Race Consciousness & Racial Separatism in Critical Race Theory

Seeing Through Race-Tinted Lenses

Jul 07, 2023

RACE CONSCIOUSNESS - the SHORT VERSION
RACE CONSCIOUSNESS in CRITICAL THEORY
RACE CONSCIOUSNESS in CRITICAL RACE THEORY
- Intro
- CRT Split Off From Critical Legal Studies Over Race Consciousness
- Basics of Race Consciousness in CRT
- CRT’s Anti-Color-Blind Stance
- CRT is for Racial Separatism Because it is Race Conscious
  - Dishonesty About Malcolm X’s Stance on Racial Integrationism/Separatism
  - CRT is for Black Nationalism
  - CRT’s View That Race Consciousness is Different for Blacks Than it is for Whites in America
- CRT’s Race Conscious Anti-Integrationism
- CRT Aligns With White Nationalists Against Liberal Integrationism
Racial Separatism is Anti-Racism?
Race Consciousness Serves Marxism

Last updated: August 10, 2023 

        ∴ This is part of the Culture War Encyclopedia ∴

What I have written below so far regards race consciousness according to critical race theorists. I intend to research race consciousness according to National Socialism, those who defended slavery in the old South, modern day white supremacists and so on as soon as I can, so donate to us, please!

RACE CONSCIOUSNESS - the SHORT VERSION

Race consciousness can be summarized as being the opposite of ‘color blindness’ or the opposite of judging people based on their merit rather color of their skin.

Lawyers, professors, students and others who write from the fields of critical theory, critical legal studies (CLS) and critical race theory (CRT) argue in favor of race consciousness which means that they want racial segregation.

One may ask what makes their race conscious ethos different than, say, that of white supremacist groups who are quite conscious of race? Their claim is that although they are concerned with advancing their own group and although they want racial separation like white supremacists, they claim that they do not think of their own group(s) as superior, just different and better off with their own kind.1

Furthermore, as demonstrated in the section on cultural Marxism in the Culture War Encyclopedia, in neo-Marxism (cultural Marxism, critical theory, CLS, CRT and so on), Marxist class struggle is replaced with neo-Marxist identity group struggle.

In Marxism, socialism and so on, to focus on class and to see things through class-tinted glasses in accordance with Marxist doctrine is to have class consciousness.

In critical race theory and so on, to have race consciousness is to see through race tinted glasses and to interpret what one sees through this filter in accordance with the doctrine.

RACE CONSCIOUSNESS in CRITICAL THEORY

According to Felluga in Critical Theory - the Key Concepts,2

“It was obvious to many of us that although race was … socially constructed (the idea of biological race is “false”), race was nonetheless “real” in the sense that there is a material dimension and weight to the experience of being “raced” in American society, a materiality that in significant ways has been produced and sustained by law. Thus, we understood our project as an effort to construct a race-conscious and at the same time anti-essentialist account of the process by which law participates in “race-ing” American society.” (Crenshaw et al. 1995: xxvi)
Critical Race Theory therefore adopts a rather complex approach to issues of race, as evidenced in key concepts that it shares with Black Feminist thought . . . including the Matrix of Domination, intersectionality, and whiteness as property. For example, rather than see racism as an aberrant, now no longer common act that directly targets minorities by denying them their rights, CRT scholars examine what they term “micro-aggressions,” those common, quotidian, minor acts that serve to mark a racial minority as inferior (repetition of racial cliche’s, body language, even simply the avoidance of someone’s gaze). “White privilege” functions in much the same way: “reserving favors, smiles, kindness, the best stories, one’s most charming side, and invitations to real intimacy for one’s own kind of class” (Delgado and Stefancic 2001: 25).
Racism, according to CRT, “is ordinary, not aberrational - ‘normal science,’ the usual way society does business, the common, everyday experience of most people of color in this country” (7). A legal notion of equality that is “color blind,” purporting to provide the same opportunities to everyone regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation and so on, only addresses “the most blatant form of discrimination, such as mortgage redlining or the refusal to hire a black Ph.D. rather than a white high school dropout, that do stand out and attract our attention” (7).
According to CRT, the liberal doctrine of “color blind” equality (e.g. the principle of meritocracy, which is used to reject affirmative-action rules) in fact serves to legitimate all the other forms of oppression and marginalization that constitute the daily experience of subaltern racial, gender, and sexual identity. The law’s support of color-blind equality thus keeps dominant identity groups from having to address the real, everyday injustices or even the systemic mechanism (e.g., standardized tests, police profiling, legal precedence) that deny subaltern groups power, statues, respect, and wealth.

