To hear conservatives tell it, Critical Race Theory — their newfound buzz phrase for virtually any anti-racist analysis or argument — is fundamentally un-American, and even racist itself.
By suggesting that the country is systemically unjust, they argue, CRT is rooted in a rejection of the United States as a “good and great” nation. And by insisting upon the existence of white privilege as a social and economic reality, CRT is, they say, racist against white people.
But amid the uproar over anti-racist scholarship, equity trainings, and the movement for Black lives, one important thing has been overlooked.
Namely, the alternative to the analysis offered by Critical Race Theory is far more troubling, offensive and racist than anything being forwarded by the Crits themselves.
After all, if disparities in labor markets, education, housing, and the justice system are not the result of deeply embedded systemic racism — meaning the sedimentation of unequal opportunities resulting from a history of white racial domination and ongoing discrimination today — what’s left to…
