Purely Political, James Buckley
Critical Race Theory has made the transition – escaped from the lab as it were – from disputed and discussed academic subject to a fully infectious disease.
CRT had previously permeated most institutes of higher learning in the United States, from Harvard and Yale to Berkeley and Stanford and many, if not most, colleges in the heartland too.
But now, its corrosive appeal affects not only academia, but also nearly all U.S. businesses from the smallest to the largest, along with banking institutions, police departments, city administrations, along with every elementary school, middle school and high school in the nation.
CRT is an outgrowth of the European Marxist School of Critical Theory, and its goal is the destruction of American constitutional law, the country’s social life, its political structures and its economic system.
CRT’s intellectual origins go back to the 1960s and ’70s and maybe as far back as the early 20th entury, and it concludes that the American judicial system does not and cannot deal with what it calls “systemic” racism.
CRT proposes that “race” is not a natural biological feature of human beings but rather a cultural category invented to oppress and exploit people of color. Critical race theorists hold that racism is inherent in the law and legal institutions of the United States and is used to maintain social, economic, and political inequalities between whites and nonwhites, especially African Americans. Consequently, those institutions need to be dismantled and destroyed.
In other words, what most of us have craved, supported and hoped for above all else: equal justice for all and a color-blind country where every person is judged “not by the color of his skin but by the content of their character,” is exactly the opposite of what CRT and organizations such as Black Lives Matter want.
CRT adherents seek to dismantle the American justice system, its prison system, its educational system, and to throw any idea of a color-blind society into the collective trash bin. Its proponents eschew the idea of equal justice; they want a system that would tip the balance of justice in their favor, to punish white people more severely than black people or any people of color, based upon historical injustices.
CRT proponents figure they can reach their goals by mandating racially equitable outcomes, institutionalizing identity politics, forcing whites to undergo regular diversity training, doing away with standardized tests, adding a “diversity/equity” scorecard to college applications, changing curriculum requirements, introducing anti-hate speech protocols, and forbidding “racist language.” Whites should be required to donate to anti-racism political groups (such as BLM), fund CRT programs and research, re-imagine policing, rename “offensive” buildings and, well, much more.
CRT is Black Lives Matter accelerated.
George Soros acolyte Chesa Boudin, the San Francisco district attorney, refuses to bring charges against looters in the city.
Which shouldn’t be too surprising; his mother, former Weather Underground activist and convicted murderer Kathy Boudin spent 20 years in prison, as did his father, David Gilbert, convicted of the same Brink’s robbery gone terribly wrong.
But that’s only half the story. When Chesa’s parents were imprisoned, Chesa was turned over to and raised by former fugitive Bill Ayers (yes, the same Bill Ayers who launched the political career of Barack Obama) and his fugitive wife, Bernardine Dohrn. Chesa Boudin worked as a translator for Venezuela president Hugo Chavez before returning to the U.S. as a public defender.
CRT is behind the non-existent capture, trial and punishment of the San Francisco looters, as it is behind the non-punishment of those that have terrorized other U.S. cities, such as New York, Chicago, Portland, Seattle and Los Angeles for the past two years.
There are hundreds more examples of these kinds of people who now either hold high-paying government jobs or are tenured professors at America’s most renowned academic establishments. Which, if this were a perfect world, would be where they’d stay. But, somehow, their twisted message is embraced by many Democrat politicians, corporate CEOs and social media billionaires who blindly take up their cause and spread the disease.
No one knows where it will end, but if the trend of full-scale acceptance of BLM and Critical Race Theory isn’t halted, my guess is it will not end well.
James Buckley is a longtime Montecito resident. He welcomes questions or comments at jimb@substack.com.
