CRT, Racism, and Slavery

 

CRT, Racism, and Slavery

Peter Schultz

 

            Oddly, even perhaps ironically, CRT, Critical Race Theory, disguises the race slavery that has existed and still exists in the United States, thereby helping to perpetuate it. How so? It does so by implicitly treating racism as “natural,” and not as the result of a freely chosen and maintained slave system, created and maintained, even now, for political, economic, and social  reasons.

 

            So, racism as a natural phenomenon is to be combatted, rooted up as it were, by “re-education,” i.e., without changing the political, economic, and social arrangements of power that exist in the United States. Hence, the agenda is: don’t have racial thoughts; take down Confederate and other statues; rename places and streets; have a “Black History Month;” don’t say “the N word.” But don’t do anything to dismantle the system, still a slave system, that exploits and oppresses blacks while allowing some of them to be successful, even to be, ala’ Obama, the head overseer of the slave system. Think “The Jeffersons,” moving on up to the sky, as if that emancipated them.

 

            But emancipation, genuine emancipation requires a redistribution of wealth and power in the United States. That is, it requires more than allowing some blacks entry into our elites. It requires creating middle class wealth and letting it “trickle up” to the wealthy, because “a rising tide lifts all boats.” This is the only way to destroy the US slave system, which is still visible in mass incarceration, black unemployment figures, and cruel acts like Bill Clinton, future president, going back to Arkansas during the 1992 presidential campaign to authorize the execution of a black man, a special needs black man at that. And when that slave system is destroyed by such redistributions of wealth and power, racism will disappear because racism is the result, not the cause of racial slavery. If you doubt this, look at nations without a history of racial slavery. As has been pointed out: “There are no black people in Africa!” By choosing slavery, we Americans chose and continue to choose racism. Unless our slave system is destroyed, efforts to eradicate racism will fail.