Another word for Critical Race Theory is history.
Critical Race Theory or CRT focuses upon the specific history of oppression-economics in the United States. You may call that slavery, American Apartheid (Jim Crow), redlining, mass incarceration to name a few, but it all boils down to the reparations owed to the descendants as a result of this abuse. CRT is the history which brings the receipts and points to “the bag;” the money that must be paid to redress the oppression.
A devout Christian-American woman once told me,
“… all people are created in the Divine Image of God. I disagree that I must look at Black History as my own. It is not my history, but I can learn much from it regarding America’s soon coming future. America, like a person, made mistakes. We learn from these mistakes and become better from the lesson.”
The words that came off the page were “[Black History] is not my history” and this is important when considering why certain people are pushing back so hard on the oppression that encapsulates much of Black History since 1526 in what became, circa 1776, the United States of America.
First of all, American slavery was no mistake. When you fight a civil war in which 2.5 percent of the population or 7 million people are killed (with two thirds of them or 4.7 million dying to ensure the enslavement of 4 million Blacks), that’s no accident and it’s no faux-pas. We’re talking about big money; the United States slavery economy turned thirteen, third-world phalanges into a single, first-world fist of dominance. People intentionally fight wars for that level of power and money.
For those who have researched the Aurignacian industry of Africa, the tools and genes brought forth into Upper Paleolithic “Europe” reveal its subsequent encroachment toward Cro-Magnon man. Black History is history. Race is a construct formed in the last five hundred years as one means of controlling the global population. Humans possess a one tenth of one percent (0.1) variation which appears through differences in hair, skin, nails, body shape and, of course, melanin expression including albinism. Since that’s the only tangible difference therefore, we truly are a planet of cousins… behaving badly.
History is history and Black history is history. This is why the strong objection to Critical Race Theory is important. Those who wish to control the population cannot bring awareness to race without the real issue of oppression, debt and reparations being acknowledged and paid out by the government.
“I disagree that I must look at Black History as my own.” This means that I am putting a wall between your pain, suffering, abuse, desolation because I do not want to feel that pain or be associated with it in any way. Christ was the same way. He did not live amongst the “sinners” or publicans. He did not drink wine with the drunkards or internalize sickness to heal the afflicted. Christ built a wall and said I am not, I will not. Right? Cover yourself in his blood, give a nod to John 3:16 and all is forgotten or is it forgiven?
Truth be told, not a lot of people want to be Black including black, brown, yellow, red and rainbow folks. They prefer to be “people of color(s).” The Census tells us that the Black population has increased, but of that increase how many are the descendants of slaves? Perhaps a new group of Blacks and “people of color” has arrived (without bones buried in those slave fields) to replace the face of oppression and abuse; to forget the debt owed to the descendants of those American slaves.
‘…the ARC of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
I would argue that had Dr. King met Dr. Darity, he would have appreciated the wisdom of the ARC–Acknowledge, Redress, Closure where redress equals reparations.
Critical Race Theory spells out the “acknowledge” of history and points to the specific “redress;” closing the wealth gap. For this reason, the elite through their minions, media, politicians and dupes, push back especially hard against CRT. They do not want to pay reparations because worse than shelling out the bag, is losing the power. If the veil of control bandied through the construct of race entered “closure” and died, the real culprit, wealth imbalance as a strategy to divide the people, finally unveiled would perish.
My concern is that when the reparations are ready to be paid, you will have a repeat of the Dawes Roll and thousands of “white” women and their men (similar to what happened with Affirmative Action now predominantly [67%] awarded to white women) would swoop in and stake their reparations claim.
Unlike the former President, the children born of these women would have non-involved, Black fathers descended from American slaves. These children though identified as Black by their mother (her family showed her how to get the bag) retain the values and sympathies of the white woman who raised them. Her loyalty towards the white men who raised her: father, brother, and uncle would be passed on to and ingrained in her Black children who would inherit the bag. Their reparations could empower the white power structure as was accomplished with the Native Americans once the Dawes rolled out. After all, this is a patriarchal, Christian Republic for which it stands. We’ve already seen white-women-with-Black-kids-reparations playing out before CRT. How many Black women tennis instructors could even hope to be hired at the local private club? Have you met any?
Critical Race Theory is an excellent start to helping citizens enter Black through the front door of intelligent thought. I hope CRT continues to push the discomfort zone into reparations where the demand takes root and must be fulfilled.
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” Frederick Douglass