I’ve heard it a lot: “I do not agree with all the tenets of Critical Race Theory (CRT), but it can be a helpful tool for analyzing the problem of racism in our culture.”  In their book, The Critical Dilemma, Sawyer and Shenvi put it this way: “Christians and non-Christians insist that CRT is a neutral analytic tool.”  Presumably, it can be used for either good or evil.

In one sense, of course, this is true.  If I have a hammer, for example, I can use it in several different ways, some constructive, others destructive, and still others more creatively.  Regardless, the hammer is primarily designed to direct strong force upon very a focused location.  This is what makes hammers good for pounding in nails.  It also makes them good for shattering windows, pulverizing hard substances, and destroying fragile objects.  The point is that the tool is designed to achieve a limited number of outcomes, even though it can be employed in a potentially limitless number of situations.  Depending on the context, the purpose can be productive, destructive, or both.  In this regard, the hammer appears to be relatively neutral, and it’s use (or misuse) depends on who wields it and how.

In another sense, however, this notion of neutrality is incomplete and even potentially dangerous, because tools are not strictly neutral in terms of their design and purpose.  Tools are designed to solve certain problems or achieve certain ends in specified ways and consequently tend to have limited functionality by design.  If a tool like CRT is only designed to look for a certain kind of problem (e.g., systemic racism) it will be far from neutral since it has very specific designs and already assumes that what it is looking for is insidiously and ubiquitously present.

Getting back to our hammer example, if all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail—even when it isn’t.  If I want a board to become smooth, I would do better to subject it to a good sanding than a firm beating with a hammer.  In short, you should choose the right sort of tool for the right sort of problems.  Otherwise, you end up doing more harm than good.  Thus, an accurate assessment of the specific problem or problems you are facing should correspond to an accurate design and selection of tools to solve those specific issues.  In short, how we define our problems will very often determine the nature of our diagnostics and proposed solutions.  It will also largely determine the type of tool you create, select, and utilize to resolve it.

Just as diagnostic tools in medicine often require a battery of tests covering a wide range of possible problems, adequate cultural diagnostic tools should also seek to identify more comprehensive possible explanations for what social problems exist and why.  If the only thing I am looking for is Covid-19, but my patient has a different and perhaps much more serious and hidden illness like liver cancer, my Covid-19 test kit will not help me much, even if they actually have the disease.  In the same way, without a broader set of diagnostic concerns to examine the problems of society and the reasons for them, we can end up doing more harm than good, even undermining our credibility and ability to identify real problems (like racism) that plague our world today.  It’s not that CRT is wrong about its search for racism.  Racism, both systemic and interpersonal, is certainly a problem in our time as it has been in all times and cultures since the fall.

However, when you assume in advance, as CRT does, that racism is widespread, systemic, and largely unconscious in majority populations of society—simply because they are in the majority and because there are social disparities, you will be looking to support your preconceived theory and predetermined conclusion that the system is widely and inherently racist and therefore evil.  As Ibram X. Kendi bluntly declares, “When I see racial disparities, I see racism.”  But simply assuming and asserting widespread inherent systemic racism, rather than adequately demonstrating its presence becomes part of the problem.  Everything in the system starts to look like systemic racism, whether or not it is actually there.  Even worse, you tend to start creating racism where it previously didn’t exist to any significant degree in order to justify the ongoing and wider use and application of your tool.

This is not just ridiculously reductionistic, it is simply fallacious.  It demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature, God’s creation, and what racism is and isn’t.  And it does almost nothing to solve the real roots of racism, systemic or otherwise.  To be sure, racial disparity might indicate racism, but it does not do so inevitably or inherently.  Whether or not it does is not based on the disparity itself but is often the result of several other factors that must also be honestly and accurately considered before any simplistically dogmatic conclusions like this are made.

As economist and social philosopher Thomas Sowell has often shown in his books like Social Justice Fallacies, more comprehensive and honest societal analysis takes time and must give attention to nuance and multiple layers of social realities.  It also may point back to the people involved and highlight and indict them of their own sin and the ways in which they themselves may have contributed to the disparities that are present.  Is it racism?  Is it laziness?  Is it mental illness?  Is it fatherlessness?  Is it generational dependency?  Is it a genuine lack of opportunity that is largely unrelated to racial issues but a result of other systemic factors like poor educational instruction, for example?  Is it the adoption of legitimate but very different social values that put the community at a disadvantage in an industrial and digital age?  Is it some, or all, or none of the above factors?  What is really going on here that is leading to and perpetuating the disparities?

Thus, to say there is no racism in American social systems (there is) is just as naïve and wrong as it is to say virtually everything in the system is racist (it isn’t).  But when CRT tries to argue that all disparities are due to systemic racism, it reveals a hidden fact that as a sociological tool it is primarily ideologically (versus empirically) driven.  As a result, any honest examination of all factors involved in a situation will very likely be done inadequately, if at all.  This will produce a very selective history and set of examples that only serve to confirm the theory (called confirmation bias) but one which does not necessarily take all relevant aspects into account.  Consequently, this produces a truncated diagnosis at best and a wrong and harmful one at worst.

CRT remains attractive because it points to a truth that is very real: Racism remains a problem in the contemporary age, just as it has been a problem ever since sin entered the world.  But as a tool of social analysis, it is not only insufficient for explaining the true scope and nature of society’s problems, according to Shenvi and Sawyer, it makes false “sweeping assumptions about human beings, purpose, lived experience, meaning morality, knowledge, and identity that inevitably bring it into conflict with Christianity.”  As a result, it produces easy villains and heroes in the face of several convoluted and complex factors contributing to the profound problems of our time.  In so doing, it offers fallacious and overly simplistic explanations and solutions which often end up hindering and hurting those they claim they are trying to help.  That is the tragedy of choosing the wrong tool (CRT) for a need that remains and requires a viable solution—the identification and eradication of unjust systemic and personal racism in our time.