by JOEL B. POLLAK 2 hours ago 100 POST A COMMENT
In November 1985, the Harvard Law Review published an article by Derrick Bell that was a "classic" in the development of Critical Race Theory. The article was edited by then-student Elena Kagan, and was cited by Prof. Charles Ogletree in support of her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Barack Obama in 2010. The article makes clear that Critical Race Theory sees the U.S. Constitution as a form of "original sin"--a view later embraced by Obama as a state legislator, and reflected in his actions and appointments. The following is an excerpt from the non-fiction portion of the article; much of what follows is a fictional story that Bell intended as a parable of racial "fantasy." (99 Harv. L. Rev. 4)
At the nation's beginning, the framers saw more clearly than is perhaps possible in our more enlightened and infinitely more complex time the essential need to accept what has become the American contradiction. The framers made a conscious, though unspoken, sacrifice of the rights of some in the belief that this forfeiture was necessary to secure the rights of others in a society embracing, as its fundamental principle, the equality of all. And thus the framers, while speaking through the Constitution in an unequivocal voice, at once promised freedom for whites and condemned blacks to slavery....
The Constitution has survived for two centuries and, despite earnest efforts by committed people, the contradiction remains, shielded and nurtured through the years by myth. This contradiction is the root reason for the inability of black people to gain legitimacy -- that is, why they are unable to be taken seriously when they are serious and why they retain a subordinate status as a group that even impressive proofs of individual competence cannot overcome. Contradiction, shrouded by myth, remains a significant factor in blacks' failure to obtain meaningful relief against historic racial injustice.
The myths that today and throughout history have nurtured the original constitutional contradiction and thus guided racial policy are manifold, operating like dreams below the level of language and conscious thought. Much of what is called the law of civil rights -- an inexact euphemism for racial law -- has a mythological or fairy-tale quality that is based, like the early fairy tales, less on visions of gaiety and light than on an ever-present threat of disaster. We are as likely to deny as to concede these myths, and we may well deny some and admit others. They are not single stories or strands. Rather, they operate in a rich texture that constantly changes, concealing content while elaborating their misleading meanings.
When recognized, these myths often take the form of the missing link between the desire for some goal of racial justice and its realization. Black civil rights lawyers propound the myth that this case or that court may provide the long-sought solution to racial division. They fantasize and strategize about hazy future events that may bring us a long-envisioned racial equality. White people cling to the belief that racial justice may be realized without any loss of their privileged position. Even at this late date, some find new comfort in the old saw that "these things" -- meaning an end to racial discrimination -- "take time." The psychological motivations behind the myths perpetrated by people of both races can be sufficiently complex to engender book-length explanations by psychiatrists. Racial stereotypes are also part of this suffocating web of myth that forms the rationale of inaction, but it is not necessary to catalogue here the myriad stereotypes about black people that have served since the days of slavery to ease the consciences of the thoughtful and buoy the egos of the ignorant,
The contemporary myths that confuse and inhibit current efforts to achieve racial justice have informed all of our racial history. Myth alone, not history, supports the statements of those who claim that the slavery contradiction was finally resolved by a bloody civil war. The Emancipation Proclamation was intended to serve the interests of the Union, not the blacks, a fact that Lincoln himself admitted. The Civil War amendments, while more vague in language and ambiguous in intent, actually furthered the goals of northern industry and politics far better and longer than they served to protect even the most basic rights of the freedmen. The meager promises of physical protection contained in the civil rights statutes adopted in the post-Civil War period were never effectively honored. Hardly a decade later, the political compromise settling the disputed Hayes-Tilden election once again left the freedmen to the reality of life with their former masters. Finally, the much-discussed "40 acres and a mule," hardly extravagant reparations for an enslaved people who literally built the nation, never got beyond the discussion stage.
