unChristian in ways that matter most. The ‘original sin’ can’t be washed out; oppressors can (and must) confess their sinfulness & repent of it, but it does accomplish redemption. The guilty are forever guilty, and the victims remain in permanent victimhood.

The long, often diffcult, history of black-white relations in the U.S. has been through a few important phases, but its trajectory has been positive, and an example for history of reconciliation. But this movement cannot abide that. It preaches a deep, almost incurable alienation between groups. There can be no hope of healing such a division, they seem to say, until everyone yields fully to their religious system, and until they are given political power to shape society.

This is why there is such a clear correlation between the rise of this movement’s infuence and the decline of race relations (or the perception of it). It helps explain the irrational rage of young people vandalizing cities & doing violence against people. It also gives perspective on ‘cancellations,’ since there can be no forgiveness for even the slightest misstep committed decades ago by someone, even if that someone was 15 years old at the time.

This difference can’t be overstated, between a message of redemption that reconciles people, and a message of race or class condemnation that offers nothing redemptive. We see this in the difference between most “revolutions,” on the one hand, and great spiritual awakenings or revivals in history. Nearly all of the great political revolutions were based on professed goods like “equality.” The French Revolution touted high-minded ideals as its basis. So did the Bolshevik Revolution. But they both led to fear, terror, oppression and a lot of wrongful deaths of their own citizens.

Historians have noted that the American Revolution differed in a few signifcant ways from these other revolutions. Its thought-leaders were steeped in a Christian way of thinking. They did not seek to bring about equality but liberty. They did not seek redemption by political means; they saw the churches as the means of that. They let the churches operate freely, and allowed spiritual awakenings and renewals to shape the character of the citizenry. Thus the American experiment did not morph into fascism or totalitarian rule as others did.

The neo-Marxist virtues of supposed equality (or full opportunity or brotherhood or any such positive goal) make for good selling points. People rightly want a better world for everyone. But the woke version of contemporary Critical Theory lacks the Christian foundation in (and emphasis on) true forgiveness. It does not renew people; there is no true conversion for an actual racist or hater of people. There is no redemption of an actual oppressor and no freedom from bitterness for an actual victim of it. The genuine reconciliation of people, regardless of past hostilities, is impossible in this false religion. Problems in the Area of Actions & the Results of Implementing these beliefs:

☭ The cultural hegemony today represents their point of view. The dominant engines of culture, those with all of the power and money to infuence the cultural narrative - including entertainment, sports, social media, major news outlets, “big money” corporations and advertising - have all bowed the knee to “woke” mobs, and now all of the elements of CT-inspired social justice are pervasive in all of theses areas. Thus when we come to the application of their theory to our situation, we fnd that they are not on the victim end of cultural hegemony, after all. They are in power; we who have not gotten on board with their movement are the minority now within the controlling systems of culture.

☭ This movement seeks to tear down without a plan to build up. Every construction contractor knows that demolition is the easiest part of the job. This movement is very good at destroying things, but they have not thought ahead about what happens once the fres they set burn through everything & only rubble remains. What is society supposed to look like once every existing “system” is demolished? We have watched a lot of people get fred from their jobs; we have seen a lot of statues destroyed or removed; we have seen areas of major cities vandalized, burned and boarded up. But we’ve seen or heard no clear basis for all of this tearing down, nor a plan for what should be built. It is as if our marching orders are to “dismantle,” and after we do so, we will then be told what to do next.

☭ It dishonestly hides its grand political vision behind the issue of racism. It is particularly despicable to infame racial tensions, given the history of American society, as a means to accomplish political goals. It is an easy target, a vulnerable area to exploit. As has been noted by many observers, the primary leaders of movements like “Black Lives Matter” have roots and training not in race relations or Civil Rights issues, but in Marxism. In all of the footage of organized takeovers of areas of cities like Portland and Seattle, it is noteworthy how disproportionately represented are non-white rioters. Anarcho-communism is its own cause, but it is not a popular one in the larger culture; cloaking it in race terminology (talking about “white supremacy” as your substitute for “capitalism”) is dishonest, even if sadly effective in gaining sympathy or support.

