Of Mottes, and Baileys, and Critical Race Theory

Critical Race Theory is the current Scissor statement threatening to cut everything in half.

I was speaking with a friend about the CRT drama and he asked me “so what the heck is it?” and explained that one of the people he researched while looking around said something to the effect of “I have a PhD in this topic and even I have trouble explaining what CRT is!”

I wasn’t particularly surprised that he said this because, heck, I’ve seen similar when reading about Critical Race Theory. Even Ibram X. Kendi says as much:

Funny passage from Ibram Kendi’s book where he admits that he struggles to explain his ideas to working people from minority backgrounds because they haven’t been indoctrinated thoroughly enough pic.twitter.com/42pdm7xBBs

— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) June 16, 2021

I struggle to concretely explain what ‘institutional racism’ means to the Middle Eastern small businessman, the Black service worker, the White teacher, the Latinx nurse, the Asians factory worker, and the Native store clerk who do not take the courses on racism, do not read the books on racism, do not go to the lectures on racism, do not watch the specials on racism, do not listen to the podcasts on racism, do not attend the rallies against racism.

Kendi sees this as a limitation of the people rather than a limitation of the theory, for some reason.

I asked my friend “If CRT is something that even PhDs in the field have trouble explaining, surely it wouldn’t be that much of a problem banning it being taught to 3rd graders.” I mean, if it’s something that you can’t explain to a grownup, how much tougher would it be to explain to a 9 year old?

My friend, of course, knitted his brow. He knew that something was up. There was a smearing going on. There’s some stuff in CRT that is really weird and esoteric and even PhDs can’t explain it well. There’s some stuff in there that 3rd Graders can learn to the point where he intrinsically pushed back against the idea of it not being taught to children.

But what *IS* it?

Well… that’s where it gets complicated. It’s a bunch of stuff. As terms go, it’s one that has ballooned in popularity over the last year or so. Here’s a Google Trends on “Critical Race Theory”:

Here’s a Google Trends on “CRT”:

Something has jumped since August of last year.
Now, to be fair, “CRT” also stands for:
Cathode Ray Tube
Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy
Chinese Remainder Theorem
Child Resource Team
Community Resource Team
Crystal Resolution Technology
C Run Time
Computer Readout Time
Computer Remote Terminal
Copyright Royalty Tribunal
Contingency Response Team
Counter Rotating Tines
Computer Rehabilitation Training
Calculus Readiness Test

Given the various spikes in the various months, I want to say that it is probably referring to “Calculus Readiness Test” (despite my sentimental inclination to say “Cathode Ray Tube”) during the various spikes and dips prior to 2019… but, the stuff after? The stuff that maps with Critical Race Theory? I’m guessing that north of 90% of that is part of the trend.

SO WHAT THE HECK IS CRITICAL RACE THEORY?

I told my friend that, when people say “Critical Race Theory”, they’re probably referring to either a motte or a bailey. That is to say, they’re either referring to something that no reasonable person could reasonably disagree with *OR* they’re talking about stuff that is downright nuts and only a true believer could possibly say with a straight face. If they’re being slippery, they’ll be talking about something that is downright nuts and only a true believer could possibly say with a straight face… and then, when called on it, retreat back into the something that no reasonable person could reasonably disagree with.

For example, Critical Race Theory can refer to a legal theory that kicked off in the 1970’s. Here’s from Wikipedia:

It is an academic discipline composed of civil-rights scholars in the United States who seek to critically examine the law to show, first, that it maintains white supremacy, white power, and enforces societal or structural racism; and, second, that transforming the relationship between law and racial power, and also achieving racial emancipation and anti-subordination more broadly, is possible.

If you’ve ever heard Anatole France’s famous line “In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread,” and can, in your head, apply it to race? That’s the strong argument for Critical Race Theory.

Should children be taught that there is a deep inequity when it comes to the relationship between law and power and white people and the relationship between law and power and Black people? Heck yeah, they should!

One of Ibram X. Kendi’s most trenchant criticisms is that it is not enough to merely not be racist. You have to be actively anti-racist. You shouldn’t merely just not be part of the problem… you have to actively be trying to change things to make things better for the oppressed. It’s not enough to feel things (or not feel them). You have to actually put your effort into the system! And that means more than merely voting for the person who makes you feel things (or not feel them).

Okay. That’s the motte. What’s the bailey?

Here’s a line from Richard Delgado’s 2001 book “Critical Race Theory: An Introduction“:

Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.

Wait, Enlightenment rationalism? Legal reasoning? Equality theory? Neutral principles of constitutional law? The very foundations of the liberal order? That’s a heck of a lot different than teaching that America has a pretty racist past that it hasn’t ever reckoned with.

