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Morality Will Never Be the Key to White Anti-Racism
Critical Race Theory is correct — only interest convergence can prompt widespread solidarity. And that’s OK
Among the central arguments of Critical Race Theory — the much-maligned but misunderstood school of legal analysis serving currently as the right’s principal bogeyman — is the idea that progress towards racial equality and justice in America has only happened in moments of “interest convergence.”
By this, scholars who operate from a CRT framework mean that only when the interests of Black people have dovetailed with those of white Americans (or the nation as a whole) has progress occurred.
Reforms on the road to equality haven’t resulted from some grand moral epiphany for those who had been collaborating with or perpetrating injustice.
They made changes because they felt they had to.
This isn’t an especially radical notion.
It stands to reason that in a nation where political power rested entirely with whites for most of its history, and Black people were subordinated by law for most of it as well, advances for Black folks were not likely to have flowed from moral suasion.