☭ Their message is dark and negative. It casts everything under the cloud of oppression, including the most basic pillars of civilization, and universally shared human values. Listening to their spokespeople, you get wall-to-wall criticism of nearly everything outside of their own cultish movement. It’s a dreary portrait of a society in which every possible ‘system’ is hopelessly and ruthlessly oppressive. There is not much in the way of hope. The disposition of the most vocal protestors is bitter, ugly & profane. ☭ It devalues the most basic freedoms & the plight of the suffering. They are not fans of free speech or religious freedom (1st Amendment), & repudiate gun rights (2nd Amendment), although in truth they want their advocates to have full freedom to speak and write, to believe and teach their own quasi-religious doctrines, and for their mobs of protestors to have arms. While many of them whine about their own (mostly privileged) lives, they hardly know nor care that women and children are traffcked as property through most of their own cities, and overseas an estimated near-million Africans continue to be traded as slaves. They want things given to them based on past wrongs, while totally oblivious to the terrible plights of people today suffering actual wrongs.

☭ Emphasis on victimhood. Psychologists can verify what common sense tells most of us, which is that a victim mentality does not represent a strong or healthy mindset. It hamstrings a person’s self-image and relationship to the world and those in it. The social justice left spreads and seeks to maintain this very mentality among as many people as possible, hampering their chances to succeed or realize their potential. Consider the strange phenomenon of seeking out opportunities to be a victim, almost wishing to be one, to the point of staging events so as to appear to have been victimized.

Wilfred Riley, a black political science professor, has studied this phenomenon carefully. In his book Hate Crime Hoax (2019) & many articles, he says he has documented over 400 confrmed cases in the last 8 years. There have been a few high profle cases, such as with the actor Jussie Smollet, but numerous others have made smaller splashes in media. See here or here.

One area of widespread hate crime hoaxes is university campuses. Riley cites all sorts of cases on various campuses in which claims were shown to be false after having caused huge uproars. And sadly, younger kids have copied the trend: the 11 yr. old Muslim girl in Toronto (2018) who claimed a white man cut off her hijab in an attack, the 12 yr old Virginia girl (2019) at a Christian school who said a group of white boys held her down & cut off her dreadlocks while calling her slurs, even the 5 yr old Michigan child (2018) who said a white man had urinated on her & used slurs, causing a 60 yr old man to be arrested; in some cases schools were defaced with hateful spray-paint graffti (as in Plano, TX and Gambrills, MD, to name two).

ALL of these cases, and many more, were proven fake, often by admission of the perpetrators. Others remain unsolved but under similar suspicion. In each case, young people seek to be portrayed as victims. The message that everything everywhere is hopelessly oppressive and racist has created a situation in which the actual supply cannot meet the imagined demand, so young people whose minds have been poisoned by this foolishness end up doing these things, which invite enthusiastic media coverage and further pollute the public mindset. ☭ They oppose open dialog. We often hear about how we need to “have a conversation” about this or that, but it is a sham. No such thing is desired or allowed. Debate itself is ridiculed as oppressive, since it implies disagreement with their doctrine. For all of the media coverage and infuence of this movement, how many actual conversations have we heard? The young foot soldiers of the movement prefer yelling at opponents to having discourse, especially when they have the opponent(s) outnumbered, as with the street mobs. Opponents rarely even get a hearing at all. See my article on this point. The behavior of their advocates on social media is also egregious. It is, again, rare to fnd civil debate taking place there; mostly it brings out the very worst humanity has to offer in the way of vitriolic personal insults.

☭ Their message often patronizes and insults the very people it claims to speak for and lift up. Some advocates claim that nearly everything that makes for civilized society is a product of “whiteness,” which ends up being truly racist.

