Hmm, well, not sure when I was ready to be done with MLK and Douglass. Don’t think Kim Crenshaw ever was either. Or Robin actually. I mean critical race theory is not anti-MLK. And King’s universalism was not colorblind. His universalism recognized the problem of whiteness, always. Obviously the Crits are more critical of the nation’s capacity for change. Derrick Bell was obviously far more pessimistic than King, but his analysis of change is accurate too. What change has happened is not because of King’s moral power or the embrace of universalism by whites. it was because of the interest convergence that Bell spoke of in his work, and which King actually knew as well…everything King did was strategic and intended to appeal to interest convergence, which is what Bell believed in too…

Not sure that we can be blamed in any way for the tactical turns of some in the movement. I think CRT has helped the analysis of the problems in the country, actually. I think the biggest problem is that the ferment has been largely academic, generally, versus prior movements rooted in Black communities, grass roots struggles, etc. And academic-y analysis is often disconnected from the discourses in other spaces. That has long been an issue on the left, and was in the 60s as well — the divide between the college campus rooted left (dispro white) and the grass roots left (dispro POC and working class) .

I am not an academic and try pretty hard not to speak like one. I think there are things I’ve said in the past that have been unhelpful in various moments, but populist anger is not what I’ve stoked. Nor is populist anger what the CRTs stoke.

Also, some of the nihilism on the left has always been there. Many of these debates and divisions are literally generations old but get amplified by social media and the internet. So every bad tendency that has always been there is just more visible I think.