Amanda Stoker, the assistant attorney-general, doesn’t like the term “anti-racism”. She hates it so much she got the Australian Human Rights Commission to scrap a tender enhancing a much-needed anti-racism campaign, according to a report in Guardian Australia.
Why did the senator take issue with “anti-racism”, which on its surface sounds like an objectively good thing? It’s because, according to a spokesperson, anti-racism is closely related to critical race theory, a once-obscure set of academic ideas that has somehow become a bogeyman for culture war conservatives the world over.
What is critical race theory?
Firstly, it’s not really all that scary. It refers to a set of ideas created by influential legal scholars such as Kimberlé Crenshaw and Richard Delgado, who were trying to grapple with the endurance of structural racism in a post-civil rights world in which black people were granted formal equality and many white Americans believed the problem of racism was fixed.
At its core, critical race theory posits that race is not biological but socially constructed, reinforced through systems of power like the law.
“It’s an approach to grappling with a history of white supremacy that rejects the belief that what’s in the past is in the past and that the laws and systems that grow from that past are detached from it,” Crenshaw, one of the movement’s leading figures, said last year.
It’s that interrogation of the way racism manifests in subtle, quietly pernicious ways that makes critical race theory such a useful analytical tool — not just in the United States but here in Australia, where despite seven Indigenous deaths in custody since the start of March, there is a dominant narrative that suggests the country is a successful post-racial multicultural society.
Critical race theory suggests those deaths are not tragic accidents or aberrations, but an inherent part of how policing and the law works to reinforce racial hierarchies.
Why are conservatives outraged by it?
So, why is Stoker suddenly so mad about critical race theory? Firstly, Stoker’s parliamentary career has been steeped in conservative culture warring, and the issues she’s picked up — like attacking transgender rights — are often imported directly from overseas.
It’s therefore a sign of how the transnational right operates, and just how much conservative politics is still swayed by the rambling outbursts of former US president Donald Trump.
For decades, critical race theory was relatively obscure outside university campuses, until Trump started tweeting about it. The former president, and the Fox News-pilled Republican Party he led, were always hostile to the idea that racism still exists in the US.
Then the murder of George Floyd provided visceral evidence of exactly what that ongoing racism looked like, led to mass protests for racial justice, and forced institutions across the country to start rethinking their own unconscious biases around race.
In an attempt to rev up the base and culture-war his way back to the White House, Trump pitted himself against that correction, defending Confederate statues and vowing to protect American history from Marxists and The New York Times.
Last September, he ordered federal agencies to stop any diversity training that discussed white privilege and critical race theory. It was all “divisive, anti-American propaganda”, Trump said, which would tear workplaces and families apart.
Within a month Trump’s culture war had jumped the Atlantic and was being picked up by Boris Johnson’s Conservatives. And of course, it’s now a frequent topic of conversation on Sky News over here, which runs multiple segments on it a week.
It was only a matter of time, then, before that old Trumpian culture war jumped over to Parliament.
Trump is gone from the White House, and banned from every reputable social media platform. But the endurance of his attacks on critical race theory are a sign of how he still has the global conservative movement in his thrall.
“and just how much conservative politics is still swayed by the rambling outbursts of former US president Donald Trump.”
I think you’ve grabbed the donkey by the tail there Kishor. Trump was only ever a mouthpiece, brainwashed by Koch brothers right wing think tanks and ‘policy research’ outfits that had been going for 40 years by that stage.
I don’t think he really grew it that much either, these ideas were festering on the internet and Facebook long before he came along, he merely gave it a bigger microphone.
A closer analogy is Howard’s nod and a wink to anti-Asian racism here given a voice with Pauline Hanson. It didn’t so much increase its membership, it just allowed it to come out of the closet.
At least that’s my take on it.
John Howard will not be viewed kindly by history.
As a wasteful PM and a racist who focused the hate upon anyone who was not white and middle class and from English stock he enabled the racists within our country and emboldened them.
