What is Critical Race Theory?
Here are some broadly accepted commonplaces, drawn from CRT scholars' own answers to the question, presented in logical progression.
A thread:
1. Race is Socially Constructed
Race is not a natural, biological, “out there” entity such that it exists independently of law and society. Rather, it is a product of human social interaction, a construction of social reality. Further, race and racial categories were ...
... historically created to justify and maintain social hierarchy, slavery, and other forms of group-based exploitation, as well as distribute protections, rights, citizenship, privileges, access, advantages, and disadvantages.
2. Differential Racialization
Race, as an historically contingent artifact, was constructed to serve different social needs and different social desires for differing social purposes at different times and in different places throughout history. Therefore, not all “races” ...
... were historically constructed along the same lines nor imbued with the same set of characteristics, nor are they temporally stable.
3. Intersectionality
Further, because race has been socially constructed to serve different purposes for different groups at different times, race is inextricably linked with other social constructions and/or social arrangements developed by dominant groups to distribute ...
... protections, rights, citizenship, privileges, access, advantages, and disadvantages. As such, “race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, ability, and age operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but rather as reciprocally constructing phenomena."
4. Racism is Endemic to American Life
Because race was historically constructed by, through, in tandem with, and as integral to, other central formative American systems and institutions, including law, government, nation, politics, religion, geography, economic structure, ...
... and distributive schemas, the attendant racial hierarchies and racial ideologies are also integral to American life and its institutions.
5. CRT is Skeptical of Claims to Neutrality, Objectivity, Color-Blindness, and Meritocracy
Because racism is endemic to American life, due to how race was historically constructed, concepts like neutrality, objectivity, color-blindness, and meritocracy are themselves viewed ...
... as sites of racial formation and preservation and therefore legitimate sites of racial critique. CRT lays the burden of proof on these concepts, judging them by their “effectiveness in helping to contest the actual conditions of racial domination" (Bell), rather than by ...
... their formal appearance of race-neutrality and objectivity.
6. Racism is a Structural Phenomenon and Explains Current Maldistributions
As such, racism is primarily a problem of historically racialized systems, created for the distribution of social, political, and economic goods, continuing to perform effectively as created, even in a
... supposedly “post-racial” legal era.
7. CRT is Discontent with Liberalism and the Standard Racial Progress Narrative
On the other hand, liberalism conceptualizes racism as an aberration, a departure from the social norm. Therefore, liberalism tends to idealize the problem of racism as (1) prejudice, bias, and ...
... stereotype, (2) discrimination, or “allowing race to count for anything,” and (3) mere physical separation of races. Liberal answers to racism, accordingly, are (1) increased knowledge, (2) color-blindness, and (3) racial “mixing”; and, of course, plenty of time to allow ..
... “enlightenment” to run its natural course.
CRT scholars, alternatively—due to the contingent history of racial construction and the embedded nature of racism—view such liberal diagnoses and remedies as means of preserving the status quo, viz., preserving and legitimating ...
... the current maldistribution of social power and racially subordinated circumstances embedded within.
8. Interest Convergence
Because of the embedded nature of racism, due to the historical nature of racial construction, racial progress is often ephemeral, and always prioritized in contrast with the rest of the traditional liberal program—i.e., individual freedom, freedom of ...
... association, free markets, vested interests, property rights, etc. “[T]he most significant political advances for blacks resulted from policies which were intended and had the effect of serving the interests and convenience of whites rather than remedying racial injustices ..
... against blacks" (Bell). When White interests change, the fortunes of Black Americans are in turn reversed. “The broader point is that one of CRT’s key claims is that racial reform and racial retrenchment are defining aspects of American law and politics" (Carbado).
9. Unique Voice of Color Thesis
Those who have been, and continue to be, marginalized through social identification with historically constructed groups are thereby uniquely placed to address their unique social, legal, political, and economic subordination, as they “are
... more likely to have had experiences that are particularly epistemically salient for identifying and evaluating assumptions that have been systematically obscured or made less visible as the result of power dynamics" (Intemann) “This knowledge is gained from critical ...
reflection on the lived experience of racism and from critical reflection upon active political practice toward the elimination of racism" (Mutsada et al). By this, embedded, seemingly invisible, systems of racism can be made more visible to those who have been socialized as ...
... members of other historically constructed groups.
10. CRT Aspires to be Interdisciplinary and Eclectic
Further, since race is not a natural entity but a social construct, and since racism is thereby embedded in American society through its historical construction, race and racism are particularly amenable to fruitful ...
... interrogation by aspects of both Critical Theory and post-modernism/structuralism, largely as inherited from Critical Legal Studies; “CRT inherits from CLS a commitment to being ‘critical,’ which in this sense means also to be ‘radical’—to locate problems not at the ...
... surface of doctrine but in the deep structure of American law and culture" (Angela Harris). Accordingly, CRT scholars seek to deconstruct these systems and ideologies with an eye toward reconstruction and liberation.
11. CRT is Both Theory andPraxis
In the end, “CRT reflects ‘a desire not merely to understand . . . [these and other] vexed bond[s] between law and racial power but to change … [them].’ The theory is both pragmatic and idealistic. It grapples with the immediacies of now ...
... without losing sight of the transformative possibilities of tomorrow" (Carbado). CRT scholars understand that consistent, effective, liberative critical social theory cannot separate the construction of social knowledge from the active redistribution of social power.
For much more, see:
alsoacarpenter.com/2021/02/25/wha…
For a little less than that:
alsoacarpenter.com/2020/12/28/in-…
For even less:
alsoacarpenter.com/2021/03/09/a-b…
Or, last, for much, much more:
alsoacarpenter.com/2020/06/22/the…
Or, we can answer some specific questions:
alsoacarpenter.com/2021/03/17/is-…
Last, I only lament that the summary given in this thread is so anemic that folks might reduce the ideology to a simple logical progression. Please see the larger works linked for fuller discussion, along with links contained within them to further reading.
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