{"id":590571,"date":"2021-07-14T05:05:47","date_gmt":"2021-07-14T09:05:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=590571"},"modified":"2021-07-14T05:05:49","modified_gmt":"2021-07-14T09:05:49","slug":"how-critical-race-theory-led-to-kendi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/how-critical-race-theory-led-to-kendi\/","title":{"rendered":"How Critical Race Theory Led to Kendi"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fhow-critical-race-theory-led-to-kendi%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=590571&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/GettyImages-1211664100-e1603302324361.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p>In 1976, two decades after <em>Brown<\/em> v. <em>Board<\/em> outlawed segregated schools, the critical race theorist Derrick Bell published <a href=\"https:\/\/digitalcommons.law.yale.edu\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?article=6361&amp;context=ylj\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">an influential critique<\/a> of the decision. Bell, a former civil rights attorney, did not object to the ruling in principle but rather to how courts were construing it: In the name of equal opportunity, schools had been ordered to achieve a racial balance that reflected the demographics of their surrounding district\u2014even when doing so hurt black students.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Low academic performance and large numbers of disciplinary and expulsion cases are only two of the predictable outcomes in integrated schools,&#8221; Bell wrote.<\/p>\n<p>His cynicism would grow as the years wore on. By 1980, he had become convinced that <em>Brown<\/em> was never really intended to help blacks but instead was aimed at managing global perceptions of the United States, where segregation was damaging the country&#8217;s reputation as it fought the Cold War. It was also damaging the Southern economy, where industrialization had lagged since Reconstruction. For a brief moment, Bell <a href=\"https:\/\/harvardlawreview.org\/1980\/01\/brown-v-board-of-education-and-the-interest-convergence-dilemma\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">wrote<\/a> in the <em>Harvard Law Review<\/em>, the interests of blacks and whites converged. When that moment passed, racial progress predictably stalled.<\/p>\n<p>Bell&#8217;s articles helped jumpstart the legal movement now called &#8220;critical race theory&#8221; (CRT), which has become the latest battleground in America&#8217;s culture war. Among conservatives, the term now functions as a synonym for pop &#8220;antiracism&#8221; and the diversity gurus associated with it, particularly Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo.<\/p>\n<p>As red states consider laws banning critical race theory from public schools, critical race theorists have responded with one of two contradictory arguments: that CRT is an obscure academic theory that will never find its way into K-12 classrooms, or that it just means teaching about slavery and Jim Crow. All critical race theory seeks to do, one <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/outlook\/critical-race-theory-law-systemic-racism\/2021\/07\/02\/6abe7590-d9f5-11eb-8fb8-aea56b785b00_story.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Washington Post<\/em> op-ed<\/a> said, is &#8220;explain how our laws and institutions \u2026 circumscribe the rights of racial minorities.&#8221; And Kimberl\u00e9 Crenshaw, herself a leading critical race theorist, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/outlook\/critical-race-theory-history\/2021\/07\/02\/e90bc94a-da75-11eb-9bbb-37c30dcf9363_story.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">has called<\/a> the anti-CRT bills an attempt to &#8220;whitewash history&#8221;\u2014implying that CRT is nothing more than a historical program.<\/p>\n<p>There are indeed some differences between critical race theory and the new racial orthodoxy. But there is also a direct link between them. The main premises of pop &#8220;antiracism&#8221;\u2014all racial disparities are illegitimate, unconscious bias is everywhere, racist speech is violence\u2014all stem from critical race theory, which is essentially a synthesis of Kendi and DiAngelo. Though neither figure is a critical race theorist, each has helped to popularize CRT&#8217;s underlying worldview, one in which structural and subconscious racism are intimately intertwined.<\/p>\n<p>Kendi&#8217;s critique of standardized tests, for example, has clear roots in CRT&#8217;s argument that race-neutral policies perpetuate oppression. And DiAngelo&#8217;s work on &#8220;white fragility&#8221; owes a great debt to the critical racist theorist Charles Lawrence, who argued that whites supported race-neutral policies because of their unconscious biases.<\/p>\n<p>Critical race theorists did not reach these conclusions through Marxist theory but through a revisionist reading of landmark civil rights cases, which they argued had been interpreted too conservatively.