Cannabis & Critical Race Theory (CRT)

Canada (and the West) is undergoing a cultural revolution. But not the good kind. This cultural revolution is akin to Mao’s great leap forward. The scourge is called critical race theory (CRT). And the cannabis industry is not immune to it.

What is Critical Race Theory (CRT)?

You can trace Critical Race Theory back to the Frankfurt School of Marxism. However, it’s more accurate to blame two law professors from the 1980s. Columbia University law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw and former New York University law professor Derrick Bell are responsible for this nonsense.

Critical race theorists believe countries like Canada and the United States are “systemically racist.” That their primarily European-descent population suffers from “white privilege.” Therefore, they reject notions of colourblindness, where you treat people as individuals instead of a member of some ethnic group. Most CRT proponents consider “individualism” to be part of Western civilization’s supposed white supremacist ideology.

On one hand, CRT is good because it sees race as a creation of society rather than a biological reality. We are, after all, all homo-sapiens. The colour of one’s skin is determined by how close to the equator one’s ancestors lived. Everything else is ethnic culture.

Unfortunately, critical race theorists don’t take this approach. Logic would dictate that defining race as a social construct would lead to a “colourblind” society. Instead, CRT proponents also ignore the biological reality that we are all homo-sapiens.

The entire point of CRT is to justify left-wing positions. It is the intellectual foundation of the “woke” progressive left.

CRT proponents behave as if they’re doing objective science no one could reasonably object to. CRT should be renamed Critical Race Religion, as that’s all it amounts to.

A secular belief in a higher power.

“Lived Experiences” DESTROYED By FACTS and LOGIC 

Mari Matsuda, a law professor at the University of Hawaii and early developer of critical race theory, told the New York Times,  “For me, critical race theory is a method that takes the lived experience of racism seriously.” But what if the “lived experiences” of minorities don’t match the CRT ideology?

Take the “lived experience” of McGill University Professor Patanjali Kambhampati. As he wrote in the National Post,

“Nowadays, the “lived experience” of marginalized communities stands as an unassailable point. But what if my lived experience renders me even more emphatically in support of the classical liberal principles that are the very foundation of democracy? My “lived experiences” as a Third World immigrant to the United States has in fact led me to be a lifelong defender of the practices of merit, fairness and equality — practices derived from classical liberal principles.”

Many CRT proponents would consider Patanjali an “Uncle Tom.” Probably brainwashed and suffering from an ideological Stockholm syndrome. If that sounds racist to you, that’s because it is. 

Critical race theory is racist, full stop.

The Civil Rights movement? That ultimately served the interests of “white people,” says CRT co-originator Derrick Bell.

That Martin Luther King quote about judging people based on their character content rather than their skin colour? He didn’t actually mean that. And if you’re fair-skinned or of European descent, and you bring up that quote, then you’re a racist.

But, for some reason, it’s not racist to say, “racism is an integral, permanent, and indestructible component of this society.” Or that “Black people will never gain full equality in this country.”

Despite Americans voting for a black president twice.

Critical Race Theory Infects Governments and Corporations 

The Canadian government of Justin Trudeau embraces critical race theory like a fat kid on a donut.

Global Affairs Canada incorporates the ideology into their training programs. Bell Canada regularly lectures its shareholders, employees and customers about white privilege. Even Home Depot believes Canada is racist.

And if you think Conservative politicians will stand up to this tyranny – think again. Earlier this year, almost every member of Ontario‘s provincial parliament (a majority of them Conservative) voted to introduce CRT into the public school curriculum. 

Don’t think minorities are safe from this, either. 

The Waterloo Region District School Board has only one black person as a trustee. He raised obvious concerns about this new form of racism getting into our public schools. The result? Censured because, as he said, “I don’t follow their political agenda.”

It’s scary. These people are in positions of power and indoctrinating children with this bullshit. A political movement based on judging people’s skin colour is idiotic. And dangerous. It’s regressive and reactionary—the complete opposite of being progressive.

