Critical Race Theory (CRT) has become a hot button cultural issue over the last few years. As with many such furors, much of the difficulty in debate and discussion centers on definitions, with the Left*, especially, wanting to use an innocuous definition for CRT in argumentation, then use a noxious definition in practice (similar practices: Marxism, racism, social justice). Here are some details to help (hopefully) re-civilize the debate. Note that I am not discussing Intersectionality here (though it is often lumped in with CRT in discussions) – that’s a separate topic, which is not entirely relevant at this point (though many CRT adherents have also written about Intersectionality).
TL;DR
Systemic Racism is the notion that racism of the past has effects in the present. Specifically, it is the idea that present social systems, having been built by racists, have racist effects even though those in charge of the systems today may not be personally racist.
CRT has a couple of different reasonable choices for its definition. First, it could refer to Critical Theory (mainly the early Gramsci/Frankfurt School flavor) in which the basis for oppression is specifically race. That is, the assumption that nearly all of human interaction is racially oppressive in nature. There are other aspects of Critical Theory (replacement of data and analysis by “lived experience” [Erlebnis], the desire to hollow out or replace all of the institutions of Western civilization, etc.) that tag along in CRT as well. I will refer to this as Critical Theory+Race.
Second, it could also refer to a system of thought arising out of Critical Legal Studies in the late 1980’s. According to two of its founders (Delgado and Stefancic), this form of CRT is
“a collection of activists and scholars engaged in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism and power. The movement considers many of the same issues that conventional civil rights and ethnic studies discourses take up but places them in a broader perspective that includes economics, history, setting, group and self-interest, and emotions and the unconscious. Unlike traditional civil rights discourse, which stresses incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.”
I will refer to this as Critical Legal Studies+Race. Very often, sources like dictionaries and encyclopedias will only refer to this form of CRT, because it has a well-recognized beginning.
In practice, there is little difference between the two definitions (and most of my discussion will be independent of which definition is chosen). The latter definition, however, is useful because it allows its supporters to maintain that CRT is “only taught in law schools.” This is true after a fashion, but in reality, law students are taught about CRT as a system, whereas K-12 students are often taught tenets of CRT as fact.
The two concepts (Systemic Racism and CRT) are clearly related, but not identical. Systemic Racism is an attribute that may or may not exist in a given social system (and it is reasonable to ask for evidence), whereas CRT is (among other things) the assumption that Systemic Racism is present in all social systems (no evidence required). Note the similarity between these and the first two forms of Marxism discussed here (academic framework and ideology)
The Details: Systemic Racism
System Racism, as defined above, is certainly possible. For examples, see apartheid South Africa or the Jim Crow South. Certainly in both of those cases, there were racist individuals as well, but the damage and harm didn’t really require them. As someone who lived in the Deep South for a few years of the Jim Crow era (though I was pretty young), I will mention here that the Jim Crow laws seem to be widely misunderstood today: most people with whom I discuss the era seem to think that the Jim Crow laws allowed racial segregation and discrimination, and thus White racists were enabled to wreak harm on Black citizens. This is incorrect: the laws required racial segregation and discrimination, and forced White citizens (whether racist or not) to wreak harm on Black citizens. I never personally lived under apartheid, but my description certainly applies to it as well.
Since Systemic Racism is certainly possible, the question becomes, “what sort of evidence is needed for determining its existence?” In large measure, Systemic Racism (and various other -isms) has been illegal in the US since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (at least as subsequently expanded by both Congress and judicial fiat). Historically, the standard for demonstrating a claim of Systemic Racism is “disparate treatment.” The evidence must show that an individual has been treated differently from others, on account of race. This claim traditionally requires intent on the part of someone, but not necessarily on the part of the person meting out the treatment (that is, there may be a system, designed intentionally for disparate treatment, that is being currently operated to produce disparate treatment, but without current intent to harm).
More recently, though, there has been a push in some corners of the legal world to replace “disparate treatment” by “disparate impact.” This push is largely the result of the rise of Critical Legal Studies (mentioned above as being an intellectual progenitor of Critical Race Theory). If this change were widely adopted, the requirement of intent would vanish, as would the requirement of showing any sort of different treatment. All that would be needed to demonstrate Systemic Racism is to show that the racial demographics of some selected group (those promoted, given raises, laid off, etc.) differ from the population from which that group was selected. There are a few places in US law where this approach is taken currently (I’m aware of the Fair Housing Act, the Age Discrimination Employment Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act – note that all of these are judicial precedents and none are in the text of the statutes; see Gail Heriot’s paper here for a thorough treatment of the subject).
Both of these methods have their shortcomings – obviously, disparate impact is much easier to show than disparate treatment. My position is that “disparate treatment” has too many false negatives while “disparate impact” has too many false positives. Subsequently, I will be discussing statistical fallacies in more detail, but for now I will note that there are many possible reasons for statistical racial disparities, with Systemic Racism being only one.
To actually demonstrate an instance of Systemic Racism, more than just demographic differences is needed. My preferred approach would be something like the approach to Social Justice I proposed earlier: use disparate impact to identify systems for deeper study; try to look for other nonracial differences between the specific groups; try to get the impacted group to adopt these other characteristics; run stats again to see if the differences were factors or markers for success; repeat. Eventually, either the disparate impact disappears or you have found some disparate treatment. The downside is that it’s a much longer process than simply shouting, “Systemic Racism” from the beginning. The upside is that you may actually improve the lives of some people along the way.
