Opponents of "critical race theory" protest June 22 outside of the Loudoun County School Board headquarters in Ashburn, Virginia. (CNS/Reuters/Evelyn Hockstein)
To hear some describe it, critical race theory is Marxism, a threat to the American way of life, reverse racism and a scheme to indoctrinate children.
The reality is less sensationalistic.
"It's a legal theory that started in the early 1970s, after the civil rights movement, that comes mostly out of graduate and law school work," said Sam Rocha, a professor of education philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, who has studied and written on the subject.
Critical race theory is primarily an academic legal framework centered on the idea that racism is systemic; that it's embedded in institutions, culture, values and laws, and not just a manifestation of personal bigotry or animus.
The theory holds that racial inequality, because of the country's history of chattel slavery, Jim Crow and other overt racist practices such as redlining, continues to be seen in many facets of American society, including lower educational attainment and home ownership for minority communities, income inequality, and disproportionate arrest and incarceration rates for Black men.
Protesters are seen near Capitol Hill May 21, 2018, in Washington to demand elected officials take immediate steps to confront systemic racism. (CNS/Tyler Orsburn)
"Critical race theory compels us to confront critically the most explosive issue in American civilization: the historical centrality and complicity of law in upholding white supremacy," the scholar Cornel West wrote in 1995 inCritical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement.
Rocha told NCR that critical race theory can be understood as "post-civil rights abolition."
"A lot of times I think people assume that critical race theory is a moral theory of anti-racism, but it's really not," he said. "It's a legal theory that helps itself to a broad and wide tradition, from Black Reconstruction to the founding of the NAACP all the way into the civil rights movement."
In analyzing racism through an institutional lens, critical race theory aligns with the understanding in Catholic social teaching that sin transcends the individual. For example, Pope John Paul II referred to "structures of sin" more than a dozen times in his 1987 encyclical,Sollicitudo Rei Socialis.
"On the face of it, there's nothing in the entire deposit of Catholic Social Teaching, from Leo XIII'sRerum Novarumin 1891 to Pope Francis'Fratelli Tuttiin 2020, that is antagonistic to the principles of abolitionism," said Rocha, who will be presenting on critical race theory and Catholic social teaching at the University of Dallas on Oct. 27.
Tia Noelle Pratt, director of mission engagement and strategic initiatives and a sociology professor at Villanova University, told NCR that critical race theory challenges the effects of racial inequality.
"When the law does not work in the same way for everyone, the Dignity of the Human Person is not fully realized," Pratt told NCR in an email. "This is a particular concern for the poor and vulnerable. Racial inequality makes BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and people of color] vulnerable to all manner of harm. This is exacerbated for those who are also low-income."
Critical race theory's legal academic roots date to the 1960s and '70s in its precursor, critical legal studies, which examined how the law and legal institutions served the interests of wealthy and powerful people at the expense of the poor and marginalized. Scholars say some of its concepts originate further back to the work of earlier 20th-century civil rights activists like W.E.B. Du Bois, Fannie Lou Hamer and Pauli Murray.
In the 1970s, the late Harvard Law School professor Derrick Bell expressed frustration with what he saw as the limitations of the civil rights movement. Bell and other legal scholars such as Kimberl Crenshaw and Richard Delgado argued that civil rights legislation and court victories had not totally eradicated racial injustice, and that racial progress in many respects had stalled.
"In the decade after the civil rights movement, you had these Black scholars in law schools, studying the very laws that had justified the enslavement and oppression of their own families and ancestors," Rocha said.
The U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which declared racial public school segregation to be unconstitutional, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Emancipation Proclamation and other moments of racial progress for Black people in the country's history generated ferocious backlashes from white Americans.
"After Brown v. Board of Education, you can look at the pictures that journalists took then of protests and signs and the demographics of protesters, and those same identical protests are happening now with respect to critical race theory," Rocha said.
Concerned with what would be the backlash to the civil rights movement, Rocha said Bell and his fellow scholars created a way to read case law that was "attentive to race in a way that had never been seen before." By 1989, critical race theory had emerged as its own organized field of study when academics attended the first annual Workshop on Critical Race Theory.
In 2001, Delgado, who is recognized as one of the founders of critical race theory, and fellow legal scholar Jean Stefancic, published, "Critical Race Theory: An Introduction," where they outlined several tenets that they said most critical race theorists would accept:
Notions of race "correspond to no biological or genetic reality; rather, races are categories that society invents, manipulates, or retires when convenient," Delgado and Stefancic wrote.
Because it argues that racism is codified in laws, embedded in structures and woven into public policy, critical race theory rejects the idea that racism can be eradicated through meritocracy or "colorblindness." In critical race theory, it is not individual bigotry that causes widespread racial inequality, but rather the systemic nature of racism.
Critics would say that the theory finds racism too present and that it echoes a Marxist class struggle, zero-sum battle of oppressors and victims.
