What is Critical Race Theory? | Black Life Theme

The culture of colonial-colonial societies, which subjugates people from all over the world, and the native inhabitants of large or small lands to form a garrison state around them, has enduring and insurmountable diseases and misanthropies. This does not mean that people in England, France, Turkey, Iran, India or China do not have their sedentary status. They do. These bases are from a different genealogy.

One thing the colonial settlers do is to act as if they were the natives of the lands they violently conquered, and to name all who come after them as “immigrants”. They are engaged in a strange and possessive kind of historiography, in an effort to convince themselves and the world that they have a direct claim to the land they have stolen.

Aware of their ultimate origins, these colonialist settlers feel threatened and begin to act in a strange way whenever their critical awareness increases as to who is who and what is theirs and theirs alone in the territory they claimed.

And the same is happening in the colony of what we now call the United States of America.

So often, you wake up in this strange habitat to find something that perceives racist settlers as magical magic sorcery that can suddenly and irreversibly delegitimize a word, a mantra, or anger myths. Nowadays, it is the “Critical Race Theory” and, given their strange obsession with abbreviations, they are being referred to as the “CRT”.

Right now, in their eyes, “CRT” is harsh, a damn word. It represents the ultimate attack on his sense of self, his “homeland”.

Now, what exactly is Critical Race Theory?

It doesn’t matter. It means what Donald Trump said. It means a bad thing. It means whites are in danger. It means if Americans don’t choose Trump or other equally reactionary and racist Republicans, then all these black, Latino, feminist, Marxist, Jewish, Muslim, gay, transgender, and godless comics will come and take their country.

The Critical Race Theory – a school of thought that builds major US institutions that are inherently racist and endure white supremacy by their very nature – would remain a completely dark academic concern, if not for Trump and his very big war. win the second term. Today, Critical Race Theory is a topic of debate in the U.S. because Trump decided to attack it because it exposed the incurable racism of himself and his supporters.

From Postcolonial Theory to Critical Race Theory

In September 2020, in most of the polls that followed Joe Biden, the Office of Management and Budget issued a directive: “All agencies should be directed to begin identifying all contracts or other agency expenses related to any training in critical race theory. or any other training or propaganda effort that suggests (1) that the United States is a country that is inherently racist or evil, or (2) that any race or ethnic group is inherently racist or evil. “

Here it is: if you are truthful and explain the structural roots of racism in this country, then you are in trouble and the federal government will come after you.

Using the federal government and its tremendous power to curb any kind of critical thinking didn’t start with Trump. About two decades earlier, Zionist Americans used the same tactic in US universities to silence criticism of Israel. Then their main goal was Edward Said and his critical fellowship.

As Michelle Goldberg explained at the Salon in October 2003, the U.S. House of Representatives “unanimously approved that the university’s international studies department show greater support for U.S. foreign policy or risk its federal funding. Its approval after hearings [that] Members of Congress heard testimonies about the detrimental impact of the late Edward Said in the Middle East’s study departments, describing it as an enclave of weak anti-Americanism. “

The same forces that tried to ban Edward Said’s scholarship, and any other kind of critical thinking that reveals the roots of the fundamental injustices that have plagued the U.S. and the world, have now turned their attention to Critical Race Theory – an idea that has existed for decades. and seeks to expose and dismantle the underlying social forces that make up racism, without being reduced to the individual acts of racism that Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, Emmanuel Macron, or Boris Johnson display on a daily basis.

Deeper roots of critical thinking

It is clear that the proposals are among the legal, political, and even ideological forces that sustain the class structure of a society. It is much older than the Critical Race Theory, and at least the mention of the Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci. “Hegemony” and its seminal text on Marx’s German Ideology before him.

We can go back to Nietzsche and from there to the iconic encounter of Trasimachus in Socrates in the first book of the Republic of Platimo, in which Socrates interrupts his arguments about “justice” by defining it as the will of the powerful.

So scholars working in Critical Race Theory did not invent critical thinking, nor did they use it for the first time to dissect racism. The Importance of Critical Race Theory At this particular point in American history, the ongoing trajectory of theoretical foundations is a way of reporting on a massive social movement known as the Black Lives Matter. This fruitful dialectic between academic theory and basic social rebellion frightens the guardians of the status quo who are struggling to protect and care for their racial and class privileges. It’s a class war, clean and simple. Those who identify as “white” seek to protect the privileges they automatically obtain by being “white,” and against the critical awareness of terror that systematically and consistently affects people who are systematically and consistently in power.

The way in which Critical Race Theory stood out was not as different as the ways in which other movements and academic fields were known and discussed. The most important event was the widespread reception of Critical Race Theory in 2001 by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, who published the book Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, outlining its origins, key issues, and key voices in the field. The authors then reviewed and updated the book to include the latest innovations.

Like the fields of Liberation Theology or previous subaltern or postcolonial studies, Critical Race Theory is also not a response to existing social realities, but a reality that required specific historical and theoretical articulations. Defining, censoring, or demonizing the scholarship area will not erase the social conditions from which they first gave birth. In fact, it proves its importance and legitimacy.

Suppose that Republicans in the U.S. Senate voted to block non-white Americans who wanted to guarantee the right to vote. In doing so, they proved the underlying truth of Critical Race Theory. It is a class war, the richest person mobilized against poor people with a specific racial connotation.

Focus on public schools

Deviating from the study of racism is actively on the Republican agenda. Last month, North Carolina representative Dan Bishop introduced what he called the “Stop CRT Act and the Fighting Racist Training in the Military Act,” which he explained in a press release, “to promote federal funds and teach Critical Race Theory (CRT) and stop our military from being dependent on it. “

“Critical race theory is poison to the psyche of our nation,” Rep Bishop said. “This destructive ideology has no place in American institutions, and the bills I present will help ensure that our government does not spend resources to promote it.” He argued that the Biden administration was supported and encouraged by the “Radical Left” and pledged to “promote this neo-Marxist propaganda to our classrooms, workplaces and even the military”.

These powerful Republican politicians target public schools primarily because ordinary people in the lower and middle classes and their children have a direct relationship with poor communities. They don’t care if private schools and wealthy communities suffer from “radical ideas” – because wealth and privilege jeopardize their learning. But in lower and middle class communities and public schools, these ideas align with the realities experienced by both students and parents and teachers. This means a definitive transformation of people’s critical consciousness.

Demonizing, censoring, censoring, diverting, and even criminalizing Theory of Critical Race will not eradicate systemic racism at its roots and extend it to the branches and bitter fruits of this country’s history and current reality. If you don’t stop reasoning and articulating the challenges against this racism, he will sing, dance, scream, protest, and go to the streets and squares of every other town. In fact, facts always rise strongly to satisfy true theory.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the attitude of the Al Jazeera editorial.