ALL RISE!
This Mornings Lesson:
CRITICAL RACE THEORY IS NOT WHAT WHITE RACISTS SAY IT IS!
So much lying and disinformation is being put out there by the facist right and black accomodationists. Because anything that questions or challenges the white male version of America must be stopped. Fascism is defined as a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition. This is the right is trying to suppress any belief except their version.
So lets study the theory beginning at it's root.
Critical Race Theory is based first and foremost in Critical Theory.
Critical theory- a philosophical approach to culture, and especially to literature, that seeks to confront the social, historical, and ideological forces and structures that produce and constrain it. The term is applied particularly to the work of the Frankfurt School.
Critical theory is an approach to social philosophy that focuses on reflective assessment and critique of society and culture in order to reveal and challenge power structures. With origins in sociology and literary criticism, it argues that social problems are influenced and created more by societal structures and cultural assumptions than by individual and psychological factors. Maintaining that ideology is the principal obstacle to human liberation, critical theory was established as a school of thought primarily by the Frankfurt School theoreticians Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Erich Fromm, and Max Horkheimer. Horkheimer described a theory as critical insofar as it seeks "to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory#:~:text=Critical%20theory%20involves%20a%20normative%20dimension%2C%20either%20by,concepts%20of%20critical%20theory%20are%20that%20it%20should%3A
So what we have that right wing whites are bitching about is critical theory applied to the issue of race. Since critical theory requires that you look the forces of society in order to determine what creates the imbalance, the history of American law and policy when assigned to race shows this:
Race is a contruct. This is a fact.
Webster's dictionary has 2 definitions of construct as it pertains to this thread we will use the second definition:
Definition of construct (Entry 2 of 2)
1: something constructed by the mind: such as
a: a theoretical entity
b: a working hypothesis or concept
2:
a product of ideology, history, or social circumstances
Linnaeus was the first to break humans into classifications in his book Systema Naturae. In this book Linnaeus decided that man had 4 races.
"Europæus albesc[ens]" (whitish European), "Americanus rubesc[ens]" (redish American), "Asiaticus fuscus" (tawny Asian) and "Africanus nigr[iculus]" (blackish African). Basically, race did not exist until it was created or constructed.
So using critical theory to study the social, historical, and ideological forces and structures that produce and constrain racial conditions for people of color, we must look at American laws and policies. To study these, there can be only one conclusion:
That race is a social construct and that whites have used race to implement policies to advance their political, economic, and social interests. Courts at every level have cases to prove this. Starting with the 1790 Naturalization Act, to Shelby Co v. Holder and now various voter suppression measures being put forth by states, the evidence is clear that Critical Race Theory is correct.
So for white racists to start whining about pitting people against each other based on race, or looking at things by color when that has been done from the very beginning of this country shows a serious inability to face reality.