What is Critical Race Theory?

We hear a lot about Critical race Theory these days, but many people have little or no idea what it actually is!

Since first it appeared in the early 1980s, Critical Race Theory has slowly risen to such prominence that it now permeates much of the discourse on racism in the Western World. Many of the expressions which we hear being bandied about so often today, such as ‘institutional racism’, ‘white privilege’, ‘microaggressions’ and so on, have their origins in Critical Race Theory. Although the theory is woefully deficient in logic and rationality, the very fact that it is so influential means that it is important to know at least something about the subject.

     Many, perhaps most, of the pioneers who fought to establish equal opportunities for all racial groups, both in Britain and the United States, in the decades following the end of the war were white. They undertook this struggle in the main by using traditional methods of academic discourse. Evidence was produced, intelligence measured, statistics gathered and analysed. Some black people found it a little galling that what was essentially their own struggle for equal rights was being spearheaded and superintended by white liberals. In the 1970s and 1980s ideas began to circulate in America which originated at Harvard Law School and evolved into a separate theory about what the struggle against racism should entail. This became known as Critical Race Theory and some of the reasoning behind it have now became part of mainstream thinking about race. Among the pioneers were academics like Richard Delgado, the son of a Mexican immigrant, at one of whose books we shall shortly be looking. It is his ancestry and consequent minority status that bestows upon Delgado the supposed authority to speak on behalf of other ethnic groups such as African-Americans.

     Whether in deliberate opposition to the usual way in which white academics went about things or for some other reason, a lot of Critical Race Theory is based on altogether different methods from those generally used in the West when debating or studying ideas. One might even say that the theory is based upon axioms or revealed truths which are not in themselves accessible to reasoned debate.

     Some of the key aspects of Critical Race Theory are a dismissal of classical liberalism of the kind which arose with the Enlightenment, rejection of rational and objective enquiry, affirmation of subjective experience, whether in story-telling or personal testimony, sometimes known as standpoint epistemology, and a tendency towards cultural or racial separatism. Since these may sound abstruse and a little difficult for the average person readily to grasp, perhaps it would be easiest to look at how Critical Race Theory works in practice. We shall begin with standpoint epistemology.

     A year after the Covid-19 epidemic first swept Britain, it was clear that it had had a deleterious effect on employment prospects, particularly among young people. On 14 April 2021 a news item appeared on the BBC website which emphasised that this situation might affect a disproportionate number of young black and Asian people. Headed, ‘Employers ignore you if they can't pronounce your surname’, the piece focused on the experiences of a 21 year-old woman from Glasgow called Mary Ibiyemi. A key feature of standpoint epistemology is that members of racial minorities, Ibiyemi was of African origin, have access to truths which are not evident to the white, majority population. Their testimony should therefore be treated with special and particular respect. This is of course very different from the usual western tradition, where the nationality, colour or religion of an individual is ideally treated as being irrelevant; it is on the evidence and power of reasoning that we normally decide if what a person is saying is sensible and worth listening to. What did Mary Ibiyemi say? Here is the account of her views, as described in the article,

     ‘My surname isn't one a lot of people can pronounce, and I feel employers are

      more likely to skip over it,’ she said, ‘I feel if you're from the black or Asian

      communities, if you have a hard-sounding name then they are less likely to

      take the time to get to know the person, the pronunciation and try to work

      with you as a person.’

     Now the first thing we should note is that because this is a black woman speaking about what she perceives to be her own experience of racism, it would be considered very poor form, according to the mores of those who embrace the tenets of Critical Race Theory, to question her closely or unsympathetically about what she says. By virtue of belonging to a minority ethnic group in a white-dominated society, Ibiyemi’s views on race are pretty much off limits to anybody other than a member of her own racial group. We observe secondly that she says twice that she ‘feels’ this racism and not that she has actual, solid and verifiable evidence for it. This too is part of the ideology. We may not ask her to debate this subject, neither should we enquire too deeply into the grounds for her belief in the idea that racism relating to her name is a factor in her unemployment. She ‘feels’ this and there is an end to the matter. To press her on this point might be seen as an oppressive, or even racist, act in itself.

