Critical Race Theory 

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From a Hillsdale College speech by Christopher F. Rufo, former Lincoln Fellow at Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy. 

   Critical race theory is America's new institutional orthodoxy. Most Americans have never heard of it - and those who have, many don't understand it. We need to know what it is so we can know how to fight it. 

   Originally, the Marxist Left built its program on the theory of class conflict. The solution, according to Marx, was revolution: the workers would gain consciousness of their plight, seize the means of production, overthrow the capitalist class, and usher in a new socialist society. 

   A number of regimes underwent Marxist-style revolutions, and each ended in disaster. Socialist governments in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Cuba and elsewhere racked up a body count of nearly 100 million of their own people. They are remembered for their gulags, show trials, executions and mass starvations. 

   By the mid-1960s, Marxist intellectuals in the West had begun to acknowledge these failures. Most Americans believed in the American dream - the idea that they could transcend their origins through education, hard work and good citizenship. 

   Rather than abandon their Leftist political project, Marxist scholars simply adapted their revolutionary theory to the social and racial unrest of the 1960s. They substituted race for class and sought to create a revolutionary coalition of the dispossessed. 

   The early proponents in the U.S. lost out to the civil rights movement, which sought the American promise of freedom and equality under the law. Americans preferred improving their country to that of overthrowing it. The vision of Martin Luther King, Jr., President Johnson's Great Society, and the restoration of law and order promised by President Nixon defined the American political consensus. 

   But the radical Left has proved resilient and enduring - which is where critical race theory comes in. 

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