Wayne Watkins
CRT stands for Critical Race Theory. Anyone with an interest in politics will have come across CRT in the last couple of years. It has become mainstream and is now unavoidable, so we really should learn what it is all about.
We all know that racism is wrong. This implies that anything that opposes racism must be good. At a glance, CRT appears to be anti-racist. It is at the forefront of the Black Lives Matter movement and was behind the Social Justice movement that has gained traction in the last decade. But if you dig a little deeper, you will find it is not what it appears to be.
We all want a fair and equal world. Yet the definition of “fair” and “equal” differs from person to person. When we watch the All Blacks play, we want the ref to be fair. We also want the All Blacks to win. It would not be fair if the ref cheated so the game ended in a draw. This is the difference between “equality of opportunity” and “equality of outcome”.
Martin Luther King led the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. He had a dream. It was that people would not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character. This was the freedom he wanted. The freedom for good people to succeed on their own merit. He wanted equality of opportunity.
This is not what CRT wants.
Equality of outcome is a communist ideal. It is no surprise that it is central to the CRT dogma. CRT is the product of Critical Theory, a philosophy created by a group of Marxist academics in Frankfurt in 1937. The goal of Critical Theory is to overthrow western society in a new socialist revolution.
CRT is being used to destroy the achievements of the Civil Rights movement in order to create disharmony and sow the seeds of violence.
Half a century of gains in the fight against racism since Martin Luther King has brought near-universal acceptance for the likes of Barrack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and Tiger Woods. Strangely, journalists trumpeted Obama as the first black president, while the rest of us simply accepted him as a charismatic and eloquent leader, regardless of race or sex. Winfrey was admired for her common touch, not a separate racial identity. Woods was the face of Nike, selling overpriced golf gear to middle-class and middle-aged white men who wanted to be like him.
Skin colour was fast becoming irrelevant.
The brilliant economist, Thomas Sowell (who happens to be black), has traced the ongoing economic disparity between black and white communities in the US to, unsurprisingly, economic factors, not racism.
In New Zealand, the urban drift that began in the 1960s has long been identified as the economic factor affecting Maori. It also affected rural Pakeha equally badly. It was never a race issue. Job skills are the solution to breaking the welfare cycle.
Even police shootings in the US are not a race issue, despite what Black Lives Matter and journalists claim. The number of white people shot dead is twice the number of black people in the 2017-2020 period of BLM activism.
The successful demise of racism meant Critical Theory was losing a “useful” division for radicalising socialists. CRT is being used to bring back that division.
The trick CRT uses for promoting racism is to claim that it is no longer enough to be non-racist. We have to be “anti-racist”. It sounds good – like a strong new step in the battle to defeat the old evil. But it is utter nonsense, and it is done by changing the definition of racism.
The dictionary definition is “discrimination against a person on the basis of their race or ethnic group”. The opposite of this is therefore to not discriminate on the basis of race.
CRT firstly defines racism as “white hating black”, then declares the opposite to be “black hating white” instead of “white not hating black”.
Anti-racism is, bluntly, racist. It is being used to stir up hatred.
CRT’s second trick borrows directly from the communist playbook to promote a clearly false ideology.
Equality of outcome has long been a tool to promote socialist and communist ideology. It is extremely enticing to poor people, because it takes from the rich and rewards the unproductive. Any sane examination reveals a system that will quickly stagnate. There is no incentive to improve, innovate, create, or excel. This is why communism has failed in every country that has tried it. This is why China has adopted a free-market economy while maintaining a political dictatorship. It is Communist in name only.
Equality of outcome based on race will also fail. But in the meantime, it is equally enticing to some minorities. Quotas for everything from medical school places to members of parliament mean a handful of adherents to racial activism get richly rewarded. CRT teaches that this is an entitlement.
We would not accept racially biased quotas on the rugby field, yet it is okay for medical matters of life and death, or political decisions affecting the entire country. A new form of racism called “diversity” is now entrenched in New Zealand.
The third trick is indoctrination. CRT teaches that everything must be seen through the eyes of race. It borrows a dangerous tool from Critical Theory, stating that truth is merely a social construct; therefore a personal belief or experience is more real. This is plainly not true, but it is a beguiling concept to empower believers because it tells them they can’t be wrong about anything.
Even science is racist, because most great scientists have been white. The famous black astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, disagrees. Somehow, his experience doesn’t count.
History is an easy target. Any fact can be dismissed as white oppression if it contradicts a single minority belief or experience. Throughout the western world, schools are teaching history in terms of white privilege. Children are being taught to see their classmates solely by race, and to blame different races for any inequality between them.
This is a betrayal of Martin Luther King’s dream. It is the destruction of the Civil Rights movement. It is a massive backwards step in race relations.
Why is this being done?
Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party is leading the promotion of CRT ideology. The party shares the same communist roots as the Critical Theory founders. Ardern herself served as president of the International Union of Socialist Youth in 2008-2009, referring to members as “comrades”. The group stated, “We struggle for redistribution between the poor and the rich, because we believe in equality and justice.”
The name Critical Theory originates from a critical analysis of Marxism’s failure to take over the world. The theory is that Marx was wrong to focus on economic factors to initiate the revolution, and that he should have targeted social institutions. To prepare society for a socialist revolution, the institutions must be made dysfunctional, in order to cause sufficient hardship for the “oppressed” to rise up.
CRT wants to make things worse for minorities such as blacks in the US and Maori in New Zealand. It wants to create conflict between racial groups. It wants biased systems to undermine trust in personal success – would a rational person hire a Maori lawyer in a quota system when he or she may not be properly qualified? It actually hurts Maori achievement. It wants to train people to see only race, and to use race in their decision making. CRT wants to create oppression.
CRT is only one part of Critical Theory. Racial division is not enough. It needs other oppression. Perhaps this is why Labour has failed on housing. The gap between rich and poor has widened. Perhaps this is why Labour has failed on public transport. The frustration of the working class grows. Perhaps this is why Labour has failed on child poverty. Angry and violent youth are easy to inflame.
Ardern and the Labour socialist elite can lead the oppressed to victory, where they decide who gets what in the Great Reset’s redistribution of wealth. Similar revolutions are planned for other countries.
We, the people, need to stop this.
Most of us are too busy struggling to get ahead in our daily lives. We don’t have time. We don’t have the resources. The parable of the frog in the boiling pot tells how the water heats up so slowly the frog doesn’t notice the change and gets boiled alive. The water in New Zealand’s pot is starting to steam. The frogs need to wake up.
We need to shout that fairness is about equality of opportunity not outcome.
We need to shout that “anti-racism” is racist.
We need to shout that race-based quotas harm races.
We need to shout that schools should not be used for political purposes.
We also need to shout that on-going economic disparities demand economic solutions because this is the best way to address Maori well-being while helping all poor people. We can put an end to racism once and for all, and it sure doesn’t need CRT.
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