Introduction
Thus far, I have explored several issues with CRT, including its antiessentialism and materialism, and some key implications for ethics. Though Crits appeal to some core moral principles and virtues, such as the need to do justice, and the dignity and equality of all humans, morals on CRT cannot be intrinsically right or wrong. Nor is there an essence beyond their own constructs that grounds and defines these morals as what they are. Instead, these and other morals are their products, being just their interpretations.
There is another implication of their views for ethics, and we can see this most clearly by examining some of Ibram Kendi’s claims about antiracism and its relationship to cultural relativism.
Kendi on Antiracism and Cultural Relativism
Kendi writes that “a racist idea is any idea that suggests one racial group is inferior or superior to another racial group in any way.”[1] Kendi rejects the use of any arbitrary cultural standards as the universal measure of “success” or morality. Since he thinks there are no universal standards, measuring one racial group’s “standing” vis-à-vis another racial group is racist. Even more strongly, he asserts that cultural relativity is the essence of cultural antiracism. That is, “when we see cultural difference, we are seeing cultural difference – nothing more, nothing less.”[2]
Assessing Kendi’s Claim
Now, in light of Christianity, all humans are made in God’s image and thus are intrinsically valuable. In that respect, it is true that people of a given racial group are not inferior to those of another – all are equal in that crucial sense. Yet, on CRT’s antiessentialism, there is no room for appeals to essences that could ground our intrinsic value.
Furthermore, there may be more morals that are held in common across cultures than Kendi might realize. He and others I have been discussing stress the importance of equality, dignity, justice, respect, and more, all of which seem to be deeply held principles that people simply seem to know are valid. Consider a bit more in detail the importance of treating other humans with respect. How that core moral is worked out in a given cultural setting may look quite different than in another one. For instance, many Asian cultures have been deeply influenced by Confucian teachings, especially in terms of filial piety. So, children, even when adults, are expected to show a deep deference to the wishes of the family patriarch. Yet, in other cultures, respect may be shown quite differently. Eskimos honor and respect their elderly by sending them off on an ice flow. Here, there is a common moral principle, yet a difference in a secondary sense, in how that principle should be applied.
However, as we have seen on CRT, there is no room for any essences and universal principles. So, even the core morals that he and others appeal to, like justice, respect, and human dignity, and particulars to a given group. Moreover, these morals are just their interpretations. That means that the morals themselves for which they advocate are relative to a given group. However, that undermines the strength of his and others’ moral contentions, including that racism is wrong, and not just according to them, and justice is good, and so forth.
Since morals are just the products of particular groups, there is no basis why others should also believe and act as he and others do. Moreover, he and others lack a moral basis for critiquing some clearly racist groups, e.g., the Ku Klux Klan. Furthermore, even for Kendi, it does not seem to be the case that cultural differences are just cultural differences. Take the Jim Crow laws of the southern U. S. states. According to this claim of his, it seems those laws were just cultural, descriptive differences, yet that does not do justice to the fact that these laws were deeply immoral.
So, on Kendi’s view, even if a minority group believes that racism is wrong, but the majority doesn’t, there is no shared moral basis to show that the majority’s position is immoral. It would be immoral only to the minority, for its morals are relative to it. Nor would the majority would be immoral, for it constructed its morals as its members saw fit.
Instead, what Kendi and others need to make their many important moral claims stick is a grounding in universal morals, which have an essential nature. And, humans need to be intrinsically valuable due to their essential nature. Yet, since they have forsaken these grounds, his and other Crits’ arguments simply cannot sustain themselves.
[1] Ibram X. Kendi, How to be an Antiracist (New York: One World, 2019), 20. Now, he prefers the description of being antiracist to being a Crit. Nevertheless, Kendi does seem to be embracing the core ideas of CRT, and so here I will consider him under that description.
[2] Kendi, 91.