Supersessionism and Critical Race Theory
Intro to CRT
CRT is predominantly a US-American field of study. It originated in the writings of several American legal scholars, including Derrick Bell, Patricia J. Williams, Alan Freeman, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Richard Delgado, Cheryl Harris, Charles R. Lawrence III, and Mari Matsuda (Critical Race Theory (CRT) | Definition, Principles, & Facts | Britannica, 2024).
According to Richard Delgado (2012), whereas traditional civil rights envision gradual progress, CRT questions this possibility in a society founded on modern liberalism. In examination here are concepts such as equality, legal argument, Enlightenment rationalism, and the neutral precepts of institutional law. Delgado (2012) describes key early developments in the emergence of CRT, beginning with the notion of legal indeterminacy – that most cases can be decided either way according to emphasis of one line of authority versus another (Delgado, 2012). While law has an alleged impartiality, it is used as a tool of privilege and power. In other words, law is politics, merely a tool for oppression (Benitez, 2015).
CRT also incorporated a “skepticism of triumphalist history”, and the notion that favorable precedent tends to decay through bureaucracy (Delgado, 2012). CRT also built upon feminism’s insights into the relationship between power and the formation of social roles, patriarchy, and other forms of domination. Lastly, from conventional civil rights thinking CRT drew a concern for addressing historical wrongs and the need to seek legal and practical action. Although initially focused on black American issues, other subgroups soon emerged within CRT including Asian, Latinex, and Queer. Writing in 2012, Delgado describes relations between different groups represented within CRT as being mostly good, maintained through regular meetings. Other ethnic groups having joined in smaller numbers include Native American and Middle Eastern (Delgado, 2012).
CRT drew from the earlier work of W. E. B. Du Bois, who was highly skeptical of supposed scientific or biological bases of race. Scientific racism or biological racism is a pseudoscientific theory systematized in the 19th century. It posits that categories of distinct “races” exist in the human species, and that racial discrimination can be justified by empirical data (Garros, 2006). Early in the Enlightenment, thinkers such as François Bernier had divided humanity into four different races, based simply on his observations as a world traveler (Bernier, 1684). A long canon of Western racial theory developed in Europe and North America, producing such abhorrent theories as Nordicism, promoted by American eugenicist Madison Grant and used to justify immigration restrictions (Lindsay, 1917).
Du Bois coupled his suspicion of scientific racism with radical political views and critical social theory (Farmer & Farmer, 2020). Rather than searching for a scientific definition of race, as a black man Du Bois sought to find or create a means for the social, political, and cultural survival of his people. Being rooted in Du Bois’ work, initially CRT was almost wholly directed towards African American studies (Farmer & Farmer, 2020).
Du Bois developed gift theory which emphasized that “each race has specific and special ‘gifts’ to contribute to national and international culture and civilization” (Farmer & Farmer, 2020). The concepts of race proposed by Du Bois were not biologically determined, but “predicated on historical, cultural, social, and political ‘common’ characteristics and ‘common’ experiences shared by continental and diasporan Africans”. These characteristics represent gifts or “race-specific and culture-specific contributions” to global humanity and the growth of civilization (Farmer & Farmer, 2020).
Rather than promote one political solution to problems of racism, Du Bois, “empirically developed a discourse on race in order to critique racism and provide a discursive point of departure for African American and Pan-African radical politics and revolutionary social movement” (Farmer & Farmer, 2020). He sought to offer models of discourse that could help critically understand race and mitigate against anti-black racism in contemporary society (Farmer & Farmer, 2020).
Du Bois was also a precursor for what would come to be known as critical white studies. Skillfully and boldly, he pointed to the essence of whiteness, chronicling its prominence related to understandings of race. To be white was to be raceless, powerful, or at least to have restrictive access to power (Farmer & Farmer, 2020). Du Bois described the colonial logic of the white world as considering race something that stains the social status of “sub-humans”, i.e., non-whites. This logic pollutes the political thinking of whites, thus reducing them to a state of impotence, irrationality, and needing clear paradigms about their identity and the nature of the world. The implication is that since whites are not negatively affected by race, they have been “burdened by God” with the task of leading the “lost, raced ‘natives’, ‘barbarians’, ‘savages’, and sub-humans” to the “lily-white ‘heaven’ of humanity”. And of course, God is also white according to the colonial logic of a “white supremacist world” (Farmer & Farmer, 2020, p. 21).
