Critical race theory. Once an academic abstraction discussed in college classrooms, it’s now a flashpoint for conservatives who say it is influencing what is being taught in grade schools.
The decades-old concept seeks to highlight how racism influences all aspects of society and how past systemic inequities continue to shape policies.The concept has become politicized with critics saying it distorts history. They say it casts white people as exploiters who owe a debt to everyone else, especially Black people.
The 'concept' has not 'become politicized,' though. It was always an inherently political mode of analysis.
The AJC tries to paint this as a conservatives vs. everyone issue, but in fact the hottest critics of CRT are on the left. Major historians who objected to the 1619 project were published by the World Socialist. As for CRT broadly, here's a sample of their opinion:
Identity politics serves to divide workers into warring camps based on superficial aspects of their identity. There is no challenge to the existing structure of society, only a shuffling of the deck chairs.
The fact of the matter is that identity politics and reactionary ideologies such as intersectionality are not merely compatible with the needs of US imperialism and its institutions like the CIA; they are an essential tool utilized by the bourgeoisie to maintain its class domination over the working class by keeping workers divided along racial and gender lines.
The actual Marxists object stridently because they see CRT (and similar critical theories) as hijacking their 'true and correct' analysis that everything is explicable in terms of economics; instead they try to explain everything in terms of race or sex or sexuality or whatever. If you're a true believer in Marxism, that's always going to lead to bad outcomes because it draws people away from the real problem, and divides them into warring camps who are more easily controlled than a united front would be.
They have a point. These theories divide us into warring camps according to criteria we can neither choose nor change. That does, in fact, make Americans as a whole easier to control. It makes it less likely that united fronts will emerge against government corruption, corporate/tech domination of society, or the influence of foreign powers over what is supposed to have been a self-governing nation.
It's also bad history, as you can read explained by major historians who were interviewed by the World Socialist.
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