The reason that the Civil War amendments failed to produce equality for blacks remains an all-too-familiar barrier today: effective remedies for harm attributable to discrimination in society in general will not be granted to blacks if that relief involves a significant cost to whites. Even in northern states, abolitionists' efforts following the Revolutionary War were stymied by this unspoken principle. Today, affirmative action remedies as well as mandatory school desegregation plans founder as whites balk at bearing the cost of racial equality.
Throughout this history of unkept promises and myth-making about the possibility and proximity of racial equality, racial policy via fantasy has not been the exclusive province of "the perpetrator perspective." Black victims of racial oppression also subscribe to myths about racial issues. The modern civil rights movement and its ringing imperative, "We Shall Overcome," must be seen as part of the American racial fantasy. This is not a condemnation. Much of what advocates call the "struggle" to throw off the fetters of subordinate status is simply an age-old effort to uncover the reality beneath the racial illusions that whites and blacks hold both about themselves and about each other.Clutching for ideological straws is understandable, but, unfortunately, the result is as predictable as that of the framers' fantasy...
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CASUALMEYHEM
2 HOURS AGO
Really? White people spend all their time Opressing black people? We have nothing better to do with our spare moments?
CRT is inherently a RACIST theory. It is built on the premise that all Whites are themselves RACIST.
And yes Democrats, Black people hating White people just because they are White is RACIST.
Get used to the equal application of your own standards.
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TILON
2 HOURS AGO
It's built on the idea that whites treat other whites with preferential treatment just because the people who wrote the Constitution were white. If I were to assume, it probably builds upon the left's assumption that individuals cannot be separated from their deeply rooted, involuntary biases, and so if whites wrote the Constitution, it was racist whether they wanted it to be or not.
Doesn't even make sense, really.
To the left, any Government that is not re-distributive is benefiting some more than others, and is thus not working 'For the People'.
Critical theory is based on tearing down the status quo inside such a society, in order so that 'the 99%' can rise up and make a redistributive Government to get back at who they think are 'hoarders'.
Little do they realize that the 'hoarders' have most of their money invested, and all they'll accomplish is collapsing society.
As for Critical Theory, it comes from the Frankfurt school of Socialist Professors who fled Germany when Hitler was attacking any collectivists that weren't part of his group. They found a warm and welcome reception and audience for their Marxism at Columbia University.
It's essentially a form of Marxism, which is easily provable through research. It focuses on tearing apart institutions using materialist and results-oriented logic, ignoring the deeper issues such as unintended consequences, values and morality, and human nature.
Critical Racial Theory is just Critical Theory tailored for a subgroup, black people who feel victimized. It seems to be a favorite tactic of the modern left to divide people into subgroups they identify with and to attack that subgroup's weakness.
For example:
For women, you attack reproduction.
For hispanics, you kowtow on the border.
For blacks, you sympathize with their victimhood.
For the middle class, you sympathize with their growing difficulties.
For the poor, you promise redistribution.
It's always focused on their more superficial, lower order needs. The KEY to seeing and proving that they are doing it for political gain, though, is to ask a simple question: Do they have a coherent, sustainable plan involving all of these factors and showing how they lead to a sustainable future? If they do not, then they are doing it for political gain, obviously, and shouldn't anyone be able to see that if it is shown to them?
If you know Maslow's hierarchy of needs you can easily see a pattern: The left appeals to more base, instinctual needs, while we are focused more on the indirect consequences of such demagoguery and the arbitrary use of force.
As for Columbia University, the Free Speech Movement happened about 25 years later...most people don't know that the Free Speech Movement was about REPEALING laws against politicization of campuses, an old tradition to maintain schools' neutrality and tradition as a place of debate...
Fast forward almost 40 years later, and look how politicized colleges have become, while the left still attempts to use their image as a neutral place of debate. Rallies and shouting down are far more common methods for debating with conservative professors in colleges today, and Obama's speeches around the country are practically a tour-de-force of colleges.
EDIT: Added information about Columbia and the FSM.
(Edited by author 1 hour ago)
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METALMOVER
1 HOUR AGO
Keep on posting, Tilon! We need you. Thanks for sharing this.
