# What is Critical Race Theory? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 27, 2020, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-critical-race-theory/921629 "2020-09-27T00:59:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-critical-race-theory/921629/121 "2020-10-06T18:51:42Z")
> [@damuriajashi](#): > > > [@iiandyiiii](#): > > > > So you objected to MLK Jr’s Civil Rights movement? Because it was the narratives he and his allies demonstrated that ultimately convinced enough Americans to change at least some of these oppressive policies. > > MLK clearly used rights based arguments. I would argue you’ve missed a lot about King’s arguments, especially in the late 60s. > [@](#): > > The new phase is a struggle for genuine equality. It is not merely a struggle for decency now, it is not merely a struggle to get rid of the brutality of a Bull Connor and a Jim Clark. It is now a struggle for genuine equality on all levels, and this will be a much more difficult struggle. You see, the gains in the first period, or the first era of struggle, were obtained from the power structure at bargain rates; it didn’t cost the nation anything to integrate lunch counters. It didn’t cost the nation anything to integrate hotels and motels. It didn’t cost the nation a penny to guarantee the right to vote. Now we are in a period where it will cost the nation billions of dollars to get rid of poverty, to get rid of slums, to make quality integrated education a reality. [https://amp-theatlantic-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/552533/?amp\_js\_v=a6&\_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQFKAGwASA%3D#aoh=16014270450956&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&\_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fmagazine%2Farchive%2F2018%2F02%2Fmartin-luther-king-hungry-club-forum%2F552533%2F](https://amp-theatlantic-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/552533/?amp_js_v=a6&_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQFKAGwASA%3D#aoh=16014270450956&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fmagazine%2Farchive%2F2018%2F02%2Fmartin-luther-king-hungry-club-forum%2F552533%2F) From King’s Where Do We Go From Here: pg. 77 > [@](#): > > It seems to be a fact of life that human beings cannot continue to do wrong without eventually reaching out for some rationalization to clothe their acts in the garments of righteousness. And so, with the growth of slavery, men had to convince themselves that a system which was so economically profitable was morally justifiable. The attempt to give moral sanction to a profitable system gave birth to the doctrine of white supremacy. (He uses the term ‘white supremacy’ 12 times in the book, FWIW) pg. 37 > [@](#): > > Power, properly understood, is the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political or economic changes. In this sense power is not only desirable but necessary in order to implement the demands of love and justice. … There is nothing essentially wrong with power. The problem is that in America power is unequally distributed. pg. 109 > [@](#): > > The dilemma of white America is the source and cause of the dilemma of Negro America. Just as the ambivalence of white Americans grows out of their oppressor status, the predicament of Negro Americans grows out of their oppressed status. It is impossible for white Americans to grasp the depths and dimensions of the Negro’s dilemma without understanding what it means to be a Negro in America. Of course it is not easy to perform this act of empathy. Putting oneself in another person’s place is always fraught with difficulties. Over and over again it is said in the black ghettos of America that “no white person can ever understand what it means to be a Negro.” There is good reason for this assumption, for there is very little in the life and experience of white America that can compare to the curse this society has put on color. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-critical-race-theory/921629/122 "2020-10-06T19:00:04Z")
This is a perfect example of the misguided thinking on the left. If employers are not allowed to do credit checks, just who do you think that’s going to bias them towards? The nice man in the good suit who lives in a decent part of town, or someone who doesn’t look like the guy doing the hiring, who lives in a poor neighborhood, and has no references? The left makes this mistake all the time. Right now the left in California is pushing for ‘preferential grading’ for minorities, so that a ‘B’ for one person is not the same as a ‘B’ for another. They can’t seem to understand that this will inevitably degrade the signalling value of a college degree for a minority person and make it harder for them to be hired. In fact, ‘systemic racism’ is in large part the result of the failure of ‘progressive’ policies of the past. The real ‘systemic racisn’ is that we tolerate a lot more violence in black communities than we ever would in white communities, and that we tolerate terrible schools in black communities that would never be tolerated in white communities. The very existence of many of those poor inner city communties can be traced back to ‘progressive’ programs