So-called ‘critical race theory’ is merely a tool in a ruling-class toolbox meant to divide working-class people from each other. If you have doubts about this, consider that it is being promoted (avidly, as seen here, here, here and here) by Bloomberg.
That’s right: the news outlet owned and run by Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York. Avid proponent of stop-and-frisk, who not only supported but expanded the practice. If there was any one person whose policies may be held responsible for the death of Eric Garner at the hands of the NYPD, it’s Michael Bloomberg. And yet he is the one whose news outlet is most active out there in promoting and defending this theory against its Republican attackers, and preaching to Americans about the evils of racial injustice.
But let’s go back and take a look at the context for a clearer picture here. Bloomberg only ever started apologising for ‘Stop and Frisk’ in 2020, just as he was starting his campaign for president. Bloomberg’s run for the presidency was aimed at one thing and one thing only: denying Bernie Sanders the nomination. What’s more: he knew he couldn’t do that without rebranding himself as an anti-racist, and appearing to outflank Bernie Sanders from the left on race issues by pointing to the supposed ‘Bernie Bro’ phenomenon. Michael Bloomberg only began burnishing his non-existent or barely-existent credentials as an anti-racist, only when the Bernie Sanders phenomenon became a threat to be repulsed. That is to say: he began embracing a capitalist mode of ‘anti-racism’ in the form of critical race theory, in order to undermine a movement based on class solidarity.
This should stick in people’s crenshaws, so to speak (although Crenshaw herself did not support Michael Bloomberg, but rather Elizabeth Warren). The fact that a vulgar form of ‘critical race theory’ was already, in the public forum being weaponised against Bernie Sanders, who was protesting for black people’s civil rights back in the 1960s, by the man whose racist policies killed Eric Garner, really takes the biscuit. As it is, ‘if this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction!’
But this is precisely the problem. Critical race theory subsists solely within the superstructure. It is a language developed by academics, for academics – not for the vast majority of non-white folks! – precisely to serve the material interests of academics (guarding tenured positions, carving out intellectual niches, preserving credentialed authority to speak on certain issues, et cetera). The standpoint-epistemology and post-structuralist focus on narrative emphasised by the critical race theorists, in particular, point to a material interest in maintaining small specialised fiefs within academia. This works out nicely for them, clearly.
But when critical race theory is translated to realms outside academia, usually in a vulgarised form, it is quickly leapt on by capitalists as a marketing and public relations strategy to appeal to particular demographics and ward off close scrutiny of corporate practices. Michael Bloomberg has clearly found it useful as a ready weapon to hand against any movement for real œconomic justice that has any broad-based appeal across race, sex and language lines. In addition, it allows grifters and corporate consultants like Robin DiAngelo and Howard Ross to make tidy profits out of selling white guilt to hapless low-level employees of corporations like Raytheon. Raytheon, in turn, makes tidy profits bombing Palestinian children in Gaza, innocent civilians in Syria and busses full of Yemeni schoolchildren on the other side of the globe.
But even if critical race theory stayed inside academia, even if it wasn’t used to railroad candidates genuinely interested in issues of œconomic justice, even if the vulgarised forms of it were not used to whitewash odious corporate actors like Raytheon with a veneer of ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’, even if it wasn’t used by the likes of Michael Bloomberg (the man responsible for Erik Garner’s death) to save face – it would still be a terrible organising principle for any movement or community. Why? Because it undermines the basic epistemological premises needed for any such movement or communicate to undertake a common action. The idea of ‘standpoint epistemology’ – that is to say, the idea that one aspect of your oppression gives you a particular gnōsis unavailable to and incomprehensible by those who do not share the experience of that aspect of your oppression – is a non-starter when it comes to building any sort of common good. A true politics of the common good will invariably include people from multiple ‘standpoints’, not all of whom share the same experiences of oppression.
The primary critics of standpoint theory in its modern form were the original critical theorists. The Marxists of the Frankfurt School – Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse – correctly saw this idea as relativistic and atomising, and a turn back to the idealism of the Young Hegelians whom Marx criticised in ‘The German Ideology’. Yet, in a rather bleakly ironic twist, many of the Republican lawmakers and talking-heads who are opposing the teaching of critical race theory – actually vulgarised ideas selected from critical race theory – in schools, insist that critical race theory is a form of Marxism derived from the Frankfurters. Oy vey.
In short, then: don’t be suckered. The fact that Mr Stop-and-Frisk, Michael Bloomberg himself, can use vulgarised concepts from critical race theory to bash ‘Bernie bros’ and railroad a campaign that would genuinely help everybody – including women and people of colour – should give its supporters pause. It should also be a warning sign that the critical race theorists tend to be Jean Jaurès ‘radicals’, who are more concerned with protecting their academic fiefs and maintaining their relevance and marketability within particular niches of academic output and corporate consulting, than they are with matters of substantive justice. It’s a ‘theory’ that appears radical, but it is in fact deeply alienating, and when put into practice its results tend to be deeply regressive.
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