RACE CONSCIOUSNESS in CRITICAL RACE THEORY

Intro

Race-consciousness experience is a springboard from which we engage in fundamental criticism. . . .

Wrote critical race theorist John O. Calmore in his essay on critical race theory (1992).3

Race consciousness is one of the major aspects of critical race theory (see upcoming section on CRT in the Culture War Encyclopedia).

Race consciousness is of course centered on race as the writers and writings quoted and discussed here define it. The section on race in the Culture War Encyclopedia discusses race from the perspectives of biology, history and critical race theory. Thus, race will not be defined here but rather we will move forward assuming the reader is versed in what these writers mean by the term race and familiar with their views of race as a social construction.

Martin Luther King (on the left) and Malcolm X (on the right). Image source: *Encyclopedia Britannica*

It is important to understand that when critical race theorists write of race consciousness, they disagree with Martin Luther King Jr.’s view that,

we must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

You see, Dr. King testified,

I have a dream today

that

little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers

but critical race theorists do not share that dream. When they write of race conscious, they agree with the racial separatist view of others such as Malcolm X (before he reversed his position),4 the Nation of Islam, black nationalists and other ethnonationalists. More on this below.

CRT Split Off From Critical Legal Studies Over Race Consciousness

Under Critical Race Theory in the Culture War Encyclopedia in the History section, it is explained how CRT emerged in the 1970s or 1980s largely because some within the association of students, scholars, lawyers and professors who saw themselves in the category of what they called critical legal studies (CLS) decided that CLS did not have enough race consciousness.

It seems, therefore, race consciousness (or lack thereof) was the wedge that drove the split.

Basics of Race Consciousness in CRT

According to critical race theorists Richard Delgado5 and Jean Stefancic6, to have race consciousness is to center one’s view on the role of race in society and to engage in racial activism in response to this view.7 As they write in Critical Race Theory - an Introduction (2017)8,

In the construction of “racism” as the irrational and backwards bias of believing that someone’s race is important, the American cultural mainstream neatly linked the black left to the white racist right: according to this quickly coalesced consensus, because race-consciousness characterized both white supremacists and black nationalists, it followed that both were racists. The resulting “center” of cultural common sense thus rested on the exclusion of virtually the entire domain of progressive thinking about race within colored communities. With its explicit embrace of race-consciousness, Critical Race Theory aims to reexamine the terms by which race and racism have been negotiated in American consciousness and to recover and revitalize the radical tradition of race-consciousness among African-Americans and other peoples of color - a tradition that was discarded when integration, assimilation and the ideal of color-blindness became the official norms of racial enlightenment.

To review, according to these critical race theorists Delgado and Stefancic;

CRT explicitly embraces of race-consciousness.
CRT wants to renew race consciousness in non white Americans.

As we will see, this means that;

CRT wants racial segregation.
CRT wants non white Americans to want racial segregation.

CRT’s Anti-Color-Blind Stance

Delgado and Stefancic write,9

Color blindness can be admirable, as when a governmental decision maker refuses to give in to local prejudices. But it can be perverse, for example, when it stands in the way of taking account of difference in order to help people in need. An extreme version of color blindness, seen in certain Supreme Court opinions today, holds that it is wrong for the law to take any note of race, even to remedy a historical wrong. Critical race theorists (or “crits,” as they are sometimes called) hold that color blindness of the latter forms will allow us to redress only extremely egregious racial harms, ones that everyone would notice and condemn. But if racism is embedded in our thought processes and social structures as deeply as many crits believe, then the “ordinary business” of society - the routines, practices, and institutions that we rely on to do the world’s work - will keep minorities in subordinate positions. Only aggressive, color-conscious efforts to change the way things are will do much to ameliorate misery.

CRT is for Racial Separatism Because it is Race Conscious

In Critical Race Theory - an Introduction, Delgado and Stefancic define integration10 as the

process of desegregating environments such as public schools or neighborhoods

and desegregation11 as the

policy to integrate the races in schools or housing

They define assimilation12 as the

process of taking on social and cultural traits of the majority race in the nation in which one resides.

and nationalism13 as the

view that a minority group should give priority to its own affairs and interests first.

They are referring to white nationalism, for example, black nationalism and so on. This is also known as ethnonationalism.

They write, furthermore, that some critical race theorists are assimilationists who want to assimilate into the broader society and, along with it, place loyalty to the USA before their loyalty to their race while others are nationalists who14

are apt to describe themselves as a nation within a nation and to hold that the loyalty and identification of black people, for example, should lie with that community and only secondarily with the United States.

