Circular logic protects ‘critical race theory’ from its own contradictions

Mar 27, 2023 by Dave Doveton

By Richard Williams, Mercatornet.

One of the great frustrations of my academic career, now spanning four decades, has been the number of “guardian angel theories” that I have encountered. Opposing and undoing them is very hard work, not because the logic and conceptual work are difficult, but because the guardian angels are conceived and maintained for mostly emotive, political, and otherwise self-serving reasons. Such motivations make it difficult for people to examine or critique the theory openly and transparently.

A “guardian angel” theory is one that is self-referential, relies on itself to prove itself, and has built-in mechanisms acting to protect a theory from critique.

In other words, the claims and constructs of the theory are invoked to defend itself against any criticism of the claims and constructs of the theory. The result is that the theory insulates itself from any valid criticism of the theory because all criticism is pre-empted and explained away by the language of the theory itself.

Read here.