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Debunking CRT

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Three Claims Made by CRT People

1
Our “racial equity” training program isn’t based on CRT.

Rebuttal: If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck. CRT should not be judged as merely an academic approach but by its real-life applications. For more on identifying CRT and deciphering its codenames, check out Identifying CRT. 

How should CRT be judged?

How do CRT proponents define CRT?

2
Race is the overarching factor in all human interactions.

Rebuttal: Something is fundamentally wrong with examining our complex history and our multiethnic/multi-racial society strictly through the prism of race. It is a reductive and prejudiced account of human relationships, creating a phenomenon of people searching for “power imbalances, bigotry, and biases that it assumes must be present.”[6]

What are the five basic elements of CRT that makes it race-obsessive?

A hyper-focus on race and racism misrepresents our complex realities.

3
To combat racism, we need anti-racism.

Rebuttal: Addressing racial disparities requires complex policy solutions, not a moral crusade.

Any format of racism, including so-called anti-racism, is racist.

The soft bigotry of anti-racism

Policy solutions, not political narratives

The Case of New York’s world-class specialized high schools

New York’s elite public high schools have used a standardized test--- Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) since 1971 to recruit talents. Recently, city officials, woke school administrators[17] and even congressional members[18] have attacked standardized testing as “racist” and characterize standardized testing as “modern-day slavery.” This is an inaccurate insult by race essentialism on merit.

 

In reality, in the 1990s, two decades after SHSAT’s adoption, black students were well represented at these schools. During the 1994-1995 academic year, their enrollments were 11.8% and 37.3% at Bronx Science and Brooklyn Technical, respectively. For a host of reasons unrelated to merit, their ratios dropped to 3.6% and 7.6% during 2016-2017. During a similar time period, New York’s primary and middle schools have failed underserved students:

math and English proficiency rates among black and Latino students from grades 3 through 8 are less than 50% of performance levels among Asian and Caucasian American students.[19] We need to hold policy makers accountable instead of blaming racism.

The Case of San Diego Pay Equity Study

In March 2021, the City of San Diego released the country’s “most scientifically robust and thorough internal pay equity study”[20] on a municipality level. The comprehensive and empirically sound research traces gender and racial-and-ethnic pay gaps in the city’s public workforce to societal factors other than racism and intentional bias, thereby invalidating the “unequal pay for equal work” argument.

 

After briefly observing the city gender pay gap at 17.6% in 2019 (18.8% in 2011) and the racial/ethnic pay gap at 20.8% in 2019 (17% in 2011), the study identifies at length four societal factors in explaining the gaps and prescribes action plans tackling each factor.[21]

 

1. Occupational sorting (different jobs held by different people) is the primary reason accounting for pay gaps. There is no evidence of discrimination or racial bias. Instead, “personal choices, societal forces, and differing barriers to entry” largely account for pay gaps.

2. A “Parenthood penalty” exists to account for 10% of the gender gap and 5% of the racial-and-ethnic gap.

3. The likelihood of working overtime explains 5% of the gender pay gap and 2% of the racial-and-ethnic pay gap.

4. Different demographics of men and women and demographics of different racial categories explain 5% of the gender gap and 3% of the racial-and-ethnic gap.

 

Education for low-income and minority groups must be improved: tackling the racial achievement gap should start in K-12 education and at the family and community levels. The market, educational institutions and our communities should work together to combat real-life disparities by fostering competitiveness, innovation and hard work among all individuals.

 

In short, slow and steady social changes, rather than forceful public mandates, are also needed. In all seriousness, past experience and common sense demonstrate what we SHALL NOT evoke with a good intention to reduce inequalities, namely, government-sanctioned preferences, unmeritocratic group favors, or CRT propagandist overreach.

 

Let us not forget Thomas Jefferson’s sound advice on liberty, benevolence, and limited government: “(A) wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, [but] shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”

CRT in its proponents’ own words

Anti-racism a process of ... unlearning co-learning engaging enacting

3 year olds hold adult-like prejudices believing that race determines whether or not one is honest, smart, or clean.

Hirschfeld. L. A. (2008)

Critical race theory questions the very foundations of liberal order including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism,  and neutral principles of constitutional law.

Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic

By the time they start kindergarten, children begin to show many of the same implicit racial attitudes that adults in our culture hold.

Kinzler. K. D. (2016)

Selectivity based on Ethnic differences is not present in the first day of life but is learned within the first 3 months of life.

Kelly et al (2005)

Avoiding conversation about race only encourages prevalent stereotypes [to] remain unchanged.

Katz, Kofkin (1997)

IT IS WHITE PEOPLE'S RESPONSIBILITY
TO BE LESS FRAGILE

People of color don't need to twist themselves into knots trying to navigate us as painlessly as possible.

ROBIN DIANGELO, in White Fragility

White identity is inherently racist, white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy... To be less white is to be less racially oppressive.

Katz, Kofkin (1997)

When liberal whites fail to understand how they can and/or do embody white-supremacist values and beliefs even though they may not embrace racism as prejudice or domination, they cannot recognize the ways their actions support and affirm the very structure of racist domination and oppression that they profess to wish to see eradicated.

bell hooks

The oppressors, who oppress, exploit, and
rape by virtue of their power, cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or
themselves."

Paulo Freire

The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist.

Ibram X. Kendi

With sufficient reasoning and positive information, negative implicit attitudes about people can be unlearned.

Mann T. Ferguson M. (2015)

On a personal level, CRT disregards individual initiative and personal choice. It is designed “to create anger, frustration, and despondency among persons in the victim categories,”[22] and to “make victimization an ongoing feature of their identity.”[23]

​

Resist CRT and its fancy derivatives.

References:

  1. Erec Smith (2019). A Critique of Anti-racism in Rhetoric and Composition: The Semblance of Empowerment.

  2. Roy L. Brooks (1994). "Critical Race Theory: A Proposed Structure and Application to Federal Pleading.”

  3. Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic (2017). Critical race theory: an introduction (Third ed.).

  4. Kimberlé Crenshaw. Interview with Time Magazine.

  5. Peter McLaren (2003). The Critical Pedagogy Reader.

  6. Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay (2020). Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody.

  7. Sheryll Cashin (2014). Place not Race: A New Vision of Opportunity in America. (Boston: Beacon Press).

  8. Abigail Thernstrom and Stephan Thernstrom (1998). “Black Progress: How far we’ve come, and how far we have to go.” The Brookings Institute

  9. Abby Budiman (2020). “Americans are more positive about the long-term rise in U.S. racial and ethnic diversity than in 2016.” Pew Research Center.

  10. Nikki Graf. “Most Americans say colleges should not consider race or ethnicity in admissions.” Pew Research Center.

  11. Christine Tamir (2021). “The Growing Diversity of Black America.” Pew Research Center.

  12. Abby Budiman and Neil G. Ruiz (2021). “Key facts about Asian Americans, a diverse and growing population.” Pew Research Center.

  13. John McWhorter (2021). “Critical Race Theory: On The New Ideology Of Race.”

  14. Wilfred Reilly (2021). “‘Systemic racism’ is a conspiracy theory.”

  15. Erec Smith (2019). A Critique of Anti-racism in Rhetoric and Composition: The Semblance of Empowerment.87-88.

  16. Richard Fry, Jesse Bennett, and Amanda Barroso (2021). “Racial and ethnic gaps in the U.S. persist on key demographic indicators.” Pew Research Center.

  17. Carl Campanile (2015). “Principal says standardized testing is ‘modern-day slavery’.” The New York Post.

  18. Emily Jacobs (2021). “Rep. Jamaal Bowman calls standardized testing ‘a pillar of systemic racism’.” The New York Post.

  19. Dyske Blog (2018). “Let’s Not Be Fooled by De Blasio’s ‘Solution’ to Diversity Problem in Elite NYC High Schools.”

  20. The City of San Diego (2021). 2020 Pay Equity Study.

  21. Wenyuan Wu (2021). “Explaining Income Inequality in San Diego’s Workforce.” Californians for Equal Rights Foundation

  22. Carol Swain (2021). “Critical race theory’s toxic, destructive impact on America.”

  23. Shelby Steele (2020). “An excerpt from ‘Shame’.” 

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