Critical Race Theory has gone mainstream

11 views

Skip to first unread message

Mark Crispin Miller

unread,

Jun 22, 2020, 5:47:20 PM6/22/20

to newsfromunderground

"Bias training" is a corporate racket that will not end racism, nor will

the ritual self-flagellation of guilt-ridden whites—trends based on the

mainstream absorption of Critical Race Theory, as Gabriel Scorgie

argues here. (My view, as I've often noted, is that this academic dogma

has not just been absorbed, but purposely deployed, to [a] Change the

Subject from the intensifying class war waged by the elites on all the

rest of us, and [b] further weaken our impulse, and ability, to fight back

all together.)

Compare the premise of CRT with James Baldwin's far more nuanced

critique of white liberals, as unconsciously neo-colonialist, and therefore

blind to the necessity of blacks and whites helping each other overcome

the legacy of racism in America. (He also noted the CIA's covert use of

"white liberals" for state purposes.)

https://youtu.be/0v5sfTgKCe8

(That view is, of course, more fully elaborated in Baldwin's The Fire Next

Time, among other of his writings, and the documentary "I Am Not Your Negro.")

MCM

Critical Race Theory Has Gone Mainstream

by Gabriel Scorgie

June 17, 2020

https://areomagazine.com/2020/06/17/critical-race-theory-has-gone-mainstream/

Critical Race Theory Has Gone Mainstream

June 17, 2020
8 comments
6 minute read
Gabriel S

In a 1992 essay, novelist Saul Bellow noted the prevalence of a particular class of people: well-intentioned, well-educated folk, uninterested in the mental workout involved in forming original opinions, preferring instead to purchase them wholesale, packaged and delivered by the good people at the

New York Times

or the news anchors on NBC. Their taste for packaged opinion stemmed from their desire to be approved by their peers. “The right sort of thinking,” Bellow writes, “makes social intercourse smoother. The wrong sort exposes you to accusations of insensitivity, misogyny, and perhaps worst of all, racism.”

Bellow called this class “the nonthinking good.” Today, they are all around us. They post black squares on Instagram. They claim that racism is as American as apple pie. They read and retweet articles by Ta-Nehisi Coates. They say that “riots are the language of the unheard,” without the recognition that Martin Luther King Jr. was acknowledging the rioters’ anger, but condemning their violence. They’re for all the good causes and against the bad ones. And they’re poised to become Critical Race Theorists.

Many ordinary citizens have noticed the slow creep of critical race theory into everyday life. Unconscious bias training has rampaged through corporate offices. When two black men were arrested inside a Starbucks, after baristas phoned the police, the company closed 8,000 of their stores so that their employees could undergo racial bias training. Later, the beauty shop Sephora closed their stores, so employees could receive diversity training, after the singer SZA claimed to have been racially profiled. Even after such high profile events, the growing influence of Critical Race Theory remained on the periphery of our awareness. Yet it has seeped into our culture and positioned itself to capitalize on the current moment.

The killing of George Floyd has people asking how they can fight racism. Sales of antiracism books have surged. In the UK, Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race is Amazon’s #1 bestseller. In America, it’s Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People to Talk About Racism. In Canada, sales of Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to Present by Robyn Maynard shot up by 172%. Behold the nonthinking good scrambling for their opinions.