Author Shelby Steele said Thursday that Critical Race Theory was a coordinated effort to “capture white guilt.”
Critical Race Theory (CRT) holds that America is fundamentally racist, yet it teaches people to view every social interaction and person in terms of race. Its adherents pursue “antiracism” through the end of merit, objective truth and the adoption of race-based policies.
Steele joined “Fox News Primetime” host Ben Domenech to discuss recent claims that conservatives have only voiced objections to CRT because they feared change. (RELATED: Fauci Has ‘Outlived His Usefulness’: Ben Domenech Says Demand For Masks After Vaccines Is ‘Dangerous’)
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“If you don’t like Critical Race Theory, you are threatened by change. That’s how the left is framing it now,” Domenech began as he introduced Steele as his guest. “Washington Post columnist Christine Emba writes, ‘It is a psychological defense not a rational one and it has become so prominent because the status quo is comfortable and accountability is not.'”
Domenech argued that CRT was toxic and “unAmerican,” asking Steele what he believed could be done to push back against it as many in power attempt to promote it.
“I think they have to begin with the understanding that Critical Race Theory is a device designed to capture white guilt. It has no other meaning, no other purpose, no other function than that. It wants to capture, to once again accuse whites of racism,” Steele said.
Steele went on to explain that once CRT was used to convince everyone that structural racism had bled into every aspect of American life, the goal was to use the guilt it created to advance black Americans by creating entitlements for them. “It’s a structural systemic society-wide problem and to the extent of its breadth, it owes us as blacks entitlement,” he added.
“What bothers me most is that the whites — we have been doing this now for 70 years, and whites still don’t get the point,” Steele continued. “You are being had. You are being shaken down over a history that you had nothing to do with, and there has to be some standing up there.”