Much is being said about CRT’s critique of liberalism. But if you’ve studied CRT literature, it should quickly become clear that the CRT critique is specifically directed at traditional liberalism’s analysis of racism and its attendant view of linear, inevitable, progress. 1/
2/ What is rejected is the liberal idea that racism is simply a form of individual irrationality that can be overcome by knowledge, that its social effects can be overcome by race-neutrality, & that its legal & economic consequences can be overcome by formal, procedural equality.
3/ As such, for liberalism, racism is just another relic of the ignorant past destined to be overcome by the inevitable progress of enlightenment. And as we continue to “mix” and ignore “difference” and see the imagined “universal human” in all of us, then racial disparities
4/ will also become a relic of the past. For liberalism, racism is no different than any other form of bigotry, which are all more similar to believing the Sun travels around the Earth than being actual products of a sinister system of laws, habits, and ideas, engrained in our
5/5 most basic social institutions, created for the purpose of exploitation. Accordingly, I don’t think the critique of liberalism found in CRT is any more shocking than what we find in, e.g., Dr. King's later writings or centuries of Black nationalisms.
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