Angry parents and community members in Ashburn, Virginia, protest after the Loudoun County School Board halted its meeting because the crowd refused to quiet down June 22. Many at the meeting objected to critical race theory being part of the curriculum. It is an academic framework examining various issues as they relate to race and racism. Opponents say it discriminates against white people and rejects fundamental tenets of U.S. history. (CNS/Reuters/Evelyn Hockstein)
"I wonder if those who expound that rhetoric know what CRT is," said Pratt, who curatesthe #BlackCatholics Syllabus, a collection of resources related to Black Catholics in the United States.
In recent months,several Republican-led state legislatureshave passed laws to ban the teaching of critical race theory or similar topics in public schools. Conservativesin other statesare pressing similar bills andlobbying local school boardsto impose their own bans. Teachers nationwidehave protested against those measuresfor having a chilling effect on their classrooms.
Pratt said white Catholics should learn what critical race theory is, and what it isn't.
"CRT is taught to law students and sometimes to graduate students. It's not taught in elementary schools," she said. "Second, those who are truly committed to living out the principles of [Catholic social teaching] should want to support ways to challenge racial inequality in the law and society more broadly. That's what CRT does."
Rocha said critical race theory has shortcomings when it's used outside of its legal academic context.
"Critical race theory is designed to analyze the law, so anything that's not law or policy or really close to something like a statute, it's not really an appropriate object of investigation," he said. "So at the end of the day, critical race theory is a sophisticated tool of analysis of legal harms, but it assumes and it works on the foundations of a larger tradition of abolitionism for its moral apparatus."
Enter your email address to receive free newsletters from NCR.
Link:
Explainer: What critical race theory is and is not - National Catholic Reporter
- Student-Led Working Group to Abolish GUPD Calls for Greater Community Involvement - Georgetown University The Hoya - April 10th, 2024 [April 10th, 2024]
- Nobel Peace Prize - Wikipedia - January 10th, 2023 [January 10th, 2023]
- Albanese government neuters ABCC ahead of abolition - The Australian Financial Review - October 28th, 2022 [October 28th, 2022]
- 3 Good Reasons You Should Learn More About Angela Davis - Because of Them We Can - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- Eradication of forced labor -- striking example of political will - The Korea Herald - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- Intrusion impending: what contractors need to know about proposed abolition of the ABCC - Lexology - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- What Does It Mean To 'Abolish the Family'? - ArtReview - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- UN experts call for complete abolition of death penalty as 'only viable path' - UN News - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- Opinion | Social justice work must continue - UI The Daily Iowan - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- Rank-and-file action committees independent of IG Metall union needed to defend all jobs at all sites - WSWS - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- Japan plans to abolish health insurance cards in fall 2024 | The Asahi Shimbun: Breaking News, Japan News and Analysis - - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- Are you buying the copaganda? - mlk50.com - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- 'Crown Jewel of Criminal Justice System': Voters In Five States Will Address Legal Loophole That Still Allows Slavery - Atlanta Black Star - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- TUPD aims to connect with Tufts community over coffee - Tufts Daily - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- Ex-condemned prisoner relives 11-year wait for hangmans noose - The Herald - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- The Ongoing Fight Against Femicides and Violence Against Women in the Caribbean - Rolling Stone - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- At Tate Britain, Hew Locke Powerfully Reckons with Colonialist Histories and Their Lingering Aftereffects - ARTnews - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- Presentation of the Annual Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights - World - ReliefWeb - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- Sanitation staff on strike over salary delay in Delhi - The New Indian Express - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- Human Rights Watch Submission to the Universal Periodic Review of Burundi - Human Rights Watch - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- UN experts warn of associated torture and cruel punishment - OHCHR - October 11th, 2022 [October 11th, 2022]
- How Lead Belly twice won freedom from prison through his music - Far Out Magazine - October 11th, 2022 [October 11th, 2022]
- Why don't Popes ever win the Nobel Peace Prize? - Crux Now - October 11th, 2022 [October 11th, 2022]
- Hunting: Where the end began - Reaction - October 11th, 2022 [October 11th, 2022]
- Greece is committed to reforming its mass media and protecting personal data - Hellenic News of America - October 11th, 2022 [October 11th, 2022]
- Standing against war and nuclear catastrophe: lessons from Port Kembla - Red Flag - October 11th, 2022 [October 11th, 2022]
- Liz Truss warned tax cuts like hers could lead to 'boom and bust' in unearthed 2018 clip - The Mirror - October 11th, 2022 [October 11th, 2022]
- Opinion | The Puppets and the Puppet Masters - Common Dreams - October 11th, 2022 [October 11th, 2022]
