What Are Critical Race Theorists Attempting To Conserve?

Photo by Lawrson Pinson on Unsplash

Recently, Congressman Dan Crenshaw (R-Tx) interviewed Dr. Richard Johnson on his podcast. Johnson is the director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Booker T. Washington Initiative.

When the conversation turned to Critical Race Theory (CRT), Johnson said, “The ideal of CRT was not a weapon of Dr. Martin Luther King … [The traditional Civil Rights Movement’s] mantra was equal-opportunity not equity — there is a difference. We need to combat CRT with the one-race theory of the Civil Rights Movement — there’s only the human race.”

Crenshaw added, “A truly colorblind society.”

Right now, defenders of CRT are shouting Crenshaw and Johnson aren’t critical race theorist, and their assumptions do not prove CRT rejects a colorblind society.

Exhibit A: In 2019, the University of California Press published a CRT text book called Seeing Race Again: Countering Colorblindness across the Disciplines.

Now, Marc Lamont Hill, host of Black News Tonight, recently interviewed Brown University professor of economics, Glenn Loury. After Loury advocated for colorblindness, Hill told Loury, “CRT would absolutely push against, what they call, liberal colorblind theory, or even seeing colorblindness as an ultimate goal of society.”