How One Version of CRT Has Muddled the Debate on Racism
Discussion
How One Version of CRT has muddled the debate on racism
Gus DiZerega:
"The meaning of “racism” has been unilaterally changed by those advocating this final version of CRT. For them, emphasizing the systemic racism within racist societies has replaced rather than enriched the earlier focus on individual racist attitudes and their historical foundations. Racism has traditionally referred to believing core racist values and an understanding about how to realize them, as with liberalism, Marxism, capitalism, socialism, and other ‘isms.’ Take some time to look up the word’s meaning and it always refers to a belief.
A racist shares at least some racist beliefs and so approves of the institutions reflecting them. In the United States most Americans consider being a racist a bad thing, and they are correct in doing so. But they will be distributed along a continuum of what they believe qualifies someone as racist. There are many racist beliefs, some far more toxic than others. Opposing a son or daughter marrying an African American is on a different level from joining the Ku Klux Klan. This continuum enables mild forms of racism to be challenged by emphasizing their compatibility with more toxic forms already rejected by the person adhering to milder forms, such as those saying “I am not a racist, but….”
In response, my friend wrote “Nobody has changed the meaning of racism. It’s still about privileging one group over another. It’s that instead of looking at it as a problem caused by prejudiced individuals, we now look at it as a systemic problem.” My friend added “All of us who are of European descent and appear white are racists in the sense that we participate in and benefit from systemic racism . . . It’s challenging to own up to the ways we benefit from white privilege and systemic racism. It can feel like a personal attack, especially if we have also been victims of other kinds of discrimination (class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity). It helps me to consider that this statement (that I am racist by virtue of appearing white) not a personal insult, but an acknowledgment of privilege. And that privilege is always intersectional and contextual.”
But this way of putting the issue exemplifies the change in meaning I am describing. Racism in its original meaning was not about privileging one group, it was about demeaning another group. It was less about privileges for one’s own group- though that is part of it, than about denying rights to others. Not having to fear being shot by a cop is not a privilege, it is a right that should apply to all. Out of racism both genuine privileges and violations of rights, arise, but rights are not privileges. This shift replacing the language of rights with that of privileges carries other implications, mostly bad.
If we are ALL racists because we live in a racist society, and benefit personally from living in this society, then ‘racism’ becomes a simpler way of saying “Euro-American.” Part of being a Euro-American is being a ‘racist.’ Eliminating blame from adhering to racism eliminates its moral dimension.
V. Shifting Meanings
We may now take a step deeper. My friend wrote “It’s that instead of looking at it as a problem caused by prejudiced individuals, we now look at it as a systemic problem.” The prominent Taos advocate of CRT I mentioned above wrote me racism is “systemic, constant, and inescapable even for presidents. ‘Prejudice’ is a personal negative feeling, and yes it can range from murderous hatred to mild revulsion – but it is personal, isolated and occasional. People of color can be prejudiced – but only white people can be racists – because the system backs white supremacy in all things, all the time . . .”
Again, what differentiates a system from traditional Western linear analysis is that causality flows both ways. If explicit attitudes and racist laws were all that was involved, changing laws and attitudes would solve the problem. The second version of CRT reduces all of American history to a working out of racism’s implications, describing a deeply reductionist model of history that does not fit the facts.
The third, that ‘Whites’ are unavoidably racist, takes this error much farther, eliminating contemporary human agency entirely. We are nothing but the expression of racist ‘systems’ and so are racists regardless of our beliefs. But a system has no moral sense, only individuals do. By eliminating human agency and responsibility, human morality is eliminated as well. And yet, paradoxically, these advocates rely on our morality in order for us to care about ending racist society. If someone asks “Why should I care?” they have no answer beyond their own preferences.
Changing the meaning of the term shifts from individual attitudes to systemic patterns, from violations of rights to acquiring systemically provided privileges independent of rights. A right refers to something an individual has as a member of society. A privilege refers to something that differentiates a class of people from another. In this context a right has always has moral weight, a privilege does not. When racism is divorced from attitude and only concerns context it loses its power as a critique. When the reason I am not shot by a cop is “White privilege” the moral condemnation involved in violating a right is replaced by membership in a privileged group. A KKK member and a liberal Democrat are both “racist.” A Nazi thug and a Euro-American beaten by him because he is a “race traitor” are both racist. The murderer, Derek Chauvin, and those of us who joined African Americans demonstrating for BLM are all racists.
This is an (unintended) attack on morality as well as clear communication.
To claim “prejudice” means what racism used to mean is false. Prejudice has a wide range of meanings, and some are laudatory in ways “racist” never is among decent people. I am prejudiced in preferring one style of art over another or dogs over cats, or vice versa. A person can have an at least initial sexual preference for blonds or red heads and not be called racist for being so. However, a personal ‘prejudice’ towards favoring ‘Whites’ over ‘Blacks’ because there is something inferior about them is morally wrong. It is morally wrong because of the racist character of the prejudice.
VI. With ‘friends’ like these…
A person’s social context can explain why someone is racist, as an ecosystem can explain why a tree has the characteristics it has, but it is the tree that has the characteristics. My friend responded: “To use your analogy, you can look at a tree as having certain characteristics (for example, being stressed by drought or pests), but if you divorce it from the system that is causing the characteristic (say, climate change), you cannot really address the problem. It’s not enough to change individual attitudes; we also have to change the system in which racism is baked in.”
This is an example of shifting definitions of CRT from the third to the first: there are racist attitudes, and racist institutions within which people live. It takes individual actions to deliberately change the system because, left to itself, the system may perpetuate racism. Slavery was such a system. It was abolished because enough Americans believed it was so immoral as to require deliberate action to abolish it. Even at the cost of their lives. For this third kind of CRT thinking, those who fought and died to end slavery were racists, at least if they were Euro-Americans. African Americans motivated by the same values were not.
The first version of CRT is a powerful corrective to blind spots in American individualism. Individualists ignore or deny the systemic insight individuals are who they are because we live in specific social systems. But the second and third kinds of CRT are collectivist theories, treating individuals entirely the product of their social relations, be they class, race, religious, or some other group or groups. If you live in a racist society and you are of the dominant race, you are a racist regardless of what you believe, as a kind of original sin.
If racism is ultimately entirely divorced from individual attitudes, as the third class of CRT advocates claim, on what grounds can individuals be urged to battle it? I am a racist because I am a Euro-American, and I can do nothing about it. If racism is divorced from my beliefs and actions, and if prejudice is not racism, why not consider it my fate, and worry about issues over which I have greater influence?
From this it is a small step to arguing “OK, I am a racist and my race has done these good things- so I will defend it. What my race did to others that was not so good would also have been done by other races in our situation- as much world history abundantly demonstrates. That’s the way of the world.” Better to be part of a hammer than a nail.
What argument can the third group of CRT advocates offer against that position? None of much weight. In a world like this, why should I support the weak instead of the strong, since no matter what I do the weak will call me a racist, privileged, member of the strong, and were they in my position, the weak would do the same to me.
The original and coherent meaning of racism answers this question clearly, but it has been dissolved away.
There is another dimension to the harm this third use of the term does. It discredits legitimate CRT in the eyes of many who resent being condemned for who they are (Euro-Americans) rather than what they do. The excesses of the third’s advocates opens all critics of racism up to attacks by the political right wing, as we see today being orchestrated by the Republican Party and even further right organizations. Indeed, because the racist right never defines “Critical Race Theory” it can even include the historical studies of the past that racists now seek to keep from entering education." (https://www.dizerega.com/2021/06/28/getting-clear-on-critical-race-theory/)