PRAGERU: What Is Critical Race Theory, And How Do We Fight It?

What is Critical Race Theory, and how do we stop it? In a new video for PragerU, James Lindsay, the founder of New Discourses and a leading expert on Critical Race Theory ideology, breaks down the anti-American belief system in easy-to-understand terms. 

Lindsay begins by noting that, in the teachings of Critical Race Theory, skin color is the most important part of you. If you belong to a racially “minoritized” group, then you’re oppressed; if you belong to a racially “privileged group,” you’re an exploiter. 

“Critical Race Theory begins from the assumption that racism occurs in all interactions,” notes Lindsay. He then provides an example of how Critical Race Theory would work in a store or small shop. 

Imagine you own a shop and two customers enter at the same time, one white and one black. Who do you help first?

If you help the black person first, Critical Race Theory would say you did so because you don’t trust black people to be left alone in your store. That’s racist.

If you helped the white person first instead, Critical Race Theory would say you did so because you think blacks are second-class citizens. That’s racist, too.

Because Critical Race Theory teaches that racism is present in every interaction, proponents of the ideology are forced to interpret every interaction “critically” — in such a way that identifies the racism. And Critical Race Theory will always find the racism it seeks, says Lindsay, “even if it has to read your mind to do it.”

Why can Critical Race Theory always find racism? Lindsay explains: “It has to be there because that’s how the Imperial European powers and then America set things up.”

Critical Race Theory rejects the idea that the western world ever moved past racism, and that any examples of society progressively improving on that front are simply “a mirage,” says Lindsay. Examples of progress just mean that racism has hidden itself better. 

“Critical Race Theory, therefore, is not a continuation of the Civil Rights Movement. It is in fact a repudiation of it. To Critical Race Theorists, Martin Luther King was both wrong and naïve. White Americans can never judge blacks by the content of their character. They can only judge them, always unfavorably — consciously or unconsciously — by the color of their skin,” says Lindsay. 

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“Ironically, not since the Aryan obsession in Germany in the 1930’s and 1940’s or South African Apartheid in the second half of the 20th century has a social movement been so obsessed with race,” adds Lindsay.

As such, Lindsay argues that Critical Race Theory can be seen as a “counter-American revolution,” something proponents of the ideology believes is a positive not a negative. “The American experiment was given a 400-year try-out and it doesn’t work. So, let’s scrap it,” Lindsay says of the proponents’ beliefs. 

So how do Americans fight back against Critical Race Theory? “The answer is simple: Refuse to accept it,” says Lindsay. 

“Don’t be intimidated by ‘the heads I win, tails you lose’ logic of this self-destructive, America-hating, anti-reality idea. Don’t be bullied into thinking that you’re racist when you know you’re not. Or that you’re a victim when you know you’re not,” he concludes. “Defend yourself. While you still can.”

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