critical race theory: Misunderstanding and Propaganda on the part of it's critics

The concept of  Critical Race Theory (CRT) Has been advanced by conseratives and right wingers as a major scare tactic. It's a mysterious sounding phrase and perect for scarig anti academic anti free thinking Republicans. To hear the right wing tell it CRT is an organized body of political propaganda based upon hating white people. What is the boogie man really? What is CRT?

According to  Stephen Sawchuk:

"Critical race theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. The core idea is that race is a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies...The basic tenets of critical race theory, or CRT, emerged out of a framework for legal analysis in the late 1970s and early 1980s created by legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado, among others."[1]

No one with A MODICUM  of intellegence could doubt that attitides of racism do find their way into statues and social structure, and that is really all CRT says.Otherwise how does one explain Jim Crow laws? Yet the right has foamented a paranoid reponse. Greg Abbott, our illustrious govener (Texas) has singed into law a bill controlling how histry can be taught in Texas schools. He said:“more must be done to abolish critical race theory in Texas,”[2] this is nothing more than curtailing academic freedom.

Let's examine the article "The Danger of Critical Race Theory" by Marc A. Thiessen.[3]He says:

Critical race theory, Guelzo says, is a subset of critical theory that began with Immanuel Kant in the 1790s. It was a response to — and rejection of — the principles of the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason on which the American republic was founded. Kant believed that “reason was inadequate to give shape to our lives” and so he set about “developing a theory of being critical of reason,”[4]

Allen Carl Guelzo (born 1953),who Thiessen quotes above, is "an American historian who serves as Senior Research Scholar in the Council of the Humanities and Director of the Initiative." He teaches at Princeton.[5] He is more reasonable but still off the beam.

...critical race theory may also be the most irresponsible way to think about race in eory is a subset of critical theory, which has got long roots in Western philosophy back to Immanuel Kantin the 1790s. Kant lived at the end of a century known as the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, but he feared that experience had shown that reason was inadequate to give shape to our lives. There had to be a way of knowing things that went beyond reason, and for him that meant developing a theory of being critical of reason, hence critical theory. The problem was that critical theory got away. It instead justified ways of appealing to some very unreasonable things as explanations [of] things like race, nationality, class...[6]

This reading of Kant fliess in the face of most modern readings of Kant. I was teaching assistant for a class on Kant when doing my doctoral work. i know this from my own readimg. That stament islso verifiedd by7 comsultation with my professor William S, Babcock retired, Perkins school of theology. It can be easily seen with a  bit of research.

Kant valued the essential ideals of the Enlightenment and viewed the French Revolution, which put these ideals into law, as the triumph of liberty over despotism. In an essay entitled "What Is Enlightenment?" (1784), he contended that the Enlightenment marked a new way of thinking and eloquently affirmed the Enlightenment's confidence in and commitment to reason.[7]

It is a grave mistake to think that Kant rejected reason. Let us hear from Kant himself: "Enlightenment is man's leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if it is not caused by lack of intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one's intelligence without being guided by another. Sapere Aude! [Dare to know!] Have the courage to use your own intelligence is therefore the motto of the enlightenment."[8]

How they got the notion that critical theory led to Jim crow laws is absurdly ridiculous. Jim crow was the embodiment of racial prejudice wokiredito a means of restaiingandoppresssimg black people, African Americans.There have always been those who distort and besmirch the reasonimg process iwth bad ideas, Ti blame critiocaltheory for thatislike blamimg all crime on language.Jim Crow laws prpve thye truth of  CRT.

Sources

[1]  Stephen Sawchuk, "What is Critical Race Theory and Why is it under attack?" Education Week, May 18, 2021,URL: https://www.edweek.org/leadership/what-is-critical-race-theory-and-why-is-it-under-attack/2021/05. Accessed Feb 20, 2022.

[2]Isabella Zou, "Demystifying Critical Race Theory And Efforts To ‘Abolish’ It" Giving CompasThe 74 Jun 25, 2021. URL: https://givingcompass.org/article/demystifying-critical-race-theory-and-efforts-to-abolish-it.  Accessed Feb 20, 2022.

[3] Marc A. Thiessen, "The Danger of Critical Race Theory," op ed Washington Post, November 11, 2021.URL:https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-danger-of-critical-race-theory/.Accessed Feb 20, 2022. Thiessen is a senior fellow of the American Enterprise Institute.

[4]Ibid.

[5]Danielle Pletka, Marc Thiessen, and Allen Guelzo, "WTH is critical race theory? How a philosophy that inspired Marxism, Nazism, and Jim Crow is making its way into our schools, and what we can do" AEI, pod cast,Episode #108 | June 23, 2021. URL: https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/6.23.21-Guelzo-transcript.pdf?x91208. Accessed Feb 23,2022.

[6]Allen Guelzo, in Ibid.

[7]Marvin Perry, et. al.Introduction to Kant, "What is Enlightenment?"Sources of the Western Tradition, Volume II (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995), pp. 56-57, third edition.

URL:file:///C:/Users/Joe%20Hinman/Downloads/Kant_What_is_Enlightenment.pdf, accessed Feb 23,2022.


[8]Ibid.