Evolution of Critical Race Theory
Critical race theory is Marxist; and it is not new. Critical race theory originated in the mid-1970s in the writings of American legal scholars. Critical race theory emerged as a serious academic movement by the 1980s. Critical race theory is rooted in critical theory. Critical race theory has two common themes. First, it claims that white supremacy, with its societal or structural racism, maintains power through the law. Second, transforming the relationship between law and racial power and achievement of racial emancipation and anti-subordination is possible. Consequently, critical race theory exchanges the two traditional Marxist classes, oppressive capitalists and oppressed labors for oppressive structural racism and white supremacists and oppressed minorities primarily blacks. This is the classical Marxist strategy of fomenting class, or racial, warfare. In 1997, Judge Richard Posner argued that Critical race theory turns its back on the Western tradition of rational inquiry, forswearing analysis for narrative,” and “by repudiating reasoned argumentation, [critical race theorists] reinforce stereotypes about the intellectual capacities of nonwhites. Former Judge Alex Kozinski criticized critical race theorists in 1997 for raising “insuperable barriers to mutual understanding” eliminating opportunities for “meaningful dialog. Therefore, critical race theory labels all white people with their white privilege as oppressors who use structural racism to suppress minorities, especially blacks. The result is high levels of racial animosity.
Critical Theory (CT) is a Marxist approach to social philosophy that focuses on the critique of society and culture in order to reveal and challenge power structures. CT is foundational to critical race theory. With origins in sociology, psychology, psychiatry, and literary criticism, CT argues that social problems are influenced and created more by societal structures and cultural assumptions than by individual and psychological factors. CT maintains that ideology is the principle obstacle to human liberation.
Critical theory was established as a school of thought In sociology, psychology, psychiatry, and political philosophy 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,” a key tenant of Marxism. Critical Theory means the Western-Marxist philosophy developed in Germany in the 1930s and drawing on the ideas of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. Modern CT has also been influenced by Gyrgy Luk¡cs and Antonio Gramsci, as well as second-generation Frankfurt School scholars, notably Jrgen Habermas. In Habermas’s work, CT transcended its theoretical roots in German idealism and progressed closer to American pragmatism. Concern for social “base and superstructure” is one of the remaining Marxist philosophical concepts in much contemporary CT.
Approximately a decade before critical race theory began to emerge in the United states, Herbert Marcuse, considered the Father of the new left, observed that before radical Marxist change could occur in Western Europe and the United states, a propaganda based educational dictatorship would be required. Marcuse described the strategies necessary to establish the educational dictatorship and the groups, embraced by critical race theorists, that would best serve as radical revolutionaries to change western culture.
Critical Race Theory Revolutionaries and Tactics
Marcuse identified anti-capitalists, radical intellectuals, the socially marginalized, exploited, persecuted outcasts and outsiders of ethnic minorities, people of color, the unemployed, and the unemployable as trainable revolutionaries. Ethnic and gender study programs were established in most universities to train the envisioned revolutionaries.” He favored these groups, the new proletarians, or laborers, of modern Marxism because he correctly believed that working class labors were no longer a potentially subversive force capable of bringing about revolutionary change in western society and culture. Critical race theory became the perfect educational dictatorship tool to train a subversive force capable of bringing about revolutionary change. Today, the Marxist critical race theory revolutionaries identified by Marcuse, are our educators from preschool to Ph.D., including National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers union leadership and members, publishers, progressive mainstream news media conglomerates, journalists, pundits, and commentators, corporate and social media executives, and leaders of the military industrial complex. Antifa affiliate members throughout Western Europe and the United States are the useful unemployed and the unemployable violent minions of progressive intolerance¦ and undemocratic means.
Strategically, Marcuse called for the gradual elimination of conservative faculty, speakers, and student groups, first at our universities, then our high schools, elementary schools, and finally in our kindergartens and preschools. Although Marcuse did not advocate violence, he indicated that the process could involve intolerance¦ and undemocratic means. The political correctness movement and designation of conservative speech as offensive trigger language, safe speech zones, cancel culture, conservative speaker shout downs, demonstrations, and Antifa riots designed to drive conservatives from campuses and our streets are some of the tactics of intolerance¦ and undemocratic means that have evolved to establish the Marcuse educational dictatorship. Currently, the corporate executives of Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, to name the most powerful speech and search platforms on the internet, were educated at universities controlled by the Marxist educational dictatorship and their Marxist curricula. Consequently, these platforms do not hesitate to reduce or eliminate conservative voices by intolerance¦ and undemocratic means.
Marxism, Critical Race Theory, and Black Lives Matter
Since their leaders claim to be trained Marxist, advocates of critical race theory and Black Lives Matter generally support the tenants of Marxism listed below. The section, of The Communist Manifesto titled Proletarians and Communists, outlines strategic details for incremental progressive domestic policy initiatives that gradually eliminate capitalism and private property. Marx wrote,
These measures will of course be different in different countries. Nevertheless, in the most advanced countries [like the United States] the following will be pretty generally applicable:
Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
Abolition of all right of inheritance.” [In the United States, inheritance taxes are incrementally moving toward abolition of all right of inheritance.]
Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State¦.
Equal liability of all labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.
Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children™s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production.”
Unfortunately, many of these measures have been enacted. Free education for all children, essential for a flourishing, capitalistic, constitutional republic like the United States of America, has been promoted in our country since colonial days.
