Month: February 2021

What is Critical Race Theory? An Introduction to the Movement and its Ideas (With Further Reading)

Brad Mason16 Comments
Derrick A. Jr. Bell
Harvard Law School professor Derrick Bell (C) walking w. a group of law students on campus after taking a voluntary unpaid leave of absence to protest the law school’s practice of not granting tenure to minority women professors. (Photo by Steve Liss//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

[This article is a revised and expanded edition of “In Short, What is Critical Race Theory?”]

In 1989, when I was a boy of eleven years—born into an all-White church, attending an all-White elementary school in all-White town, well on my way to believing that racism was in the past, that America had achieved equality, and that inferiority of racial circumstance simply reflected inferiority of racial “culture”—more than twenty legal scholars met in Madison, WI to discuss how we ended up here and what should be done about it. This “Workshop” was titled “New Developments in CRT,” the first formal use of the now oft maligned acronym.[1]

1. Civil Rights Retrenchment: Why?

Just over twenty years following the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 1965 Voting Rights Acts, and the 1968 Fair Housing Act, the stated goals of this historic legislative package seemed further and further out of reach. Kimberlé Crenshaw, who spearheaded the first CRT Workshop along with Neil Gotanda and Stephanie Phillips, was sadly able to report in 1988 that,

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The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 8: the Harvard Story and the Birth of “Critical Race Theory”

Brad Mason3 Comments

Part 8 Image

The eighth post in my series, The Christian and Critical Race Theory, is now up on The Front Porch!

We’ve discussed how Critical Race Theory was a “race intervention in a critical space”; we now turn to how CRT was a “critical intervention in a particular institutional contestation over race,” specifically the academy (p. 1288). “The eruption that served as a point of departure in CRT’s trajectory,” according to Kimberlé Crenshaw, “was the institutional struggle over race, pedagogy, and affirmative action at America’s elite law schools” (p. 1264).

Please take a look and let me know what you think!

Part 1: “The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 1: A Survey of the ‘Traditional Civil Rights Discourse’”

Part 2: “The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 2: The Segregationist Discourse and Civil Rights Retrenchment”

Part 3: “The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 3: A Bridge: Dr. Derrick Bell”

Part 4: “The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 4: Alan Freeman and the Contribution of CLS“

Part 5: “The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 5: A Misalignment of Frames: Integrationism“

Part 6: “The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 6: A Misalignment of Frames: The ‘New Right’”

Part 7: “The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 7: A Race Intervention Into Critical Legal Studies”

Part 8: “The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 8: the Harvard Story and the Birth of ‘Critical Race Theory’“

Interlude: “The Christian and CRT, an Interlude: The Most Segregated Hour and Liberal Integrationism”

And if you want to go back to Critical Theory more broadly, please start here: “Christianity and Critical Theory, Part 1: Marx and Frankfurt”

More to come!

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The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 7: A Race Intervention into Critical Legal Studies

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Article 7 at TFP

The seventh post in my series, The Christian and Critical Race Theory, is now up on The Front Porch!

In short, the “race intervention in a critical space” that is Critical Race Theory was deeply and inescapably informed by the tension between the (literal) life and death commitment to traditional Civil Rights ideology and the postmodern critique inherited from Critical Legal Studies.

Please take a look and let me know what you think!

Part 1: “The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 1: A Survey of the ‘Traditional Civil Rights Discourse’”

Part 2: “The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 2: The Segregationist Discourse and Civil Rights Retrenchment”

Part 3: “The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 3: A Bridge: Dr. Derrick Bell”

Part 4: “The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 4: Alan Freeman and the Contribution of CLS“

Part 5: “The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 5: A Misalignment of Frames: Integrationism“

Part 6: “The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 6: A Misalignment of Frames: The ‘New Right’”

Part 7: “The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 7: A Race Intervention Into Critical Legal Studies“

Part 8: “The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 8: the Harvard Story and the Birth of ‘Critical Race Theory’”

Interlude: “The Christian and CRT, an Interlude: The Most Segregated Hour and Liberal Integrationism”

And if you want to go back to Critical Theory more broadly, please start here: “Christianity and Critical Theory, Part 1: Marx and Frankfurt”

More to come!

Follow @AlsoACarpenter

Carl Trueman’s CRT, Conclusion: Why the Critiques Keep Missing the Mark

Brad Mason1 Comment

In our last post, I addressed Dr. Carl Trueman’s claim that Critical Race Theory (CRT) assumes the premise that “life is a zero-sum game.” I further critiqued his understanding of CRT and racial “power” dynamics, digging into the ideological history of “Black Power” vs. “Liberal Integrationsim.”

Today we move onto his sixth claim and conclude this series. (I will note again that these posts are intended to be read in order; please see Part 1 for the general introduction to the series.)

And, last, (6) CRT claims to offer a “comprehensive explanation for all the evils we suffer.”

To my lights, the most appropriate answer to Dr. Trueman’s final claim here is simply, “Where?” Where does any CRT scholar claim this? In what way does CRT ideology even suggest this to Trueman? I simply have no idea.

My best guess is that Trueman is conflating a totalizing interpretation of, for example, traditional Marxism, or maybe even the Frankfurt School, with Critical Race Theory. This would be consistent with the error of most of his other claims, so probably a good guess. As stated before, his critiques, though weak and fundamentally unargued, might be better suited for some figures in the European critical tradition, including some of their White American Left offspring. If you recall from Part 3, CRT scholar Robert Williams offered a critique of Critical Legal Studies’ (CLS’s) Eurocentric reading of “rights” discourse that proved similarly illuminating for understanding Dr. Trueman’s failed critiques of CRT. Again, we read,

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