policy research center. He is a graduate of Georgetown University and a former Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy. Christopher Rufo As executive director at the Documentary Foundation, Christopher Rufo has directed four films for PBS, – Bing video including most recently America Lost (PBS, 2019) – YouTube is a documentary triptych that explores life in three of America’s “forgotten cities”—Youngstown, Ohio, Memphis, Tennessee, and Stockton, California. Christopher Rufo | Discovery Institute
The film shows the dramatic decline of the American interior through a mosaic of
stories including an ex-steelworker scrapping abandoned homes to survive, a recently incarcerated father trying to rebuild his life, and a pair of sisters hoping to escape their blighted urban neighborhood. I spent five years gathering these incredibly intimate portraits of Americans living on the edge.
The film sheds light on how our crumbling social institutions have created a dangerous divide between the haves and have nots. He is also a contributing editor of City Journal, where he covers topics including critical race theory, homelessness, addiction, and crime. Critical race theory is fast becoming America’s new institutional orthodoxy.
Yet most Americans have never heard of it—and of those who have, many don’t understand it. It’s time for this to change.
We need to know what it is so we can know how to fight it.
In explaining critical race theory, it helps to begin with a brief history of Marxism. Originally, the Marxist Left built its political program on the theory of class conflict.
Marx believed that the primary characteristic of industrial societies was the imbalance of power between capitalists and workers. The solution to that imbalance, according to Marx, was revolution: the workers would eventually gain consciousness of their plight, seize the means of production, overthrow the capitalist class, and usher in a new socialist society.
During the 20th century, a number of regimes underwent Marxist-style revolutions,
and ended in disaster. Socialist governments in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia,
Cuba, and elsewhere racked up a body count of nearly 100 million of their own people. They are remembered for their gulags, show trials, executions, and mass starvations.
In practice, Marx’s ideas unleashed man’s darkest brutalities.
By the mid-1960s, Marxist intellectuals in the West had begun to acknowledge these failures. They recoiled at revelations of Soviet atrocities and came to realize that workers’ revolutions would never occur in Western Europe or the United States, where there were large middle classes and rapidly improving standards of living.
Americans in particular had never developed a sense of class consciousness or class division. Most Americans believed in the American dream—the idea that they could transcend their origins through education, hard work, and good citizenship.
But rather than abandon their Leftist political project, Marxist scholars in the West simply adapted their revolutionary theory to the social and racial unrest of the 1960s. Abandoning Marx’s economic dialectic of capitalists and workers, they substituted race for class and sought to create a revolutionary coalition of the dispossessed based on racial and ethnic categories.
Fortunately, the early proponents of this revolutionary coalition in the U.S. lost out in the 1960s to the civil rights movement, which sought instead the fulfillment of the American promise of freedom and equality under the law. Americans preferred the idea of improving their country to that of overthrowing it.
The vision of Martin Luther King, Jr., President Johnson’s pursuit of the Great Society, and the restoration of law and order promised by President Nixon in his 1968 campaign defined the post-1960s American political consensus. But the radical Left has proved resilient and enduring—which is where critical race theory comes in.
WHAT IT IS:
Critical race theory is an academic discipline, formulated in the 1990s, built on the intellectual framework of identity-based Marxism. Relegated for many years to universities and obscure academic journals, over the past decade it has increasingly become the default ideology in our public institutions.
It has been injected into government agencies, public school systems, teacher training programs, and corporate human resources departments in the form of diversity training programs, human resources modules, public policy frameworks, and school curricula.
There are a series of euphemisms deployed by its supporters to describe critical race theory, including “equity,” “social justice,” “diversity and inclusion,” and “culturally responsive teaching.”
Critical race theorists, masters of language construction, realize that “neo-Marxism”
would be a hard sell. Equity, on the other hand, sounds non-threatening and is easily
confused with the American principle of equality.
But the distinction is vast and important.
Indeed, equality—the principle proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence,
defended in the Civil War, and codified into law with the 14th and 15th Amendments,
the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965—is explicitly rejected
by critical race theorists. To them, equality represents “mere nondiscrimination”
and provides “camouflage” for white supremacy, patriarchy, and oppression.