They write that critical race theorists who take the nationalist side of this split want segregated schools: all black schools, all Latino schools, all white schools and so on.15

To be fair, I must say that after reading a few books and many essays on critical theory, critical legal studies and critical race theory by proponents of these schools of thought adding up to about 1,950 pages, I have seen very little from them arguing for assimilation.

They also write16 that

Latino nationalists also endorse preservation of the Spanish language and ties with Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Caribbean or other homelands. A few speak of restoring what is now the U. S. Southwest to something like it previous condition - the mythical land of Aztlan.
Both Latino and black nationalists take a dim view or passing - the effort to deracinate oneself and present oneself as white. Latino nationalists usually reject the term “Hispanic” because of its association with Spain, the nation that oppressed their ancestors in Mexico and Central and South America. Nationalists honor ethnic studies and history as vital disciplines and look with skepticism on members of their groups who date, marry, or form close friendships with whites or seek employment in white-dominated workplaces or industries.

The authors go over some intermediary positions on this contention.17 For the most part, however, Critical race theorists are against racial integration, at least insofar as they present their writings to the public in what are considered by themselves to be their most important writings (see the bibliography). In other words, they are against desegregation. In other words, they are against racial integration in housing and in schools.

They want to reverse Brown v. Board of Education and the resulting “liberal integrationism” as they call it18, and “integrationist assumptions”.19

As Ibram X. Kendi20 reminds us in Progress, printed in The 1619 Project21 that following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling by the Supreme Court, there was the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 for desegregation on buses, the Little Rock 9 in 1957, the lunch counter sit-ins of 1960, the Freedom Riders of 1961, the March on Washington with Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963, the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.22

In Race Consciousness23, an essay that is included in Critical Race Theory - The Key Writings That Formed the Movement24, originally published 1990 in the Duke Law Journal25, Gary Peller (who writes that he is white26 associates race consciousness necessarily with what is known as ethnonationalism (white nationalism, black nationalism, National Socialism and so on). Oxford Bibliographies describe ethnonationalism as referring to forms of

nationalism that regard ethnicity and ethnic ties as core components of conceptions and experiences of the “nation”.

Peller’s argument is that of ethonationalism and, again, in opposition to what he calls the assumptions of integrationists27, against their ideology28, against what he calls “liberal integrationism”29.

Dishonesty About Malcolm X’s Stance on Racial Integrationism/Separatism

Peller opens his essay, some of which is quoted below, with this quote from Malcolm X in favor of black nationalism30 as if X never turned against this view. As it states under Malcolm X in the Encyclopedia Britannica,

“The entire civil rights struggle needs a new interpretation, a broader interpretation. We need to look at this civil rights thing from another angle-from the inside as well as from the outside. To those of us whose philosophy is black nationalism, the only way you can get involved in the civil rights struggle is to give it a new interpretation. The old interpretation excluded us. It kept us out.” [1]
- Malcolm X, 1963
This Essay is, in part, a reaction to the emergence of critical race theory, the new scholarship about race being produced by people of color in American law schools. [2] As I see it, one of the historically significant features of the critical race theory movement is that, after nearly two decades of relative consensus about what a progressive race reform agenda encompasses, a new generation of scholars is in a sense following Malcolm X's advice, and reinterpreting the meaning of "this civil rights thing."

Peller never does mention that Malcolm X turned away from this racial separatist stance roughly one year after he stated those words after leaving the Nation of Islam.

In Church31, Anthea Butler32 writes33 that Malcolm X

disparaged the desire for integration

and subscribed to Black nationalism. Like Gary Peller, Anthea Butler fails to disclose that Malcolm X renounced this separatist stance in 1964. [see the section Final years and legacy under Malcolm X in the Encyclopedia Britannica]

CRT for Black Nationalism

In Race Consciousness, Peller writes34,

I contrast integrationism with black nationalism as it was articulated during the 1960s by Malcolm X and others. My purpose . . . is to depict integrationism and nationalism as starkly contrasting discourses of racial justice-in part to identify integrationism as a particular racial ideology, depending for its persuasiveness on certain background images of social life that are controversial rather than self-evident-and in part to present black nationalism in a systematic, theoretical frame, to counter the deep-seated image in dominant discourse that black nationalism embodied merely an emotional and angry reaction to oppression, rather than an alternative, coherent, and reasoned analysis of the meaning of racial domination. . . I argue . . . that the contemporary mainstream image of racial justice in terms of transcending race consciousness was embraced in part to resolve the particular "threat" that black nationalism represented in the late 1960s and early 1970s: In the background of today's dominant discourse about race are the traces of profound cultural anxiety rooted in the broad-ranging critique that militant nationalists lodged against the assumptions of everyday life in American institutions.

