Op-Ed: Is Wokeness the new "White Man's Burden?"

By Heather Crosley

In 1899, Rudyard Kipling published "The White Man's Burden," in which he urged American colonization of the Philippines and its people. Kipling argued that it was the moral imperative of white man to "civilize" the non-white Filipinos. 

This exhortation by Kipling to "take up the white man's burden" elevates the white man to a place of moral superiority of a Biblical level, insofar as he evokes Moses leading the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery.

Kipling warns that opposition, in the form of the "blame of those ye better" and the "hate of those ye guard" are to be expected and endured.

The cognitive dissonance involved in the intellectual colonialism of the equity-obsessed liberal is quite astonishing.

Their self-aggrandizing goal is to virtue signal their moral superiority by improving society. But their view of how to improve society is by elevating "marginalized" voices. While that aim, in itself seems moral and honorable, it has two major flaws:

First, it makes its own (often arbitrary, and many times deeply flawed) determination of which voices are marginalized; and

Second, in order to amplify the voices of the marginalized it requires the non-marginalized to speak in their stead, which does indeed marginalize the voices it aims to amplify.

Participation by the marginalized is heavily supervised and scrutinized. Dissent by the marginalized is met with contempt, or else dismissed as "the hate of those ye guard." After all, it was the woke man who "brought ye us from bondage our loved Egyptian night."

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is an academic and legal framework that holds that systemic racism is part of American society. CRT theorizes, and then concludes that racism is embedded in laws, policies and institutions that uphold and reproduce racial inequalities.

CRT offers the explanation that all manner of societal ills are a result of the shameful history of slavery, caste, and systemic racism which are foundational to laws and institutions that exist today and that racism is woven into the fabric of our society.

CRT is just another way for self-proclaimed "anti-imperialists" to take up "the white man's burden" of "civilizing" our society by teaching non-whites how to think: as victims of inherently racist systems. CRT presents equity (prioritizing non-whites and the marginalized group du jour, without regard to merit) as the only viable solution for societal issues.

CRT offers a dream of a nation where children may one day be judged by the color of their skin, and not by the content of their character.

If systems and institutions are inherently racist and the purposeful elevation of minorities is required to right this wrong, then is it not incumbent upon whites to rectify these injustices? Does that not presume a dependence of non-whites upon whites for justice?

CRT is, then, the woke man's burden" of "civilizing" our society by teaching children that the United States is a latticework of inherently racist systems in which non-whites are inferior to whites.

The critical theory of CRT simultaneously accepts, and teaches, as truth, that whites are born oppressors of non-whites and that non-whites are subordinate and inferior, and therefore doomed to be oppressed by whites.

Moreover, CRT reinforces these lies as truth, without acknowledging that the ideas that comprise CRT are merely perspectives that propel racism.

Ultimately, CRT does nothing to propose solutions to the very damaging ideas underlying the problems it creates.  

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Heather Crosley is a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, New York Advisory Committee; Treasurer of the Federalist Society Long Island Lawyers chapter; and a Deputy Town Attorney in the Town of Hempstead.