Absolutely the last thing needed for a cohesive multi-cultural society, John Howard did not want that to be successful. He facilitated the importation of workers on weird visas who were desperate to succeed and so ripe for exploitation.
And now the extremely right wing LNP appointee Senator culture warrior woman from Queensland has already begun the attacks.
How embarrassing for Queenslanders.
I think ‘STINKER’ stoker would be better suited to the PHONP. Imagine the explosions when the two red-heads argue over policy direction worth the money to see it happen. Probably Hanson would win as gut cunning always wins out over so called intelligence.
He did give it the “bully pulpit”
Stoker’s “parliamentary career” doesn’t amount to much. As I understand it she was parachuted into the Senate when Brandis left in 2018.
But no surprises the reactionary ranks are filled with those opposing critical race theory. Personally, I struggle to understand how it can be even vaguely controversial here, given the absolute facts associated with Britain’s annexation and settlement of Australia based on the terra nullius lie and the ensuing appalling, immoral treatment, displacement, diminishment and disenfranchisement of First Nations people pursuant to racist and discriminatory laws that lasted well into the second half of the 20th century. And laws today which disproportionately impact peoples still gripped by and/or trying to recover from the ravaging effects of past violent and abusive treatment and the laws allowing it.
“Personally, I struggle to understand how it can be even vaguely controversial here”
No such problems for the ‘conservatives’. They don’t see what they don’t want to see. And many, I suspect, know exactly what’s going on but just refuse to acknowledge it, pretend it’s not there. It suits their narrative to lie about it.
Yep her career will be just another road bump on the highway to hell.
I’m afraid I can’t see any necessary connection between the two propositions a) that structural racism exists (reasonably true) and b) that race is a social construct (complete crap).
Given your views on proposition (b) does it follow that you believe race derives from empirically demonstrable biological facts? If that’s not it, what in your view is the basis of race?
Given that race is generally defined by the colour of our skin, then isn’t Robin correct?
I don’t know, since Robin has not replied yet. Are you authorised to speak for him?
Wouldn’t ‘empirical’ imply that a point of view is irrelevant?
When the question includes the phrases “does it follow you believe” and “what in your view,” it really is specific to the beliefs or views of the question’s addressee, so rather than irrelevant, it is of the essence.
It’s another target to dog whistle and help maintain a motley voter coalition which has issues with education, European enlightenment and empowered citizens.
Legal expert in CRT and author of ‘Dog Whistle Politics’ (destroying the middle class) Ian Haney-Lopez in interview ‘What is crt?’ 30 Sep ’20 with Center for Public Integrity:
‘Two important points that I really want to emphasize: One, the critical in critical race theory is a gesture toward European philosophical thinking that said almost all of our practices and ideas are socially produced. They do not exist in nature. They are not handed down from God. They are socially produced. … The other important insight is that racism is a complex phenomenon that requires serious study. And you can’t hope to understand racism simply on the basis of living race in your daily life, just as you cannot hope to understand the economy because you are spending money every day to buy goods. That doesn’t make you an economist. It doesn’t make you an expert on the economy. Likewise, living in a racially stratified society doesn’t mean you understand race and racism.’
Also underpinning the criticism of CRT is the need for nativist conservatives or white Christian nationalists to have a target for their voters and supporters to bleat and complain about; makes them suitably negative and ready to vote the right way.
Forgot, of course good excuse to attack and denigrate universities too to develop antipathy towards the fulcrum of learning, research, science, progress etc. that contradict god and the top people.
I love to ask Pentecostals and Christian Fundamentalists how old is the earth and the Universe. They give their answer as a few thousand years, but can not explain how light coming from the other side of the Universe has taken billions of years to get here.
Oh that’s easy, as is every question about everything. God made it so. Say no more, don’t question it. How good is that! No wonder clerics and politicians love religion.
I don’t understand giving critical race theory such a pivotal role in this article. Donald Trump wouldn’t have the intellectual curiosity to even delve into race theory. What worries me about critical race theory is that you really can’t have an argument about it. You either accept the premises (usually stated in the densest prose imaginable) or you are yourself a racist. It reminds me of religion.