Peller wrote35, further on,

As I have suggested, there was no analytically necessary reason that would require the identification of the social reform of racial integration with cultural assimilation, individualist norms, or with the idea that race consciousness is evil. But racial integration, and its oppositional relation to black nationalism, have acquired this particular meaning within the last two decades. The ideology of integrationism - with its analytic components of prejudice, discrimination, and segregation - forms the framework for American mainstream thinking about race.

Also36,

The rejection of black nationalism as reverse racism, with the corresponding idea that any race consciousness implies a form of domination and oppression, now forms part of the underlying structure of mainstream discourse about race in legal, political, and cultural spheres.

CRT’s View That Race Consciousness is Different for Blacks Than it is for Whites in America

Peller wrote in Race Consciousness37,

When a new generation of scholars embraced race consciousness as a fundamental prism through which to organize social analysis in the latter half of the 1980s, a negative reaction from mainstream academics was predictable. . .

…and38…

. . . it is important to comprehend the different meaning that race consciousness historically represents for whites and blacks in America. Within the white community, the conflict over race traditionally has been structured around an opposition between white supremacists who supported segregation, and white liberals and progressives committed to integration and civil rights reform. To white liberals and progressives, looking through the prism of integrationist ideology, a nationalist conception of racial identity was understood to distinguish backward, ignorant whites from cosmopolitan, educated whites. Whites who took race as central to their self-identity thereby expressed a commitment to racial supremacy, whereas whites who opposed racism understood that opposition to require the transcendence of racial identity in favor of integration and color-blindness. In other words, most white liberals and progressives, projecting themselves as the enlightened avant garde of the white community, automatically associated race nationalism with the repressive history of white supremacy, and never developed either a consciousness or a political practice that comprehended racial identity and power as centrally formative factors in American social relations.
In contrast, within at least a faction of the African American community, advocates of black nationalism consistently have opposed an integrationist understanding of racial progress. Instead, black nationalists asserted a positive and liberating role for race consciousness, as a source of community, culture, and solidarity to build upon rather than transcend. They developed a thoroughgoing critique of integrationism as either inevitably, or at the very least historically, linked to assimilation.
Within the white community, the issue of race consciousness symbolically divided whites committed to racial justice from whites committed to racial domination. But within the black community, the issue of race consciousness historically divided those committed to norms of racial solidarity from two groups: first, from assimilationists who found white culture more attractive; and second from those who concluded that if the price of black racial identity was the continuation of white racial identity in its traditional, repressive form, then integration was preferable.
The conflict between nationalists and integrationists in the late 1960s and early 1970s represented a critical juncture in American race relations. At that time, black nationalism arguably had overtaken integrationism as the dominant ideology of racial liberation among African Americans, while virtually all liberal and progressive whites embraced a theory of integration as the ultimate definition of racial justice. Although there has been some refinement since this historical moment-particularly with the development of a national commitment to a limited form of "cultural pluralism" [8] - the basic boundaries of contemporary mainstream thinking about race were set in the early 1970s when a loose coalition of "moderate" African Americans joined with liberal and progressive whites to resist-and equate-black nationalists and white supremacists.
The reemergence of race consciousness among scholars of color should be an occasion for liberal and progressive whites to reevaluate our position concerning the racial compromise that mainstream visions of racial justice embody. I believe that the failure of the progressive and liberal white community to comprehend the possibility of a liberating rather than repressive meaning of race consciousness has distorted our understanding of the politics of race in the past and obscures the ways that we might contribute to a meaningful transformation of race relations in the future. Specifically, deep-rooted assumptions of cultural universality and neutrality have removed from critical view the ways that American institutions reflect dominant racial and ethnic characteristics, with the consequence that race reform has proceeded on the basis of integration into "white" cultural practices-practices that many whites mistake as racially neutral. And even when a commitment to consider the possible ethnocentrism of institutional practices exists, the attempt to construct a racially neutral culture has commonly produced only bland institutional forms whose antiseptic attempts at universalism have ensured the alienation of anyone with any cultural identity at all. [9]
It is now time to rethink the ways that racial justice has been understood in dominant discourse for the past several decades. The civil rights era consensus among the "enlightened" over how to effectuate racial progress has ended. In our times, conservatives utilize the very rhetoric of tolerance, color-blindness, and equal opportunity that once characterized progressive discourse to mark the limits of reform. ]10]

CRT’s Race Conscious Anti-Integrationism

In his conclusion, Peller writes39,

I have argued that the basic assumptions of contemporary race discourse - of what passes for common sense among the educated and enlightened where issues of race are concerned - should be understood to reflect a particular ideology rather than the necessary and transcendent meaning of progress itself. The commitment to integration as the ultimate goal of race reform, like the understanding of Brown v. Board of Education [175] as the exemplar of progressive jurisprudence, is connected in our social context to a whole range of images about the nature of truth, progress, and enlightenment within which race consciousness appears arbitrary, subjective, primitive, and backward.