Marxism is an atheistic philosophy that is antagonistic to the Judeo-Christian heritage of Western Europe and the United States. Judeo-Christianity, especially Biblical Christianity, has a history of individuals accomplishing great things in service to our God, His Son, and our Savior, Jesus Christ. Individuals must personally accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16, NIV). Within Biblical Christianity, there are two critical institutions, the family and the church. The Judeo-Christian family has consisted of one husband, one wife, and their children (Gen 4:1-2) since creation, For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh (Gen 2:24, NIV). The family and the church are both ordained, Holy institutions set aside to serve God.
Husbands, love your wives [and children, Eph 6:4], just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her [the church] to make her Holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word [scripture], and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, Holy and blameless (Eph 5:25-27, NIV).
Consequently, Marxist disdain the Biblical Christian church and the traditional Christian, patricentric or patriarchal family. All categories of Marxists support same sex marriage, multi-person marriages including bi-sexual partners, other forms of polygamy, single parent families, and un-wed mother families. These families contradict the concept of the traditional Biblical Christian family undermining the impact of Judeo-Christian values on our society and culture. Currently, Marxist advocates of critical race theory and Black Lives Matter vociferously denounce the patricentric or patriarchal family.
Marxist animosity toward the Biblical Christian family and church stems from the role of these two institutions in fostering individualism. This fact is well documented in Marxist writings and rhetoric. These two institutions are where individuals learn about their infinite worth in the kingdom of God when they become followers and servants of Jesus Christ. The reason for this animosity is simple; for Marxism, in all its pragmatic forms, communism, socialism, progressivism, critical race theory, and Black Lives Matter to succeed, the individual must be totally subservient to the good of the collective. For Marxists, the individual is worthless compared to the worth of the collective. In contrast, Biblical Christian individuals have infinite worth to God because God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ [God’s one and only Son, John 3:16] died for us [each individual] (Rom 5:8, NIV). In John 15:13, Jesus said, Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command (NIV).
The individualism fostered by Biblical Christianity is incompatible with Marxism. For any form of Marxism to succeed, Judeo-Christian, Biblical Christian, and the Biblical Christian church and family influence on society and culture must be eliminated or, at least, marginalized. Consequently, the vitriol displayed by Marxists toward Jews, Biblical Christians, and the Christian family and church is understandable from the Marxist, critical race theory, Black Lives Mater perspective.
Marxism, in all its forms, claims that societies will evolve into societies where wealth will be equally redistributed from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Most modern Marxist would add that the benefits and wealth of society would be equally redistributed to all regardless of individual willingness or ability to contribute to the good of society. This includes the idea of reparations supported by proponents of critical race theory and Black Lives Matter. All manifestations and characteristics of individualism must be rejected by Marxists. Of Course, Capitalism, the ultimate expression of individualism, is rejected by Marxists and the proponents of critical race theory and Black Lives Matter. Competition, personal responsibility and accountability, self-discipline, strong individual work ethic, and meritocracy, are also rejected as meaningful characteristics of a Marxist society.
Marxists, Frankfurt School philosophers, and critical theorists in our universities have influenced psychology, psychiatry, and sociology curricula and research since at least the late 1930’s. Their curricula, research, and publications emphasize the detrimental effects of competition, personal responsibility and accountability, self-discipline, strong individual work ethic, meritocracy, Christian morality and ethics, and the traditional patricentric or patriarchal family on individuals and our society. According to these psychologists and sociologists, stressing the elements of individualism in our primary and secondary schools harms some children by causing low self-esteem among low performers potentially causing future neurosis or psychosis for the low performers. Of course, the converse, high self-esteem, occurs among high performers. Research and publications designed to explore the societal benefits of the characteristics of individualism are lacking because such information would promote individualism, innovation, entrepreneurship, and capitalism.
Since most university education programs require courses in sociology and psychology, our teachers are taught that the characteristics of individualism are harmful to student psyches and interpersonal relationships. Preschool, kindergarten, and elementary school teachers are told to avoid teaching and free time activities that praise high performers or correct and discourage low performers. Maintaining positive self-esteem is more important for low performing students than promoting and encouraging the efforts necessary for achievement according to the psychologists and sociologists training our teachers. The same philosophy of esteem building dominates our younger sports and extra-curricular activities programs. Games are played without keeping score. Batters try their best rather than striking out; and every player or participant gets a participation trophy. There are no winners or losers because competition is bad in the Marxist collective where all share equally in the benefits of society.
Today, in critical race theory education, self-esteem has been replaced by equity programs which claim that white supremacy, structural racism, and outright racism is the cause of low performance among most minorities. Asian minorities are an obvious and inconvenient exception to these claims. Consequently, under critical racism ideology, correcting a student who concludes that 3+2=6 no longer causes the student to have lowered self-esteem; it is racist. Setting high standards and requiring effort in academics is structural or systemic racism. This is simply a verbal Marxist bait and switch. Critical race theory educators replaced the misguided ideas of the self-esteem movement for the misguided ideas of racism. The goal is the same, a Marxist educational dictatorship. Racial antagonism replaced class antagonism. Unfortunately, elementary students and younger children are taught the divisive ideas that since they are white, they will grow up to oppress people of color.
There are only two words to adequately characterize critical race theory and Black Lives Matter, Marxist racism.
Join the fray. All of the America’s Crossroad Posts are listed by categories in the BLOG CONTENTS tab. If you decide to read a few, please leave comments about your Patriot Visions, start or join the conversation, and share the Posts with friends and political frienimies.