Conservative critics of CRT will often say it is a “Neo-Marxist” theory, which doesn’t make that much sense without a lot of reading. I hope to clarify and save you, dear reader, a little time.
So what is Neo-Marxism, and why would it have anything to do with education or race? Marxism is about government takeover of industries and wealth redistribution, after all, and CRT is about teaching about racial oppression in schools.
Turns out there is some truth to it, and also a few important differences.
BTW, a pro tip if you want to understand Critical Race Theory, is to read writings about it before about 2015, when the world lost its mind and the debate became intensely political. Fortunately, CRT is an academic theory, so there are endless papers about it, dating back decades.
Yes, Critical Theory generally and CRT in particular are related to Marxism.
There are a number of similarities…
First, CRT and Marxism are both reductionist.
Marxism’s central idea is that:
“The history of all hitherto existing human society is the history of class struggles.” — Marx, Communist Manifesto
In the Marxist view, Capitalist owners exploit proletariat Workers, and any means to reform that is justified. The powerful in society are hegemonic, controlling all functions and institutions in a society.
Critical Race Theory similarly considers White Supremacy to be ubiquitous and hegemonic; therefore, CRT theorists strive to “center” race in their analyses. Early CRT theorists understood this need not be an obsession, but it has become so after work from Ibrahim X. Kendi and others who suggest a “for us or against us” mindset toward race and “anti-racism.” Bell Hooks writes about centering in a way that highlights the conflict and injustice she says is always present between those in the center and those on the margin:
It is the very act exclusion that defines the center; If the margin/fringe get too close, the center will sanction them out and retake that power; Many times, being in the center is an unearned privilege.
Concretely, CRT advocates will say that police are actually an outgrowth of slave patrols, the First Amendment protection for freedom of speech was created during a period of legalized slavery and is actually designed to allow oppressors to maintain racism, etc. In this view, tangential connections become simplistic cause and effect. So now CRT has a strong reductionist flavor.
Second, both ideologies seek to dismantle power structures through political action, and that the mainstream in society wields power as a means to maintain oppressive structures. This is essentially the notion that “structural racism” both exists (true) and is central to all institutions and events (false). Marxism and CRT are both therefore “tear it all down” movements — at least in the view of the more extreme adherents — where all the structures and ideas in society form an ontological network that reinforce and perpetuate oppression, so must be reformed wholesale. (Class oppression for Marxists and white supremacy for CRT.) E.g. Michael W. Apple’s “Ideology and Curriculum,” a well-known critical theory text, uses the word “power” 351 times in about as many pages.
Third is a focus on education as a means of social transformation. As Marx writes:
[W]e destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social. And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, &c.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.
Marx understood and emphasized early how education transmits values. The reductive CRT view that white supremacy is at the very core of society, and our typical educational materials are incompatible with removing it. FOr instance: curricula that say that the United States is founded on the ideals of freedom and equality for all. Something has to give.
A fourth similarity is hostility to the family to the extent it transmits Capitalism and White Supremacy, respectively. Now this is not your “individual racist” white supremacy, but more the structural traditions and institutions that have been absorbed into a white supremacist society, and are transmitted not only by the schools (above) but also the family. CRT therefore requires intervention of CRT-informed educators in schools, sometimes to the exclusion of parents, or as a way of countering the retrograde beliefs of parents.
As above, the idea that the US, in particular, is a “free” country is hostile to CRT, as are many Enlightenment ideals such as tolerance of differing views, a focus on “truth” or “merit,” open debate, etc. CRT theorists would like to at least alter our understanding of the United States, replacing the founding mythos with a set of new ideas that can eventually and finally wipe out white supremacy (theoretically, anyway).
A fifth item — if not exactly a similarity — is academic history. Critical Theory emerged from Marxism when the Frankfurt School, Institute for Social Research and others mixed Marxism with newer thinking. So CRT traces back to Marxism, and the similarities above are not random or haphazard, but at least partially due to shared intellectual history.
But no, Critical Race Theory is not the same as Marxism
There are also plenty of differences. For one, CRT adherents and Marxists kind of hate each other. You just can’t have two reductionists philosophies at once; the very definition of reductionism is that only one thing really matters. You’ll see old-school Marxists and many Socialists undermine CRT because it reduces the focus on class and the plight of the Worker.
Critical theory is not always reductionist and mis-used. At its best, CRT can be a way of interrogating our preconceived notions by looking at society through a race-based analytic lens to uncover assumptions we are blind to. Ibrahim X. Kendi is great at this (though he is also a reductionist) . If you show him condiments on the table at a Wendys, he’ll doubtless find some evidence of racism in them. (Salt is particularly bad for African Americans, he might say, and pepper is best suited to European foods.) While some race-centering observations are off base, a lot of them are illuminating. Black farmers really have been practically run out of the business by denying them credit and government support; growing Black businesses really were razed to the ground in Tulsa and elsewhere. The trick is to use the lens, and then put it down to integrate new observations into a more complex and comprehensive view.
My argument with Kendi and the more extreme CRT ideologues is that they can’t put it down, and cannot seem to look at the world any other way.
Critical Theory can work without the reductionism
It really does not have to be this way. Critical Race Theory is immensely useful in seeking out the ways that racism impacts our society, and showing the truth: that many “structural” issues harm Black Americans and hold them back, and these accumulate over centuries and generations. Racism (including slavery) is the worst thing that the United States (in particular) has ever collectively done. Even as American ideals of freedom and equality have changed the world and arguably did lead to the abolition of slavery, the path was not fast enough, and the work will never be complete enough, so CRT can help.
The problem arises when CRT becomes a political ideology, coupled to intolerance and zealotry, pushed into schools rather than debated openly with parents. Many of the creators of CRT actually understood it to be an “analytical lens” to view society through, and only the newer political owners of the ideology have made it a totalizing, “burn it all down” movement since then.
Some references:
For more information on the CRT critique of freedom of speech, and the desire to carve out racial bias as an exception, read: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/books/287/
For information on how CRT is used to shape curricula (though CRT is not explicitly taught in k-12 schools) read the influential “Ideology and Curriculum” 4th edition: http://www.daneshnamehicsa.ir/userfiles/files/1/10-%20Ideology%20and%20Curriculum.pdf
Marx’s Communist Manifesto (always a good read): https://www.britannica.com/topic/Marxism/Class-struggle
Critical Race Theory and Education — a Marxist Response (the book with the cover photo up top): https://www.amazon.com/Critical-Race-Theory-Education-Response/dp/0230613357