Notice the concern with deconstructing truth, progress and enlightenment philosophy here. Again, Peller, an important representative of critical race theory according to the editors who put together Critical Race Theory - the Key Writings that Formed the Movement,40 makes a point to oppose the enlightenment. Britannica describes enlightenment philosophy as

the use and celebration of reason, the power by which humans understand the universe and improve their own condition.

and states that the goals of the enlightenment were

considered to be knowledge, freedom, and happiness.

Peller writes further on41,

The embrace of integrationism as the dominant ethos of race discourse is the symbolic face of the new cultural "center" that was created in the context of the various ruptures of American society in the 1960s. Relative to this center, black "militants" and white "rednecks" were defined together as extremists; comprehending racism as a form of "discrimination" meant that race could be understood as just another example of the range of arbitrary social characteristics-like gender, physical handicap or sexual preference-that right-thinking people should learn to ignore.

Also42,

Whatever the intentions and psycho-cultural needs of black and white integrationists in the past, it should now be apparent that the exclusion of a nationalist approach to racial justice from mainstream discourse has been a cultural and political mistake that has constrained the boundaries of racial politics. Instead of comprehending racial justice in terms of the relations of distinct, historically-defined communities, the embrace of integrationism has signified the broad cultural attempt not to think in terms of race at all. Integrationists filter discussion of the wide disparities between African American and white communities through the nonracial language of poverty and class, and avoid altogether any consideration of the racial implications of the institutional practices of "integrated" arenas of social life.

Note that here the author is arguing against the “the nonracial language of poverty and class” that can be found in, among other things, Marxism and that he is arguing instead for “consideration of the racial implications” which is the neo-Marxist approach of critical theory and then critical legal studies and now critical race theory as well. Peller continues43,

The assumptions of integrationism have become so deeply ingrained in the dominant culture of educated Americans that it is easy to forget that a sharp and dramatic alternative exists for a progressive and liberating way to think about, and effectuate, race reform. The reappearance of race consciousness in the scholarly work of critical race theorists in part reflects an attempt to reopen a political discourse that was closed off in the 1960s. It should be the occasion for whites to reconsider our position in the cultural compromise that defined the discourse of race and reform for the past few decades. We should, I think, reinterpret our role in race relations so that we might self-consciously understand ourselves as whites, as having a particular identity that was historically constructed through the economy of race relations. This kind of identification need not mean an interest in racial domination, nor must it mean a paralyzing guilt and self-flagellation. Rather than despise what reveals one as white, and engage in neurotic self-improvement to remove such "biases," a precondition to meaningful negotiation of the terms of our social spaces - whether they are separate or shared-is to recognize that racial cultures form a significant element of what goes into the construction of our social relations.

CRT Aligns With White Nationalists Against Liberal Integrationism

Peller writes in Race Consciousness44,

The reappearance and refinement of race consciousness in many critical race theory works symbolizes the break with the dominant civil rights discourse. For example . . . Kimberle Crenshaw argues that everyday institutional practices embody "white norms" that are camouflaged by a stance of cultural neutrality presented as "perspectivelessness." [4] . . . And Richard Delgado more generally contends that race makes a substantial difference in how scholars approach legal topics; he emphasizes storytelling and narrative as elements of a distinctive voice employed by people of color. [6]
The commitment to a race-conscious perspective by many critical race theorists is dramatic because explicit race consciousness has been considered taboo for at least fifteen years within mainstream American politics and for far longer within the particular conventions of law and legal scholarship. Instead, race has been understood through a set of beliefs-what I call "integrationist" ideology . . .
Along with the suppression of white racism that was the widely celebrated aim of civil rights reform, the dominant conception of racial justice was framed to require that black nationalists be equated with white supremacists, and that race consciousness on the part of either whites or blacks be marginalized as beyond the good sense of enlightened American culture. . .

A call for racial segregation and black nationalism is necessarily a call for white separatism and white nationalism. It is interesting to note that we have here a white theorist arguing for white nationalism and white separatism. This means that the author is arguing for racial segregation.