A prominent example: In 2020 the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture unveiled a display called “Aspects and Assumptions of Whiteness in the U.S.” It was intended to make (mostly white) people aware and give guidelines on thinking and talking about race. It appears to have been taken from an “educator” named Judith Katz. It included video features by people like Robin DiAngelo.

The illustrative chart explains the bizarre view that the following things are all imposed elements of dominant white cultural values: hard work, self-reliance, independence, fair play, the nuclear family, objectivity, reason, linear thinking, Judeo-Christian traditions, Western thought from Greek and Roman times on, success, work before play, having goals, monotheism, wealth, respect for authority, ownership and protection of property, progress, delayed gratifcation, future planning, optimism for tomorrow, traditional holidays, system of law, competition (winning and losing), taking action, control over nature, being extroverted, decision-making, written tradition, proper English, confict resolution, politeness.

The display & guidelines were immediately seen by non-whites as pejorative and belittling, as though nearly every trademark of civilized society (and most things that separate human beings from other animals) are exclusively “white.” Besides being utterly false and idiotic, it was a slap in the faces of most people on earth, as though every race of people other than whites live beastly, tribal existences. The Smithsonian was quickly forced by the reaction to apologize and remove the display.

But this “soft bigotry of low expectation,” as many call it, is an unfortunate characteristic of CT social justice approaches. It infantilizes non-whites and robs them of their full humanity. Again, as John McWhorter said in his scathing review of White Fragility, it talks down to black people in the most condescending way imaginable. ☭ It breeds a ruthless and tyrannical enforcement of its orthodoxy everywhere. They do not believe in ‘agree to disagree’ or ‘live and let live.’ They are censorious to the extreme. They demand censorship of all dissenting opinions. Anyone of prominence who does not bow to them and make a profession of faith must be made to pay. Like the Inquisition, they investigate the history, the social media trail, the past contributions, etc., of all public fgures in order to discover who is a heretic. Found guilty, you have no recourse except by public confession (what the Spanish Inquisitors called an “auto de fe”). And even then you may still burn (i.e., lose your job/position) but you will have saved your soul, perhaps, to their way of thinking. Even prominent liberals have become alarmed at this trend, as seen in a letter signed by over 150 of them.

☭ The ruthless tactics described above have spawned the “cancel culture” by which such activism is an ongoing hobby for many. People, slogans, mascots, art, scientifc fndings, historical fgures, statues and structures, past television shows, commercial products and more are targeted by the woke warriors with nothing better to do than to look for anything, no matter how silly, by which to pretend to be offended. They then smear the target with epithets (“racist, misogynist, homophobic”) call for boycotts, pretend it is an outrage, and harass advertisers to cut ties.

The number of people in academia, corporate business, media and entertainment who have lost their livelihoods in this climate has swelled. In many cases, the grounds for their fring (or being pushed out) are paper thin. In a “gotcha” atmosphere, weak and easily intimidated executives react to the bullying of cyber-mobs without much investigation. It can happen to anyone, overnight, for the most innocuous or idiotic reasons.

An army of busy-body internet activists dedicate their time to researching the past social media lives of people with whom they disagree. Unsuspecting victims of these sleuths have found themselves jobless and ruined because of tweets, posts, emails or photographs from many years ago. Livelihoods have crashed and burned over things written back in the 9th grade.

Here are just a few lowlights of this bloodthirst for cancellation:

➔ Emmanuel Cafferty, a San Diego Gas & Utility worker, made a fellow driver angry on his way home; that driver offered hand gestures with his screaming, coaxing Cafferty to mimic one of them - an “OK” sign. The driver photographed it, tweeted it, & contacted his supervisor to report that Cafferty made a “white supremecist hand gesture.” Cafferty was fred.

