No, not heard of CRT? Well, it’s a significant issue around the world these days and seems to be becoming embedded in the thinking of certain sectors of our society.
Critical Race Theory (CRT) seeks to explain the multitude of ways that race and racism have become embedded in modern societies. The core idea is that we need to look beyond individual acts of racism and make structural changes to prevent and remedy racial discrimination.
In CRT thinking, all white people are deemed instinctively white supremacists and unconsciously racist. That seems to say that racism is not just embedded but secreted in our thinking.
CRT asserts that racism is socially constructed. This means that the social and behavioural differences we see between different racial groups are products of the society that they live in, not something biological or ‘natural’.
The theory is that there are many examples of systemic and institutional racism around the world. They become evident when a system doesn’t have anything explicitly racist or discriminatory about it, but there are still differences in who benefits from that system.
By using ‘systemic’, theorists imply something so deep and so instinctive that we’re not even conscious of it.
But surely poor white people face barriers associated with socioeconomic and cultural standing? They might not experience racial discrimination in the same way as some do, but they do encounter systemic barriers related to poverty, access to quality education, healthcare and employment opportunities. So, what label do you put on that circumstance?
Not surprisingly, CRT has grown out of academia!
One example of systemic racism often used/quoted by CRT devotees is the education system: it’s not explicitly racist, but students of different racial backgrounds have different educational outcomes and levels of attainment.
In NZ there probably any number of reasons for sub-par educational outcomes, but, all too often, the default setting for blame is colonisation.
Critical Race Theory? Or more like an excuse than theory!
And it is that sort of ideology that makes me feel CRT is becoming subliminally embedded in NZ thinking, especially around political activity and I believe it is having a deleterious effect on – not just racial or social cohesion – but the actual advancement of our country.
CRT is never mentioned, as such, but if you apply a CRT lens over the current political and social construct of NZ, I believe it is.
Look at parliament: we have the totally ideologically driven opposition and we have a National Party that is visibly divided and ostensibly reluctant to confront the race issue.
Prime Minister Luxon, presumably, sees Maori as victims of colonisation. Why else would the power of veto, conferred on Maori via Te Mana o te Wai statements, remain in Three Waters co-governance? Why else does he not challenge activists’ claim of sovereignty?
This ideological opposition is pushing forward with the He Puapua/Maori sovereignty agenda and just waiting for the next election. Or even simply awaiting the collapse of the coalition! Given the immense support given to their cause by the MSM, that is not a fanciful manifestation.
Government bureaucracy: The political mandarins. Those powerful civil servants moving chess pieces behind the scenes. As yet there has been no strategic clean out in ministries that are led by these mandarins. Matthew Hooton recently wrote, “The bureaucracy has no intention of allowing a mere government to butcher it. To the contrary, it plans to kill the government with death by a thousand cuts.”
I contend these political mandarins, either wittingly or unwittingly, are applying a CRT lens over their ministries, presumably believing inherent or even unconscious racism abounds and they must correct the injustice!
Education: This is a classic ‘mandarin’ case in point. The distortion and subversion of young minds began with this group. Education is awash with flawed ideology, contradictions and ethnic bias.
New Zealand education system is surreptitiously using CRT to promote Maori values and concepts over the broad need of everyone else. It is stepping further and beyond CRT. It is actively prioritising the rights of Maori over individual rights.
Rolling heads are sorely required.
Law and Order: This is an area that desperately needs change! In 2017 the Waitangi Tribunal found the Crown had breached its Treaty obligations by failing to prioritise the reduction of Maori reoffending and prison population relative to non-Maori. The answer: ramp up the use of home detention!
And moves are afoot to initiate law reform that “will respond to the needs and aspirations of marginalised communities most impacted by hate speech in Aotearoa New Zealand”.
Judiciary: The weaving of tikanga into common law. Is this not a Supreme Court out of control? Justices of the court have indicated that any issue of law before the courts may need to be addressed in the light of tikanga. Amazing! The Supreme Court has repeatedly asserted that the court’s role is (somehow) to divine ‘changing societal values’ and use them to ‘develop’ the common law.
As I said earlier, CRT has its roots in academia. Universities love this sort of airy fairy issue. They can proselytise the issue to the heavens, so enraptured: their language is rendered meaningless and made unintelligible by excessive use of academic word salads.
