In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
Yogi Berra
I saw an interview with the great Stephen Fry last year, and he said that he considers himself an empirical atheist, not a rational atheist. The difference between rationalism and empiricism is that rationalism is focused on theory, while empiricism is focused on measurable real-life evidence.
Let’s talk about CRT.
There is no progress without criticism. Progress means that something is imperfect, and the art of criticism is the art of identifying and articulating the imperfection. A good critique provides both the catalyst and the foundation for something better.
To boil it down to a single sentence, Critical Theory is the practice of forming a wholistic critique that analyzes the connection between the problem itself and any of society’s major structures, systems or assumptions. It’s a highly philosophical and theoretical style of critique and a thoroughly valid perspective.
Unfortunately, the logic tracks very neatly that the solution to racism is to raze society’s major structures, systems and assumptions to the ground and rebuild them from scratch.
Rationally, that is the obvious answer. Empirically, that is a terrible idea, for one simple reason: major structures, systems and assumptions cannot be built from scratch. They are, by definition, evolved entities. They are too complicated for us to wrap our heads around even if we all work together. Look up Gall’s law.
Progress must be made slowly, piece by piece. That has always been and will always be how progress works.
The value of CRT is that it identifies deeper problems that less wholistic perspectives would miss. But less wholistic perspectives will be better to solve those problems.
The original question was: Does CRT = American history?
Yes, CRT = American history in the same way that what you see when you look out your kitchen window = the world. It is, but it is a very small part of it looked at from a very limited perspective.
There is nothing wrong with looking out your kitchen window, seeing that your lawn is turning brown and watering it. The problem is when you look out your kitchen window, see that your lawn is turning brown, and try to pass a law that everyone must run sprinklers 30 minutes a day.
Some yards will benefit. But some yards get rain every day. And some yards don’t have lawns.
The correct political response is somewhere between forbidding you from watering your lawn and forcing everyone to turn on sprinklers, between outlawing CRT and writing entire curricula with no opposing perspectives. Where exactly? That’s a question worthy of debate.
