In a statement on the Catholic League website Thursday, the organization’s President Bill Donohue warned that Critical Race Theory (CRT), which smears the United States as a deeply racist nation, is itself “an inherently racist prescription” because “it judges people on the basis of their skin color, not their individual traits.”

CRT “is a textbook example of promoting racism in the name of fighting it.” Today, “there is no shortage of educators, reporters, activists, and lawmakers who claim to oppose racism while harboring an agenda that sometimes promotes it,” Donohue states. He pointed out that there are those who have a vested interest in stoking “the perception that we are a racist nation,” a notion that is now “widespread.”

Lies about systemic racism are purveyed by dishonest groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Donohue asserts, “a left-wing activist organization that claims to monitor such offenses.”

“SPLC has racism on the brain,” he adds, noting the group’s 2020 report that laments the fact “the majority of Americans thought that Black Lives Matter (BLM) violence in 2020 was a bigger problem than police violence against blacks.”

“Real racism and extremism, as the Catholic Church understands it, must be opposed and defeated,” Donohue concludes. “It does not help this noble cause when prominent Americans and non-profit organizations are bent on finding racism under every rock.”

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Critical Race Theory

3 Known Connections

Founded by the late Derrick Bell, critical race theory is an academic discipline which maintains that society is divided along racial lines into (white) oppressors and (black) victims, similar to the way Marxism frames the oppressor/victim dichotomy along class lines. Critical race theory contends that America is permanently racist to its core, and that consequently the nation’s legal structures are, by definition, racist and invalid. As Emory University professor Dorothy Brown puts it, critical race theory “seeks to highlight the ways in which the law is not neutral and objective but designed to support white supremacy and the subordination of people of color.” A logical derivative of this premise, according to critical race theory, is that the members of “oppressed” racial groups are entitled—in fact obligated—to determine for themselves which laws and traditions have merit and are worth observing. Further, critical race theory holds that because racism is so deeply ingrained in the American character, classical liberal ideals such as meritocracy, equal opportunity, and colorblind justice are essentially nothing more than empty slogans that fail to properly combat—or to even acknowledge the existence of—the immense structural inequities that pervade American society and work against black people. Thus, according to critical race theorists, racial preferences (favoring blacks) in employment and higher education are not only permissible but necessary as a means of countering the permanent bigotry of white people who, as Bell put it, seek to “achieve a measure of social stability through their unspoken pact to keep blacks on the bottom.”

To learn more about Critical Race Theory, click here.

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