Critical race theory (CRT) is a body of thought that could be roughly summarized as follows: history is to be primarily understood as a power struggle between racial groups, and the way to happiness as a society is to restore the balance by reacting aggressively against the racial groups with dominant power. CRT is a decentralized movement, so it’s hard to codify its ideology, but its fundamentally Marxist view of power as the fundamental truth of social reality can be seen in how it is defined by some of its most prominent theorists and proponents. (I’ve selected the following phrases from various reputable sources quoted on Wikipedia’s main page on CRT):

CRT is used to “explain social, political, and legal structures and power distribution through a ‘lens’ focusing on the concept of race, and experiences of racism”; in other words, it’s a “way of thinking about the world, especially the social norms…that govern society” that sees race as as something “used to oppress and exploit people of color,” and consequently seeks to “examine and challenge the ways race and racism implicitly and explicitly impact on social structures, practices and discourses”, with the ultimate goal of “transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power.”

It is hard to fault critical race theory for most of its criticisms of traditional liberalism and the historical treatment of ethnic minorities. I am not particularly interested in defending the actions that Europeans have done under the influence of the Enlightenment, whether it be slavery or segregation or any of their vestiges today. I agree that greed and power have gone unnamed in the development (shall we say conquest) of the modern world by capitalists. With the kernel of good within the American Dream there has been also the potential for hubris and excess and exploitation, both of the Earth and of her Children. The roots, I think, are fundamentally economic, but, plainly, the oppression has gone largely according to skin tone. I have no bones to pick with any of that.

The worst and most harmful philosophies are not those that are baldly, laughably wrong, but those that are mostly right—they rightly critique some other wrong—and yet twist the truth at some key point, to the subtle distortion of the whole. I think this is the case with critical race theory. The twisting of the truth, I think, is that people are their race; that their race is the dominant and most determinative trait of a person, or a society. Feminists and modern gender theorists at least have more ammunition on this point, because sexuality does run deep in the human soul, so deep that it goes back to the very beginning, when God created us “male and female.” But race comes later, and, if there is any undeniable cry of those seeking racial justice, it is “People should not be judged by the color of their skin!” But this is precisely what critical race theory does. It places value on all people and all their ideas based on whether they are white or black or indigenous, whether they were (whether or not they knew it) an oppressor or an oppressed person, due to the color of their skin. In short, I believe critical race theory is wrong and harmful because it is racist.

It is one of the ironies of postmodern philosophies that, in attempting to rectify wrongs without the power of The Deliverer, they inadvertently perpetuate the very wrongs they sought to right. Communism, in its opposition to capitalism’s centralization of power into the hands of a few, solves this problem only by centralizing it further into the hands of the One, the State. And critical race theory, in attempting to rectify the wrongs of racism, only makes everything, and everyone, more racist.

I do believe that history matters. The solution is not to pretend that everyone in our society has equal opportunity. But the way that critical race theory seeks to give people equal opportunity is “an eye for an eye,” and we know what quality of collective sight that leads to. If history is any indication, critical race theory will only make things worse.The solution, instead, is something more like the teachings of Nelson Mandela. We must love and forgive. We must believe there is good in our neighbors. We must treat people as individuals— humans like us, with all the same basic wishes and desires and fears—not as mere members of a class of evil oppressors. “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood.”

Over the past eight years or so, I have often supposed that I saw glimpses of a false god, ruling both oppressor and oppressed from behind the smokescreen of racial ire that he has stirred up to conceal his movements: Mammon, one of the great Principalities of our nation. Perhaps, if we came together, we could make war instead on him.