Here’s a link to my panel discussion on Critical Race Theory and Pipeline Cyber-Threats and Politics. Vickie Oddino hosted me and economist Richard Salsman.
I contrast individualist anti-racism to the new Postmodern- and Critical-Theory-derived strategies. Along the way I discuss these three revealing descriptions of (1) postmodern anti-individualism, (2) the structural part of “structural racism”, and (3) the academic CRT co-founders’ big-picture targets.
(1) Postmodern anti-individualism:
“In the postmodernist perspective, modern subjectivity in all its concrete forms and manifestations—as person, as individual, as self, as res cogitans, as moral agent, as aesthetic subject, as author, as bearer of human rights—is theoretically and practically at the end of its tether, if not already defunct.” Postmodernism is “the dissolution of subjectivity into overarching structures and systems.”
(Rainer Friedrich, “Brecht and Postmodernism.” Philosophy and Literature 23:1. April 1999, 44-64. P. 46.)
(2) On structural racism:
“In this century, the move towards structuralism in many disciplines has been a (secular) seeking out of hidden rules that regulate human behaviour. Structuralist approaches challenge the humanist concept of the self as an autonomous agent by laying bare the extent to which its apparently free choices are predetermined.”
(Chris Weedon, Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory, 1987, p. 33.)
(3) Application to movement Critical Race Theory. Co-founder Richard Delgado, who explicitly rejects MLK’s approach at its basis:
“Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.”
(Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. New York University Press;2001;3. First edition 1995.)