➔ Stan Wischnowski, a senior editor with the Philadelphia Inquirer, wrote an architecture column in the midst of the rioting with the headline “Buildings Matter, Too.” The mob came for him, & he was forced to resign. ➔ Grant Napier, Sacramento Kings play-by-play announcer, committed the unpardonable sin of tweeting the words “All Lives Matter.” He had to resign in the middle of the insane chaos this caused online.

➔ David Shor, a data analyst aligned with Democrats working for the progressive frm Civics Analytics, tweeted the summary fndings of a study by a black Princeton professor that was published in a top political science journal; the study showed that over the years, violent race riots had reduced Democratic vote share, while peaceful protests had increased it. It made the wokesters very mad. Shore was fred.

➔ James Bennett, NY Times Op Ed editor, ran a piece by U.S. Senator Tom Cotton on the legality and constitutionality of the use of federal troops for riot control. Though this was a perfectly normal thing to do for decades, social justice rage, including among woke Times staffers, ended up forcing Bennett’s resignation.

➔ Martin Shipton, chief reporter with the Western Mail (U.K.), pointed out that the BLM protests in Cardiff violated the offcial social distancing regulations of the Welsh government; he was forced to step down after calls for his head.

➔ Claudia Eller, editor-in-chief at Variety, wrote a piece lamenting the lack of diversity on her own staff, vowing to address it. But a former employee of Asian descent did not think she went far enough, & began a twitter dispute with her over it. She was forced to take a leave of absence.

➔ Stockwell Day, former Canadian cabinet member, was working as a commentator on Canadian Broadcasting’s Power & Politics. In a panel discussion he said that although there are some “idiot racists” in Canada, it is still not a systemically racist country overall. That was enough for a frestorm & his eventual stepping down.

➔ Majdi Wadi, a Palestinian immigrant with a successful catering business in Minneapolis, was told by his daughter, who served as catering director in the company, that she had sent antisemitic & other racist tweets back when she was 14 yrs. old. They agreed to her fring in order to prevent the ruin of the business. It didn’t matter. His lease was cancelled & clients dropped him. Mobs came to his store. The online pushback was too ferce.

➔ Adoph Reed, long-time socialist scholar, activist from the segregation era, organizer of black movements, was invited to speak to the Democratic Socialists of America’s largest chapter (in NYC). But when it was learned that Reed believes that the movement focuses too much on race, the woke backlash erupted, & they ended up cancelling the event. Even Harvard leftist Cornel West said “God have mercy” on the activists who caused the cancellation, accusing them of dangerous “narrowness.”

This list could go on much longer. In the realm of higher education, there is a growing compilation of cancellations of this kind. ☭ Promotion of chaos and lawlessness. Any form of civilization requires law and order. This crowd gives permission for its mobs to vandalize and to use violence. It is a self-granted license to sin at will. Opponents do not have to be given a voice or treated with respect. Their imagined high moral cause justifes or rationalizes, in their minds, stealing anything they want, as well as despicable behavior toward other people & their property, as well as all authority. Some writers have made absurd attempts to defend this activity.

The promotion of vandalism and total destruction that was encouraged in the Summer of 2020, including by politicians who made the police stand down and took no action, caused more damage than any period of civil unrest in American history. The insurance industry said it was at “catastrophic” levels. Hundreds of minority-owned businesses in parts of the cities that were most devastated by vandals, rioters and arsonists, were ruined without hope of recovery or repair. Several hundred families - many minorities and immigrants - saw their years of hard work and fnancial futures go up in fames.

Along with the property damage has been the more serious issues of injury and death. Murder rates in these cities saw double-digit surges as police hands were tied by mayors and city councils. There is no way to estate the injuries to people in clashes with police or each other in different cities. Unsuspecting people caught in the middle of riots have often been beaten by the mobs and ended up hospitalized. Worst of all, we’ve seen cold-blooded attempts to assassinate police offcers, and deranged crowds who chanted “We hope they die!” as they blocked the emergency entrance of the hospital..

