But how close can the gap between majority/minority or privileged/oppressed ultimately be made?
Let me say that I'm about to write things I disagree with, but I honestly don't see closing the gap without adherence to paragraph three because of the conditions outlined in paragraphs one and two.
The answer that critical theory would give is that we could close the gap until we approach either a system of detente between the minority and majority, or, if one wants to get grandiose about it, an attempt at the amelioration of those huge gaps we see in law today. There's no doubt that the result of policies aimed at separating whites from blacks have caused such a disparity in economic and social status that even basic notions of fairness seem violated. I mean, when it's gotten to the point where there is such an underclass, and that underclass lags in every indicator possible that remedial efforts at equality seem so severe in implementation, it can be evidence of a majority having had beat up on a minority and leaving them really dispossessed, as American whites are argued to have done to American blacks. The proof is the result, as it were.
As conservative and Enlightenment and liberal rights-minded as I am, one cannot help but look at the disparities as something that doesn't bespeak to a true taking, almost, a taking of property and status from a minority group simply at its expense and seemingly for merely the continued ends of the majority. It is here were critical theory and critical race theory sort of jumps off. It asks for a stop to the "carceral" state, the condition under which so many minorities are in prison or jailed. It asks for economic measures to help remedy the inequality that is the result of policies enacted deliberately at the behest of the majority against the minority in question, policies that left them wanting for basics such as equal opportunities for shelter and education, not to mention basics like real food and clean and drinkable water.
The question, I guess, is what can we expect people to tolerate for generations? Can we expect a former dominion over body and spirit in the form of slavery, unequal treatment and abject lack of political representation under Jim Crow, radically unequal opportunities for social status and educational pursuits until
Brown v. Board and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to continue to manifest themselves without threat of systemic overthrow? I don't think we can. That leaves us with the unpleasant task of reintegration and the redress of prior wrongs in various forms, be it through social programs, educational outreach and achievement, and reparations on a grand scale. These things are difficult to imagine. Well-placed liberalism pays heed to equality and dignity as shibboleths, but it's really going to require some radical redistribution of property and the curtailing of the freedom of association and freedom from taxes most of us in the conservative/classical liberal tradition abhor. It will be a reevaluation of rights-based thinking, where rights to property and rights of association will have to be ceded to the state or the public for redistribution. In short, a real cluster.
Or, we can proceed apace and see our lives come to grinding halts nightly at the hint of violence by any authority towards the mobilized minority who are currently dispossessed. The disruptions right now have really just begun, it seems, considering the adoption of these methods and arguments made against the majority. The adoption of CRT and critical theory as means of criticizing the system have borne fruit. I don't expect them to stop. That is what the focus should be. How to stop something so anathema to liberal, rights-based governance. It might require drastic measures, but the system seems untenable in its current form of incidents, protests, and reverberations and shock. Amelioration by intrusion, or separation and detente, most likely hold the keys to the future.