Critical Race Theory ignores anti-Semitism

[rangerrebew]

Critical Race Theory ignores anti-Semitism
Its obsession with 'whiteness' overlooks centuries of discrimination
BY Joel Kotkin and Edward Heyman
 

Edward Heyman is a former political scientist and consultant in the Orange County, CA Jewish community.
August 9, 2021
 

National Socialism, Maoism and Marxism-Leninism all have one thing in common: they boil down human experience to one aspect, such as race or class, and diminish the struggles and achievements of much of humanity.

In some respects, as an approach to understanding history, CRT has a certain credibility. Ibram X. Kendi’s retelling of American history in Stamped from the Beginning is lucid, well-crafted and internally consistent in its description of racism as both a motivating force and by-product of the American tale. He uses it to rationalise and support his claim that African Americans have failed to attain the fruits of American life in the same way as whites — higher education, corporate leadership, home ownership and intergenerational wealth — but suggests this is due almost entirely to racist policies embedded in American institutions and law.

It certainly does not serve any country’s history to ignore such things; they are fundamental strands of the national tapestry. But CRT and its adherents present an all too one-sided view. Its founding father, legal scholar Derrick Bell, even claimed African Americans had not made progress since Abolition, obliterating the enormous contributions — in politics, arts, culture and elsewhere — made by African Americans in the face of widespread discrimination.

https://unherd.com/2021/08/critical-race-theory-rewrites-history/

[Kamaji]

Sorry, but Ibram X. Kendi’s retelling of American history is a flat-out lie, concocted solely for political purposes, and misses the basic fact that it is culture, not skin-color, that matters the most, and right now, black American subculture is suicidally pathological.

[Free Vulcan]

I think it has to ignore it. The idea of genetic racism in whites sure sounds awful close to how Hitler talked about the Jews.

Wouldn't want anyone making that connection, or drawing the conclusion that CRT is nothing but black supremacy ideology.

[The_Reader_David]

It is not that CRT ignores anti-Semitism, rather, it expands its target.  As I wrote in the comments section of UnHerd, where I post in under my given name, rather than a pseudonym:

Consider the following description of an ideology: an ethnic group which has proved very successful by many measures of social and economic attainment is vilified as the source of the world’s miseries for centuries, if not millennia; the group’s success is held not to be the result of cultural characteristics worthy of emulation, but of blameworthy contrivances to gain unfair advantages over others; the more extreme exponents of these views suggest that the elimination of the ethnic group in question is the only way to solve the problem they present. What is being described? Hint: until recently, there was only one right answer, now there are two.

I would suggest that CRT does not ignore the Jews, but merely expands the target of the “the-Jews-run-the-world” version of anti-Semitism to all “white people” (“white” being peculiarly defined so that Sepharic Jews and Arab Christians are “white” but Arab Muslims are “people of color”).

In California they have even found a way to tar all white people with the old anti-Semitic charge of “deicide” (though being illiterate in classical languages, they mix Greek and Latin roots and call it “theocide”). “How?” you may wonder. Well, the white Conquistadors destroyed the human-sacrificing pagan religion of the Aztecs, and thus all of us white folk are guilty of offing Quetzelcoatl and company.

[berdie]

It is not that CRT ignores anti-Semitism, rather, it expands its target.  As I wrote in the comments section of UnHerd, where I post in under my given name, rather than a pseudonym:

Consider the following description of an ideology: an ethnic group which has proved very successful by many measures of social and economic attainment is vilified as the source of the world’s miseries for centuries, if not millennia; the group’s success is held not to be the result of cultural characteristics worthy of emulation, but of blameworthy contrivances to gain unfair advantages over others; the more extreme exponents of these views suggest that the elimination of the ethnic group in question is the only way to solve the problem they present. What is being described? Hint: until recently, there was only one right answer, now there are two.

I would suggest that CRT does not ignore the Jews, but merely expands the target of the “the-Jews-run-the-world” version of anti-Semitism to all “white people” (“white” being peculiarly defined so that Sepharic Jews and Arab Christians are “white” but Arab Muslims are “people of color”).

In California they have even found a way to tar all white people with the old anti-Semitic charge of “deicide” (though being illiterate in classical languages, they mix Greek and Latin roots and call it “theocide”). “How?” you may wonder. Well, the white Conquistadors destroyed the human-sacrificing pagan religion of the Aztecs, and thus all of us white folk are guilty of offing Quetzelcoatl and company.

That is an excellent post!