On top of that, Critical Race Theory has grown and has been pop-ified in the decades since this obscure legal theory came about. Since then, it has become part of a pop phenomenon that consists of (at least) Ibram X. Kendi’s work (in such books as How to Be an Antiracist) and Robin DiAngelo’s work (such as White Fragility). In addition, stuff like the NYT’s 1619 Project tends to be lumped into this phenomenon as well. When you hear stories about Corporate Antiracist training, odds are that they’re going to have slides that quote Kendi or DiAngelo. The 1619 Project was explicitly intended to be part of a school’s American History curriculum.

As such, in practice, the training and educating veers away from the stuff that absolutely everybody agrees with and, thanks to its modern popification, wanders into stuff that tends to embarrass Critical Race Theory when brought to light. In general, this results in training slides being rewritten or pulled entirely.

You may have heard of the whole “math is racist” thing. John McWhorter was furious when he saw a bunch of slides titled “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction“.

You can see screenshots of the original slides here and the thing I want to draw your eyes to is the part on the original slide that says:

White supremacy culture shows up in math classrooms when…
Students are required to “show their work.”

After this slide got publicized, the Equitable Math folks took McWhorter’s criticism to heart and you can see what the slide looks like now on page 55:

White supremacy culture shows up in math classrooms when…
Students are required to “show their work” in standardized, prescribed ways.

That sort of thing keeps happening. People make statements out in the bailey and they get noticed… at which point the statements run quickly back into the motte.

There was another incident where the National Museum of African American History & Culture released a bunch of slides that included a handful of discussion of “Aspects and Assumptions of Whiteness and White Culture” and…

Well, you can look at one of the slides here:

Well, once the slides were heavily publicized, they got pulled and the National Museum of African American History & Culture issued an apology.

That’s something that keeps happening. The wacky assertions are made, then they are noticed by “bad” people who then publicize these statements, then those statements are pulled. There was an incident where Disney had its antiracist portal publicized and then it quietly removed it. There was an incident where Coca-Cola had antiracist training based on Robin DiAngelo’s work publicized and then Coke quietly removed it.

Critical Race Theory, out in the bailey, has resulted multiple times in slides being changed, training being pulled, and apologies offered. It’s not merely the strong argument given in earnest about the difference in how white criminals are arrested and how black innocents are treated.

What might be the wackiest incident that made it all the way to the edge of the bailey was the NYC Community Education Council for Manhattan District 2 video where one of the concerned attendees complained about one of the white male attendees holding an African-American toddler in his lap at one point during the meeting:

It hurts people when they see a white man bouncing a brown baby on their lap and they don’t know the context! That is harmful! That makes people cry. It makes people log out of our meetings. They don’t come here. They don’t come to our meetings. And they give me a hard time. Because I’m not vocal enough. And I’m not trying to be a martyr. I am trying to illustrate to you that you think I’m a social-justice warrior. And you think I’m being patronizing. And I’m getting pressure for not being enough of an advocate. I take that to heart. That hurts me. And I have to learn how to be a better white person. Read a book. Read Ibram Kendi. Read How to Talk to White People. It is not my job to educate you. You’re an educated white male. You can read a book. And you can learn about yourself.

In practice, Critical Race Theory also manifests…well, like that.

I suppose we could “no true scotsman” the surely well-intentioned woman and explain that she wasn’t doing *TRUE* Critical Race Theory, but she’s invoking Ibram X. Kendi and telling others to educate themselves.

People are, seriously, arguing that the stuff happening out in the bailey is not “real” CRT, it’s merely diversity and inclusion! It’s pedagogy! But it’s not CRT! CRT is this one particular legal theory that merely questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law. AND IT IS NOTHING ELSE.

But that’s kind of disingenuous when we see these arguments that come out and question the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.

So, all that to say, when it comes to “What is Critical Race Theory”…what is it?

Is it an obscure set of legal theories from the 1970s that nobody knew about until Tucker Carlson started bloviating about it only this last year?
Is it a progressive woman complaining about a white man bouncing a brown baby on his lap without providing the necessary context and telling others to educate themselves by reading Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo?

Well, it’s both. Both things fall under the umbrella of Critical Theory.

Critical Race Theory, it seems to me, is a subset of Critical Theory. You’ve heard of Critical Theory. You’ve heard of Critical Feminist Theory, right? You’ve heard of Critical Gender Theory, right?

Well, Critical Race Theory is just a special corner of Critical Theory and it’s just dealing with race this time.

And there are parts of it that are important and can be easily summarized and taught to 3rd graders. The stuff about racism being bad. The stuff about how America has never truly reckoned with its racist past. And there are parts of it that are obviously upwardly mobile urban white progressives crab bucketing and trying to outdo each other without any care whatsoever about helping or changing anything for any person that is not already part of their little bourgeois circle.

It manifests as both things.

And the people who want to defend it want to pretend that it’s nothing more than teaching children about the wickedness of slavery and Jim Crow and, with wide-eyed innocence, ask how anyone could ever oppose such a thing.

And the people who want to attack it want to pretend that all it is is explaining to black math students that showing your work is racist.

I asked him if he now had a better idea of what Critical Race Theory was. He grimaced and said “Yeah.”