     Some readers might be thinking that this is a little unfair, because it allows members of ethnic minorities a ‘free pass’, as it were, to make any statement at all and then be relieved of the consequences of explaining or defending what has been said. This ability to make unsubstantiated and sometimes tendentious allegations without the need to back them up with facts is a privilege which few of us enjoy and it is not difficult to see how such a practice might be abused. Let us look at what might be said in response to Mary Ibiyemi’s ‘feelings’.

     We are told specifically that members of Asian communities in Britain with what are described as ‘hard-sounding’ names might be victims of discrimination and that this might affect their employment prospects. Here is something which we can certainly investigate. We might begin by looking at the statistics for the percentages of young people belonging to one or two Asian communities in Britain and seeing how many of them are neither employed nor in full-time education.

     It turns out that Chinese names, which are famously difficult for westerners to pronounce correctly, pose no handicap to young people of Mary Ibiyemi’s age in Britain who are of Chinese origin. The figures show that just 6.2 % of Chinese people aged between 16 and 24 are not in employment, education or training. This is compared with a national average of 12.8 %. Let’s look at another Asian community with unusual names, those of Indian origin. There, the figure for young people who are not working or studying is also below the national average.

     All this makes us stop and think a little more about the young black woman’s feelings; her ‘truth’, if you like. It is clear that her ‘feelings’ were not an accurate gauge of the state of affairs in the real world. But then, her story sounded inherently implausible from the start. Do Polish plumbers and builders find themselves standing idle because they have ‘hard-sounding’ names? The whole idea sounds dubious.

    This reliance upon subjectivity was of course displayed to great and telling effect when Meghan Merkle, married to the British queen’s grandson, was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey in 2021. After the former actress had given her perspective of events, she was asked, ‘'How do you feel about the palace hearing you speak your truth today?' This was revealing, because of course allegations of racism had been made. Both Oprah Winfrey and Meghan Markle are African-Americans and so it was inconceivable that either would doubt anything the other had to say about racial prejudice. It was taken as given that when a black woman talks about supposed racial prejudice, then he or she is ‘speaking her truth’.

     One very important point about Critical Race Theory which is sometimes overlooked is that most of those who subscribe to it reject the rationality of the Enlightenment (Delgado & Stefancic, 2017). During the Enlightenment, that period during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries sometimes also called the Age of Reason, human reasoning and the scientific method became the touchstone for the falsity or truth of hypotheses. Rather than religious revelation or spiritual insight, evidence gathered through the senses and analysed by rational thought became seen as the wisest way of studying the world. Followers of Critical Race Theory are often dismissive of this method of dealing with history or current events, believing that their own intuition can provide a surer path to the truth as it relates to such matters as racial prejudice and the essential nature of the society in which they live.

     Abandoning the paramount role of reason can be a hazardous undertaking, of course, and leads on occasion to one exceedingly undesirable consequence; which is to say an increase in racism. When Oprah Winfrey asked her widely reported question about Meghan Markle’s own ‘truth’, this was mocked and derided in some newspapers and magazines. The fact that the two people taking part in the conversation were both black had the unfortunate effect of giving a racial tone to what looked like a patronising dismissal.

      In a broader context, declining to abide by the generally accepted customs and rules of discussion and debate can lay the followers of this philosophical system open to the charge that they are actually incapable of coherent and logical reasoning. One eminent American jurist, Judge Richard Posner, has explicitly said of those who are proponents of Critical Race Theory that,

     by repudiating reasoned argumentation, they reinforce stereotypes about the

     intellectual capacities of non-whites

Posner has also written disparagingly about the practice of abandoning rational enquiry and depending instead on narrative to uncover truth.

        Standpoint epistemology dovetails neatly with the use of narrative to study society and its problems. Storytelling, the relating of narratives and construction of myths are very popular in Critical Race Theory. Most people are aware that the stories which we tell about our experiences are all too often unreliable and coloured by our own feelings and prejudices. For that reason, we usually compare mentally what we are being told with what we already know of people and the situations about which they are telling us. In this way, we subconsciously work out whether or not we are hearing an accurate and unvarnished account, rather than one which has been edited and exaggerated or even perhaps a complete pack of fairy tales. This is how most of us operate, perhaps without even thinking too deeply about what we are doing. This attitude is anathema for the adherents of Critical Race Theory. When a member of an ethnic minority relates a narrative about prejudice or oppression, the very act of doubting what is said or even suspending belief until evidence is provided, can be seen as further oppression.

