Critical Theory and its progeny have permeated every aspect of our society. The SCOTUS decisions in the Harvard and UNC cases were the first meaningful, national level, rebuke of it.
It actually has been around for a while, living in the margins of government agencies like the EEOC, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, for example.
I can recall trying to hire entry level engineers when I worked for FMC here in northern Utah back in the early 2000's. We got investigated by the EEOC due to not having enough black engineers in our applicant flow data. Utah, at that time, had a total minority percentage of around 3% of the total population and in the Ogden area, where our facility was located, that number was just over 1%. Blacks were a minority of the minority, the majority being Native American and Pacific Islander.
The EEOC made us post ads in the help wanted sections of major metropolitan newspapers (when we still did help wanted print ads) to attract black applicants for a job that didn't pay quite enough for a person to move without assistance and with moving assistance was too expensive for the company to pay, especially when capable, competent engineers were being turned out every year by our local major universities.
It's just they were the wrong skin color.
I don't think we ever had a successful minority hire from that mandate. In the end, the EEOC was satisfied that we tried it.
But the thinking behind it was Critical Race Theory, we just didn't really understand what CRT was back in 2002.
Critical Theories always begin with three a priori assertions that are treated as proven fact:
There can only be one real cause of the issue - the favorite these days is racism - that explains everything and we already know that to be true before we even examine anything.
Everyone subjected to the issue is equal in every way - nobody is smarter, more talented, more prepared, more educated, or better suited to the task at hand that the others and all are equally available. This supports #1.
Performance is irrelevant because everyone can equally perform, regardless of historical measures or experiences. This supports #2.
Every single one of these assumptions is patently false.
And yet these "theories" have expanded to every facet of our personal and professional lives.
The problem is that in life, as in logic, when one begins with a false premise, everything that flows from it is also false.
That's why I think the SCOTUS decision in the Harvard/UNC case is so important. It begins a reversal of this fallacious process.
This week may go down in history as the week that Satan was frustrated by the Supreme Court of the USA.
The SCOTUS decision on Harvard/UNC ... A nation that has achieved the highest standard of living for the greatest number of its citizens in all of history, founded on principles of self-reliance, private property, and equality in the law just got a gut check back onto the course to continuing success.