“White People Bad, Black People Good, Asians we're not sure about."

By Patrick Hall

A CRT Decoder

It’s non-sense beyond all understanding. It can aptly be described as little more than racism under new management. It has been around in academia for years. It is another version of Marxism, using race instead of class to separate the masses. However, the latest reincarnation or repackaging of this neo-Marxist philosophy is finally out in the open.  Critical Race Theory (CRT) has gone through many reiterations, especially since the 1970s, when it was sold under the Trojan horse of multiculturalism and cultural diversity.  As pointed out decades ago by the late William F. Buckley, multiculturalism and cultural diversity were no more than balkanization and tribalism, touted as congeniality. Its real target was and has always been our constitutional republic, and by association, white people, who, according to CRT proponents, have enjoyed its privileges by the oppression of so-called people of color.  Critical Race Theory and its many political-educational antecedents simply encouraged blacks, Latinos and other people, who have been blessed with the distinction of “most favored minority”, to marinate in their hyphenated, race, ethnic and gender tribal circles, waiting to be aggrieved or deeply offended by God knows what.

CRT’s more direct application is to blame all of the societal inequalities on white people. CRT is like a chameleon and has existed under many different names: deliberately apocryphal nomenclature,  Afro-centric teaching methods, Microaggression and unconscious bias doctrines, culturally sensitive pedagogy, and authentic assessment Ebonics methodology of early 1990. These were just a few of the socio-cultural banners CRT attached to and metastasized within our body politics. Also, we cannot forget the irreparable damage done to the nation via the peer-reviewed quackery of the Implicit Bias Theorists. It was, and still is, all the rage in educational, corporate, and government-sponsored employee workshops. Its signature purpose was to mine or explore the “unconscious” to explain ongoing racial inequalities in America. Like CRT, the game is to blame "systemic or institutional racism" (i.e., white people).  As the late economist Walter William once opined, it became anathema and taboo at universities and mainstream society over the decades to acknowledge intergroup differences in abilities, interests, cultural values, mores, or family structures might produce socioeconomic disparities.  CRT and its many incarnations find it easier to blame Western society in general and white people in particular.

 Implicit Bias' tenets are even accompanied by a self-serving, if not dubious, psychological instrument called the Implicit Association Test or IAT. I was first exposed to IAT back in the1990s as part of a Beta test group while working in the University of California Higher Education System. The IAT instrument is purported to demonstrate that white people, in particular, are indeed incurably or implicitly show bias, exhibit micro-racisms or unintentionally track in that direction. Once again, most individuals and other privileged members of society (again mostly whit) are unaware of their latent or suppressed racial bias.   In concert with the socio-cultural parasite of CRT, IAT was one of the main progenitors of the white privilege stupidity. Progressive Democrats and Republicans, Moderates and chic, culturally sophisticated White Liberals employ white privilege as a “self-serving therapeutic." Its primary goal or strategy is to have Whites beat themselves up, which in turn aids them to assess and come to grips with their white privilege.  To quote Charlie Brown, “good grief”?

Social-Emotional Learning Methodology (SEL) is another seemingly benign sub-discipline of CRT.  In conjunction with the hovering barnacle of CRT, SEL is essentially a self-indulged circular firing squad for some whites to continue to engage in a strange Neo-Cistercian self-flagellation ritual. It does nothing to improve the SAT scores of black kids, nor does it stop black folks from murdering each other in places like Chicago, East St. Louis, and Baltimore. Literacy rates for many in the black underclass remain abysmal.  It indeed doesn't inculcate into the black underclass simple civil behaviors such as picking up the trash in front of their dwellings.  But then again, according to the wizards-of-smart within the CRT movement, picking up trash in front of one's dwelling is probably defined as "acting white."

”But yessiree, Bob! It enables some white liberals, who identify themselves as Moderates or Independent, to feel better about themselves because they are acutely aware of their white privilege. At the same time, these self-flagellating constituencies can secretly (or not so secretly) look down upon their unrepentant or less enlightened brethren.

 It’s a classic, “I’m Ok, you’re a white racist-rube” therapeutic.  

Today, after its outing by irate parents around the nation and the subsequent push back by these same parents, CRT ideologues have employed “a Sergeant Schultz” strategy. They see nothing!  

They either deny its existence or use the talking point that CRT was only something bandied about in our nation’s Law Schools. What is more common in their polemic against those who object to the pedagogic lunacy of CRT is to call you a racist or something even more damning. You are a Trump voter.

 As a recovering Progressive Liberal Democrat (i.e., Moderate) now in my fifth decade of sobriety, I have come to accept a truism about liberal Democrats, the cultural left, and academics.  We may see them and their misguided ideas as just wrong. However, with some exceptions, they view us as evil and must be changed, re-educated, or designated as domestic terrorists. Recently, the Biden Administration has done just that, by directing DOJ and its Civil Rights Division to monitor and take corrective actions against "parents around the country who object to CRT and other instructional malpractice being promoted by many Government School officials.  What is more disturbing, and you will not hear this from the corporate media, is, that these efforts to police the unruly parents at School board meetings in places like Loudon County Virginia, is being headed by no other than the Melanin Queen herself, Assistant Attorney General, Kristen Clarke.  This woman believes that blacks and many people of color are innately superior to whites because of their skin color or melanin. Ms. Clarke, who heads the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, is an unapologetic disciple of the CRT.  

CRT – A Cliff Note

Whatever Democrats in conjunction with the corporate media and NPR are telling you about the educational hydra, that is Critical Race Theory. They are lying. I want to say they are just misguided or not entirely accurate in their depiction of CRT, but no, they’re just flat out lying to you.  

With that said, CRT is simple to understand but horrendously deadly in its effects upon our young people at both the university and grade school levels. Critical Race theory, like many of the related ideologies, discussed earlier, purports to teach diversity, equity and inclusion, but in reality, promotes exclusionary, if not a neo-segregationist canon under the guise of its many euphemisms. CRT has a blatant discriminatory effect against students who are inappropriately defined as having “white privilege” or being oppressors based solely on race. Metaphorically, CRT teaches that white people are bad, black people are good. However, many Asian Americans, because they tend to do well in our supposedly systemically racist culture, are somewhat of an enigma to the cultural left and Progressive Liberal Democrats. They are not quite sure how to fit them into their CRT blame white people game. I would imagine CRT scholars will get back to us on that one. Maybe?

With that said, here is a quick cliff note about Critical Race Theory.  Critical Race Theory is an academic discipline that holds the United States was founded on white supremacy and oppression. These same malignant forces are still at the roots of American society today. CRT race catechumenates believe that American institutions preach freedom and equality, such as our constitution and legal system. Still, they are mere camouflage for naked and intrinsic racial domination by white people. Everything in American culture, according to CRT, is poisoned by institutional and structural racism; and they do mean everything. That is why such goofy downstream ideas, such as Math is racist, are an outgrowth of the Critical Race Theory's dystopic poison.

[Patrick Hall is a retired university library director. He is a graduate of Canisius College and the University of Washington, where he received three advance degrees. He has published in Freedom's Journal Magazine, America, Commonweal, Headway, Journal of Academic Librarianship, American Libraries and others. He currently volunteers at a local VA hospital in the town of Erie, Pa.]