What Exactly is Critical Race Theory?

With all the scuttlebutt over Critical Race Theory (CRT), I would bet that 75% (I’m being generous…) of the people who have dug in on this issue one way or the other couldn’t define it. I’ll say this, if you are interested in what it is, you are on the right track. Not that I necessarily endorse CRT. While I think some things about it are valid I also see the theory as significantly flawed. But all that said, I absolutely believe that if we are going to bring it up in class then we should know what it is - so I wrote this concise definition:

CRT posits the idea that legal institutions (the law, police, courts, the Constitution, etc), by design, function to support and maintain the primacy of the white dominant culture at the expense of marginalized people of color.

There may indeed be some variants on this out there but for the most part, after doing a hell of a lot of reading on the subject, I think this pretty much covers it. Further, many suggest that these ideas transcend the legal world and also infect other institutions including education, the corporate world , and entertainment/media.

What I find valuable here are ideas that come up frequently in CRT writings about power and power relationships. Power and structures of power are important realities of the human experience which warrant investigation. In addition, I think it is necessary that we try and understand the groups that have traditionally held the reigns of power and how they define themselves and what constitutes inclusion within this group. CRT also notes the social construction of race, which strikes me as fundamentally true.

My critique of CRT is that is tends to be racially deterministic - a problem that comes up pretty quickly if someone were to inquire about other variables of power, such as socio-economic class. And further, many of the claims made by CRT authors rely on stories framed in entirely subjective perceptions of lived experience - what may seem to an individual as necessarily racist in origin may or may not be. Finally, those who claim that racism is baked into our legal system are always hard pressed to provide any explicit evidence that that is the case. The Constitution and pieces of legislation such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act clearly prohibit legal discrimination. So in other words, one can certainly assert the claims of CRT, but supporting the claims is a different story.

As always - I think it is important to read the material, analyze the claims, and determine whether or not the claims are valid based on evidence. You should start with Critical Race Theory: An Introduction by Richard Delgado and Jean Stephancic. You can read it gratis HERE. And, you’ll probably want to become familiar with the writings of scholars such as Kimberlé Crenshaw and Derrick Bell.

If you would like to watch two scholars discuss CRT in a critical way, check out Glenn Loury and John McWhorter HERE and HERE.

Here’s the thing. In the end - racism exists. Disparities that rest along racial lines also exist (though the data are always in flux). So how do we explain them? I suspect, as always, that the answer here is a lot more complicated than many think. I believe we can trace some problems in this regard to the racist policies of 60+ years ago, I am much more skeptical that the racism has simply gone “underground” and continues to support systemic racism at every institutional level. So let’s hash it out…

I am up for discussing all of this anytime.

With compliments,

Keith