- Intersecting Drug Policy and Abolition: A Conversation - TalkingDrugs - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Rival parties to lock horns over Gender Ministry in government organization reform plan - The Korea Herald - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Reforms, roll-outs and freezes in the tax and benefit system | Institute for Fiscal Studies - ifs.org.uk - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Kwasi Kwarteng to bring forward planned fiscal statement in another U-turn as it happened - The Guardian - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- IR35 reforms repeal: How it stands to benefit the tech sectors SMEs and contractors - ComputerWeekly.com - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- The Future of Truth - Portsmouth Daily Times - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Governor Hochul Names Canal Corporation Vessel in Honor of the Inspirational Life and Legacy of Harriet Tubman - ny.gov - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Tory MPs hit back after threats issued to those opposing 45p tax rate abolition - The Guardian - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- John Hood: Don't That Just Beat All? Neuse News - Neuse News - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Scrapping inheritance tax is a terrible idea - The Spectator - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Reeves: Government instincts in mini-Budget were to cut taxes for wealthiest - LabourList - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- The Biggest Exhibitions To See In London And Beyond: Autumn 2022 - Londonist - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Actually, Black Mermaid Folklore Has Been Around Long Before Disneys The Little Mermaid - Yahoo Life - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Build solidarity with rail workers fight! Help strengthen, expand the labor movement! The Militant - The Militant - September 14th, 2022 [September 14th, 2022]
- The Most Absolute Abolitionnew book explores abolition and lives of escaped slaves - Socialist Worker - September 14th, 2022 [September 14th, 2022]
- Democracy Cant Be Reduced to Voting in 2022 We Must Build the Future We Want - Truthout - September 14th, 2022 [September 14th, 2022]
- Christophe Ferrari denounces the announced abolition of the CVAE - US Sports - US Sports - - September 14th, 2022 [September 14th, 2022]
- Child labour: Nashik tribals struggle to survive, give kids to goatherds for Rs 10K - The New Indian Express - September 14th, 2022 [September 14th, 2022]
- Library Takeover Returns: Submit Your Application! | City of Madison - City of Madison, Wisconsin - September 14th, 2022 [September 14th, 2022]
- Do Britain and the world really need a king? - People's World - September 14th, 2022 [September 14th, 2022]
- Soka Gakkai International's Nuclear Abolition Work - Tricycle - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- Clinton nonprofit funneled $75,000 to 'defund the police' group: report - New York Post - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- Cops and Prosecutors Truly Work the Same Side: Ingrid Raphal and Melissa Gira Grant on their FOV Doc They Wont Call It Murder - Filmmaker Magazine - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- The Iran Man Behind the Nuclear Curtain Jewish Policy Center - Jewish Policy Center - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- Dorothy Roberts Tried to Warn Us - New York Magazine - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- Hear Me Now: The Black Potters Of Old Edgefield, South Carolina - Antiques And The Arts Weekly - Antiques and the Arts Online - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- The Spin | Zimbabwe's upset win should spur England to be good global citizens - The Guardian - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- Letter of the week: The Proms deserve better - The New Statesman - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- Why We Should Abolish the Family Current Affairs - Current Affairs - September 6th, 2022 [September 6th, 2022]
- On the Need for Honest Abolitionists. | Jeff Hood - Patheos - September 6th, 2022 [September 6th, 2022]
- Chile rejects a progressive constitution with big changes - NPR - September 6th, 2022 [September 6th, 2022]
- Where Solidarity, Abolition, and Queer History Meet - The Nation - September 6th, 2022 [September 6th, 2022]
- Addressing the sugar crisis long term - Manila Bulletin - September 6th, 2022 [September 6th, 2022]
- Experts react: The United Kingdom has a new prime minister. What should the world expect from Liz Truss? - Atlantic Council - September 6th, 2022 [September 6th, 2022]
- Explained Books | An eminent cardiac surgeon's account of his work, and of Kashmir - The Indian Express - September 6th, 2022 [September 6th, 2022]
- Formerly incarcerated women of color face worse health in later life | OUPblog - OUPblog - September 6th, 2022 [September 6th, 2022]
- The crime against humanity that is the modern OS desktop, and how to kill it - The Register - September 6th, 2022 [September 6th, 2022]
- Kenya: William Ruto's triumph, By Reuben Abati - Premium Times - September 6th, 2022 [September 6th, 2022]
- What shall we do with the climate refugees? - Trinidad & Tobago Express Newspapers - September 6th, 2022 [September 6th, 2022]
- Digitisation of records, land reforms turn 'Naya J&K' hi-tech - Rising Kashmir - September 6th, 2022 [September 6th, 2022]
- What year was slavery abolished in the US? - Fox News - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- The United Nations Human Rights Council met for its 50th Regular Session from June 13 to July 8, 2022. - WCADP - World Coalition Against the Death... - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- Special Tax Regimes for Mobile Individuals and Their Impact on the EU's Single Market - Bloomberg Tax - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- Undergraduate Summer Research Highlights - Newsroom | University of St. Thomas - University of St. Thomas Newsroom - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- A safe and healthy working environment is now a human right - Workplace Insight - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- Haryana dismisses alleged abolition of teachers post as baseless - The Statesman - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- New book explores wicked problems facing peace studies scholars and practitioners // Department of Political Science // University of Notre Dame -... - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- Universities Are Plundering Cities. How Can This Relationship Change? - Truthout - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- Edinburgh should apologise for role in slavery and colonialism, says academic - STV News - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- The inside story of the CIA v Russia from cold war conspiracy to 'black' propaganda in Ukraine - The Conversation Indonesia - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- Radical gender theory has now made its way into more than 4,000 US schools - Home - WSFX - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- Infanticide: Excitement as 5-year-old reunites with family in FCT - Blueprint Newspapers Limited - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]