In contrast to equality, equity as defined and promoted by critical race theorists is little more than reformulated Marxism. In the name of equity, UCLA Law Professor and critical race theorist Cheryl Harris has proposed suspending private property rights, seizing land and wealth and redistributing them along racial lines.
Critical race guru Ibram X. Kendi, who directs the Center for Antiracist Research
at Boston University, has proposed the creation of a federal Department of Antiracism.
This department would be independent of (i.e., unaccountable to) the elected branches of government, and would have the power to nullify, veto, or abolish any law at any level of government and curtail the speech of political leaders and others who are deemed insufficiently “antiracist.” One practical result of the creation of such a department would be the overthrow of capitalism, since according to Kendi, “In order to truly be anti-racist, you also have to truly be anti-capitalist.”
In other words, identity is the means and Marxism is the end.
An equity-based form of government would mean the end, not only, of private property, but also, of individuals civil rights, equality under the law, federalism, and freedom of speech. These would be replaced by race-based redistribution of wealth, group-based rights, active discrimination, and omnipotent bureaucratic authority.
Historically, the accusation of “anti-Americanism” has been overused.
But in this case, it’s not a matter of interpretation—critical race theory prescribes
a revolutionary program that would overturn the principles of the Declaration and
destroy the remaining structure of the Constitution. 1. governmental action,
2. grassroots mobilization, and 3. an appeal to principle.
We already see examples of governmental action. Last year, one of my reports led President Trump to issue an executive order banning critical race theory-based training programs in the federal government. President Biden rescinded this order on his first day in office, but it provides a model for governors and municipal leaders to follow. This year, several state legislatures have introduced bills to achieve the same goal: preventing public institutions from conducting programs that stereotype, scapegoat, or demean people on the basis of race.
And I have organized a coalition of attorneys to file lawsuits against schools and government agencies that impose critical race theory-based programs on grounds of
the First Amendment (which protects citizens from compelled speech), the Fourteenth Amendment (which provides equal protection under the law), and the Civil Rights Act
of 1964 (which prohibits public institutions from discriminating on the basis of race).
On the grassroots level, a multiracial and bipartisan coalition is emerging to battle
against critical race theory.
Parents are mobilizing against racially divisive curricula in public schools and employees are increasingly speaking out against Orwellian reeducation in the workplace. When they see what is happening, Americans are naturally outraged that critical race theory promotes three ideas—race essentialism, collective guilt, and neo-segregation—which violate the basic principles of equality and justice. Anecdotally, many Chinese Americans have told me that having survived the Cultural Revolution in their former country, they refuse to let the same thing happen here.
In terms of principles, we need to employ our own moral language rather than allow ourselves to be confined by the categories of critical race theory. For example, we often find ourselves debating “diversity.” Diversity as most of us understand it is generally good, all things being equal, but it is of secondary value. We should be talking about and aiming at excellence, a common standard that challenges people of all backgrounds to achieve their potential. On the scale of desirable ends, excellence beats diversity every time.
Similarly, in addition to pointing out the dishonesty of the historical narrative on which critical race theory is predicated, we must promote the true story of America—a story that is honest about injustices in American history, but that places them in the context of our nation’s high ideals and the progress we have made towards realizing them. Genuine American history is rich with stories of achievements and sacrifices that will move the hearts of Americans—in stark contrast to the grim and pessimistic narrative pressed by critical race theorists.
Above all, we must have courage—the fundamental virtue required in our time.
Courage to stand and speak the truth. Courage to withstand epithets.
Courage to face the mob. Courage to shrug off the scorn of the elites.
When enough of us overcome the fear that currently prevents so many
from speaking out, the hold of critical race theory will begin to slip.
And courage begets courage.
It’s easy to stop a lone dissenter.
it’s much harder to stop 10, 20, 100, 1,000, 1,000,000,
or more who stand up together for the principles of America.
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Truth and justice are on our side. If we can muster the courage, we will win.
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Expires: 11/03/23 Rating: TV-PG