Critical Race Theory is Illiberal

Silverfiddle Rant!

Andrew Sullivan makes the best argument yet contra Critical Race Theory (not the narrow academic theory but all the Ibram Kendi/Robin DiAngelo pop-psychology pseudo-science racial dogma that has sprung up like stink weeds around it).  The Crux of Sullivan's unassailable argument?  

Critical Race Theory is incompatible with the classical liberalism upon which our Western civilization is founded.

He starts by listing some characteristics of classic Western liberalism:

Fallibilism, the belief that anyone, especially you, can always be wrong; 

Objectivity, a rejection of any theory that cannot be proven or disproven by reality; 

Accountability, the openness to conceding and correcting error; 

Pluralism, the maintenance of intellectual diversity so we maximize our chances of finding the truth.

No ultimate authority; just inquiry and provisional truth. No final answer: an endless conversation. No single power, but many in competition.

In this open-ended conversation, all can participate, conservatives and liberals, and will have successes and failures in their turn. What matters, both conservatives and liberals agree, is not the end result, but the liberal democratic, open-ended means. That shift — from specifying a single end to insisting only on playing by the rules — is the key origin of modern freedom.

My central problem with critical theory is that it takes precise aim at these very core principles and rejects them. By rejecting them, in the otherwise noble cause of helping the marginalized, it is a very seductive and potent threat to liberal civilization.

CRT Rejects Western Liberalism

This is what makes CRT different. When it began, critical theory was one school of thought among many. But the logic of it — it denies the core liberal premises of all the other schools and renders them all forms of oppression — means that it cannot long tolerate those other schools. It must always attack them.

Critical theory is therefore always the cuckoo in the academic nest. Over time, it throws out its competitors — and not in open free debate. It does so by ending that debate, by insisting that the liberal “reasonable person” standard of debate is, in fact, rigged in favor of the oppressors, that speech is a form of harm, even violent harm, rather than a way to seek the truth. It insists that what matters is the identity of the participants in a debate, not the arguments themselves

This debate is not about whether you are a racist or an antiracist. The debate is about whether, in your deepest heart and soul, you are a liberal or an anti-liberal. And of those two options, I have no doubt where I stand. Do you?

Read Andrew Sullivan's excellent essay here: Removing the Bedrock of Liberalism

See also:  Political Tea Leaves - Andrew Sullivan, "White Supremacist!"?