The mainstreaming and elite-backing of anti-racism initiatives is promoting a new form of racial thinking, argues Joanna Williams in spiked. A new elite is using not racism but anti-racism to invent and exploit differences between people. Rather than aiming to end racism, they want it to continue indefinitely.
Just at the point when ‘scientific’ racism was being thoroughly discredited, CRT breathed life back into racial thinking by insisting everyone has a racial identity, and this alone determines our perception and understanding of the world. Rejecting colour-blindness pushes us to view each other as racialised beings. The emphasis on group membership simultaneously erodes both differences between individuals and the possibility of finding common cause across identity groupings. At worst, this provides fresh justification for racial segregation.