Use of the term critical race theory (CRT)

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See also: Trends in curriculum development and Arguments about critical race theory (CRT)

Critical race theory (CRT) is a term that has been used by academics in scholarly works dating back to the 1970s. The term has come into widespread use among politicians, journalists, and others in recent years, particularly in debates about K-12 curriculum outside academia. Since its early development, the term has taken on a wider variety of perceived meanings. This page includes information about the various uses of the term critical race theory in academic and policy circles. It traces the origin of critical race theory as a technical term among scholars and includes information about the variety of ways in which it's used and defined in policy debates.

For more information about the main areas of inquiry and disagreement related to CRT, click here.

Origin of the term

Foundations

The term critical race theory first came into use in the mid-1970s as a term to describe a method of legal inquiry that developed following the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. The critical race theory approach to legal analysis developed in part as "a response to the notion that society and institutions were 'colorblind,'" according to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Legal scholars at the time, including Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw (who first coined the term critical race theory), rejected the notion of colorblindness. Crenshaw and other scholars argued instead that racial disparities "have persisted in the United States despite decades of civil rights reforms, and they raise structural questions about how racist hierarchies are enforced, even among people with good intentions."

Relationship to critical legal studies

Originators of the new analytical framework, including Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Mari Matsuda, and Richard Delgado, among others, derived the term critical race theory from critical legal studies—an approach to legal analysis popularized during the 1970s that argued that the law does not function according to neutral, objective principles. Proponents of what became known as critical race theory, like those of critical legal studies, considered the law to sometimes function in a way that subverts, rather than upholds, what they called social justice, according to Delgado.

Wider use in academia

The term critical race theory gained a foothold in legal scholarship during the 1980s. The term referred to a legal analytical framework that aimed to analyze and evaluate the role that race has played in shaping the law in the United States. By the late 1990s, legal scholar Daniel Subotnik observed in the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy that the term had experienced rapid growth in popularity: "Scarcely fifteen years old, Critical Race Theory (CRT) has generated a passion among its adherents, mostly minority academics, that has already fueled at least a dozen books, probably 250 law review articles and a half-dozen conferences."

Since its inception, other academic disciplines have incorporated critical race theory into their analytical frameworks, including sociology, public health, social work, and education. In more recent years, scholarship and policy analysis concerning immigration and international law has also referenced the term critical race theory. By 2011, the term had roughly 3,500 legal citations, according to Delgado.

Competing definitions of the term

Many media sources, academics, activists, and organizations have published definitions of the term critical race theory. A selection of these definitions can be found below:

Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic (Legal scholars and founders): "The critical race theory (CRT) movement is a collection of activists and scholars engaged in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power. The movement considers many of the same issues that conventional civil rights and ethnic studies discourses take up but places them in a broader perspective that includes economics, history, setting, group and self-interest, and emotions and the unconscious. Unlike traditional civil rights discourse, which stresses incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law."

Christopher F. Rufo (Senior fellow, Manhattan Institute): "Critical race theory is an academic discipline, formulated in the 1990s, built on the intellectual framework of identity-based Marxism. Relegated for many years to universities and obscure academic journals, over the past decade it has increasingly become the default ideology in our public institutions. It has been injected into government agencies, public school systems, teacher training programs, and corporate human resources departments in the form of diversity training programs, human resources modules, public policy frameworks, and school curricula."

American Bar Association: "Crenshaw—who coined the term 'CRT'—notes that CRT is not a noun, but a verb. It cannot be confined to a static and narrow definition but is considered to be an evolving and malleable practice. It critiques how the social construction of race and institutionalized racism perpetuate a racial caste system that relegates people of color to the bottom tiers. CRT also recognizes that race intersects with other identities, including sexuality, gender identity, and others. CRT recognizes that racism is not a bygone relic of the past. Instead, it acknowledges that the legacy of slavery, segregation, and the imposition of second-class citizenship on Black Americans and other people of color continue to permeate the social fabric of this nation."

James Lindsay, (Author, mathematician, and political analyst): "Critical Race Theory—

• believes racism is present in every aspect of life, every relationship, and every interaction and therefore has its advocates look for it everywhere
• relies upon 'interest convergence' (white people only give black people opportunities and freedoms when it is also in their own interests) and therefore doesn’t trust any attempt to make racism better
• is against free societies and wants to dismantle them and replace them with something its advocates control
• only treats race issues as 'socially constructed groups,' so there are no individuals in Critical Race Theory
• believes science, reason, and evidence are a 'white' way of knowing and that storytelling and lived experience are a 'black' alternative, which hurts everyone, especially black people
• rejects all potential alternatives, like colorblindness, as forms of racism, making itself the only allowable game in town (which is totalitarian)
• acts like anyone who disagrees with it must do so for racist and white supremacist reasons, even if those people are black (which is also totalitarian)
• cannot be satisfied, so it becomes a kind of activist black hole that threatens to destroy everything it is introduced into"

The Brookings Institution: "CRT does not attribute racism to white people as individuals or even to entire groups of people. Simply put, critical race theory states that U.S. social institutions (e.g., the criminal justice system, education system, labor market, housing market, and healthcare system) are laced with racism embedded in laws, regulations, rules, and procedures that lead to differential outcomes by race."

Arguments about critical race theory (CRT)

See also: Arguments about critical race theory (CRT)

This links below present an overview of the main areas of inquiry and disagreement related to the history, theory, and practice of critical race theory:

• If critical race theory is wrong or unnecessary, then why?
• If critical race theory is right or necessary, then why?
• What is meant by the term critical race theory?

See also

• Overview of trends in K-12 curricula development
• Arguments about critical race theory (CRT)

External links

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