<\/p>\n<p>By the mid-1970s, segregation was gone, but disparities in jobs, housing, and education persisted. The reason for this, critical race theory charged, was that civil rights law remained wedded to a colorblind ideal that made redressing racial inequality impossible. As Alan David Freeman <a href=\"https:\/\/scholarship.law.umn.edu\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?article=1803&amp;context=mlr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">put it<\/a>, courts had outlawed discrimination without eliminating &#8220;the conditions associated with it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The critical race theorists thus urged courts to adopt a more outcome-oriented approach to civil rights. &#8220;Institutions or practices oppressive in their effects,&#8221; Freeman wrote, should have to &#8220;justify themselves as legitimate.&#8221; He pointed to <em>Griggs<\/em> v. <em>Duke Power Co.<\/em> as a rare example of the Supreme Court taking that approach. In <em>Griggs<\/em>, the court forbade employers from using intelligence tests that disproportionately disqualified black applicants, unless the tests were &#8220;significantly related&#8221; to job performance.<\/p>\n<p>This argument assumed that the lion&#8217;s share of racial disparities were rooted in racism, a position only slightly more moderate than Kendi&#8217;s. &#8220;When I see racial disparities, I see racism,&#8221; Kendi <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2018\/03\/27\/upshot\/reader-questions-about-race-gender-and-mobility.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">told<\/a> the <em>New York Times<\/em> in 2018. And at <a href=\"https:\/\/earlysuccess.org\/ibram-kendi-talks-antiracist-early-childhood-policy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a 2020 gathering<\/a> for early childhood advocates, he stated that &#8220;the outcome of \u2026 policies&#8221; is &#8220;all that is relevant&#8221; when assessing them. Because &#8220;Black and Latinx children routinely get lower scores&#8221; on the SAT, Kendi <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bosedequity.org\/blog\/read-ibram-x-kendis-testimony-in-support-of-the-working-group-recommendation-to-suspendthetest\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">has said<\/a>, there must be &#8220;something wrong with the test.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Such results-based reasoning poses a slippery slope of which the critical race theorists were well aware: Many race-neutral policies, from bridge tolls to sales taxes to licensing laws, have a racially disparate impact of some kind; what was to stop courts from declaring much of modern government a civil rights violation?<\/p>\n<p>Critical race theory&#8217;s answer was implicit bias: Disparate impact was necessary but not sufficient for racism, CRT said; race-neutral policies were only racist if whites subconsciously supported them because of their disparate impact, which served to reinforce white dominance. The critical race theorists <a href=\"https:\/\/scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu\/bitstream\/10125\/65975\/1\/The%20Id%20The%20Ego.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Charles Lawrence<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/digitalcommons.law.yale.edu\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?article=7965&amp;context=ylj\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ian Haney Lopez<\/a> defined institutional racism in almost exactly this way. One &#8220;benefit&#8221; of focusing on &#8220;unconscious racial attitudes,&#8221; Lawrence said, is that it &#8220;significantly decreases&#8221; the number of neutral policies threatened by anti-discrimination law.<\/p>\n<p>But because critical race theory sees those attitudes in most institutions, this limiting principle is not terribly limiting. Lawrence himself writes that messages of racial inferiority are &#8220;deeply ingrained in our culture,&#8221; transmitted through the symbols, scripts, and stereotypes we take for granted. The ubiquity of these messages means that any race-neutral policy could theoretically be motivated by them, making all disparate impact inherently suspect. Far from preventing a slide from CRT to Kendi, unconscious bias greases the slope.<\/p>\n<p>It also justifies the therapeutic approach to &#8220;antiracism&#8221; associated with DiAngelo. If subconscious racism reinforced structural oppression, CRT reasoned, dismantling oppressive structures would require psychic intervention. &#8220;The illness of racism infects almost everyone,&#8221; Lawrence wrote. &#8220;Acknowledging and understanding the malignancy are prerequisites to \u2026 an appropriate cure.&#8221; This is precisely the premise of DiAngelo&#8217;s white fragility workshops, which enjoin whites to recognize and confront their own racism. And the idea that racism is an &#8220;illness&#8221; in need of a &#8220;cure&#8221; was on full display in the title of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/06\/06\/nyregion\/yale-psychiatrist-aruna-khilanani.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">recent talk<\/a> at Yale Medical School: &#8220;The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>For CRT, the cure was to censor words, ideas, and images that perpetuated racist attitudes, something Kendi has also proposed. Lawrence claimed <em>Brown<\/em> v. <em>Board<\/em> provided a warrant for such censorship. Chief Justice Earl Warren had held that segregation was unconstitutional because it stigmatized black students, &#8220;generat[ing] a feeling of inferiority as to their status.