Opinion: Understanding critical race theory reveals how it's harmful to race relations

There was a rare moment of bipartisan agreement recently concerning race in America. In the Republican response to President Joe Biden’s address to Congress, Sen. Tim Scott, a Republican Black man from South Carolina, avowed that America “is not a racist country.” Within two days Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris affirmed, “I don’t think America is a racist country.” All three acknowledged the history of racism in our country and that racism still exists. 

They differ on critical race theory, also called CRT, and its benefit or harm. An examination of CRT's ideas shows its counterproductive effects.

In our lifetimes, there has been a sea change in race relations. 

At the time of my birth, the U.S. Army was integrated by President Harry Truman. In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional, and President Dwight Eisenhower enforced it in Little Rock in 1957. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963 at the March on Washington; in 1965, civil rights icon John Lewis, as a young Black man, helped lead the Selma-to-Montgomery marches over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 ended voting discrimination and Jim Crow laws.

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In 1966, “Five Smooth Stones,” an interracial love story, became a best-seller, and in 1967, the movie of an interracial marriage engagement “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” won an Academy Award. In 1976 the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated all race-based restrictions on marriage. A Gallup survey showed acceptance of interracial marriage went from 4% in 1959 to 87% in 2013. In 2017, 39% even said interracial marriage was not just acceptable but was good for society, up from 24% in 2010. Today, a number of politicians of both parties are in biracial marriages, including Harris.  

In 2008 a Black man, Barack Obama, was elected president of the United States and then re-elected. 

Can anyone deny that our country has made very significant progress in racial fairness and equality in the past 70 years? 

Are there still racists in our country? Absolutely, but they are fewer in number than ever, and people of color have more opportunity in our country than ever. A growing Black middle and professional class is testament to that. America is still considered the land of opportunity, which is why so many people around the world want to live here.

So why does it feel like we are going backward in race relations?

CRT: White supremacy maintains power through the law

It is not my intent to get into the issue of how one defines “systemic” racism. However, much is written about critical race theory, and its tenets are now being taught in schools. Many people really don't understand what CRT is, but it is the opinion of many jurists that it will actually set back civil rights and be harmful to race relations.

For in-depth analysis, read a 1999 article in the Boston College of Law Review by Jeffrey Pyle, “Race Equality and the Rule of Law: Critical Race Theory’s Attack on the Promises of Liberalism.” For many years CRT was the province of university, law school and academic journals. Now it's being promoted for public institutions, public schools, teacher training programs, corporate human resource training sessions, and diversity workshops for every type of group.

There is no exact creed for CRT. Terms like “equity” (not to be confused with “equality”), “social justice,” “diversity and inclusion,” and “culturally responsive teaching” don't really convey its scope or meaning. It first bubbled up about half a century ago from Marxist intellectuals with echoes of the Black power demands from that era. Rather than accepting a class-based dialectic of Marxists, CRT substitutes race for class in order to create a revolutionary coalition based on racial and ethnic categories. Ibram X. Kendi, who directs the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, says, “In order to be truly antiracist, you have to be anti-capitalist.”

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Advocates of such ideas lost out in the 1960s to the nonviolent civil rights movement led by King and the NAACP, which sought freedom and equality under the law. CRT actually disparages King’s dream of a country where one is judged by the content of one's character, not the color of one's skin.

CRT has two common themes: first, that white supremacy maintains power through the law, and, second, that the relationship between law and racial power must be transformed. Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic write in "Critical Race Theory: An Introduction" that CRT's writings would reject our founding liberal principles of rationality, legal equity, constitutional neutrality, and incremental civil rights. The substitute: a race conscious approach to social change targeting mainstays "of liberal jurisprudence such as affirmative action, neutrality, color blindness, role modeling, or the merit principle."

Answer racist discrimination with 'antiracist discrimination'?

CRT would substitute "naming one's own reality" for rational analysis. It teaches that  civil rights legislation was passed more for Cold War propaganda purposes than to alleviate racial discrimination, that only members of a minority have the authority and ability to speak about racism, that the racial neutrality of law is false, and that our system can't redress certain types of racial wrongs. It tears down without providing answers.

CRT writings advocate the view that separation and reparations should be a form of foreign aid for black nationalists. Some CRT writers even say that being white is a form of property that whites alone possess, that the white skin of some Americans is like owning a piece of property making achieving the American Dream more likely than white.

CRT’s call for “equity” doesn’t sound threatening because it sounds like “equality,” but there is a huge difference. Equality of opportunity is very different from "equity."  Equality of opportunity means that all have a chance to succeed. CRT “equity” means that everyone gets equal rewards. Note the Marxist tones. Equality to CRT theorists is “mere nondiscrimination” and provides cover for white supremacy, patriarchy and oppression. UCLA law professor and CRT theorist Cheryl Harris proposes suspending private property rights, seizing land and wealth and redistributing them along racial lines.

In a speech in Dallas in 1966, King said that separate was never equal and called for integration: “Segregation is a cancer in the body politic which must be removed before our moral and democratic health can be realized.”  CRT theorists advocate a new segregation. At Rice University, students demand designated spaces just for Black groups, white people not appreciated.  According to the National Association of Scholars, scores of colleges and universities allow similar segregated centers, spaces and programs. And forget free speech: if you disagree with the CRT program, it is proof of “white fragility,” “unconscious bias,” or “internalized white supremacy.” If you dissent, you must remain silent and accept your “complicity in white supremacy.”

King thought that liberalism’s goal that race should not matter was the ultimate goal of society. Kendi says in his book “How to Be an Antiracist”: “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to prevent discrimination is future discrimination.”

A philosophy that can only take us further from its purported goal

On occasion I would sit on the floor of Congress with John Lewis during votes and he would tell me what it was like to walk with King. King was Lewis' hero. However, to CRT advocates, King’s color-blind constitutionalism is not just naïve but "racist." King saw affirmative action as a means to a more inclusive, integrated nation. CRT criticizes even affirmative action as simply “transitional assistance” that gets in the way of permanent reparations and is thus racist, too.

CRT advocates ridicule “equal opportunity” that inspires much liberal political and economic thought. They say that there is no such thing and that “merit” is a racist construct to keep white people in control. Thus, students shouldn’t see their academic grades penalized for disrupting class or turning in tardy work or not at all. Traditional measures of merit such as grades or test scores are racist, too, because they don’t produce “equitable” outcomes.

Ultimately, CRT reinforces group stereotypes, shames meaningful dialogue, and worsens race relations. Judge Richard Posner of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals argues CRT “turns its back on the Western tradition of rational inquiry, forswearing analysis for narrative” and that “by repudiating reasoned argumentation … it reinforces stereotypes.” Jeffrey Pyle in the Boston Law Review summarizes, “Critical race theorists attack the very foundations of the liberal legal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.”

CRT has the opposite effect of achieving racial harmony. It leads us to worse race relations, not better.  

Dr. Greg Ganske is a retired surgeon and was a member of Congress from Iowa from 1995 to 2002.