Critical Race Theory: what it is, its origins and its critics

 Critical Race Theory came to my attention when it was announced in September, President Donald Trump and the White House Office of Management and Budget would take the steps to cancel funding for training in Critical Race Theory among federal agencies. Their reasoning is it was a divisive un-American propaganda. After this announcement, the news and the internet exploded with outrage. People were proclaiming how dare he?!?! And it was a step backward. It was pushing the white supremacy agenda. I had no idea what Critical Race Theory is and why people were so upset. I had never heard it before. And like I have done with many other terms, I decided to investigate the theory. In 2002, over 20 American law schools offered Critical Race Theory courses. In addition to law, Critical Race Theory is taught in the fields including education, political science, women’s studies, and ethnic studies.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a theoretical framework in the social sciences that examines society and culture as they relate to race, law, and power. It developed out of critical theory of social philosophy where social problems are influenced and created more by societal structures and cultural assumptions than by individual and psychological factors. A few of the important scholars in CRT includes Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, and Camara Phyllis Jones. Critical Race Theory began in the 1980s as people of color students art Harvard Law school organized protests the lack of racial diversity in the curriculum as well as in students and facility. The students supported Professor Derrick Bell’s racial law courses to be taught by a faculty of color. After the school ignored their required hired two white civil rights activists. A number of students boycotted and organized to develop an alternative course using Derrick Bell’s Race, Racism and American Law (1973, 1^st edition). Harvard Law School continued to ignore the students requests led to the creation of Critical Race Theory in 1987 as an offshoot of critical legal studies. According to Crenshaw, "one might say that CRT was the offspring of a post-civil rights institutional activism that was generated and informed by an oppositionalist orientation toward racial power” (Gottesman, 2016).

There are several themes in CRT. Rather than overwhelm my readers with the information, I will discuss a few. First, CRT criticizes liberalism. CRT favor a more aggressive approach as opposed to liberalism’s cautious approach and rejects affirmative action, color blindness, role modeling (emulating a successful person) and merit principle (goods and services are received through talent, effort, and achievement) (Delgado & Stefancic, 1993). Second, CRT uses storytelling, counter-storytelling or “naming one’s own reality.” It is the use of narratives to explain and explore experiences of racial oppression (Delgado & Stefancic, 1993). Third, CRT offers revisionist interpretations of American civil rights laws and progress. Derrick Bell argued that civil rights advances for blacks coincided with the self-interest of white elitists. Mary L Dudziak (1998) suggests that the civil rights legislations were passed to improve the US image to third world countries as the US needed allies during the Cold War. Lastly, institutional racism. According to Camara Phyllis Jones (2002) the structures, policies, practices, and norms result in the differential access to the goods, services, and opportunities by race. Historically, institutional racism was slavery, segregation, internment camps and reservations. Modern examples are bank lending practices, housing contracts, profiling by law enforcement and representation in news and media.

Many of the Critical Race Theory critics take issue with its foundations in postmodernisms and reliance on moral relativism and social constructionism. Richard Posner, a judge for the US Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals (1981-2017), argued that critical race theorists have “succumbed completely to postmodernist absurdity” and “radical legal egalitarianism” (1997). Alex Kozinski, a judge for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (1985-2017), argued that CRT is a philosophy which “raises insuperable barriers to mutual understanding” and makes valid exchange of ideas impossible (1997). George Will (1996) argued that CRT’s use of storytelling and the insistence of racism “so institutionalized that all blacks are victims by definition” and not by an “identifiable act of discrimination.” Eleanor Krasne (2020) argued that CRT, rooted in Marxism, doesn’t allow for meaningful discourse that “questioning their ideas amount to tacit support of racism and makes you a racist.” She further states that “you either agree with the left’s worldview or you are an enemy of all that is good” (Krasne, 2020). Dan Subotnik also argues that leaving whites out of the race conversation doesn’t help anyone. “White males tempted to participate in the conversation were condemned in advance as interlopers, even imperialists” (Subotnik, 1998). Essentially whites were, and still, are told to step aside, sit down, and shut up, you have no say in the matter as you would not understand.

For far too long, minorities have been kept out of history, their roles pushed to the background and ignored and left out the conversations. There's no denying it. They have fought to be included in the history lessons and the conversation about today’s issues, to have their current contributions counted and celebrated as they should. However, there are a few are now enacting their revenge as they turn the tables on whites. “You left us out, now it’s your turn.” Critical Race Theory, at first look, seems like a good idea; however, in practice, it is an “agree with me or you’re my enemy” paradigm. It is still racism when the roles are reversed. An adage says, “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” Repaying evil with evil does not overcome evil. Evil is only overcome with kindness. Human nature has a long way to go.

 

References

 

Delgado, Richard and Stefancic, Jean (1993). Critical Race Theory: An Annotated Bibliography. Virginia Law Review. 79 (2): 461–516.

 

Dudziak, Mary L. (November 1998). Desegregation as a Cold War Imperative. Stanford Law Review. 41(1):61-120.

 

Gottesman, Isaac (2016). Critical Race Theory and Legal Studies. The Critical Turn in Education: From Marxist Critique to Poststructuralist Feminism to Critical Theories of Race. London, England: Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1317670957.

 

Jones, Camara Phyllis (2002). Confronting Institutionalized Racism. Phylon. 50(1/2): 7-22.

 

Krasne, Eleanor (June 29, 2020). How Leftists’ Critical Race Theory Poisons Our Discussion of Racism. The Heritage Foundation. www.heritage.org/civil-society/commentary/how-leftists-critical-race-theory-poisons-our-discussion-racism. Retrieved October 18, 2020.

 

Kozinski, Alex (November 2, 1997). Bending the Law. The New York Times Archives. www.archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/02/reviews/971102.02kosinst.html. Retrieved October 17, 2020.

 

Posner, Richard A. (October 13, 1997). The Skin Trade. The New Republic.