Mackubin Owens| Guest columnist

Mackubin Owens, of Newport, a monthly contributor, is a senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.

The latest battlefield in Americas culture war is critical race theory,a pernicious and reactionary theory that, until recently, was confined to academia. No longer. CRT now infects most U.S. institutions,corporations and the government, including the military.

CRT can be traced to Karl Marx and his epigones, manifesting itself first as critical theory, a Marxist philosophical framework that rejects the validity of concepts such as rationality and objective truth. It posits two categories: oppressed and oppressors. In Marxs original formulations, the lens was economic class. The bourgeoisie was the oppressor class and the proletariat were the oppressed. CRT substitutes race for class. According to CRT, the entire system of a society is defined by those who have power (whites) and those who dont (people of color).

Several states have now sought to ban the teaching of CRT. In response, CRTs advocates make three arguments: first, CRT issimply a benign academic theorysupporting the latest stage in the struggle for equal civil rights; second, banning the teaching of CRT is an assault on free speech; and third, opposing CRT is an attempt to whitewash American history.

Regarding the first, CRT is fundamentally at odds with the principles that underpinned all advances in the rights of Black Americans, from the Civil War constitutional amendments to the Civil Rights Act of 1964:that all Americans should be treated equally, regardless of race, color, creed, or religion. These are philosophically linked to the Declaration of Independence, which holdsthat human beings are equal in their possession of natural rights and that, accordingly, no one has the natural right to rule over another without the latters consent.

But CRT attacks the American Founding. Advocates of CRT do not wish to fulfill the promises of the American Founding, which they regard as racist. Instead, they want to replace the principles of the Founding with something radically different, for instance, replacing such concepts as equality with equity and subverting the meaning of justice.

Regarding free speech, CRTemploys a rhetorical tool developed by the neo-Marxist philosopherHebert Marcuse: repressive tolerance. According to Marcuse, totolerate all ideas the essence of reasonable discourse that traditionally has defined the mission of education is, in fact, repressive, since it does not privilege the correct ideas. True tolerance, Marcuse argued, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.

Adopting Marcuses logic, CRTbrooks no dissent. To argue against CRT is itself fundamentally racist,evidence of the dissenters white fragility, unconscious bias, or internalized white supremacy.Thus rather offering a perspective that invites debate, CRT education is essentially ideological indoctrination.

Finally, opponents of CRT do not want to whitewash American history. But perspective matters. Slavery is Americas original sin, but when the United States was founded in 1776, slavery was a worldwide phenomenon. Americas Founding principles made the abolition of slavery a moral imperative. Jim Crow was indeed a terrible stain on America, especially as it was nationalized by Progressives such as President Woodrow Wilson. The Tulsa Massacre must never be forgotten.

But CRT ignores what Frederick Douglass said of President Abraham Lincoln: Most Americans of all races have risen above their prejudices, striving to bring American practice into accord with American principles regarding justice.

CRT demeans African Americans by stripping them of all agency, treating them as simply inanimate objects, helpless victims of impersonal forces. It also essentially absolves politicians of bad policy.

But in the end, CRT is nothing more than a return to 1850s-style racism as espoused by John Calhoun and Chief Justice Roger Taney in his infamous Dred Scott decision. It is divisive; it fosters racial hatred by trafficking in racial stereotypes, collective guilt, racial segregationand race-based harassment. It rejects Martin Luther Kings hope that we should be judged, not by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character.

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Opinion/Owens: Making the case against 'critical race theory' - The Providence Journal