Critical race theory is slightly complicated. You can look it up on Wikipedia. It was conceptualized by a group of academic lawyers, mostly African-American, and it addresses ways that various parts of society are structured and operated to the disadvantage of African-Americans. If we look at it slightly differently, we can see the same distortion activated to the disadvantage of other groups. From Wikipedia, "In 2017, University of Alabama School of Law Professor Richard Delgado, a co-founder of Critical Race Theory, and legal writer Jean Stefancic, define CRT as 'a collection of activists and scholars interested in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power.'" "In his introduction to the comprehensive 1995 publication of critical race theory's key writings, [academician, race activist, and Harvard professor] Cornel West described CRT as 'an intellectual movement that is both particular to our postmodern (and conservative) times and part of a long tradition of human resistance and liberation.'" "Law professor Roy L Brooks defined critical race theory in 1994 as 'a collection of critical stances against the existing legal order from a race-based point of view.'" And "In 2021, Khiara Bridges, a law professor and author of the textbook Critical Race Theory: A Primer defined critical race theory as 'an intellectual movement,' a 'body of scholarship,' and 'an analytical toolset for interrogating the relationship between law and racial inequality.'"
I'm not a lawyer, but Wikipedia goes on to something about which I know much more. "Scholars of CRT say that 'race is not biologically grounded and natural,' rather it is a socially constructed category used to exploit and oppress people of color, and that racism is not an aberration, but a normalized feature of American society." And I disagree. I don't disagree about CRT. It's a rock-solid theory, and we have overpowering evidence of the truth of it. But I disagree that it's just about "race," or that it's "American." CRT is garden variety anthropology and human-level animal behavior, and it's been around for millennia and all over the world. Aggressors dominate, and humiliate, the people they beat, they enslave them, and they mistreat them. If you think there's such a thing as "god," then you might know that "god" told the Jews in the OT to do just that. History is rife with examples of conquerors subjugating the people they conquer. To the best of my knowledge, it wasn't Americans who went to Africa to capture people to sell them into slavery. I think it was the Portuguese. It's just that the people who lived in what we now call the United States were more than pleased to acquire, own, and treat any way they wanted these Africans.
The thing about race is that it makes the victims easier to identify. It's easy to differentiate someone who's black from someone who's caucasian. Likewise, it's easy to identify someone from China or Japan. I once heard a story, possibly apocryphal, about a psychiatrist named Vamik Volcan (true, he was a famous psychiatrist), and his study of what we now call PTSD (but which used to be called "war neurosis"). He was studying a particular conflict somewhere in eastern Europe, and he couldn't figure out the difference between one warring faction and the other. He eventually realized the two sides wore different colored sashes. It's even harder to tell the difference between Irish people who are Catholic, and want Ireland to be separate from England, and Irish people who are Protestant, and want Ireland to be part of England. Or the US Civil War, or the Spanish Civil War, or the North and South Vietnamese, or...sure...why not...Democrats and Republicans. But the underlying anthropologic dynamic is the same. It's group/herd instincts, and uses and thems, and leaders and followers. And the technique is always to dominate or disadvantage the people who aren't your group. There are lots of ways to do it, too, and some of them are subtle.
About a year or two ago, I read an article about some African-American woman in Indiannapolis. She wanted to sell her house. She called a realtor or appraiser, they came over and took a look, and they told her her house was valued at $110K. She wanted a second opinion, so to speak, so she called another realtor or appraiser, and they told her her house was valued at $125K. The article I read didn't make clear why she had doubts, but she tried once more. But this time, she removed all personal and family photographs, and decorations that might suggest the homeowner was black, and she asked one of her caucasian male friends to pose as the homeowner. And when she reached out to realtor/appraiser #3, she did not call on the phone, and she created a new and unrevealing e-mail address. This time, the valuation was $250K. And I've heard that same story twice more in recent weeks or so. One was from Baltimore, and the other was from somewhere in NY. It's a very different person who walks away from a sale with $250K than one who only has $110K.
There are loads of stories about how black American farmers and landowners were treated regarding loans (whether or not they got them, when in the season they got them, what was the interest rate). The same is true of African-Americans who are not farmers, and just need a loan.
And the voting... Did you see the movie "Selma?" But you know about Ron DeSantis' shenanigans about having black people arrested to prevent them from voting. And Brian Kemp...and gerrymandering. It's so rampant that it's hard to take a still photograph of this nonsense, and identify it for what it is.
Heather Small, a 57 year old black British woman who's a singer with a group called The Proud, says she been dealing with racism since she was seven, and "there isn't a week goes by..." (https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/smallbusiness/heather-small-discusses-the-racism-she-s-faced-since-she-was-seven-there-isn-t-a-week-goes-by-when-something-doesn-t-happen/ar-AA14xK1Y?cvid=8038fa1525ca42419fac0dc564b2d528)
From the other direction, retired federal judge Mary Beth O'Connor says "It Wasn't Luck That Allowed [Her] to Become a Judge After Meth Addiction. It Was White Privilege." https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/op-ed-it-wasn-t-luck-that-allowed-me-to-become-a-judge-after-meth-addiction-it-was-white-privilege/ar-AA14zHO5?cvid=bda62e6dbccd4c11b9a8f44250d29a6c
I don't know how many times I've heard black people say they "have to work twice as hard to get half as much." It's been a lot of times.
Yesterday, I saw a patient I haven't seen in several years. He lived here with his girlfriend, was in college, then became a long distance trucker, got married and moved to Virginia, and is now in a wonderful career. But he was back down here, and needed, after all this time, to be seen. He's darker than most, and of Haitian heritage, and he said he hated living in Miami. He was constantly getting pulled over by the police, for nothing. Once he was driving a truck, all over the country, that stopped happening. But it happens again now somewhat, in Virginia, but only when he's driving his Mercedes. If he drives his wife's car, he doesn't get pulled over.
So, OK, let's not get hung up on "CRT." Let's call it a fault, or a flaw, in human nature. But it ought to be our job to civilize ourselves better, and outgrow it.
First of all, my apologies! Vamik Volkan is still alive, and 90 years old. He is a Turkish Cypriot psychoanalyst, and has had a stellar career, including multiple nominations for the Nobel (Peace?) Prize. As best I can tell, he's still active, at 90!
ReplyDeleteSecond, regarding the CRT scholars' comment that "race is not biologically grounded and natural," of course it is. People can be of one race or another, and it's not hard to tell who's a member of what race. What's not biologically grounded or natural are the implications of being one race or another (assuming they're not mixed in the same person). For our purposes, and thinking about races like the Negro race and the Caucasian race, the differences are cosmetic. Any other imagined implication, like about intellect, for example, is...imagined. It's made up. It has a dehumanizing effect, and that's its purpose. Last year, I was out to dinner with a companion and another couple. The husband of the other couple was an older Air Force pilot, and his son was an Air Force pilot, too. He talked about how he and his son liked to fly jet planes together. You get the image, right? I don't remember why this came up, but at one point, I said that women are smarter than men. The former AF pilot immediately contradicted me, and he said women aren't smarter, because they can't focus. I didn't feel like arguing, since we were trying to have a nice dinner together, but I wanted to say that's why women are smarter: they take more things into consideration. But they're socialized to act, and imagine themselves, less smart than men. They underperform when men are around. Years ago, someone studied elementary school girls, and found that they learned math better in all girl classes than they did when they were in co-ed classes. Society, and the females themselves, dumb down females. That's what happens with the races, too. And it's perpetuated by treating certain races as if they've done something wrong (and the police stopping them) when they haven't done anything wrong.