The Black Face of White Supremacy: MLK Jr.

To adopt Critical Race Theory is to reject the appeal to liberalism that solidified the fight for Civil Rights

Critical Race Theorists, knowing the iconic power of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s most cited speech, have consistently sought to re-frame the speech so that conservatives, classical liberals, or those who simply and correctly identity Critical Race Theory as “Race Marxism,” cannot use its words to promote a morally race-neutral society. King spoke of “systemic racism,” they’ll point out; he was dissatisfied, at times, with the continuing modes of discrimination he recognized at play even after Civil Rights were codified into law in 1964 and 1965. He identified “white backlash” as a by-product of a society that had changed legally but not always temperamentally or habitually.

What they won’t tell you, though, is that for Dr. King Jr, these complaints were about remnants rooted in the dissolution of codified racism he believed still needed addressing. He didn’t believe them to be the permanent state of affairs, nor did he see racial struggle as necessarily endless, as Critical Race Theorists do. Under Critical Race Theory’s own self-conception, the moment the prevailing structurally determined system of White Supremacy is toppled, a new dominant system of racial centrality will take its place, and therefore it, too, must be relentlessly interrogated.

There is no end to it. As I wrote more generally back in 2005, describing even then what today is overt:

An obvious problem with the grievance aspect of identity politics is that the grievance needs to be perpetually maintained in order to justify the identity aspect of the politics.

With Critical Race Theory — as with all Theory born in the cauldron of Cultural or Western Marxism — one must always be raising critical consciousness. It’s not an academic exercise; it’s a way of life, a mode of both seeing and being, an action one must take to gain the authenticity necessary to engage in the production of knowledge.