Defunding Diversity?
By: Thomas St Thomas
Tags: Culture, Diversity, Racism, Trump, Race

Explaining the deep seated origins of a philosophical theory in order to help people understand why Critical Theory is a problem, will most likely turn into white noise and cause people to disengage. It’s a long history of the evolution of philosophical ideas few people are truly interested in. So to help convey the problem, here are some ideas which are the products of Critical Race Theory:

— All white people are racist. Even those who truly believe in white privilege and work to publicly acknowledge it are participating in a racist system that benefits them and therefore will always be racist.

— Economically successful black people who participate in the American system have internalized white supremacy to selfishly benefit themselves by working the racist system in their favor.

— Racism is not simply the belief in the superiority of one’s race, but requires that person to have the power to discriminate in order to be racist. So, only white people can be racist.

— Discrimination against white people is okay if it makes economic outcomes more equal.

— Differences in outcomes between racial groups is itself evidence of racist policies, regardless of the individual or collective actions of the people in those groups.

— White people who disagree with the theory of systemic racism or their complicity in that system are simply confirming their racism through their discomfort or denial of the ideas produced by this theory.

Do any or all of the ideas above sound not only ridiculous but deeply offensive? Well, that’s because they are. And they are now being taught with your tax dollars and even promoted in education for children in grades as early as kindergarten. And no, these are not straw man versions of their ideas. They unapologetically state exactly this in their literature which is flying off of the shelves, is promoted at Target, and just received ten million dollars in funding from Twitter. I will also include several related quotes throughout the essay, and beyond, from Critical Theorists that tie into these ideas.

“Being good or bad is not relevant. Racism is a multilayered system embedded in our culture. All of us are socialized into the system of racism. Racism cannot be avoided.” — Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility

Critical Theories

Critical Theory refers to a specific type of theory which originally came from a group of academics in Germany as a reaction to the failure of Marxist predictions of the proletariat (working class) revolution against the bourgeoisie (property owners). It was thought this revolt would be the natural consequence of capitalist societies, formed from liberal Enlightenment values of liberty and individual capacities for reason. When it failed to happen as predicted, those who saw the world through this lens needed to understand why they were wrong. Critical Theories seek to do just that through being critical of liberal societies, and creating a framework to disrupt the structures which they see as inherently problematic. To be a Critical Theory, a theory must have three main elements of its structure. It must be explanatory, practical, and moral:

Explanatory: it posits a problem with society and then proceeds to articulate how such a problem is intrinsically linked to the adoption of liberal, Enlightenment values.

it posits a problem with society and then proceeds to articulate how such a problem is intrinsically linked to the adoption of liberal, Enlightenment values. Practical: it produces a framework for political and social action aimed at correcting the problem.

it produces a framework for political and social action aimed at correcting the problem. Moral: the explanation and its practical application result in the betterment of society, as defined by the theorists themselves.

Critical theory is a set of blueprints to describe various real or perceived ills of liberal society and how to dismantle the structures allegedly responsible. The big difference here, as compared to other theories developed in university settings, is a shift from understanding the world through explanation, to a certainty about the world and what should be done to rectify it. It is a shift from what is to what ought to be. Comparatively, a widely accepted theory about our world, like the Theory of Evolution, describes the manner in which species evolve through natural selection, but it does not tell us how species should evolve nor prescribe the manner in which we should make it so. We already tried eugenics, and anyone even tangentially tied to such an awful idea has now pretended it never happened.

The perceived problems identified in liberal societies are based on two basic principles about knowledge and politics, as outlined by James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose in their book, Cynical Theories:

Knowledge — radical skepticism about whether objective knowledge or truth is obtainable and a commitment to cultural constructivism.