Listen to this statement on CRT by Victoria University:“Our central thesis is that scholars and activists seeking to apply a CRT framework or conduct a CRT analysis in New Zealand should be mindful of the particular circumstances of the settler-colonising state imposed by the Crown.”
Further – “It has been well established by Maori and other scholars, and advocates of colour, that the settler-colonising state of so-called ‘New Zealand’ is fundamentally racist.”
The Reserve Bank: These guys are frantically boarding the CRT band wagon. They recently announced they were hiring a principal Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) adviser – offering prospective employees the chance to embed “Te Ao Maori lens across policy, processes and systems”; utilise “gender and ethnic pay gap analyses”; and communicate “with credibility the linkage between proposed DEI initiatives, organisational strategies and the benefits to organisation in a variety of forms”.
Can you believe it?
Then there is the MSM: The self-elected defenders of woke, CRT and DEI. How often do we see media enthusiastically reporting negative portrayals or circumstances of Maori? They never represent Maori as a diverse grouping and continually describe them as a homogenous group of victims, all suffering from systemic racism.
Therein lies the genesis of the victimhood industry, where self-interested proponents capitalise on the MSM narratives of victimisation to advance their agenda.
Other than Winston Peters and David Seymour, there is no attempt to rein the media in. Prime Minister Luxon still seems to believe they will eventually ‘love’ him…
CRT advocates reject democracy as a relic of the Age of Enlightenment: the late 17th- and 18th-century intellectual movement emphasizing reason, individualism and scepticism. Now it is argued that white people use illusions like democracy and truth to oppress and dominate people of colour.
CRT advocates proclaim, ‘The only remedy to racist discrimination is positive discrimination!’
“The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
How’s that for a warped concept?
And here’s the underpinning CRT advocates fall back on: Because critical theory rejects reason, it cannot be questioned.
How’s that for expediency and cancel culture?
You may well think I’m talking rubbish, but CRT is invidious in its subversion of rights, democracy and free speech.
Take the time to read He Puapua. Then compare it to what I have alleged. There is an incremental and not so hidden transformation taking place.
So, the current issue is: How do we counter CRT? Or a worrying subsequent question could be: Is this at all possible given its roots have been allowed grow so deeply?
We need to confront and reject CRT because it is invasive and corrosive, ruining everything it touches: social justice, environmentalism, feminism, education, culture and Christianity.
Is this government up to the task?
CRT theorists are “trying to pave the road to reconciliation with good intentions and bad ideas!”
John Porter is a citizen, deeply concerned about the loss of democracy and the insidious promotion of separatism by our current government. This article was first published HERE
CRT asserts that racism is socially constructed. This means that the social and behavioural differences we see between different racial groups are products of the society that they live in, not something biological or ‘natural’.
The theory is that there are many examples of systemic and institutional racism around the world. They become evident when a system doesn’t have anything explicitly racist or discriminatory about it, but there are still differences in who benefits from that system.
By using ‘systemic’, theorists imply something so deep and so instinctive that we’re not even conscious of it.
But surely poor white people face barriers associated with socioeconomic and cultural standing? They might not experience racial discrimination in the same way as some do, but they do encounter systemic barriers related to poverty, access to quality education, healthcare and employment opportunities. So, what label do you put on that circumstance?
Not surprisingly, CRT has grown out of academia!
One example of systemic racism often used/quoted by CRT devotees is the education system: it’s not explicitly racist, but students of different racial backgrounds have different educational outcomes and levels of attainment.
In NZ there probably any number of reasons for sub-par educational outcomes, but, all too often, the default setting for blame is colonisation.
Critical Race Theory? Or more like an excuse than theory!
And it is that sort of ideology that makes me feel CRT is becoming subliminally embedded in NZ thinking, especially around political activity and I believe it is having a deleterious effect on – not just racial or social cohesion – but the actual advancement of our country.
CRT is never mentioned, as such, but if you apply a CRT lens over the current political and social construct of NZ, I believe it is.
Look at parliament: we have the totally ideologically driven opposition and we have a National Party that is visibly divided and ostensibly reluctant to confront the race issue.
Prime Minister Luxon, presumably, sees Maori as victims of colonisation. Why else would the power of veto, conferred on Maori via Te Mana o te Wai statements, remain in Three Waters co-governance? Why else does he not challenge activists’ claim of sovereignty?