like The Projects, which turned into inescapable slums for many people. The blame for this is almost entirely on the left. The teacher’s unions that protect lousy schools and lousy teachers, the governments of Democratic states and the mayors of corrupt Democratic cities, policies that were supposed to ‘help’ but wound up creating permanent underclasses. The bipartisan drug war, which incarcerated millions of young black men leaving their children to grow up without fathers, etc. Critical race theory ignores all of this in building its ‘narratives’. CRT says that if black people don’t do as well on college entrance exams it’s because the exams favor ‘white thinking’, rather than accepting the possibility that the average school black kids go to is worse than the average school white kids go to. Critical race theory is racist as hell for that reason. It actually accepts that there are large differences between races, and that so long as the ‘white race’ values are determinative minorities will never be able to compete. Thus we need the eternal ‘struggle’ of anti-racism, complete with struggle sessions, admissions of guilt, atonement, public shaming, expulsion from work, etc. This isn’t Bolshevik Marxism - it’s more akin to the ‘Cultural Revolution’ in China. The Liberal tradition says that if there are differences in how the races are doing in society, we should look for what’s causing those differences and fix them, because the assumption is that skin color just doesn’t matter. So we work for better schools, help minorities with college prep for those who need it, create inner city business incubators, provide special scholarships and business incentives for minorities, more policing in violent minority neighborhoods, etc. That’s what Joe Biden, author of the 1994 crime bill, believes. Or did. CRT says that if there are differences in outcome, the system itself is to blame for rewarding the traits of one race over another, and political action is necessary to tear it down and install one that better suits the other races. And of course, CRT being Marxist in its thinking, you know what kind of system they want to replace the current one with. And CRT totally rejects the notion of evaluating people based on their individual qualities and character, rather than through the lens of race. Martin Luther King is spinning in his grave. CRT is a divisive, racist mode of thinking. It rejects enlightenment thinking in favor of propaganda and raw political power. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-critical-race-theory/921629/123 "2020-10-06T19:00:34Z")
> [@damuriajashi](#): > > No, you’re clearly wrong on this point. The fact that some nyc politicians agree with you doesn’t make your claim any truer than if donald trump agreed with you. Everyone can see that you are ignoring 10 other states and other cities, your ignorance is still unconvincing. Your attempts at just hanging to one article is pathetic, I’m using more than just one. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-critical-race-theory/921629/124 "2020-10-06T19:01:04Z")
Pretty much none of this is actual CRT, but rather the right-wing caricature of CRT. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-critical-race-theory/921629/125 "2020-10-06T19:07:01Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > The blame for this is almost entirely on the left. The teacher’s unions that protect lousy schools and lousy teachers, the governments of Democratic states and the mayors of corrupt Democratic cities, policies that were supposed to ‘help’ but wound up creating permanent underclasses. The bipartisan drug war, which incarcerated millions of young black men leaving their children to grow up without fathers, etc. > > Critical race theory ignores all of this in building its ‘narratives’. 🤦🏽‍♂️ [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323548612\_Racialized\_Mass\_Incarceration\_and\_the\_War\_on\_Drugs\_A\_Critical\_Race\_Theory\_Appraisal](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323548612_Racialized_Mass_Incarceration_and_the_War_on_Drugs_A_Critical_Race_Theory_Appraisal) > Proponents of CRT are committed to progressive race consciousness and view CRT as a mechanism for analyzing and addressing racial inequity (Capers, 2014). We cannot incarcerate our way out of the drug epidemic. The War on Drugs is a war on individuals who experience a treatable medical condition and on the communities in which they reside. It should more properly be called “The War on Our Own People.” The failed War on Drugs and the current administration’s efforts to revive and strengthen it provide examples of how the dominant society allows, and perhaps even actively promotes, the destruction of minority communities. Let me guess, as usual there is a sea of things that you don’t know but instead of looking at proper sources you look at the caricature that right wing sources of information paint. . . . On edit: I swear I did not see [iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)’s post that sees Sam’s post also as pointing at a caricature. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-critical-race-theory/921629/126 "2020-10-06T19:46:31Z")
