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Saturday, November 06, 2021

What is Critical Race theory?

 Let's start with critical legal theory, which is what critical race theory grew out of.

Critical legal theory is the theory that there are no "innocent" rules in law, no "neutral" laws. All rules, all laws, have winners and losers, and are chosen for cynical reasons.

Rules are chosen to favor one group or another -- and the group which is always favored by the law are the wealthy, the powerful.

Because the law is dressed up as something neutral and objective and just and wise and good, and society propagandizes it as such (for society is controlled by the wealthy and the powerful who selects the laws), the people are blind to the fact that rules and laws are in fact chosen to favor one group over another.

Critical legal theory seeks to make what is invisible -- the cynical nature of imposing laws and rules and protecting power and privilege (we'll come back to that in a minute) for those who already have it -- and provides a "toolbox" of "critical lenses" and deconstructive techniques for doing so.

One idea put forth by the critical theorists is that property is, well, theft, and that the very idea of owing property is a conspiracy of the descendants of robbers who stole the land centuries ago against the descendants of virtuous non-robbers who didn't steal land or had land stolen from them.

All of our assumptions about the legal order must be "challenged."

Sound familiar?

And what is critical race theory? Well critical race theory is the same thing except 1, it hypothesizes that rules and laws are not selected to protect the wealthy and powerful but the white (and, per the intersectional branch of critical theory, the male and straight), and 2, it expands the critique into not just law but all "systems" of society, into everything.

The reason I say this is to point this out: Whenever someone says that you have "privilege," that you should "check your privilege," or that you are "oblivious to your privilege," or that you are "punching down," they are employing the language of critical theory, and using the "toolbox" of critical theory, to deconstruct the oppressive systems of society, and to illuminate the "invisible chains" that oppress the oppressed classes.

THAT IS A CONCEPT DERIVED DIRECTLY FROM CRITICAL RACE THEORY. THAT IS CRITICAL RACE THEORY IN ACTION.

Whenever a teacher tells your kid that he is privileged due to his skin color (or sex, or sexual preference, or able-bodiedness) that teacher IS doing Critical Race Theory. He is teaching your child Critical Race Theory. He is indoctrinating your child in Critical Race Theory concepts.

Read the whole thing.

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