Racial Separatism is Anti-Racism?

Ibram X. Kendi, one of the Biden-administration-backed critical race theorists whose ideas were put into school curricula45 dedicated a chapter in his #1 New York Times best seller46 How to Be an Antiracist,47 to an argument against racial integration.

In this chapter, Kendi wants us to know that when he argues against racial integration, that does not mean that he is arguing for racial segregation because that’s bad. He’s arguing for racial separatism and that’s good, he says, or, as he qualifies it, antiracist. As he wrote,48

When integrationists use segregation and separation interchangeably, they are using the vocabulary of Jim Crow, Segregationist blurred the lines between segregation and separation by projecting their policies as standing “on the platform of equal accomodationsfor each race but separate,” to quote Atlanta newspaper editor Henry W. Grady in 1885.

He wrote the following about racial integration or what he called “integrationist strategy”,49

The integrationist strategy - the placing of White and non-White bodies in the same spaces - is thought to cultivate away the barbarism of people of color and the racism of White people. The integrationist strategy expects Black bodies to heal in proximity to Whites who haven’t yet stopped fighting them. . . The antiracist desire to separate from racists is different from the segregationist desire to separate from “inferior” Blacks.
Whenever Black people voluntarily gather among themselves, integrationists do not see spaces of Black solidarity created to separate Black people from racism. They see spaces of White hate. They do not see spaces of cultural solidarity against racism. They see spaces of segregation against White people. Integrationists do not see these spaces as the movement of Black people toward Back people. Integrationists think about them as a movement away from White people. They then equate that movement away from White people with White segregationist movement away from Black people. Integrationists equate spaces for the survival of Black bodies with spaces for the survival of White supremacy.

He also writes50

After Brown, the integrated White space came to define the ideal integrated space where inferior non-White bodies could be developed. The integrated Black space became a de facto segregated space where inferior Black bodies were left behind. Integration had turned into “A one-way street,” a young Chicago lawyer observed in 1995. “The minority assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around,” Barack Obama wrote. “Only white culture could be neutral and objective. Only white culture could be nonracial.” Integration (into Whiteness) became racial progress.

Kendi goes on to define desegregation as51

eliminating all barriers to all racialized spaces.

From there he continues,

To be antiracist is to support the voluntary integration of bodies attracted by cultural difference, a shared humanity. Integration: resources rather than bodies. To be an antiracist is to champion resources rather than bodies. To be an antiracist is to champion resource equity by challenging the racist policies that produce resource inequity. Racial solidarity: openly identifying, supporting, and protecting integrated racial spaces. To be antiracist is to equate and nurture differences among racial groups.
But antiracist strategy is beyond the integrationist conception that claims Black spaces could never be equal to White spaces, that believes Black spaces have a “detrimental effect upon” Black people, to quote Chief Justice Warren in Brown. My Black studies space was supposed to have a detrimental effect on me. Quite the opposite.

It is interesting to note that Kendi argues for what crits (critical race theorists) themselves term race consciousness and that yet, he writes that “racist power” calls affirmative action race conscious.52 One might say that Kendi is himself a crit. However, his book shows him to be (or at the time to have been) only semi-literate in critical race theory.

To be fair, Biden later dropped Ibram X. Kendi53 along with the 1619 Project54, apparently due to controversy. It may be that they realized that it would be difficult to defend the support of an author who argues for separation of people based on their skin color. Kendi writes,55

Through lynching Black bodies, segregationists are, in the end, more harmful to Black bodies than integrationists are. Through lynching Black cultures, integrationists are, in the end, more harmful to Black bodies than segregationists are. Think about the logical conclusion of integrationist strategy: every race being represented in every U.S. space according to their percentage in the national population. A Black (12.7 percent) person would not see another until after seeing eight or so non-Blacks. A Latinx (17.8 percent) person would not see another until after seeing seven or so non-Latinx. An Asian (4.8 percent) person would not see another until after seeing nineteen non-Asians. A Native (0.9 percent) person would not see another until after seeing ninety-nine non-Natives. White (61.3 percent) Americans would always see more White people around than non-White people. They would gain everything, from the expansion of integrated White spaces to Whites gentrifying all the non-White institutions, associations, and neighborhoods. No more spatial wombs for non-White cultures. Only White spatial wombs of assimilation. We would all become “only white men” with different “skins".” to quote historian Kenneth Stampp in 1956.

Though his message, such that it is, can be confusing and not exactly consistent, to be fair, Kendi allows for56

voluntary integration of bodies attracted by cultural difference, a shared humanity.

