Shapiro 'Ecstatic' to See How Successfully Americans Are Pushing Back Against Critical Race Theory
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro is “ecstatic” to see such strong pushback from Americans nationwide concerning critical race theory.
At the heart of CRT is the belief that the entire American political system is racist, and therefore must be taken down. Any who oppose such a wholesale replacement are themselves racist, according to the CRT way of thinking.
In this respect, Shapiro argued Monday on his podcast, “The Ben Shapiro Show,” that the theory is much like Marxism.
He explained that CRT is really just a derivation of critical theory, which dates back to the 1950s.
“Critical theory is a sort of a neo-Marxist movement in which power defines everything,” he said.
“Instead of saying that all of the systems of power are created in order to help the upper class — which is sort of what critical theory posits — critical race theory posits that all the systems of power were created in order to help people of specific races,” Shapiro continued.
Incredulously, ideals at the heart of the American experiment in liberty, including free speech rights and private property rights, are themselves seen as racist because they enable whites to continue to oppress blacks.
Shapiro recounted that liberals have recognized that many Americans now view CRT negatively, so they have been seeking to rebrand it as “anti-racism.”
This is the language used by CRT proponent Ibram X. Kendi.
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“Real racism is believing in the system, so anti-racism would be destroying the system,” Shapiro said, identifying the argument that encapsulates the “anti-racist” view of things.
While CRT had been gaining ground in American institutions, Shapiro believes the tide is now turning.
“The blowback is coming and the blowback is very, very real, and the left is very upset about it,” he said.
“What’s happening right now is that that vast middle is saying, ‘No.’ All it takes to ‘renormalize’ already renormalized institutions is a bunch of people in the middle saying, ‘Absolutely not. We’re not doing this,’” Shapiro recounted.
“And this is why the left is getting pissed. Because a bunch of people who were heretofore silent, a bunch of people who were very quiet up to this point, they’re now standing up and they’re taking back their school boards. They’re standing up and they’re retaking their legislatures. They’re standing up and they’re retaking congressional seats and they’re saying, ‘No.’ And the left can’t handle it.”
Shapiro contended that this sudden change “scares the living hell out of the left,” because it has been a while since they’ve seen such grassroots level pushback on their efforts to change institutions.
The conservative said there are a couple of steps to successfully countering CRT. These steps include first exposing the agenda for what it is, and then forming coalitions of like-minded people to oppose it at the institutional level.
Shapiro also identified a common misdirection tactic CRT supporters employ: saying that opposing it means one opposes teaching America’s true history.
This is not true, he argued. Schoolchildren, for example, are undeniably being taught that slavery existed in the United States and that a Civil War was fought which ended the terrible institution in America.
Additionally, school kids learn about the Jim Crow laws that southern states implemented in the years after the Civil War, which made African-Americans second-class citizens. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 overrode these unjust laws.
All these things should be taught, Shapiro said, but that is different from CRT, which argues that the very form of constitutional government that calls for equal protection under the law for all races is itself systemically racist.
He predicted that CRT, if accepted, would lead to “more suffering, more inequality, more cruelty [and] more violence.”
For this reason, Shapiro concluded, “I’m ecstatic to see how far the pushback is going at this point.”