This idea is adopted from post-modern ideas about knowledge and how knowledge is a function of language, or the “discourse,” of people. Essentially, there is no objective truth, and what each culture says is true is true for them as a means to justify their own status. This is what they believe is the manner in which cultures are constructed, and controlling language is a means for changing culture. Politically correct speech is a manifestation of this idea. By promoting speech that shapes culture in the “right” direction, and suppressing speech that moves it in the “wrong” direction, activists believe they can shape the world into what they decide it should be. These are the roots of authoritarianism, as they believe they have the moral authority to shape people as they see fit.

Political — a belief that society is formed of systems of power and hierarchies, which decide what can be known and how.

This is in part an adoption of Karl Marx’s Conflict Theory, which views the world as a constant struggle between groups of people in different economic classes. It was evolved by Antonio Gramsci into what he called the “cultural hegemony,” which replaced economic classes with cultural identities into a hierarchy of power between groups of people in different cultures. The competing cultures have evolved in Critical Theories to include sexual orientation, gender identity, disabilities, body size, and ethnicity, the study of which is referred to as Critical Race Theory. Each group therefore has a position in the cultural hierarchy as well as specialized knowledge that pertains to their culture which can only be known as a member of that culture.

These two principles combine to create an environment where adherents to these principles will deeply question any claim to objective reality, and assume to claim any authority on a subject is a ploy for power over another person or group. Only members of a marginalized group have the ability to understand their assumed oppression, as they are privy to specialized knowledge. Fighting against the current structure of society is then a virtuous fight against the dominant group, or a fight against “Whiteness.” This idea also indicts any person who benefits from the system as a participant in the very problem itself.

The product of this type of thinking is on full display in Critical Theory author Robin DiAngelo’s popular views on what she calls “White Fragility,” which assumes the structure of society as a struggle amongst groups of people for power, without providing any empirical evidence to back that claim up. Karl Marx did the same with exploitation, where he assumes all workers are exploited, provides no evidence of exploitation, and then proceeds to create a “scientific” way to understand history and predict the future of these struggles. Robin DiAngelo and her fellow Theorists also proceed with absolute certainty about the underlying assumptions, then simply prescribe the solution. As stated at the National Race and Pedagogy Conference in 2015, “The question is not ‘Did racism take place?’ but rather ‘How did racism manifest in that situation?’” If it sometimes feels as if you can no longer escape constant claims of racism, you now know why. And to challenge the underlying assumptions made about the structure of society as inherently racist is to display “ignorance” or “white fragility.” Nothing could be more anti-scientific or against the liberal tradition as to create an unfalsifiable theory.

“The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist.” — Ibram X. Kendi, How To Be an Antiracist

We now have a situation where activists are emboldened with absolute certainty of the manner in which society is structured, a cynicism about the intentions of people, and instructions with which to dismantle what they see as oppressive power plays by those in charge. This cynical system of thought is now part of our institutions and seen in the African American History Museum’s official description of “Whiteness,” the overwhelming increase in sales of White Fragility and How to be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi, as well as mandatory training for white male executives at facilities where our nuclear weapons are designed.

Just last year, Sandia National Laboratories, a national nuclear laboratory, held a three-day mandatory training for only the white male executives. The purpose of the training was to examine their white privilege and deconstruct “white male culture.” Using the term “Whiteness” to describe several aspects of white culture, they pointed out several “white” values: individualism, hard work, reason and objectivity, amongst others. After learning about their privilege, they must publicly recite “white privilege statements” and then write short letters of apology to women and people of color. Not only are these sessions reminiscent of re-education camps and Maoist struggle sessions, but it’s worse. It assumes values which created the progress and freedom we all enjoy in the United States are property of white people, and expecting “people of color” to participate in them or value them in itself is racist. As if “people of color” are unable to handle such a task.

Good ideas do not have a color. Hoarding them for and away from people based on their color is racist. Just imagine the psychology that goes into telling someone they, because of the color of their skin, are inherently bad and they cannot escape sin because of the system in which we operate. In addition, anyone who disagrees is simply proving their guilt. Sound familiar?