However, immediately following this sentence, he writes,57

Integration: resources rather than bodies. To be an antiracist is to champion resource equity by challenging the racist policies that produce resource inequity. Racial solidarity: openly identifying, supporting, and protecting integrated racial spaces. To be antiracist is to equate and nurture difference among racial groups.
But antiracist strategy is beyond the integrationist conception that claims Black spaces could never be equal to White spaces, that believes Black spaces have a “detrimental effect upon” Black people, to quote Chief Justice Warren in Brown. My Black studies space was supposed to have a detrimental effect on me. Quite the opposite.

To be fair, good Sir Kendi, it seems to have contributed to your apparent xenophobia.

Race Consciousness Serves Marxism

Tarl Warwick (Styxhexenhamer666) wrote in Debunking Critical Race Theory (2021),58

my own advocacy for colorblindness as a solution to the issue of actual bigotry is, I claim, self evident. The claim of Martin Luther King that people should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin, is both an enlightened and libertarian statement. This is a statement which CRT proponents wants us to discount as unhelpful. I reject their premise; but their premise is based explicitly on Marxism. There must under such systems be an us and a them - A hierarchical power dynamic needs to exist or else the "utopian" goals of Marxism have been largely fulfilled anyways and there is no need for left wing provocation.
Rather fixate on the usefulness of colorblindness we can simply consider the uselessness of the CRT-derived counterpart. To my knowledge not one person has been uplifted by the message of their Marxist screed. The color of their skin does not matter; no non-white individual will ever have their life improved by Marxism or similar systems because the entire end goal of such systems has nothing to do with improving anyones' lives. Indeed, abuse and excess are the fruits of the labor or leftism.

Ideologies such as race consciousness, and racial segregation are espoused by critical race theory which branched off from critical legal studies which branched off from critical theory which is explicitly Marxist (or neo-Marxist to be more specific) and which is open about using the cultural Marxist tactic of swapping out class struggle as a means to achieve communism with identity group struggle, to swap out class consciousness for race consciousness. See the sections in the Culture War Encyclopedia for cultural Marxism, critical theory, critical legal studies (CLS) and critical race theory (CRT) to establish these points.

Obviously, many accidentally support this agenda. I would venture to guess that most people who support the tenets of critical race theory are largely uneducated about CRT, CLS, critical theory and probably think that cultural Marxism is a recent right wing anti-Semitic conspiracy theory rather than something neo-Marxists have been promoting as such for decades. These people are more likely to be thinking, “I will defend the act of reading Ibram X. Kendi’s book How to be an Antiracist aloud in my child’s class because I am against racism!” than something like, “I will defend the act of reading Ibram X. Kendi’s book How to be an Antiracist aloud in my child’s class because I know that book argues for racial segregation which serves the cultural Marxist behind critical race theory, an agenda I agree with.”

This is inconsequential, however. What matters is that promotion of race consciousness as they define it is promotion of racial segregation.

In the future I plan to add information on how the Nazis, the KKK, the Brown Panthers and others viewed race consciousness.

Please donate!

Also see:

Affirmative Action

black rage

color blindness

critical legal studies

critical race theory (coming soon)

critical theory (coming soon)

cultural Marxism

Implicit Association Test (IAT)

implicit bias

race

racial separatism in critical race theory

unconscious racism

whiteness as property

∴ Liberty ∴ Strength ∴ Honor ∴ Justice ∴ Truth ∴ Love ∴

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chong-Soon Lee, Jayne - Navigating the Topology of Race in 46 Stan. L. Rev. 747 (copyright February, 1994, Board of Trustees of the of the Leland Stanford Junior; published by Stanford Law Review)

Delgado, Richard59 & Jean Stefancic60, preface by Angela Harris61 - Critical Race Theory - an Introduction (3rd edition; copyright 2017, New York University Press, published by New York University Press)

Felluga, Dino Franco62 - Critical Theory - the Key Concepts (2015, Routledge)

Warwick, Tarl - Debunking Critical Race Theory (2021, self published)

FOOTNOTES

Page 847, Gary Peller, Race Consciousness, 1990 Duke Law Journal 758-847 (1990)

Pages 62-63 in Critical Theory - the Key Concepts by Dino Franco Felluga (2015, Routledge)

John O. Calmore’s essay Critical Race Theory Archie Shepp and Fire Music Securing An Authentic Intellectual Life in A Multicultural World was originally printed in Southern California Law Review 65 (July, 1992) and was included in Critical Race Theory - The Key Writings That Formed the Movement (1995).

