Any real academic-research program searches for knowledge and follows the evidence wherever it leads, but there are some that are based on the felt necessity of protecting a preconceived set of ideas. Such programs are not actually doing research, but advancing an ideology. We shouldn’t waste resources on them, but sadly we do.
In today’s Martin Center article, Professor Stanley Ridgley examines the field of “anti-racism” research and concludes that it is bogus. He writes, “When proponents of a theory reach the point where they spend more time rescuing their pet from disconfirmation than they do illuminating reality, they reveal themselves as harnessed to what Imre Lakatos called a ‘degenerating research program.’ This is the current deteriorating state of critical racialism and ‘Critical Race Theory,’ which are often subsumed under the generality of ‘anti-racism.’”
Ridgley notes that there are numerous subspecies of “anti-racism” running wild on American campuses. What they have in common is that they can never question the central tenet that “racism” is an indelible stain on America. Everything these “researchers” do must confirm that notion and move on to advocating transformative remedies.
And why is that? It’s because huge amounts of money depend on the racism narrative. Ridgley observes, “Racism is especially needed on college campuses, so that bureaucracies can be staffed, budgets inflated, control increased, and bombastic pronouncements of ‘anti-racism’ issued by public-relations apparatchiks. Thus, we see the constant manufacturing of new varieties of ‘racism’ to accommodate a cascade of facts that threaten to inundate the paradigm. These constitute ‘rescue hypotheses.’”
A sure way for a wannabee scholar to succeed is to spin out some new variant of racism in an academic journal that will only be reviewed by others already committed to the cause.