This Is Your Brain on Critical Race Theory

L ast week, the actor Tom Hanks responded to calls for a more robust accounting of America’s racial history by penning a piece in the New York Times about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. “For all my study,” Hanks conceded, “I never read a page of any school history book about how, in 1921, a mob of white people burned down a place called Black Wall Street, killed as many as 300 of its Black citizens and displaced thousands of Black Americans who lived in Tulsa, Okla.” This, Hanks suggested, was perhaps because “History was mostly written by white people about white people like me, while the history of Black people — including the horrors of Tulsa — was too often left out.”

Yesterday, writing for NPR, Eric Deggans explained that what Hanks had written in the Times was “not enough.” “Tom Hanks,” Deggans proposed, “is a non-racist.” But, he added, “it’s time for him to be anti-racist.” Echoing almost verbatim an argument that has been advanced by Ibram X. Kendi, Deggans explained that there is a “difference between being non-racist and being anti-racist” and that Hanks had not yet bridged the gap. “Anti-racism,” Deggans submitted, “implies action — looking around your universe and taking specific steps to dismantle systemic racism.” And while Hanks’s words are nice, they did not change the fact that he “has built a sizable part of his career on stories about American white men Doing the Right Thing.” “If he really wants to make a difference,” Deggans concluded, “Hanks and other stars need to talk specifically about how their work has contributed to these problems and how they will change.”

Deggans’s essay serves as a perfect illustration of the cynical Motte and Bailey game that is currently being played by America’s self-appointed “anti-racists.” While in their Motte, the sponsors of critical race theory and its equally ugly relatives insist that all they truly want is for America’s schools to do a better job of teaching the history of American racism. On Twitter yesterday, Berkeley’s Robert Reich provided a solid example of this position with the claim that, by opposing the adoption of CRT in schools, the Republican Party is “trying to ban educators from teaching about the anguished role racism has played in the shaping of America.” In the safe haven of the Bailey, however, such defensible-sounding arguments are quickly swapped out for a set of considerably more extreme contentions, such as the claim that unless a person spends his days actively dismantling whatever “structures” a handful of “experts” have decided are problematic — including himself and his work, if necessary — he is in practice aiding and abetting racism. Clearly, Tom Hanks thought that he was playing inside the Motte. Clearly, he was not.

Critics of this grotesque tactic are invariably informed that they do not actually understand what critical race theory or modern “anti-racism” really are — and, as such, that they are in no position to oppose its adoption by America’s schools. But no such confusion can be alleged in this case. In Slate last week, Kendi was called forth to “explain critical race theory” for the benefit of those who don’t “know what it is.” Kendi’s explanation makes clear that the framework Deggans used in his essay on Tom Hanks is simply the application of CRT’s core structural claims to the movie industry, along with the verbatim utilization of the “racist”/“non-racist”/“antiracist” categories that Kendi himself has made famous. Want to know what critical race theory does to a person’s mind? Look no further than to Eric Deggans.

Ultimately, Deggans’s approach is a totalitarian one, from which there is no meaningful chance of escape. Had Tom Hanks elected to stay quiet, he would have been deemed guilty of inadvertently endorsing the unequal status quo. Had he rejected Deggans’s premise entirely, he’d have been deemed guilty of explicitly endorsing the unequal status quo. Having chosen to speak up in a way that tracked neatly with what he was told was expected of him, he was deemed guilty of inadequately fighting the unequal status quo. Even if he were to follow Deggans’s advice to the letter, he would still be deemed guilty of something.

Deggans complains that Hanks has often portrayed heroic white men on screen. But, as a white man, was he supposed to do the opposite? (And, if he had, what do we think would have been the response?) Deggans complains that, by promoting stories about the heroes of D-Day, the Apollo program, the Maersk Alabama hijacking, and other adventures, Hanks has spent a career “amplifying ideas of white American exceptionalism and heroism.” But the people Hanks has played really were heroes — which means that if Hanks were truly to “dismantle and broaden the ideas [he] helped cement in the American mind,” he would either have to lie about history, ignore it, or condemn his entire life’s work purely on the basis of his race — thereby committing the very sins that, when they are sitting in their Motte, “anti-racists” such as Deggans strenuously deny they are demanding. Perhaps anticipating this objection, Deggans concludes his litany of complaints by submitting that Hanks has failed to use his position to tell other important stories. But, even if this were true, it would still represent a trap. Tom Hanks could announce tomorrow that he intends to spend the rest of his life making films of which Eric Deggans approves, and within hours he would be accused of taking up spaces that belong to black actors, writers, producers, and directors; within days, it would be said that he was undermining important “voices of color”; and within a month, he’d be charged with possession of a “white savior complex.”

In the grand scheme of things, Eric Deggans’s view of Tom Hanks is not going to have a profound effect on the future of the United States. But the degree to which the country adopts the ideology that motivated that view most certainly will. Like Ibram X. Kendi, Deggans has adopted a Manichean worldview in which each and every person is placed on either the wrong or the right side of a set of inchoate and ever-shifting lines. That Tom Hanks, of all people, has been found wanting should tell us all we need to know about the integrity, the efficacy, and the conceivable consequences of this most peculiar and destructive of ideas.