See the section Final years and legacy under Malcolm X in the Encyclopedia Britannica

According to publisher De Gruyder,

Richard Delgado is John J. Sparkman Chair of Law at the University of Alabama and one of the founders of critical race theory. His books include The Latino/a Condition: A Critical Reader (co-edited with Jean Stefancic; New York University Press) and The Rodrigo Chronicles (New York University Press

Here are some results from Google Scholar for Richard Delgado…

author: Richard Delgado

author: Richard Delgado race

author: Richard Delgado race consciousness

author: Richard Delgado critical race theory

According to publishers De Gruyder,

Jean Stefancic is Professor and Clement Research Affiliate at the University of Alabama School of Law. Her books include No Mercy: How Conservative Think Tanks and Foundations Changed America’s Social Agenda and How Lawyers Lose Their Way: A Profession Fails Its Creative Minds.

Here are some results from Google Scholar for Jean Stefancic…

author: Jean Stefancic

author: Jean Stefancic race

author: Jean Stefancic race consciousness

author: Jean Stefancic critical race theory

author: Jean Stefancic critical theory

author: Jean Stefancic Marxism

author: Jean Stefancic socialism

Page xiv in Critical Race Theory - an Introduction by Delgado, Richard & Jean Stefancic, preface by Angela Harris (see bibliography)

Page xiv

Page 27

Page 177

Page 172

Page 168

Page 180

Page 69

Page 68

Page 69

Page 70

Pages 778, 779, 780, 783, 786, 801, 803, 817, 841 in Race Consciousness by Gary Peller (1990) Duke Law Journal 758-847 (1990)

Page 780 in Race Consciousness by Gary Peller (see bibliography)

Ibram X. Kendi is described on page 552 in The 1619 Project - A New Origin Story as thus;

Ibram X. Kendi is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and the director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University. His book Stumped from the Beginning won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 2016. He received the Gugenheim Fellowship in 2019and both his book How to Be an Antiracist and Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African-America, 1619-2019, which he coedited are national best sellers.

Copyright 2020 by Ibram X. Kendi, included (pages 420-440) in The 1619 Project - A New Origin Story by multiple authors and editors, created by Nikole Hannah-Jones, copyright 2021, New York Times Company) published by One World, New York

Page 435 in The 1619 Project - A New Origin Story (see bibliography)

Pages 127 - 158 in Critical Race Theory - The Key Writings That Formed the Movement (see bibliography)

Gary Peller - Race Consciousness, (1990) in Duke Law Journal 758-847 (1990)

Page 847 in Race Consciousness by Gary Peller (see bibliography)

Page 780 in Race Consciousnes, by Gary Peller (see bibliography)

Page 758 in Race Consciousness by Gary Peller (see bibliography)

Pages 778, 779, 780, 783, 786, 801, 803, 817, 841 in Race Consciousness by Gary Peller (see bibliography)

Page 758 in Race Consciousness by Gary Peller (see bibliography)

Anthea Butler is described on pages 551-552 in The 1619 Project - A New Origin Story as thus;

Anthea Butler is a professor of religious studies and African studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on race, religion an politics. She received a Luce/ACLS Fellowship in Religion, Journalism and International Affairs in 2018. A contributor to MSNBC Daily, she has written for The Wasington Post, CNN and other national outlets.

Page 348 in Church

Page 763 in Race Consciousness by Gary Peller (see bibliography)

Pages 820-821 in Race Consciousness

Page 821 in Race Consciousness

Page 760 in Race Consciousness

Page 761 in Race Consciousness

Page 844 in Race Consciousness

Page 845 in Race Consciousness

Page 847 in Race Consciousness

See;

Biden Set to Push Critical Race Theory on U.S. Schools by National Review (April 19, 2021)

Team Biden pushing Critical Race Theory in America’s classrooms by the New York Post (April 25, 2021)

'Understand the threat': Efforts to ban critical race theory in schools meet rocky reception by the Washington Times (May 2, 2021)

This is according to the cover of the book in the edition I quote from here (see bibliography).

Chapter 13, pages 166-180.

Page 175 in How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi (see bibliography)

Pages 174-175 in How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

Page 178 in How to Be an Antiracist

Page 180 in How to Be an Antiracist

Page 20 in How to Be an Antiracist

Stoll, Ira - Biden Backs Down on Civics Regulations as Senate Passes Amendment Against Teaching Children to “Hate America” by Education Next (Summer 2021)

Pages 179-180 in How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

Page 180 in How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

Page 9 in Debunking Critical Race Theory by Tarl Warwick (see bibliography)

Richard Delgado