You seem to have reading difficulty. I pointed out that the ‘drug war’ is part of the problem. Why you thought posting an anti-drug war article would refute anything I said is beyond me. My point was that that drug war was bipartisan, as Democrats also thought that they could fix inner cities by cracking down on drugs and by imposing heavier sentences on people dealing and using drugs in the inner cities. Insted of fixing the problem, it created a generation of young black men that can’t find work and a generation of kids raised in single parent families. As a libertarian, I have always been opposed to the Drug War, and if you do a search I’m sure you’ll find me talking about how damaging it was to the inner city black communities two decades ago. CRT has taken the fact that nuclear families are diminishing in the black community not as a bad thing resulting from bad incentives, but as meaning that ‘nuclear families’ are part of ‘whiteness’. In fact, Black Lives Matter used to have a paragraph on their ‘about us’ page that said one of their missions was to reject the ‘nuclear family’ as being a ‘white’ phenomenon, and instead supporting ‘communal’ raising of children. The problem with the idea of nuclear families being a ‘white’ thing is that black people have always believed in strong families, and used to have nuclear family traditions just as strong or stronger than anyone else. The problem of black single motherhood is entirely a creation of the incentives baked into the attempts to ‘help’ them with bad ideas and bad laws, and has nothing at all to do with the inherent differences between races. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-critical-race-theory/921629/127 "2020-10-06T19:50:21Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > You seem to have reading difficulty. I pointed out that the ‘drug war’ is part of the problem. Why you thought posting an anti-drug war article would refute anything I said is beyond me. I did reply because you insisted that “Critical race theory ignores all of this” It does not. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-critical-race-theory/921629/128 "2020-10-06T20:00:41Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > CRT has taken the fact that nuclear families are diminishing in the black community not as a bad thing resulting from bad incentives, but as meaning that ‘nuclear families’ are part of ‘whiteness’. In fact, Black Lives Matter used to have a paragraph on their ‘about us’ page that said one of their missions was to reject the ‘nuclear family’ as being a ‘white’ phenomenon, and instead supporting ‘communal’ raising of children. You are still getting your information from the ones peddling the caricature. > **[Government policies based on racist myths help dissolve black families |...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/20/government-policies-racist-myths-dissolve-black-families)** > > The lie that African-Americans are incapable of building and maintaining family structures has be bought by many, including policymakers > As the Black Lives Matters movement has striven to show, the absence of black men fills many of our institutional origin stories, but the problem isn’t our insufficient commitment to traditional family structures. The idea that black people fill our prisons because they are inherently violent and have flawed family structures has never been true. It is time to acknowledge the deliberate destruction of our family structures and stop peddling harmful, racist myths. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-critical-race-theory/921629/129 "2020-10-06T20:20:56Z")
From the (now deleted) ‘What we believe’ page on the Black Lives Matter website: “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another” ‘Western-prescribed’. ‘Disrupt’. The idea clearly being that nuclear families are only required because ‘western’ (ie white) culture demands it, not because humans have organized that way since there were humans, and for good reason. See the difference? Both sides admit differences. Liberal thought says that where there are differences, we should try to figure out what’s causing them, because people of different races are not different. Fix the problems holding back minorities, and they can compete just as well as anyone. CRT says there are differences in outcome between races because the races ARE different in many ways, but there’s no objective ‘better’ way. Any differences simply come down to power imbalances. So minorities can NEVER do as well as whites in a ‘white’ system that values ‘white’ traits. The only answer is the eternal struggle of anti-racism, aimed at supplanting ‘white’ values with other values. Blacks don’t do as well at math? A liberal would say that we need better math education in black schools, because black kids are just as capable of learning math as white kids. Or perhaps a national program of subsidized math prep for minority children from inadequate schools. CRT says we just need to emphasize things other than math, because math is a ‘white’ value. Or that black kids should be graded more easily because math itself favors ‘white’ thinking. It’s the old eternal Marxist struggle, except this time for race instead of class. And again, it’s racist as hell. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-critical-race-theory/921629/130 "2020-10-06T20:29:29Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > From the (now deleted) Sowing that indeed most CRTs did not agree with what they said there, I can assign your point as being just nutpicking. Not even BLM on the whole are following that. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-critical-race-theory/921629/131 "2020-10-06T20:32:48Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Blacks don’t do as well at math? A liberal would say that we need better math education in black schools, because black kids are just as capable of learning math as white kids. Or perhaps a national program of subsidized math prep for minority children from inadequate schools. CRT says we just need to emphasize things other than math, because math is a ‘white’ value. Or that black kids should be graded more easily because math itself favors ‘white’ thinking. Sorry to say, but by know it is clear that you are only pointing at caricatures and nutpicks, do you have a cite from the CRTs that started this in academia supporting that? What you are falling for is mostly poison from Trump and others. > **[What Is Critical Race Theory?](https://time.com/5891138/critical-race-theory-explained/)** > > Here's what you need to know ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-critical-race-theory/921629/132 "2020-10-06T20:38:13Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > ‘Western-prescribed’. ‘Disrupt’. The idea clearly being that nuclear families are only required because ‘western’ (ie white) culture demands it, not because humans have organized that way since there were humans, and for good reason. Say what?! Humans have definitely NOT organized that way since there were humans. There is a reason it is called “NUCLEAR” family. It originated in the 1950s in the West. Prior to that you had generations living together - and in many cultures that is still how it works. ---
**Author:** ![damuriajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ac8455/32.png) [@damuriajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/damuriajashi)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-critical-race-theory/921629/133 "2020-10-06T21:03:15Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Pretty much none of this is actual CRT, but rather the right-wing caricature of CRT. So how would you define CRT? Because AFAICT, according to you, CRT is never what is described. The flaws are all imagined by some elusive right wing. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-critical-race-theory/921629/134 "2020-10-06T21:10:59Z")
The gaslighting around this is just about as bad as it is for ‘defund the police’. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-critical-race-theory/921629/135 "2020-10-06T21:14:55Z")
On that you are also wrong, but that is not a surprise, nowhere it is denied that BLM removed those controversial statements (IOW you are not even getting what gaslighting is), what I notice was that it was also other blacks that noticed those dumb statements, meaning that again, most are not supporting those. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-critical-race-theory/921629/136 "2020-10-06T21:17:03Z")
> [@damuriajashi](#): > > So how would you define CRT? Because AFAICT, according to you, CRT is never what is described. The flaws are all imagined by some elusive right wing. Time Magazine was already cited by looking at what the ones proposing the theory are looking for, > ## Who came up with the idea? > > The critical race theory movement officially came into being at a 1989 workshop led by Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda and Stephanie Phillips at the St. Benedict Center in Madison, Wis.—but the ideas behind the movement had been brewing for years by that point. > > In the 1970s, a group of legal scholars and activists developed the theory, building on the work of movements like critical legal theory and radical feminism. Civil rights lawyer Derrick Bell, who was [the first tenured Black professor at Harvard Law School,](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/us/derrick-bell-pioneering-harvard-law-professor-dies-at-80.html)is often credited as the [“father of critical race theory”;](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2012/03/derrick-bell-controversy-whats-critical-race-theory-and-is-it-radical.html) his 1980 _Harvard Law Review_ article [“ _Brown v. Board of Education_ and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma,”](https://www.jstor.org/stable/1340546?seq=1) is often cited as an integral piece in starting conversations about the critical race theory movement. Other founding scholars of CRT include Richard Delgado, Allan Freeman, Patricia Williams, Mari Matsuda and Crenshaw, who also [coined the term intersectionality](https://time.com/5786710/kimberle-crenshaw-intersectionality/), which explains how different facets of identity like race and gender can “intersect” with one another. > > “[Early] CRT theorists identified the significant role that law played not only in facilitating civil rights reforms, but also in establishing the very practices of