>Another central tenet of critical race theory is the critique of liberalism. This comes as a shock to most American readers who mistakenly identify critical race Theory as something associated with liberals and liberalism, but CRT is openly an anti-liberal theoretical and political project. The liberal approach to anti-racism is to divest race categories of social significance and treat everyone equally. That is, race is to become largely irrelevant and we, as a society, come to see skin color as having no more significance to a person’s worth or abilities than their hair color. This is referred to by critical race Theorists as “colorblindness” and is deemed highly problematic (see also, racism-blindness). A liberal society aims to make sure that everybody is treated equally by ensuring that race, gender, or sexuality does not prevent anyone from accessing any opportunity and then evaluates each individual on their abilities. This is known as “meritocracy,” which is viewed as a highly problematic ideology white people use to maintain their cultural dominance and justify their own white supremacy.
>Critical race Theorists reject colorblindness and meritocracy as myths and illusions that allow white people to perpetuate their own privilege by failing to see racism operating beneath the surface of systems (see also, white ignorance). Essentially, they see liberalism as the belief that equality, colorblindness, and meritocracy have already been achieved or enable white people to pretend it has or to be satisfied with a painfully slow incremental change, which is inadequate, while misleading people of color by hiding from them the realities of their oppression (see also, false consciousness).
