Please consider this a very basic ‘alpha draft’ of these ideas and arguments. Happy to expand on things or provide further support for assertions as that will help build the argument.

Rather than keep trying to deconstruct and debunk Critical Race Theory ideas, here is the short-short version of what I think is going on.

First, some definitions:

1. Socialism: In the broader, non-Marxist sense. That being the use of a limited and democratically responsive state in the pursuit of equality, fairness, basic universal provision and to guard against the emergence of dominant hierarchies.
   
2. Social Mobility: In the sense of a persron’s capability to move between the economic and social strata of society, typically based on merit, and derived from more equal opportunities and the prevention of emergent hierarchies in 1.
   
3. Racism: Prejudice based on race.
   
4. WEIRD Countries: Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic.
   
5. Woke: Insufferably ‘right on’ and strangled by critical theory orthodoxy and an embraced tendency to biased, unscientific, subjective, hidebound, identity-based thinking. The popular politics of the moment, and of Social Media.

In the WEIRD countries, we have unprecedented levels of wealth and equality, at least legally. Economically there is an ever-increasing gulf. Still, at least in terms of rights and legal standings, members of actual or legal minorities have the same rights as anyone else, often – in defiance of the very point of equality – more rights.*

Despite this and the significant civil rights struggles being between 40 and 60 years old – or more – we seem paralysed by division based on race and other identity categories.

My hypothesis, or perhaps theory, is that we are still re-litigating old struggles that are no longer relevant while ignoring an even older struggle, which feeds our inequality; class struggle.

Let us take America as our case-in-point example.

America has some of the worst historical racism issues of the WEIRD countries and has one of the worst divides between rich and poor. Ethnic minorities indeed tend to be poorer and to do less well by various metrics, and, indeed, the nation was appallingly historically racist.

At the same time, America prides itself on being a place where anyone can make it. The American dream is that anyone can be a success, free of the factors contemporaneous to its founding that might prevent that (not being born into nobility being the main one). Nevertheless, this idea, integral to the American psyche, is less true of America than many other nations (America ranks 27th, the top 5 countries all being Scandiwegian Nordic nations).

The United Kingdom is not much better, insulated by the skeletal remnants of its post-war welfare state but rapidly becoming as bad as America. It is estimated that it takes about five generations for a low-income family to climb the social ladder merely to the average income in the UK. That being the case, it would take around 100-150 years for a wave of immigrants – typically starting at the bottom of the social ladder – to become homogenous with the rest of the population.

Windrush began in 1948, so we would expect Britons of Afro-Caribbean descent to start getting to parity (as a demographic) around 2048-2123, without historical racism being a factor.

However, here is the thing; this is also true for poor white families, the ‘chavs’ on sinkhole estates. Doubtless, racism plays its part, but class and wealth, and the lack of social mobility, seems to be a far more substantial and more overwhelming factor.

Wealth, social mobility, are materialist concerns that directly impact the material condition of people’s lives and have a knock-on cultural, mental, and, some would say, spiritual effect.

Poverty correlates exceptionally well with crime and appears to be causal. African Americans are approximately 2.5 times as likely to be poor as white Americans. They are also about 2.5 times as likely to be incarcerated. Can we accurately say this is because of a mental or social effect (racism), or is it not more likely to come down to material concerns?

Because the lack of social mobility harms the poor regardless of racial identity, attempting to solve these issues on a racial identity basis only breeds resentment. Poor whites struggle as much, materially, as poor blacks but are excluded from aid and effort directed at black communities. This disjunct feeds a divisive story about competition between members of the same class for scant resources when it should be building solidarity across identity divides and on a class basis. It also allows the entry and proliferation of far-right ideology within the identity grouping left behind, both because they go unaided and because identity politics is seen as legitimate for the ‘other’ grouping.

I do not mean to say that there are not other factors, including actual racism, at play. Instead, I say that identity politics do not serve the interests of the working and underclasses. Those identity politics divide and conquer the working and underclass. One need only remember what happened with the fizzling of Occupy to see a convenient example of what identity division does.

If we remove the ‘woke’ lens and examine how identity politics is being embraced by capitalism and neoliberal, capitalist-captured governance, it seems evident that this must be suiting the agenda of capital and capitalists. Exploitative companies will happily put a rainbow on their storefront during Pride month but will not pay any of their workers a fair, living wage without being forced.

So, I submit that the main problem we are all facing is a class/wealth issue, with other issues being incidental to or ‘downriver’ from those material issues. I say that we should be striving for class solidarity and the redress of the material, class-based inequalities and concerns that cross-cultural and ethnic boundaries. I believe we can tackle problems that are being misdiagnosed as identity issues best by improving the material conditions and social mobility of all and eliminating that inequality based on need (material conditions) rather than identity.

This change can be wrought through redistribution via traditional structures, social investment, economies of scale and by increasing the accessibility of technological innovation and education through a form of Anarcho-Technocracy.

In the Utopian Socialist tradition and that of the Fabians, I think it is also possible to convince the current capitalist class that it is in their own best interests to allow greater equality and to engage in social investment. Historically speaking, this seems to have been the case. Where ‘Scientific Socialism’ (Marxism really, not Socialism) has failed, Utopian Socialism has succeeded. It also seems that ideas such as Universal Basic Income (a societal ‘floor’ of income and provision) have some popularity amongst the current and emerging technocratic capitalist class.

Variations on this theme, I believe, also account for similar problems around other identity categories such as gender presentation, sex, sexual preference and other categories.

*Protected status, investment on the basis of identity, rather than need.