    In a sense, dismantling the foundations upon which Critical Race Theory is built is too easy, but alarmingly few journalists or commentators appear to have the appetite for such an undertaking, probably because of the fear that they will be accused of racism. Let us look at what some of the most significant figures in CRT have to say about the idea of storytelling, which we mentioned above. The temptation to remark that in the vernacular ‘telling stories’ is a euphemism for lying is strong, but must be resisted. It might though be instructive at this point to examine in detail the concept of narrative as outlined in a well-known and authoritative book on Critical Race Theory. Let us read what is said about storytelling by its proponents.

     Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, has, since its first publication 20 years ago, become the standard introduction to the topic of CRT and is used as a textbook in university courses. The two authors, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, are acknowledged to be experts in the field. All quotations are taken from the third edition of the book, published in 2017. The chapter with which we are currently concerned is called, ‘Legal Storytelling and Narrative Analysis’. One of the ideas expounded is that of so-called ‘counterstorytelling’. The authors of the book explain, quite correctly that all societies have myths or accepted narratives to which most people in a nation or community subscribe.  This idea is melded together with another central tenet of CRT which calls upon us to abandon reason itself, as was mentioned above. This can have the most momentous effects, not the least of which being that it can create an impenetrable barrier to communication between people belonging to different ethnicities.

     The difficulty is that not all those trying to discuss race and racism with black people are aware that they are effectively speaking a different language to those with whom they are attempting to establish a dialogue. This can lead to problems. Most white people in Europe and North America, whether crane drivers or university professors, work unconsciously to a common framework. They are assuming such things as the paramount role of human reason when working out if something is true and also take it for granted that reality is accessible to investigation by the scientific method. They seldom take the trouble to put it into those words and express this clearly of course; it is just the background in which we have all been raised and which has been operating since the eighteenth century.

     In the same way, we ideally disregard the religion, social class, skin colour or nationality of a person with whom we are debating and concentrate instead upon what is being said, rather than by whom. We hope, in other words, to set ideas against each other according to certain conventions and see how they fare when everybody thinks, talks or writes about them. Discussion is therefore turned into a bloodless and academic exercise. Critical Race Theory will have none of this. The things with which it is concerned are too important to be analysed in this cold-hearted and objective fashion and the personal history of the person putting forward a view is most definitely of importance.

     In the modern, Western world, if somebody expresses an opinion about the history of Europe, the inequalities of society or the existence of atoms, then we are likely to ask, ‘Why do you think that?’ or perhaps, ‘Do you have evidence for this belief?’ Of course, in day-to-day life we might not phrase the questions in such formal language, but that is the general meaning. For the greater part of human history, questions like this were not part of ordinary people’s intellectual toolkit. If asked about beliefs, then the answer would be likely to end the conversation and close off any supplementary enquiries. Until the nineteenth century, asking, ‘Why do you think that?’ might typically have been met with a response such as, ‘Because it says do in scripture.’ Delving into our beliefs by dissecting them with the tools of logic and requirements for strong evidence would have appeared a dangerous doctrine to many people.

     Today, almost all of us know, however vaguely, that we need to have evidence and good reasons to hold a view. We may not actually have those things for some of our opinions, but at least we know that we should have them. Critical Race Theory works according to quite different rules. The scientific method itself is seen as a tool of white hegemony, and reasoned debate is a rabbit hole down which an oppressive system tries to lure people. These are little more than stratagems devised by powerful and cunning white men to confuse issues relating to ethnicity, race and the true structure of society. As was mentioned above, the very act of asking, ‘What grounds do you have for supposing this to be so?’ can be interpreted as an act of racist aggression when asked of a black woman by a white man. This leads us to another important feature of Critical Race Theory, which is white privilege.

     Phrases such a ‘white privilege’ and ‘institutional racism’ were, until a couple of decades ago, unknown to the average person. They have been around for many years, but their use was restricted to scholarly circles and their meanings very clearly and precisely defined. In a book published in 1986, the section on Institutional racism is headed, ‘The problem of institutionalised racism. This academic work,  Race and Ethnicity, by John Rex, published in Britain by the Open University, explores what was then described as, ‘the problematic concept of ‘institutional racism’. It was made plain at that time that this was a term and an idea about which there were many difficulties and that unless those using it were very careful, it might easily lead to misunderstanding. There may, 45 years ago, have been many reasons to avoid phrases such as ‘institutional racism’ and ‘white privilege’, but all such reservations have now been swept away and a day scarcely passes in which we do not read or hear these terms being bandied about.

