Critical Race Theory

by Tom Kando

There has been a big brouhaha about “Critical Race Theory.” The people on the Right (heinous figures such as Tucker Carlson) are on a rampage to censor this subject from schools. The label “C.R.T.” joins “Socialism” on the list of American political taboos. States that are currently legislating such censorship include Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee., Idaho, Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Arizona. 

I have been wondering why the Right has chosen this particular topic as the special target for its wrath, over and beyond its obvious perennial opposition to civil rights, “wokeness,” and all steps towards racial equality. 

Shouldn’t we find out what Critical Race Theory actually IS? There is probably no more sociological topic than this, so I will try to shed some light on it. 

I am once again stimulated by an excellent New Yorker article, The Man Behind Critical Race Theory by Jelani Cobb. The main name to associate with C.R.T. is Derrick Bell (1930-2011). He was a lawyer, professor and civil rights activist. He worked for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, became the first tenured African-American law professor at Harvard in 1971 and ended his career as a visiting professor at the NYU School of Law. He and his writings are the most influential source behind what is now known as Critical Race Theory. 

First a brief definition of C.R.T.: This is a legal movement which seeks to explain the intersection of race and US law. It is critical not only of the conservative response to racism, but also the liberal approach. It stresses that racial inequality is the result of social, institutional and legal realities rather than that of intentional individual prejudices. 

Before I outline C.R.T. in greater detail and Bell’s contributions to it, let me mention some of the theory’s other primary precursors: 

1. The notion that human social reality is a construct has long been one of Sociology’s central tenets. See for example (Berger and Luckmann). This includes the concept of race, the meaning of which is socially constructed. 

2. Critical and post-modern Sociology are similarly relativistic, rejecting the objectification of existing social and cultural arrangements.

3. The concept of Institutional Racism has been around for half a century. It stresses the structural nature of racism, which is built into laws, institutions, banking, housing and employment practices, and operate independently from Individual prejudices. 

4. Critical Legal Studies (C. L. S.) is a movement which emerged In the 1970s. Its premise is that the law, rather than being a neutral system based on objective principles, operates to reinforce established social hierarchies. ( The Man Behind Critical Race Theory pp. 24-25). Its primary focus is on social class. 

5. Prominently absent from the discussions of C.R.T.’s precursors is the brilliant trail-blazing work of the Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal. In An American Dilemma (1944), the Nobel laureate explains the vicious cycle of black oppression: whites oppress blacks, and then use blacks’ poor performance as reason for their oppression. 

As just mentioned, Derrick Bell and the other founders of C. R. T. attack not only conservatism, but they also give up on the liberal Civil Rights efforts, noting that these cannot solve the problem of racial inequality. Why not? 

Because liberalism, as formulated initially by men such as John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, focuses on individual rights and on the dangers of government overreach and tyranny. The liberal solution is the creation of a legal system which claims to protect individual rights blindly and impartially. However, C. R. T. notes that the law reflects power relationships. It is not blind and impartial. Whenever some degree of racial progress has been achieved, it has been temporary and eventually reversed. Examples: 

1.Reconstruction (1865-1877) was followed by Jim Crow. 

2. The 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown vs. Board of Education declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. In the 1970s, the attempt to integrate schools took the form of busing. However, the attempt was criticized not only by conservatives but also by the likes of Derrick Bell, and it failed. White schools were farther away than the local schools to which black students would otherwise have gone. Thus the burden of school integration remained the same. 

3. Furthermore, residential segregation and ghettoization did not diminish, due to white flight to the suburbs. 

4. Another liberal effort was Affirmative Action. In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled in the Bakke case that it is permissible to consider race as a factor in college admissions, but that explicit racial quotas are unconstitutional. 

5. President Obama’s election in 2008 was a major liberal victory. However, it has been followed by the vicious Trumpist reaction. 

According to Bell, all such liberal solutions constitute “treatment for ailment whose worst symptoms can be temporarily alleviated but which cannot be cured.” (p. 22) 

According to the author, “racial progress occurs mainly when it aligns with white interests” He calls this “Interest Convergence” (p. 24). For example, 

1.“Emancipation came about as a prerequisite for saving the Union.” (p.22) 

2. “societal changes of the mid-twentieth century were NOT the result of a moral awakening among whites (but) the product of interest convergence and Cold War pragmatism.” (p. 24). Competition with the Soviet Union for support in Africa and elsewhere in the third world (e.g India). 

In sum, when the courts and conservatives preach “color blindness,” it APPEARS they desire equality. But in fact, in leaves the (unequal) situation intact and fails to address the machinery of inequality and the need to address historical wrongs. So nothing changes (p. 22). 

3. In addition, C. R. T. adds variables to the analysis of intractable inequality, namely gender and social class (p. 25). This introduces the concept of Intersectionality. 

All in all, Bell is skeptical, growing increasingly “doubtful about the prospect of ever achieving racial equality.” (p. 24). One wonders whether his skepticism turns into fatalism. 

Bell would argue that even Obama’s election cannot refute his skepticism: “We can recognize this... as a significant moment like the civil rights protests, the 1963 March for Jobs and Justice in DC, the Brown decision, so many more great moments that in retrospect promised much and, in the end, signified nothing except that the hostility and alienation toward black people continues in forms that frustrate thoughtful blacks and place the country ever closer to premature demise.” (26). 

After a decade of Tea Party, Trumpism, white nationalism and voter suppression, Bell and C. R. T. appear pretty realistic and prescient. The people at Fox News accuse C. R. T. of being black supremacist, and affirmative action of being reverse discrimination. They deride “wokeness,” which simply means being alert and aware of social and racial injustice and discrimination. They attack C. R. T. , even though this theory is itself hostile to liberalism. But it is too late. C.R. T is here to stay. It reveals how “the gap between words and reality in the American project persists” (p. 26). The political Right worries that C. R. T. will indoctrinate high schoolers. But the theory is a major intellectual contribution, most appropriate for graduate school. It helps us to understand why the country’s race relations continue to resist change so stubbornly. 

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