CALGARY, Alberta – As a public service to our vast readership, 2P News is taking stock of the great issues of our day and offering our insights and knowledge. Our editorial board of Darcy Flowman, Antoine McGuilicuddy, Yu Mii, Cynthia Redbush and Rodecker Smith is committed to this ideal and presents this, our first effort. Critical race theory is all the rage in intellectual circles these days so we felt it deserved a close examination. We have decided to present our findings in a question and answer format:
What is critical race theory (CRT)? To many of our older readers CRT means cathode ray tube, like your old TV or computer monitor, or a charitable remainder trust, or corneal refractive therapy, but that’s not what we’re talking about. In simplest terms, it refers to the notion that the winner of a race such as the Kentucky Derby or Indianapolis 500 is only critical if a lot a people pay attention to it and think it’s important.
What makes the race critical? A race is critical if it is important enough to bet on. Any race where money changes hands is therefore by definition “critical.” Just ask Andy Killinger. He loses more money on horse races than most people spend on rent. He also loses money on hockey, football, baseball, basketball, tennis, golf, volleyball and tiddlywinks.
Why is it called a theory? Beats the heck out of us. The notion that there is one winner and the rest are losers in a race is as straight forward as anything gets, notwithstanding all those “participation” trophies that kids get these days. It really ought to be called the critical race principle.
Are you sure about this? Sure as sure can be. We know that there are multiple definitions of the words “race” and “critical”. There’s even debate over what constitutes a theory. But, this is a case where we applied the abductive heuristic of Occam’s Razor. That is, the simplest answer to a question is the best answer. That’s our answer and we’re sticking to it.