This ideological opposition is pushing forward with the He Puapua/Maori sovereignty agenda and just waiting for the next election. Or even simply awaiting the collapse of the coalition! Given the immense support given to their cause by the MSM, that is not a fanciful manifestation.
Government bureaucracy: The political mandarins. Those powerful civil servants moving chess pieces behind the scenes. As yet there has been no strategic clean out in ministries that are led by these mandarins. Matthew Hooton recently wrote, “The bureaucracy has no intention of allowing a mere government to butcher it. To the contrary, it plans to kill the government with death by a thousand cuts.”
I contend these political mandarins, either wittingly or unwittingly, are applying a CRT lens over their ministries, presumably believing inherent or even unconscious racism abounds and they must correct the injustice!
Education: This is a classic ‘mandarin’ case in point. The distortion and subversion of young minds began with this group. Education is awash with flawed ideology, contradictions and ethnic bias.
New Zealand education system is surreptitiously using CRT to promote Maori values and concepts over the broad need of everyone else. It is stepping further and beyond CRT. It is actively prioritising the rights of Maori over individual rights.
Rolling heads are sorely required.
Law and Order: This is an area that desperately needs change! In 2017 the Waitangi Tribunal found the Crown had breached its Treaty obligations by failing to prioritise the reduction of Maori reoffending and prison population relative to non-Maori. The answer: ramp up the use of home detention!
And moves are afoot to initiate law reform that “will respond to the needs and aspirations of marginalised communities most impacted by hate speech in Aotearoa New Zealand”.
Judiciary: The weaving of tikanga into common law. Is this not a Supreme Court out of control? Justices of the court have indicated that any issue of law before the courts may need to be addressed in the light of tikanga. Amazing! The Supreme Court has repeatedly asserted that the court’s role is (somehow) to divine ‘changing societal values’ and use them to ‘develop’ the common law.
As I said earlier, CRT has its roots in academia. Universities love this sort of airy fairy issue. They can proselytise the issue to the heavens, so enraptured: their language is rendered meaningless and made unintelligible by excessive use of academic word salads.
Listen to this statement on CRT by Victoria University:“Our central thesis is that scholars and activists seeking to apply a CRT framework or conduct a CRT analysis in New Zealand should be mindful of the particular circumstances of the settler-colonising state imposed by the Crown.”
Further – “It has been well established by Maori and other scholars, and advocates of colour, that the settler-colonising state of so-called ‘New Zealand’ is fundamentally racist.”
The Reserve Bank: These guys are frantically boarding the CRT band wagon. They recently announced they were hiring a principal Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) adviser – offering prospective employees the chance to embed “Te Ao Maori lens across policy, processes and systems”; utilise “gender and ethnic pay gap analyses”; and communicate “with credibility the linkage between proposed DEI initiatives, organisational strategies and the benefits to organisation in a variety of forms”.
Can you believe it?
Then there is the MSM: The self-elected defenders of woke, CRT and DEI. How often do we see media enthusiastically reporting negative portrayals or circumstances of Maori? They never represent Maori as a diverse grouping and continually describe them as a homogenous group of victims, all suffering from systemic racism.
Therein lies the genesis of the victimhood industry, where self-interested proponents capitalise on the MSM narratives of victimisation to advance their agenda.
Other than Winston Peters and David Seymour, there is no attempt to rein the media in. Prime Minister Luxon still seems to believe they will eventually ‘love’ him…
CRT advocates reject democracy as a relic of the Age of Enlightenment: the late 17th- and 18th-century intellectual movement emphasizing reason, individualism and scepticism. Now it is argued that white people use illusions like democracy and truth to oppress and dominate people of colour.
CRT advocates proclaim, ‘The only remedy to racist discrimination is positive discrimination!’
“The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
How’s that for a warped concept?
And here’s the underpinning CRT advocates fall back on: Because critical theory rejects reason, it cannot be questioned.
How’s that for expediency and cancel culture?
You may well think I’m talking rubbish, but CRT is invidious in its subversion of rights, democracy and free speech.
Take the time to read He Puapua. Then compare it to what I have alleged. There is an incremental and not so hidden transformation taking place.
So, the current issue is: How do we counter CRT? Or a worrying subsequent question could be: Is this at all possible given its roots have been allowed grow so deeply?