☭ Many of their foot soldiers are craven cowards. They gain boldness for their cause only in great numbers, when the threat of the mob is behind them. Their acts of violence are nearly always in situations in which they’ve chosen easy targets and in which they outnumber their victim(s). When citizens or law enforcement stand up to them, they whine and pretend to be victimized themselves.

Dozens of videos from their protests have shown people being beaten, always outnumbered, often sucker-punched. The kind of thing that used to bring dishonor to a man or get him branded a coward is now something these craven fools are proud of, it appears. They are willing to beat up women and the elderly. Their language is disdainful and utterly disrespectful toward citizens minding their own business in outdoor restaurants or public parks. They surround, threaten and intimidate people, some of whom probably support them. Nothing shows the abysmally ugly character of these overgrown brats like watching them scream ‘f-bombs’ at the top of their lungs into the faces of old ladies. This behavior should disqualify them from any consideration or concessions of any kind. ☭ This has led to a lot of silliness. There is a reason the internet and social media are replete with satire aimed at this movement. It has become a comedic send-up of itself. The fake “grievance studies” papers submitted by scholars (see earlier section) demonstrated this at the academic level.

At the popular level we have seen over-active woke warriors scouring every area of public life and pop culture to fnd reasons to take feigned offense at things. Long-time brands like Aunt Jemimah and Cream of Wheat have had to scramble to address their “offensive” corporate symbols of black cooks/chefs. The kids’ show “Paw Patrol” was under fre for featuring a policeman as a character.

Lots of common words or phrases have been deemed racist because of how they might sound to some people, or possible etymologies originating in the slave era - words like “blacklisted,” “blackballed,” “master bedroom,” “grandfathered,” “low-hanging fruit,” “sold down the river,” etc. The classic game Scrabble decided it had to ban a couple hundred “offensive” words. While some of them truly are offensive by any measure, the list includes words like “butch,” “hunkey,” “squaw,” “wrinklie,” and even “Jesuit.”

Universities are hearing protests against the entirety of Western history and literature. Plato, Galileo, Shakespeare and Isaac Newton have all got to go. They’re too white. We’re told that some medical terms (like “Adam’s Apple”) need to be changed. Race-conscious entomologists have identifed names of insects that need to be changed, such as the “gypsy moth” the “Jew’s ear,” the “slave-maker ant,” and the “Oriental cockroach.”

The hypersensitivity across all media and communication has had the surreal effect of a social media police state. Battalions of woke censors man their laptops to oversee built-in systems of algorithmic surveillance. Beware the opinions you share lest you be “deplatformed” by the so-called fact checkers. Even the Declaration of Independence couldn’t get past the vigilant censorship programs. Conclusion

The popular movements of today that are rooted in “Critical Theory” have origins and a traceable history, whether their advocates know it or not. CT’s roots go back to the ideas of Karl Marx; it is supplemented by philosophical perspectives of postmodern thinkers; the more recent emphasis on intersectionality reshaped it further.

An honest assessment of the felds of study that have sprung from this heritage- from Critical Race Theory to Queer Theory to Post-colonial or Whiteness Studies - shows them to be woefully defcient in their logic, basic beliefs, understanding of history, and proposed solutions to social problems. Furthermore, the popular movements they have birthed have a painfully clear record of failure on many counts, as explained in the previous pages.

James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose, two of the scholars who exposed the ridiculousness of these ideas in academic journals and conferences, summarize the central problem like this:

“Postmodern philosophy is radically skeptical that objective truth exists and can even approximately be known, and it forwards the competing view that knowledge is just an assertion of politics by other means. That is, the key of postmodernism as a social philosophy is that whether a claim is true or not doesn’t matter and misses the point. All that matters is how that claim can be used politically.

“The development of this divorce from the truth, political turn to everything, and ruthless approach to social critique present in “critical theories” is how we arrived at this literally riotous, almost incomprehensible moment in history.”

