The fusion of identity politics with Marxist forms of political analysis (in which race, ethnicity, and gender replace the exploited proletariat and white people the exploiting bourgeoisie) has come to be called "cultural Marxism."
The fusion is more powerful than the original Marxist formulation because it taps primal emotions and identifies forms of oppression that go back much further in history and are more firmly rooted in the defects of human nature than the kinds allegedly inflicted upon the working class by industrial capitalism.
Tribalism is the oldest form of human identity, and there is no narrative more powerful than one tribe oppressing another (in the case of identity politics and critical race theory, the white tribe continuing to oppress the Black and brown).
At the heart of the new Marxism is the concept of systemic racism. And at the heart of systemic racism can be found two inherently illogical assumptions.
The first is that we should expect a distribution of wealth and status across racial and ethnic groups in precise proportion to each group's percentage of the population.
The second is that any detectable disparities between groups (any failure to achieve such proportional representation) is caused primarily by racism, to the point where the degree to which disproportionate outcomes obtain can be taken as a measure of the degree of racist influence.
Thus, the systemic racism concept (and attendant concepts like whiteness, subconscious bias, and white privilege) depends upon acceptance of the idea that, in a racist-free world, there would be a perfect distribution of all that is desirable to distribute.
The fatal flaw comes in realizing that there is no more reason to expect perfect (or even approximate) proportional representation among groups than among individuals. Such distributions have never been found in any society at any point in history and could not be achieved even with the most unsavory and draconian of means.
In short, the fundamental assumption behind the systemic racism concept (and therefore all the other elements of cultural Marxism supported by it) is fallacious--by positing that which is impossible to find and then assuming racism to be the cause when it isn't, the concept establishes a formula for seeing racism just about everywhere (hence "systemic").
If the primary measure of progress in combating racism is progress toward proportionate group representation, then we will never make much progress in combating racism. And since we will make (have made) so little progress, more race conscious policies must be developed and our efforts redoubled (wash, rinse and repeat).
As long as there can be shown to be unfavorable statistical disparities in any respect between different tribes, grievances are registrable and tribal resentments stoked.
We set up the problem in such a way that the answer we will always get is racism, and that answer then justifies more race consciousness and race-conscious policies (which, tragically, beget more real racism, as race comes to even more pronouncedly define our lives and opportunities).
Apart from the inherent illogic of using group statistical disparities as de facto evidence of racism, there also exists a perhaps deliberate refusal to take into account those disparities that contradict the narrative.
As Wilfred Reilly notes, "most of the highest-performing groups in the United States are not white. As per the 2019 American Community Survey, the wealthiest group of Americans is not Anglo-Saxon 'WASPs'--or Jews as is often claimed--but Indian Americans, with a median household income of $135,816. Taiwanese Americans come in second place, at $102,405. All in all, seven of the 10 highest-earning groups--Indians, Taiwanese, Filipinos, Indonesians, Pakistanis, Iranians and Lebanese Americans--are not 'white' as this term is generally conceptualized."
Perhaps even more subversive of the systemic racism narrative, with its attendant assumption that such racism prohibits Black achievement and explains all Black failure, is Reilly's observation that "quite a few Black or majority-Black groups are ahead of the average income for U.S. whites ($65,902). Ghanaian Americans bring home a healthy $69,021 annually, Nigerians earn $68,508 and Guyanese Americans make $67,772 on average."
Even if we concede the detrimental influence of slavery and segregation on the status of Black Americans, a country in which most of the highest earning groups are non-white, and Indian Americans earn more than twice as much as white Americans can hardly be a country in which racism is as systemic as claimed.
When the income of Ghanaian and Nigerian Americans, who presumably look the same as other Black Americans, and would therefore be just as likely to be discriminated against, are 50 percent higher than for native-born Black Americans, it would be reasonable to conclude that a lot more is going on than simply white racism.
If America has been a white supremacist project from the beginning, as critical race theory adamantly claims, lots of Pakistani, Indonesian, and Iranian Americans apparently didn't get the memo, much to their benefit.
Critical race theory might provide an opportunity for guilty white liberals to prove their virtue and for Black race hustlers like Ibram X. Kendi to shake down craven corporations, but it's less than clear how it helps ordinary Black folks, or if it is even meant to.
Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.