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TILON
48 MINUTES AGO
Thanks a lot.
I'd like to note that the reason the left seems to not care how much money they spend kowtowing to various subgroups is buried in the same beliefs as critical racial theory's belief that as long as the system exists that was created by whites, the whites will be superior.
Basically, the reason the left doesn't care how much they spend is because according to their beliefs, as long as capitalism still exists, they haven't spent enough. The object is to overwhelm the system, because that's when the Government can step in further.
They see results-oriented, secular Government as superior to both the old American Constitutional system, and superior to capitalism itself.
As long as capitalism still exists, according to their ideology, they haven't taken enough yet.
The Fabian Socialist Society openly states in their writings that one of their main objectives is to tax those who make money off of property (renters, stockholders) until those people CEASE TO EXIST.
http://www.econlib.org/library...
Look here, at the Fabian Society's writings.
Revision of Taxation.
I.1.34
Object.—Complete shifting of burden from the workers, of whatever grade, to the recipients of rent and interest, with a view to the ultimate and gradual extinction of the latter class.
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NAMEREDACTED
1 HOUR AGO
This is a great summary. Thanks.
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DARRELL
1 HOUR AGO
You got it right on in very identifiable and relational terms.....for most people who mean well......and not those that are harping their political devisive opinions! This needs to be published in other news meia! Good job!!!
Your article certainly exposes the real intentions of the sociialist/marxist....whoops Democrats in this country today. The head of the Dems are very organized and know where they want to take this country.........and the rest of us....are being dragged kicking and screaming along with the direction they are going....with us not knowing how to STOP THEM!!!!!
HOPE WE CAN FIND A TRUE AMERICAN LEADER TO RISE TO THE OCCASION DURING THIS PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION!!!
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PJEAN
2 HOURS AGO
This is what our president said in 2008.
Obama, “If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights
movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it
succeded was to vest formal rights in previously disposed peoples. So
that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit a a
lunch counter and as long as I could pay for it, it would be OK. But the
Supreme Court NEVER VENTURED INTO THE ISSUES OF REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH AND MORE BASIC ISSUES OF POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE IN THIS SOCIETY.”
“And to that extent as radical as I think people try to radicalize the Warren Court it wasn’t that radical it didn’t BREAK FREE FROM THE ESSENTIAL CONSTRAINTS BY THE FOUNDING FATHERS IN THE CONSTITUTION, at least as its been interpreted and the Warren Court interpreted it in the same way that generally the CONSTITUTION IS A CHARTER OF NEGATIVE LIBERTIES
SAYS WHAT THE STATE CAN’T DO TO YOU. WHAT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CAN’T
DO TO YOU. BUT DOESN’T SAY WHAT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OR STATE
GOVERNMENT MUST DO ON YOUR BEHALF.“
Sounds a little like CRT.
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PAINTWAGON
1 HOUR AGO
This was actually in 2003, on Chicago Public Radio.
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PJEAN
1 HOUR AGO
Thank you.
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AMERICANFAITH
30 MINUTES AGO
YA, CHICAGO radio...the conform or be a racist chicago? Chicago plays MIND games with its citizens...to keep them in line...
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AMERICANFAITH
33 MINUTES AGO
"CONSTITUTION IS A CHARTER OF NEGATIVE LIBERTIES
SAYS WHAT THE STATE CAN’T DO TO YOU. WHAT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CAN’T
DO TO YOU. BUT DOESN’T SAY WHAT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OR STATE
GOVERNMENT MUST DO ON YOUR BEHALF." Because its the government that takes the rights of the the people away...That is why we are a REPUBLIC - BY the People For the People...The people we elect should be looking out for the American People...obviously the people who have been put in these elected positions have changed our law to fit their agenda so as they can get away with raping and stealing from the People and the rest of the World. You should read the Declaration if Independence and the Constitution and its Amendments and not just parrot what others say it says like the Usurper...
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