Du Bois was also an early advocate of the race/class thesis that argued that the class struggle present for centuries in human history had been coupled with the modern concept of race, capitalism, and colonialism with the effect of exacerbating race/class conflicts. For Du Bois, the West’s weapon of choice in its efforts to establish global capitalism were theories of race and racism (Farmer & Farmer, 2020).
Key Thinkers of CRT
When CRT did emerge in the U.S. in the 1970s, one of its most important proponents was Derrick Bell. Bell was raised as an Evangelical Christian but went on to write critically about the relation between racism and Christianity (Golden, 2022). Bell explored how Christianity was used to inspire racist ideologies, such as the Old Testament curse of Ham as a justification for slavery of blacks and the New Testament acquiescence to slavery as an “earthly institution”. Bell referred to racism as an “idolatrous faith” whose focus moves from worshipping God to worshipping the self. The focus of devotion becomes the “superiority of the white self and white race”. Bell describes the superiority of this faith as connected with the insistence that Whiteness is a “property right”. Whiteness affords whites with a privileged status that they seek to protect. In this idolatrous faith, “the true spirit of Christianity becomes divorced from its implementation” (Golden, 2022).
Throughout his work, Bell recognized that eliminating racism is an endless challenge (Golden, 2022). For Bell, the religious basis for racism is both a historical and contemporary reality which most racist Christians will not recognize. He observed how racist theology offers a comprehensive system of “meaning, value, and loyalty” providing “stability and reassurance” in a world of economic inequality. This faith perspective can justify the lack of common economic interests across races, with those of lesser means. In conceiving of racism as faith, Bell expresses its “deep cognitive structure”. This is especially important considering Enlightenment approaches to eradicate racism through reason. But the postmodern refutation of the secularist hypothesis demonstrates that racism will have to be dealt with as “enduring and foundational” (Golden, 2022).
Bell also explored the relation between racism and religious structure, “the transposition between the positive, originating spirit of Christianity and its institutionalization, the difference between a faith and the organizational structure developed to perpetuate it” (Golden, 2022). Towards the end of his life, Bell posited that Jesus recognized that the revolution that was needed was more about spiritual reformation than political change. This task begins with personal responsibility but also leads to instigation of change in others. The crucial discovery is how to create spiritual reformation in others that converts the perspective of a minority into the consensus of the majority. It is impossible to challenge racism without promoting spiritual reformation. At the same time, we must recognize that faith and spirit can also motivate resistance to change related to racism. The mixture of faith and racism prevents some From seeing (Golden, 2022).
Bell’s idea of radical racial realism argued that “race is not an anomaly to American structures but constitutive of American sociopolitical life. Racism is a permanent part of the DNA of America” (Golden, 2022). He asserted that black people would never achieve full equality in the U.S. But Bell did not see racial realism as denying hope, rather, he means for it to help readers “rethink our strategies of resistance and languages of hope”. By this perspective, expectations regarding racial justice must be grounded in “transcending racism instead of eradicating racism”. Bell describes this transcending task as defiance, which views victory against racism considering agency. Such advocacy is committed to not letting racism have the last say. He describes this as a defiant hope that helps oppressed racialized communities to reclaim their humanity and agency as they envision better worlds (Golden, 2022)
The second CRT scholar whose thought we will briefly explore is Patricia J. Williams. Williams argues that at the heart of myths and media sensationalism around African Americans in positions of authority and of crimes involving blacks is a “crippling fear of the other which divides societies against themselves, to everyone’s loss and no one’s gain” (Scholar, 2006). She argues that American cities are divided according to race stemming from a settler history where good and evil are perceived battling for control. Thus, while crises of urban crime and poverty are portrayed as rooted in individual causality, the true causes are structural (Scholar, 2006).
In the case of terrorists, the evildoers among the population are rooted out in a “secularized casting-out-of-demons from the Beloved Community” (Scholar, 2006). But while individual human rights are asserted, they are endangered by the fomentation of fear directed towards certain enemies of the good. Williams writes on America’s history of lynching or scapegoating blacks, Jews, or Catholics where police permitted vigilante justice. She sees a similar paradigm playing out on the global stage since 9/11 that undermines America’s reputation and security (Scholar, 2006).
Williams proposes that the color-blind society desired by liberals is impossible until the reality of racism is dealt with (Scholar, 2006). Personal experience and actions are related to structural dynamics, and each of us must answer for our actions. Although color-blindness is a legitimate goal at some point in the future, at present we need accountability. To fulfill the vision of human rights in the American Constitution, we must put away fear, seek public and private accountability, and be creative and imaginative in seeking solutions (Scholar, 2006).
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