We need to confront and reject CRT because it is invasive and corrosive, ruining everything it touches: social justice, environmentalism, feminism, education, culture and Christianity.
Is this government up to the task?
CRT theorists are “trying to pave the road to reconciliation with good intentions and bad ideas!”
John Porter is a citizen, deeply concerned about the loss of democracy and the insidious promotion of separatism by our current government. This article was first published HERE
6 comments:
Well summarised, John.
Another indication of CRT proponents is their opposition to the Enlightenment, whose values and outlook did so much to strengthen the modern, democratic world.
What the “progressive” (i.e., regressive) leftists who so eagerly adopt CRT don’t seem to comprehend is that CRT is an inherently irrational and socially divisive “theory”. This is a direct consequence of CRT’s underlying postmodernist scepticism of objectivity and truth.
And what is more, this sort of irrationality is equally open for misuse by the extreme right to create their own “personal stories” of persecution and myths of ethnic “superiority”.
LFC
CRT is an expression of the neo-Marxist doctrine that all history is explained by Group A sitting and shitting on Group B. Insert men/women, Whites/Blacks, etc.
This is grossly simplistic as it focuses purely on the 'vertical' aspect and ignores horizontal relationships within the strata. Take slavery for instance: Black tribe X captures Black tribe Y and sells them on to an Arab slavetrader who then sold them to a White captain who would sail the cargo to the Americas. The first step in this chain is essential and is 'horizontal'; the 'vertical' aspect only comes in right at the end.
Because CRT is an absolutist doctrine and translates into rules and regulations that work against the so-called oppressors (men, Whites......) through misnomers such as affirmative action, and then make it a crime to criticise the pseudotheory or its concomitants. I call it 'marxofascism'. I hope the term catches on.
Yes, we can and should oppose it by supporting political action that will spike their guns. But that requires a right-wing political government with backbone. The Nats seem to be somewhat lacking in that dept but ACT and NZF seem to be better equipped.
moves are afoot to initiate law reform that “will respond to the needs and aspirations of marginalised communities most impacted by hate speech in ..... New Zealand”.
In New Zealand that's us old white men.
I hope those laws are good laws.
As David Berlinski , erudite scientist and philosopher states Marx was a "windbag". The sooner this is instilled into society the better. Why are we still listening to a fool from the 19th century whose theories have caused so such bloodshed and misery and are blatantly wrong?
Marxism can be blamed for much of our current NZ educational failure, including the longest tail of underachievement in the developed world,, through Marxist nonsense ideas applied to schooling. Maori have been the victims of Marxism since they are over represented in this tail.
Marxist ideas caused much of our educational failure and now a revival of Marxism in CRT is all set to make things much worse by putting the blame elsewhere ,of course , certainly not on itself where it rightly belongs.
CRT therefore should be seen for what it is- a smoke screen to hide the real causes .These causes of educational failure include unscientific teaching methods arrived at from Marxist theory that selectively discriminate against low SES children. One example to illustrate this would be the abandoning of spelling lists and practise because this was supposed bourgeois repression on the lower classes! Insane.
Marxism along with socialist Progressive Education had a contempt for everything traditional including our Traditional Liberal education , which is now shown by scientific research to have had effective teaching methods that gave us in the past a world class education system.
Well if anyone wants to see the results of CRT brainwashing on kids, all you have to do is look at the video posted on fb showing indictrinated kids, seething with rage at the high school, after david seymour visited. The treachers could not control them. I believe hitler did this to school kids , teaching them to hate jewish people. It is nothing new as many regimes have indoctrinated kids in this way. When I think back to my high school, that sort of behaviour would have meant guaranteed expulsion. The security had to cover the doors of david's car so the kids would not attack him. These kids will be voting in a few years. Unfortunately our country is heading for a very dark future.
Britain is a prime example of positive discrimination becoming reverse racism.
In 2012 I sent an Official Request for Information to the UK Human Rights Commission asking "Which ethnic group in Britain is de facto the most racially abused today?".
The reply I received indicated clearly that the Commission anecdotal evidence suggests that the most racially abused group in Britain is White English people. The Commission added that this has not been substantiated because the majority of White English people do not feel comfortable or safe making a formal claim of racism. Many believe the "urban myth" that you can't claim racism if you're White and / or English. Ten years on, this has been happening here in New Zealand over the past several years.
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