No one really knows what the critical race theory bogeyman looks or sounds like or what he wants, yet everyone is being told how dangerous he is. He is responsible for every wrong-think we may have about race, racism and racial discourse. CRT has become shorthand for every bad, inconvenient or unacceptable cultural thought invading us from the US, even if the thoughts don’t permeate from the US, or if they are mostly relevant to Britain. Be afraid of the bogeyman: be very afraid.
Last week I went on TalkTV to discuss the decision by some Church of England schools to teach about white privilege. Asked what white privilege is, I explained that it is the lack of societal obstacles associated with being white. I further elaborated that it doesn’t mean you will not face obstacles in life: it means that any difficulty, challenge or hardship you face is unlikely to be a result of your skin colour if you are white. By comparison, I as a man, for example, face many pressing issues in society, yet none of them are related to or rooted in me being a man. Simple, uncontroversial, unradical and entirely factual stuff.
My fellow panellist, Peter Whittle, a former Ukip deputy leader, saw it very differently. He described his “friend” (ie me) as “disingenuous”, before rattling on about how white privilege is “based or comes out of something called critical race theory which is being pushed in our schools now”. He then cited a report from an organisation called Don’t Divide Us – which, ironically for an organisation so called, seems hell bent on drumming up hysteria over the “Americanisation” of British racial discourse.
Thanks to its handy work, critical race theory has been cited in a range of race hysteria-driven news stories: the latest being exposes of schools teaching about the “pyramid of white supremacy”. What is this hateful pyramid? It is a learning device that offers practical lessons in how dehumanisation works in practice. How it escalates from indifference and minimisation right the way up to violence and mass murder. One objection is that in its graduations, the pyramid refers to extreme American racial themes such as the Ku Klux Klan, cross burnings and lynchings. Too much information. Way too much. The truth: who can handle the truth? The self-appointed rightwing school inspectors have indeed been busy, and one focus of their attention has been the Nia Academy, a Black-targeted supplementary school in north London (which currently has four children in attendance and costs schools a measly £400 a child for 33 weeks of classes).