exclusion and disadvantage that the civil rights movement was designed to dismantle,” Crenshaw explains. “Racial discrimination, segregation, [anti-miscegenation rules] and many more practices were lawful practices right up until the day they weren’t, creating disadvantages and privileges that continue to live throughout our society right up to the present day.” > > ## How has critical race theory been applied? > > Critical race theory has been used to examine how institutional racism manifests in instances like [housing segregation](https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3576&context=penn_law_review), [bank lending](http://law2.wlu.edu/deptimages/Law%20Review/61-4Skeel.pdf), [discriminatory labor practices](https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1190&context=law_jurisprudence)and [access to education](https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1865&context=etd). It has also helped to develop themes and language to address racism and inequality, such as white privilege, intersectionality and [microaggressions](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2696265), among others. > > Here’s a specific current example: consider the fact that a [disproportionate amount of people from Black and Latinx communities are being impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.](https://time.com/5847050/coronavirus-protests/) According to the [CDC](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/05/us/coronavirus-latinos-african-americans-cdc-data.html), Black and Latinx people are twice as likely die from the virus as white people. A person considering that stat in a vacuum might assume that genetic or biological factors are to blame—a false conclusion that insinuates that there is something inherently wrong with Black and Latinx bodies. However, a person applying a critical race theory framework to this issue would also ask how historical racism—which manifests today in everything from [access to clean air](https://time.com/5863757/cory-booker-environmental-injustice-race/) to [treatment](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5915910/) by medical professionals—might be influencing this statistic, and would thus arrive at a much more complete and nuanced explanation. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-critical-race-theory/921629/137 "2020-10-06T21:30:13Z")
> [@damuriajashi](#): > > So how would you define CRT? For about the twentieth time, start here: > **[Critical race theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory)** > > Critical race theory (CRT) is an interdisciplinary academic field focused on the relationships between social conceptions of race and ethnicity, social and political laws, and media. CRT also considers racism to be systemic in various laws and rules, and not only based on individuals' prejudices. The word critical in the name is an academic reference to critical thinking, critical theory, and scholarly criticism, rather than criticizing or blaming individuals. > CRT is also used in sociology t... It’s not something that can be summed up in a single phrase. > [@](#): > > Because AFAICT, according to you, CRT is never what is described. When described by those who hate and disdain CRT, that’s true. Those who get their info on CRT from Rush Limbaugh and the like aren’t likely to have an accurate understanding of it. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-critical-race-theory/921629/138 "2020-10-06T21:32:36Z")
Why would you expect that we would trust a right-wing interpretation of CRT? Rush Limbaugh and Hannity don’t know what they’re talking about when they talk about it. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-critical-race-theory/921629/139 "2020-10-06T22:07:17Z")
Now you are getting it. You are being lied to, and as such, you are getting a false impression, and therefore responding to the boogieman that they want you to be afraid of, rather than the reality of what CRT actually means. Now that you understand that you are being gaslighted by the conservatives who want racism to go on without question or criticism, you are on the road to being an ally against bigotry. ---
**Author:** ![damuriajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ac8455/32.png) [@damuriajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/damuriajashi)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2020, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-critical-race-theory/921629/140 "2020-10-07T13:57:42Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > For about the twentieth time, start here: I’m not really looking for the wiki definition. I know the wiki definition. I am asking for your take. My main criticism of crt is that it can be used to justify almost any position. The abandonment of empirical data, logical thought, deductive reasoning, in favor of anecdote and parables puts crt in the same camp as religion. And just like religion, it is unfalsifiable to the believers and everything they see is a further affirmation of their beliefs. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-critical-race-theory/921629.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-critical-race-theory/921629.md?page=8)