Criticism of Critical Race Theory

 Originally published to Facebook October 1, 2020

As far as I can tell, the fear and rejection of "critical race theory" seems to hinge on a few related critical beliefs:
1) The belief that the foundations of the United States - particularly our founding documents and narrative of resistance to tyranny - are pure declarations and instruments of universal rights and liberty, equally applicable to all people of all demographic categories, including gender, race, religion, etc.
2) That any expression of injustice or inequity along any demographic lines (race, gender, etc.) are due to distortions or perversions of the original intent of the founders, and that a restoration of perfect equity can be achieved by strict adherence to those original documents and the institutions and body of law founded upon them.
3) The rejection of the idea that past inequity of access to equal protection under the law, opportunities for advancement, access to wealth accumulated by one's own labor and/or the labor of others, or other resources has lasting impact on the inequitable distribution and access to the same in current generations.
4) The idea that what inequitable outcomes persist are due only to the intentional, malicious actions of individuals, and that only individuals should be help accountable for their particular actions divorced from societal structures that amplify or enable the harm produced.
Our cherished ideal of American "Liberty" basically goes like this: as long as my actions don't directly harm anyone else, I am allowed to do whatever I want, whenever I want. The freedom of the individual is held as the highest ideal, and any time an individual is asked to give up some degree of freedom for the greater community, it is incumbent upon the one asking to demonstrate how the specific act would directly harm others in the community.
What makes this starting place so harmful is a fatally flawed assumption: the assumption that with very few exceptions the impact of our individual actions and choices are limited to those we can directly observe and do not have an indirect impact on the greater communities of which we are a part. We hold that intention to cause harm must be proved if anyone is to be held accountable for the outcomes of their actions, but then studiously resist educating ourselves on how the larger systems of which we are a part affect the most vulnerable in our local communities, our nation, and our world. At best we claim that our actions didn't break any "rules" without being open to the idea that the rules themselves might be an important cause of inequitable outcomes. At worst we insist that those very rules are actually causing inequitable outcomes to our disadvantage despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary.
Someone said that all of our defensiveness against accepting our part in systems that produce inequitable outcomes can be boiled down to variations on two classic questions: "Am I my brother's keeper?" and "Who is my neighbor?" Tragically it is often those for whom the clear answers to these rhetorical questions should be most obvious who resist the implications most strongly.

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