     That society, which was created by and for white people, is of itself and by its very nature racist, is one of those things which I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter as being more like revealed truths than carefully argued positions. White people who eve attempt to debate the topic are likely to find themselves being eyed askance as closet racists. They are, to use another popular expression, probably unaware of their ‘white privilege’. Encountering this dogmatic framework can be irritating and the irritation can sometimes spill over into offence. After all, if a white person was discussing some aspect of the modern world with a black man and then announced, ‘Oh, you wouldn’t understand what I’m talking about, because you’re black!’, eyebrows would be raised. Once more, as in other areas of this theory, there is a belief that black people have access to insight and knowledge which can only be acquired by lived experience and cannot be transmitted to others by words alone, however articulately expressed or rationally argued. In that sense, it is perhaps more akin to mysticism than anything else.

     It will not have escaped notice that white people are placed at a distinct disadvantage when talking about Critical Race Theory. The very act of asking for explanations or evidence can be interpreted as hostility and another instance of a white person not ‘checking’ his or her privilege. About one key aspect of Critical Race Theory though, white people may feel entitled to express an opinion, since it is something of which white societies have had a good deal of overwhelmingly negative experience. This is the vigilante justice of lynch law advocated by all proponents of CRT. It is not called that of course, but that is certainly what is being suggested when we read passages such as the following. After a discussion of the difference between African-Americans who adhere to an ‘assimilationist’ or ‘nationalist’ position, this is said of so-called ‘nationalists’,

     Persons of this persuasion identify with the “race rebel” aspect of some black 

     criminals and support them, at least if they are young, redeemable, and a

    potential asset to the community. African Americans who hold this view want

    the police to leave certain black offenders alone and let the community handle

    them. Antisnitching campaigns in black neighborhoods are evidence of this

    attitude.

     Let us think a little about this subject, which is presented as being an innocuous, even sensible, proposal. During the Black Lives Matter disturbances in 2020, there were calls to ‘defund’ the police, although few people seemed to have any real idea of what that might actually entail. We ask ourselves to begin with, what might be meant by letting the ‘community’ ‘handle’ those supposed to be guilty of criminal offences? Will the guilt of such individuals be assumed or would they be brought before some kind of judicial tribunal; a ‘people’s court’, perhaps? What of those found guilty by such ad hoc proceedings? How will they be ‘handled’? Perhaps by being put on probation or given a suspended sentence? Will social workers be involved in pre-sentence reports? Such proposals usually raise more questions than they answer.

     A clue to the likely course of events when once a suspected offender has been apprehended may perhaps be gleaned from the mention of ‘antisnitching campaigns in black neighbourhoods’. This brings unbidden to our minds the saying popular in some such neighbourhoods, to the effect that ‘snitches get stitches’. Sometimes, the warning is even more stark, ‘snitches get stitches and wind up in ditches’. Stitches are needed for those who have been badly cut and of course ditches are a traditional location for the disposal of the corpses of murder-victims. If such penalties are mooted for those who speak unguardedly to police officers, it is unlikely that the punishments dealt out to thieves, rapists or child molesters would be any milder.

     Whenever communities of any kind have been allowed to ‘handle’ offenders themselves, rather than relying upon the police and judicial system, the results are usually grisly and often entail death. One remembers with horror the lynchings which took place in the United States well into the twentieth century. More recently, there were in the United Kingdom province of Northern Ireland ‘No Go’ areas in the 1970s, where law and order was maintained by the ‘community’. At that time snitches really did end up in ditches; death being the punishment for those thought to be passing information to the army or police. Theft was sometimes dealt with peremptorily by what was known as kneecapping. This involved shooting a man through the knee and so crippling him for life.

     The history of communities handling offenders themselves, without official involvement is a grim one and there is no reason at all to suppose that any version devised and operated by black people would be any less bloodthirsty. That a major thread in modern anti-racism looks even vaguely in a favourable way upon such a state of affairs is disturbing.

     This has been a most cursory examination of Critical Race Theory, although perhaps broad enough to cause the average person to stop and ask himself whether the chief concepts sound sensible or, on the other hand, foolish and dangerous.