As has been said, beliefs have consequences, and false beliefs have victims. This quasi-religion, whether under the guise of “social justice”, “anti-racism,” or any similarly positive-sounding title, is a poisonous cloud of bad fumes increasingly permeating the culture, making inroads even into churches.

My hope is that in the pages of this study it is made clear to any reader that Christians ought to have nothing whatsoever to do with these toxic false beliefs, and nor should any persons of good will who care about truth, human well-being, peaceful coexistence and a morally sane society. Appendix: Black Opposition to CRT

Black intellectuals are in a unique position to address the errors of Critical Race Theory in particular. Here are some who have done just that.

Thomas Sowell - preeminent black intellectual of the last several decades. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6ImP-gJvas

Shelby Steele - longtime scholar & social critic, senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. https://dailycaller.com/2021/06/03/shelby-steele-critical-race-theory-fox-news/

Jon McWhorter - Columbia Prof. of Lit., a linguist who also teaches music history https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/dehumanizing-condescension-white-fragility/ 614146/ https://1776unites.com/featured-essays/we-cannot-allow-1619-to-dumb-down-america-in-the-na me-of-a-crusade/

Robert Woodson - long-time civil rights leader, founder of Woodson Center, founder of 1776 Unites (https://1776unites.com/) https://www.c-span.org/video/?510288-3/washington-journal-robert-woodson-latest-book-race-re lations

Walter Williams - the late Prof. of Economics, George Mason Univ. https://www.creators.com/read/walter-williams/05/15/black-lives-matter

Glenn Loury - Prof. of Economics & Social Science at Brown Univ. https://www.city-journal.org/the-case-for-black-patriotism?mc_cid=27bc035274&wallit_nosessio n=1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82HA4raBiOw

Wilfred Reilly - Prof. Political Science, Kentucky State Univ., author of Hate Crime Hoax: How the Lef is Selling a Fake Race War (2019) https://spectator.org/critical-race-theory-schools/ Jason Hill - Jamaican-born descendant of Carribean slaves, prof. of Philosophy at DePaul Univ. (also identifes as gay), author of several books & articles, frequent guest on talkshows, etc. https://www.jasondamianhill.com/about-1 https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/jason-hill/black-lives-matter-problem/

Ayaan Hirsi Ali - female Somali-born, former member of the Dutch Parliament, founder of the AHA Foundation (her initials) focused on issues of women under Islamic extremism; a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, also published by the NY Times & others on political issues, free markets, etc. https://www.hoover.org/profles/ayaan-hirsi-ali https://pjmedia.com/culture/tyler-o-neil/2020/07/16/ayaan-hirsi-ali-rips-apart-the-fraud-of-white- fragility-warns-of-censorship-terrorists-n654853

Peter Kirsanow - member of US Commission on Civil Rights, formerly on the National Labor Relations Board, law prof., practicing attorney, contributor to National Review https://www.nationalreview.com/author/peter-kirsanow/ https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/25/critical-race-theory-is-not-a-single-lesson-or-training-but-a- way-of-life/

Niger Innis - son of the Civil Rights activist Roy Innis, he is the National Spokesperson for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), of which his father was Chairman. https://www.bizpacreview.com/2020/06/09/niger-innis-blm-not-a-damn-thing-to-do-with-saving- black-lives-wants-to-overthrow-western-civilization-932301/

Carol Swain - has taught political science & law at Vanderbilt & Princeton. She is a Christian who has authored numerous books on diferent topics. She has focused on the ‘White Nationalist’ movement, ‘Critical Theory’ and other relevant topics. https://carolmswain.com/about/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYVXqTwYl3rKlyQIfMlJukg

Voddie Baucham - President of African Christian University in Zambia https://truthxchange.com/2021/05/voddie-baucham-and-the-dangers-of-critical-race-theory/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuSMvIVtd0A