As it stands, “Systemic Racism” is used so often to refer to situations that are susceptible of many other explanations that the phrase appears to be mostly a distracting virtue signal. Glenn Reynolds has said, “Structural racism is what you talk about when you can’t find enough examples of actual racism to make an argument.”
Critical Race Theory
As we’ve noted before, there is a tendency on the left* for vague (or multiple, differing) definitions, and CRT is no exception to this. Pluckrose and Lindsay, in Cynical Theories, discuss CRT extensively. The two versions I described above as Critical Theory+Race and Critical Legal Studies+Race are described by them as the materialist and postmodern schools, respectively, of CRT.
However one describes the intellectual history of CRT, though, what it has become is an astonishingly illiberal intellectual framework (see here for the 5 tenets of CRT and here for an excellent analysis of them) that:
- sees racism (systemic or personal) everywhere
- is opposed to color-blindness, meritocracy, neutrality and objectivity
- sees “experiential knowledge” of people of color as superior to statistics in the aggregate (puzzling when you consider that one form of CRT comes from CLS, which pushes “disparate impact” evidence standards, which are highly statistical in nature)
- is committed to race-based historical revisionism
- is committed to social justice ending all forms of subordination of all people
One might be forgiven for believing that the last one is perhaps innocuous, but as Thomas Sowell has pointed out:
In its pursuit of justice for a segment of society, in disregard of the consequences for society as a whole, what is called “social justice” might more accurately be called anti-social justice, since what consistently gets ignored or dismissed are precisely the costs to society.
The costs of achieving justice matter. Another way of saying the same thing is that “justice at all costs” is not justice. What, after all, is an injustice but the arbitrary imposition of a cost—whether economic, psychic, or other—on an innocent person? And if correcting this injustice imposes another arbitrary cost on another innocent person, is that not also an injustice?
Discussions about CRT: Yikes!
“Discussions” around CRT abound – on social media, in school board meetings, in corporate diversity training, et al. Much heat and little light is generated in most of these. Here is a non-exhaustive list of the errors I have seen made in such discussions that result in partisans talking past each other (note that I am making no claim that these errors are disingenuous; people may really believe that their definitions and statements are correct):
- The claim that CRT is the same as Systemic Racism
- The claim that CRT is only taught in law schools
- The claim that CRT is Marxist
- The claim that CRT is necessary for teaching the history of race relations in the US
- The claim that CRT is necessary for understanding the history of race relations in the US
- The claim that CRT is the same as Kendi’s “anti-racism”
I’m sure there are many others – I’m going to run through these quickly, with a short discussion of the problems associated with each error.
Error 1: CRT is (among other things) the assumption that Systemic Racism is ubiquitous. One may request evidence for a specific instance of Systemic Racism, but for a CRT adherent, no evidence is needed. This error is used to downplay the seriousness of the threat that CRT is to, frankly, Western civilization.
Error 2: Law schools teach about CRT as a system (and there it can be critiqued), but some of K-12 education has adopted the practice of teaching tenets of CRT (that is, propositions that are derived from the assumption of CRT) as fact. This error is used to downplay the seriousness of the toxic nature of some of what is taught to K-12 students.
Error 3: Some Critical Race Theorists are Marxist, some aren’t. Mostly, the Critical Theory+Race theorists were Marxist at some level, while the Critical Legal Studies+Race theorists (at least the early ones) were postmodernists who were actually opposed to Marxism. Some recent CRT has become Marxist again. The problem with this error is that it is fairly easily refuted, and credibility is lost.
Error 4: This (as well as Error 5) is nearly into “not even wrong” territory. CRT has nothing to do with the facts of history, it has to do with how those facts are interpreted. One may easily teach the history of race relations in the US from a non-CRT perspective (including discussions of specific claims of Systemic Racism) accurately and helpfully (see here, for example). This error is generally instantiated to oppose various state statutes prohibiting CRT-inspired ideas in K-12 education; it’s an odd opposition strategy because even if it were true, it’s irrelevant – the statutes in question normally prohibit specific noxious practices but not CRT by name. If CRT is necessary (and innocuous) then the statutes don’t apply to it!
Error 5: similar to Error 4, but perhaps even worse. One needs understanding of CRT to understand the history of race relations in the US precisely to the extent that CRT has recently become influential in the discussion of the subject. From my perspective, CRT sheds no light on facts prior to its inception, and only sheds light on subsequent facts because some of our current problems have been caused by it.
Error 6: similar to Error 3 – Kendi has certainly been influenced by CRT (and he says so) but his “anti-racism,” while I see it as harmful in its own way, is different from CRT. In particular, Kendi requires a statistical discrepancy for racism, while CRT would be satisfied with the narrative of one disgruntled person of color. There are other differences as well. The difficulty here (and this is a trap that Chris Rufo has fallen into, however helpful much of his writing on the subject is) is that it is easily refuted, and credibility is lost. As a side note, Rufo seems to use CRT as a shorthand for various similarly racially toxic ideas – I have consistently decried the left’s tendency to redefine terms, so I will do so here as well: Rufo should come up with another term for the aggregate of ideas he is opposing, since not all of them are properly CRT.
Suggestions
I reiterate my suggestions for civil debate – establish agreed-upon definitions and stick to them. Whether discussing racism (personal or systemic), social justice, or CRT, don’t let the left* get away with slippery or varying definitions, and don’t adopt their tactics. There are more than enough reasons to oppose actual CRT without bringing in other notions like Marxism and “anti-racism.”
* See here for what I mean by the political “left.”