What Is Critical Race Theory, and Why Is It Under Attack?
Education Week
By Stephen Sawchuk — May 18, 2021
...Critical race theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. The core idea is that race is a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.
The basic tenets of critical race theory, or CRT, emerged out of a framework for legal analysis in the late 1970s and early 1980s created by legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado, among others.
A good example is when, in the 1930s, government officials literally drew lines around areas deemed poor financial risks, often explicitly due to the racial composition of inhabitants. Banks subsequently refused to offer mortgages to Black people in those areas….
critical race theory (article)
Encyclopedia Britannica
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| Derrick Bell |
By Gabriella Borter
REUTERS
September 22, 2021
…Critical race theory (CRT) is an approach to studying U.S. policies and institutions that is most often taught in law schools. Its foundations date back to the 1970s, when law professors including Harvard Law School’s Derrick Bell began exploring how race and racism have shaped American law and society.
The theory rests on the premise that racial bias - intentional or not - is baked into U.S. laws and institutions. Black Americans, for example, are incarcerated at much higher rates than any other racial group, and the theory invites scrutiny of the criminal justice system's role in that.
An often-cited illustration is America's War on Drugs. The 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act established harsher penalties for possession of crack cocaine than those for powder cocaine; Black Americans are more likely to be convicted of the former and whites the latter. Within four years, average federal drug sentences for Black offenders were 49% higher than those handed out to white offenders, according to the American Civil Liberties Union....
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The spread of critical race theory in schools has sparked controversies across the country
By Sam Dorman | Fox News
What exactly is critical race theory? The answer to that question appears to have eluded many, as controversies over racial diversity trainings and curricula have swept the nation's schools in recent months.
Often compared by critics to actual racism, CRT is a school of thought that generally focuses on how power structures and institutions impact racial minorities. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the first annual CRT workshop took place in 1989 but its origins go back as far as the mid-20th century with the development of a more general precursor known as critical theory.
Advocates of these ideas view the world through the lens of power relationships and societal structures rather than individuals. The movement itself came in reaction to the perceived failures of classical liberalism in the 19th and 20th centuries. Race, according to this view, is a relatively recent social construct that is weaponized by dominant groups to oppress others.
Part of the problem defining CRT is that its contours are so vague….
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| Kimberlé Crenshaw, Kendall Thomas, Patricia Williams |
Columbia Law School professors explain this method of research for legal scholars and how it’s being misunderstood.
Columbia News
July 01, 2021
…Critical race theory was a movement that initially started at Harvard under Professor Derrick Bell in the 1980s. It evolved in reaction to critical legal studies, which came about in the 70s and dissected the idea that law was just and neutral. Over time, the movement grew among legal scholars, mostly of color, at law schools across the country, including at UCLA, where [Kimberlé] Crenshaw lectured on critical race theory, civil rights, and constitutional law, and later at Columbia, where she was appointed a full professor in 1995, alongside [Patricia] Williams, a former student, research assistant, and lifelong mentee of Bell’s, and who is now professor of law emerita.
Although the scholarship differs in emphasis and discipline, it is united by an interest in understanding and rectifying the ways in which a regime of white supremacy and its subordination of people of color in America has had an impact on the relationship between social structure and professed ideals such as “the rule of law” and “equal protection.”
Put simply, according to Crenshaw, who coined the term intersectionality, which refers to how different forms of discrimination (such as sexism and racism) can overlap and compound each other, critical race theory is a way to talk openly about how America’s history has had an effect on our society and institutions today….
By: Gregory Pardlo
Pen America
November 8, 2021
…The popular (among some) objection is that CRT teaches children and young people that America is racist at its core. This is true. That is, America is indeed racist at its core. And it is a dishonest—not to mention illogical—rhetorical move to make that assertion mean “all white Americans are racist,” which is what CRT-baiters would have us believe is the hidden agenda. Equally dishonest is the effort to have the words “racist” and “racism” describe only the willful and overt racial hatred expressed by a conscious actor. Defining racism like this prevents us from examining the ways that laws, policies, practices and institutional cultures might bear the imprint of earlier generations’ racial attitudes and beliefs. Defining racism in this limited way precludes the possibility that an institution can act on its own, independently from its individual constituents, which, of course, is the very thing institutions are designed to do….