Are CRT proponents unaware of Nazi Germany? It’s not hyperbolic to compare the two ideologies. 

In the Grievance studies affair, Peter Boghossian, James A. Lindsay, and Helen Pluckrose used passages from Hitler’s Mein Kampf, replacing “Jew” with “white male.” They aimed to highlight the poor scholarship and criteria of academic fields infected with CRT. Their papers were published and praised until publishers found out who was behind them. 

How it Infects the Cannabis Industry 

As the cannabis industry develops, those who have bared the brunt of prohibition are seeing one of two things happen. They are welcomed into the industry or pushed out legally or financially. For many, this proves that “racist hierarchies” dominate Western civilization.

But this has nothing to do with race. Trudeau’s legalization scam keeps out a large majority of BC Bud farmers. It has nothing to do with their skin colour and everything to do with the size of their bank accounts and how many political connections they have in Ottawa.

But what about the mass incarnation of nonviolent drug offenders in the US? Most of them are black. Isn’t that proof of systemic racism?

It’s evidence the police are racist. This is one area where I agree with the left: defund the police. I’ve previously discussed it here, here, here, here, and here. Long before “Defund the Police” was a meme. 

The difference is I want a private-sector model to replace it. Not some commie-sounding nonsense like replacing armed guards with “community service workers.” 

A private policing model serves the communities via contract law. It opens the field to competition. 

Suppose you owned a private security force in downtown Chicago, and your fair-skinned employees kept arresting and shooting darker-skinned people at an exceptionally higher rate. How long do you think you’d stay in business?

Systemic racism isn’t prevalent in the cannabis industry. Crony-capitalism is. As Murray Rothbard wrote, “What the State fears above all, of course, is any fundamental threat to its own power and its own existence.”

CRT as a Function of Self-Preservation 

An unelected elite of bankers and technocrats are screwing over ordinary people. They can’t have us unite against them. Their biggest fear is all of us united in the street, occupying their buildings, chanting “We are the 99%.”

Therefore, the State must invent or adopt an ideology that will pit us against each other. White versus black. Poor versus rich. Us versus them.

But there is only one “us versus them.” 

There is the creative productivity, peaceful exchange and cooperation of free people relating to each other on a consensual basis.

And then there’s the coercive predation over those social relations. 

Philosopher Albert Jay Nock defined these contesting forces as “social power” and “State power.” United, we have enough social power to remove the State. But first, we have to, as Nock wrote, recognize that our common enemy is the State. 

Two Final Thoughts on CRT

Late into George W. Bush’s second term, the economy collapsed. Big banks had made terrible decisions and now wanted a bailout.

Bush famously said, “we need to abandon free market principles to save the free market system,” as if the US has had anything resembling free markets for over a century.

Barack Obama was the populist saviour. He campaigned against the big banks and all the wars. He was the peace candidate and would return America to sanity after eight years of Bush’s war on terror.

But then Obama won. And continued the wars. Then he bailed out the banks again. The result was Occupy Wall Street. Although the movement had a leftist bent to it, almost everyone was for occupying New York’s financial centre. It was all of us, the 99%, versus the 1% who had all the power and controlled the money.

Not surprising, then, that beginning in 2011 (and certainly following Donald Trump’s popularity), the corporate press started focusing on promoting division based on race.

Divide and conquer. That’s how the elites win, and we lose.

Fortunately, people are waking up. The MacDonald-Laurier Institute has published a series of essays written by ethnic minorities. These essays explain and criticize critical race theory from the “lived experiences” of African, Caribbean, Jewish, Middle Eastern and South Asian people.

And despite CRT proponents maintaining their power in high positions, at the end of the day, the common folk, the silent majority, will determine which way society’s pendulum swings. 

And considering the growing popularity of “far right” ideas, I have hope that even young, impressible school children will recognize CRT as the blatantly racist bullshit it is.