&#8221; In other words, Lawrence argued, &#8220;<em>Brown<\/em> held that segregated schools were unconstitutional primarily because of the message segregation conveys.&#8221; It could therefore &#8220;be read as regulating the content of racist speech.&#8221; Kendi, who has argued for a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/interactives\/2019\/how-to-fix-politics-in-america\/inequality\/pass-an-anti-racist-constitutional-amendment\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">constitutional amendment<\/a> banning &#8220;racist ideas,&#8221; would find much utility in such a reading.<\/p>\n<p>Some critical race theorists went so far as to conflate speech with violence, an idea that is also seeping into K-12 education. In December, Seattle Public Schools held a training for teachers that <a href=\"https:\/\/christopherrufo.com\/seattle-teaching-hate\/\">accused<\/a> educators of committing &#8220;spirit murder&#8221; against black children. The term comes from the critical race theorist Patricia Williams, who <a href=\"https:\/\/repository.law.miami.edu\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?article=2092&amp;context=umlr&amp;httpsredir=1&amp;referer=\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">argued<\/a> that small, subtle acts of racism were &#8220;as psychically obliterating as robbery or assault.&#8221; Spirit murder, she said, ought to be considered a &#8220;capital moral offense.&#8221; Another critical race theorist, Richard Delgado, <a href=\"https:\/\/scholarship.law.ua.edu\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?article=1359&amp;context=fac_articles\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">argued<\/a> that the &#8220;psychological harm&#8221; of racial insults entitled their targets to monetary recompense.<\/p>\n<p>Why did CRT become so influential? Perhaps because it left class largely out of the picture. CRT came onto the scene just as the Reagan revolution was beginning; by the time the discipline had fully established itself, Bill Clinton&#8217;s Democrats were singing the virtues of free trade. Civil rights maximalism, aimed at closing the gaps between blacks and whites, did not threaten the basics of that economic order. Full-throated Marxism, aimed at closing the gaps between rich and poor, would have.<\/p>\n<p>Yet the early critical race theorists never expected to have much influence; they were convinced that the white majority wouldn&#8217;t allow it. Racial equality is &#8220;not a realistic goal&#8221; in a &#8220;perilously racist America,&#8221; Bell <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalracetheory\/files\/2019\/02\/Bell-Racial-Realism.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">wrote<\/a> in 1992. &#8220;Our actions are not likely to lead to transcendent change.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Bell&#8217;s fatalism was understandable at the time, when critical race theory was confined to a few law school seminars. It is less understandable now, when critical race theory is defended by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2021\/07\/08\/nikole-hannah-jones-just-proved-correctness-critical-race-theory\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">mainstream media outlets<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2021\/jun\/24\/critical-race-theory-general-mark-milley-defence-military\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">four-star generals<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/biden-administration\/biden-nominee-to-opm-signals-woke-ification-of-the-federal-government\/\">government officials<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20210705090534\/https:\/\/ra.nea.org\/business-item\/2021-nbi-039\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">massive teachers&#8217; unions<\/a>. Far from sneering at CRT&#8217;s critique of colorblindness, white liberals have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tabletmag.com\/sections\/news\/articles\/americas-white-saviors\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">increasingly embraced it<\/a>. And so have some white conservatives: Phil Scott, the Republican governor of Vermont, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.economist.com\/united-states\/2021\/04\/11\/vermonts-race-based-vaccine-policy-raises-legal-questions\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">announced in April<\/a> that his state would give minorities priority access to the COVID-19 vaccine.<\/p>\n<p>Critical race theory seems poised to transform American institutions from within. If it succeeds, it will have proven its founder wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1976, two decades after Brown v. Board outlawed segregated schools, the critical race theorist Derrick Bell published an influential critique of the decision. Bell, a former civil rights attorney, &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1890113,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-590571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=590571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1890113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=590571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=590571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=590571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}