I just read an article that messed up my day
It is rare that an article infuriates me. However, Andrew Sullivan’s alarmist article warning of the “dangers” of Critical Race Theory (CRT) did the trick. His article entitled “Removing the Bedrock of Liberalism,” starts with the assertion that white supremacy is not a real social construct but a figment of the imagination of Critical Race Theorists who deliberately obfuscate the meaning of CRT in order to “disrupt and dismantle the Western concept of discourse itself.”
Sullivan’s points are narrow minded, ill informed, and pernicious. From the instant he uses Ibram Kendi as his foil, it is obvious Sullivan is not interested in any serious intellectual engagement with CRT. What he is interested in is setting up a straw man to knock down. While Kendi may be the “most popular purveyor of CRT,” it is only because his book has gone mainstream due to its accessibility and acceptance by White people as a racial salve.
What Sullivan does here is elevate Kendi as the source of CRT and then conflate CRT with the current discourse about Antiracism. While Kendi may have popularized the phrase Antiracism, CRT goes all the way back to Frederick Douglass. Regardless of Kendi’s perspective, CRT and his Antiracism doctrine are two different things.
CRT is not “deliberately impenetrable” as Sullivan suggests. It is very straightforward. In the face of an explicitly hostile society, CRT seeks to enrich Western discourse by preserving minority history and perspectives to which mainstream society is actively opposed, passively indifferent, or harmfully misguided about. To put it in simpler and much more blunt terms, Western society enslaved, oppressed, and exploited Black people, and now Western society would like to forget this ever happened, while also ignoring the deleterious effects systemic racism has on equal opportunity. Critical Theorists are in the business of ensuring that Western society never forgets what has happened, not only so it doesn’t happen again, but so that the myriad injustices visited upon minorities by systemic racism in the present can be properly addressed.
In this way CRT is the academic manifestation of a long struggle by Black people (and other minorities) for full citizenship, freedom, and equality. It follows the tradition of Frederick Douglass, WEB Dubois, Thurgood Marshall, Sojourner Truth, Angela Davis, Nikki Giovanni, Martin Luther King, James Baldwin, Cornell West, Henry Louis Gates Jr, Eddie Glaude, Patricia Todd Collins and so many countless others. CRT is the culture and education that is continually safeguarded and preserved by the best Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). The Civil Rights movement would not have been successful if it wasn’t for the tireless efforts of Black Academics who challenged the faulty preconceptions of Western society and discourse.
Early in his piece Sullivan states that he is confused about the nature of CRT, but then goes on to define it. Since by his own admission he is not a trained Critical Theorist it is not a surprise that he completely mischaracterizes CRT. A person who has studied political theory as long as he claims to have should be very clear on what CRT is. However, it is unsurprising that his point of view is limited.
He asserts (and I agree) that some central core principles of “liberal society” are “fallibilism, the belief that anyone, especially you, can always be wrong; objectivity, a rejection of any theory that cannot be proven or disproven by reality; accountability, the openness to conceding and correcting error; and pluralism, the maintenance of intellectual diversity so we maximize our chances of finding the truth.”
He goes on to say that CRT takes aim at these principles and rejects them. He is wrong. CRT does not question the foundations of “enlightenment rationality, legal equality, and Constitutional neutrality.” Rather it seeks to point out that these foundations, integrated and fused with white supremacy as they have been, lead to implementations which fall short of their promises. One need not reach further than Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech to take note of the intent of CRT. In the very beginning of his speech Dr. King excoriates America for having defaulted on the promises of life liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as concern Black people. The I Have a Dream Speech is a central text in CRT.
He states that Critical Theorists argue the “promise of the American experiment, has never been actual equality, even as, over the centuries, it has been extended to everyone.” Here again he mischaracterizes CRT. CRT does not dispute that efforts have been made to extend equality; but it must be said that none of these efforts occurred without the continued dedication of activists. These activists excavated Black American History, expounded on it, derived crucial insights about the full American experience, and introduced it into academia as CRT, where it continues to be challenged critically by Conservative and Liberal elites. Given the unique nature of the Black experience, the unwillingness of academics to accept Black scholarship, and the unrelenting scrutiny that accompanies any academic attempting to introduce ideas that challenge the academic status quo, the survival of CRT is nothing short of remarkable. It is not hyperbole to say that CRT should actually be respected as one of the most solid forms of theory because it is among the academic endeavors that face the highest levels of scrutiny. It is contested not only in academia, but in politics, and in the media, yet it stands and has stood for decades.
Sullivan claims CRT seeks to awaken people to the fact that liberalism is a lie. He is wrong. CRT seeks to awaken people to the fact the liberalism has been infected from the start with hatred in the form of white supremacy. That liberal ideals while worthy of reverence, have not been implemented properly. That Liberalism that elevates the ideals, perspectives, and experiences of one group of people and seeks to erase all others is in fact illiberal.
Sullivan perceives CRT as a threat to liberal society because the “liberal” society he speaks of never existed and was certainly a far cry from the tenets he proposes. To wit, proponents of the kind of liberalism Sullivan espouses think they are promoting fallibility until they are forced to grapple with white supremacy and institutional racism. Then all of a sudden, the become quite sure that its effects are being exaggerated by those who suffer under it. Despite the decades of scholarship, they still seek to reduce CRT to “lived experience” as Sullivan cynically does in his article.
Proponents of this kind of “liberalism” think they are promoting objectivity but then seek to control the terms on which reality is defined as Sullivan does when he implies that White supremacy and all the consequences of it are either a fallacy or exaggerated.
Proponents of Sullivan’s “liberalism” say they are committed to accountability until Critical Theorists examine Western society and find it wanting when it comes to eradicating systemic racism.
Proponents of Sullivan’s “liberalism” claim to be in full support of pluralism until they encounter CRT which promotes the fullness of Black Intellectual thought. Instead of examining its fullness they seek to condense and confine it to the most extreme and least defensible arguments of a single professor.
The 1619 project doesn’t insist white supremacy is “the definition of the Unites States.” It asserts that America cannot be fully understood much less improved upon without understanding the profound effect white supremacy has had in retarding the American Experiment. CRT does not throw out its competitors it as Sullivan suggests, it challenges them to be more inclusive. Sullivan’s problem is that whenever CRT had been wielded by a true practitioner in the field, it has thrived in the ruthless light of open debate if that debate is framed with the pure ideals of liberal society.
CRT does not “remove a cornerstone of liberal democracy,” white supremacy and all its attendant doctrines do that. CRT is the corrective to that situation. And as we all know, sometimes medicine has a very nasty taste going down.
Sullivan purports to “insist that we can do better — within a self-correcting, open liberal system…” But he overlooks the reality that the “open liberal system” has never been corrected without the efforts of Critical Theorists, Activists, and Politicians pushing it ever closer to its ideals.
The debate may not be between anti racists and racists when it comes to academia. But out here in the real world those who forward “liberal” academic positions without regard to the implications of white supremacy end up ultimately supporting an illiberal and racist status quo.