Race vs. Culture
A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race—and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin.
Ayn Rand
Critical Race Theory (CRT) conflates race with culture and equates ideas with the former rather than the latter. One’s race refers to his or her physical appearance, largely determined by genes, i.e., biology. One’s culture refers to his or her beliefs and practices, which are both volitional, i.e., chosen. The great achievement of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s was its recognition that race is not a moral issue, as the moral is that which one chooses and acts upon. Since a person’s race has no relationship to their honesty, ambition, integrity, intelligence, diligence, trustworthiness, or capacity for hard work, it is not a proper basis for judging him or her.
CRT associates values such as “objectivity,” “individualism,” “punctuality,” “capitalism,” or “love of the nuclear family” with whiteness, a racial designation. Such a view is just as absurd as declaring their opposites as representative of blackness. Ideas, as such, lack a racial dimension.
To make this point concrete, consider my intellectual development and how it diverges from others who may share my genetic lineage. I am a passionate individualist, an admirer of the Enlightenment, an advocate for political freedom and capitalism, yet I have Cuban ancestry. Who do you suppose I sympathize more with: Thomas Jefferson or Fidel Castro? An individualist would compare and contrast the ideas and values of Jefferson and Castro, finding that Jefferson was a revolutionary concerned with limited government and Castro was a revolutionary concerned with unlimited government. Such an analysis would find that I am more at home alongside Jefferson. A racist, on the other hand, would say that because Castro and I have a similar genetic makeup, I should be more at home with El Caballo rather than the third U.S. president. An “anti-racist” imbued with CRT would not only agree with the racist, but they would hold my own view to be “a problematic reflection of white privilege.”
We as parents and educators need to teach children that a person’s race is morally, socially, and politically irrelevant. Children should be taught that one should neither be ashamed nor proud of their race since this is not something anyone has control over, and it is irrational to be either ashamed or proud of something that is truly out of your hands.
We, as CRT dissenters, need to assert that racism is a real concept but that it has been stolen and perverted by the critical theorists to indict white Americans for moral crimes because, somehow, “only white people can be racist.” Racism is the idea that one can make moral, political, and social judgments about individuals based on their skin color — any skin color — and that no “race” of people has a monopoly on such a moral abomination. We as Americans need to declare that we believe it is unjust to reward people today for crimes that may have been committed against their ancestors yesterday, that it is immoral to inflict handicaps on individuals today for injustices committed by their ancestors yesterday.
