There’s a meme that recently made the rounds among my well-meaning lefty friends, and it’s a variation on this: Oh, snap. Here’s the thing, though. I get it. There are plenty of people who are slinging the term “critical race theory” around, clearly without knowing what it means. Ask ten of them what it means, and at least nine of them will give you a vague or incorrect answer.
I love this substack, thanks for the insightful writing!
These days I work for an economic development nonprofit, but I spent the naughts in a social science PhD program at a top public university; at the time, I had my sights on an academic career.
At the time, it was obvious that acquiring serious fluency in postmodern, and critical theory discourses was an absolute necessity for competing in the academic job market. My politics were left-of-center, so I was pre-adapted, and acquire that fluency I certainly did.
Here's my take on the whole Pomo/Critical Theory ball of wax: by the late 60s, the Marxian left had very much soured on the idea of the proletariat as the foot soldiers of the revolution; it's fair to say that the feeling was mutual.
By that time, it had become abundantly clear what an appalling shit-show Soviet communism was, and even the French Marxists were having a crisis of faith. University radicals seeking to keep the faith, but uncomfortable with mass death in the pursuit of human liberation, needed a way out. They were certainly aware that most western workers despised them and their bottomless contempt for the societies that gave these academic radicals cushy jobs and elite status, so the workers had to go.
Being themselves widely despised in mainstream society, the radicals of the academy naturally sympathized with despised minorities. Thus, identity-based prejudices were seen as the path forward, and marginalized identity groups (racial, ethnic, and gender/sexual, to name a few) were chosen as a substitute for the proles. With the jettisoning of class as the primary lense for understanding oppression, factories as the primary battlefields, and workers as the shock troops, a new framework was required. That new framework was language, culture, power, and identity. With this shift, the old Marxian notion of 'the workers must seize control of the means of production' became 'the oppressed groups must seize control of the means of discursive production.'
The white race became the new bourgeoisie, and the search for unearned privilege was substituted for the old Marxian habit of denouncing all things bourgeois. And, of course, just as the proletariat needed a vanguard, so, too, do the oppressed groups. Capitalism and hierarchy are still very bad, so at least some things never change!
If you want to understand the new left, and just how badly these ideas can potentially play out, read Orwell. Homage to Catalonia, Animal Farm, and 1984 are good places to either begin, or refresh one's memory.
Matt Yglesias (Slow Boring) wrote a post that I can't remember the name of. His point was that he wasn't a fan of the "cancel culture" discourse. He said it's pretty reasonable for a company to fire someone for saying racist things and holding racist beliefs. The problem isn't the "cancelling," the problem is that we've move the goalpost on what being racist means. Most of us wouldn't want to work with a klansman or a white nationalist. It's probably a good thing that we have social taboos against that sort of stuff. Yglesias' problem is that people have begun calling fairly mundane beliefs racist: like the idea (once common in liberal circles) that standardized test gaps represent actual gaps in learning between races.
I think that's part of the problem here. Progressives have broadened the definition of racist/racism beyond all reason, and now a lot of others feel like the chair has been pulled out from under them.
I think that's what's going on here pro-CRT (CRT used with like ten asterisks here) people have decided all opposition is racist and therefore doesn't need to be addressed.
I love this substack, thanks for the insightful writing!
These days I work for an economic development nonprofit, but I spent the naughts in a social science PhD program at a top public university; at the time, I had my sights on an academic career.
At the time, it was obvious that acquiring serious fluency in postmodern, and critical theory discourses was an absolute necessity for competing in the academic job market. My politics were left-of-center, so I was pre-adapted, and acquire that fluency I certainly did.
Here's my take on the whole Pomo/Critical Theory ball of wax: by the late 60s, the Marxian left had very much soured on the idea of the proletariat as the foot soldiers of the revolution; it's fair to say that the feeling was mutual.
By that time, it had become abundantly clear what an appalling shit-show Soviet communism was, and even the French Marxists were having a crisis of faith. University radicals seeking to keep the faith, but uncomfortable with mass death in the pursuit of human liberation, needed a way out. They were certainly aware that most western workers despised them and their bottomless contempt for the societies that gave these academic radicals cushy jobs and elite status, so the workers had to go.
Being themselves widely despised in mainstream society, the radicals of the academy naturally sympathized with despised minorities. Thus, identity-based prejudices were seen as the path forward, and marginalized identity groups (racial, ethnic, and gender/sexual, to name a few) were chosen as a substitute for the proles. With the jettisoning of class as the primary lense for understanding oppression, factories as the primary battlefields, and workers as the shock troops, a new framework was required. That new framework was language, culture, power, and identity. With this shift, the old Marxian notion of 'the workers must seize control of the means of production' became 'the oppressed groups must seize control of the means of discursive production.'
The white race became the new bourgeoisie, and the search for unearned privilege was substituted for the old Marxian habit of denouncing all things bourgeois. And, of course, just as the proletariat needed a vanguard, so, too, do the oppressed groups. Capitalism and hierarchy are still very bad, so at least some things never change!
If you want to understand the new left, and just how badly these ideas can potentially play out, read Orwell. Homage to Catalonia, Animal Farm, and 1984 are good places to either begin, or refresh one's memory.
Matt Yglesias (Slow Boring) wrote a post that I can't remember the name of. His point was that he wasn't a fan of the "cancel culture" discourse. He said it's pretty reasonable for a company to fire someone for saying racist things and holding racist beliefs. The problem isn't the "cancelling," the problem is that we've move the goalpost on what being racist means. Most of us wouldn't want to work with a klansman or a white nationalist. It's probably a good thing that we have social taboos against that sort of stuff. Yglesias' problem is that people have begun calling fairly mundane beliefs racist: like the idea (once common in liberal circles) that standardized test gaps represent actual gaps in learning between races.
I think that's part of the problem here. Progressives have broadened the definition of racist/racism beyond all reason, and now a lot of others feel like the chair has been pulled out from under them.
I think that's what's going on here pro-CRT (CRT used with like ten asterisks here) people have decided all opposition is racist and therefore doesn't need to be addressed.
Your comments on this post on Heather Heying's Substack were great, thank you!
https://naturalselections.substack.com/p/childrentransitioning
(I couldn't post my thanks there, because I'm not a paid subscriber)