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.
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https://www.britannica.com/topic/critical-race-theory
Encyclopedia Britannica
CRITICAL RACE THEORY
1) Race is socially constructed, not biologically natural.
2) Racism in the United States is normal, not aberrational:
it is the common, ordinary experience of most people of colour.
3) Owing to “interest convergence” or
“material determinism,” legal advances (or setbacks) for people of colour
tend to serve the interests of dominant white groups.
Thus, the racial hierarchy that characterizes American
society may be unaffected or even reinforced by ostensible improvements
in the legal status of oppressed or exploited people.
4) Members of minority groups periodically undergo
“differential racialization,” or the attribution to them of
varying sets of negative stereotypes, again depending on the needs or interests of whites.
5) According to the thesis of “intersectionality” or “antiessentialism,”
no individual can be adequately identified by membership in a single group.
An African American person, for example, may also identify as a
woman, a lesbian, a feminist, a Christian, and so on.
6) the “voice of colour” thesis holds that people of colour are uniquely
qualified to speak on behalf of other members of their group (or groups)
regarding the forms and effects of racism. This consensus has led
to the growth of the “legal story telling” movement,
which argues that the self-expressed views of victims
of racism and other forms of oppression provide essential
insight into the nature of the legal system.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory
Wikipedia
CRITICAL RACE THEORY
Common themes
Common themes that are characteristic of work in critical race theory, as documented by such scholars as Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, include:
♦
Critique of liberalism:
Critical race theory scholars question foundational liberal concepts such as Enlightenment, rationalism, legal equality, and Constitutional neutrality, and challenge the incrementalist approach of traditional civil-rights discourse.[17] They favor a race-conscious approach to social transformation, critiquing liberal ideas such as affirmative action, color blindness, role modeling, or the merit principle[32] with an approach that relies more on political organizing, in contrast to liberalism's reliance on rights-based remedies.
♦ Storytelling, counter-storytelling, and "naming one's own reality": The use of narrative (storytelling) to illuminate and explore lived experiences of racial oppression.[33] Bryan Brayboy has emphasized the epistemic importance of storytelling in Indigenous-American communities as superseding that of theory, and has proposed a Tribal Critical Race Theory (TribCrit).[34]
♦ Revisionist interpretations of American civil rights law and progress: Criticism of civil-rights scholarship and anti-discrimination law, such as Brown v. Board of Education. Derrick Bell, one of CRT's founders, argues that civil-rights advances for black people coincided with the self-interest of white elitists. Likewise, Mary L. Dudziak performed extensive archival research in the U.S. Department of State and Department of Justice, including the correspondence by U.S. ambassadors abroad, and concluded that U.S. civil-rights legislation was not passed because people of color were discriminated against; rather, it was enacted in order to improve the image of the United States in the eyes of third-world countries that the US needed as allies during the Cold War.[35]
♦ Intersectional theory: The examination of race, sex, class, national origin, and sexual orientation, and how their combination (i.e., their intersections) plays out in various settings, e.g., how the needs of a Latina female are different from those of a black male and whose needs are the ones promoted.[36]
♦ Standpoint epistemology: The view that a member of a minority has an authority and ability to speak about racism that members of other racial groups do not have, and that this can expose the racial neutrality of law as false.[1]
♦ Essentialism vs. anti-essentialism: Delgado and Stefancic write, "Scholars who write about these issues are concerned with the appropriate unit for analysis: Is the black community one, or many, communities? Do middle- and working-class African-Americans have different interests and needs? Do all oppressed peoples have something in common?" This is a look at the ways that oppressed groups may share in their oppression but also have different needs and values that need to be looked at differently. It is a question of how groups can be essentialized or are unable to be essentialized.[37]
♦ Structural determinism: Exploration of how "the structure of legal thought or culture influences its content", whereby a particular mode of thought or widely shared practice determines significant social outcomes, usually occurring without conscious knowledge. As such, theorists posit that our system cannot redress certain kinds of wrongs.[38]
♦ Empathetic fallacy: Believing that one can change a narrative by offering an alternative narrative in hopes that the listener's empathy will quickly and reliably take over. Empathy is not enough to change racism as most people are not exposed to many people different from themselves and people mostly seek out information about their own culture and group.[39]
♦ Non-white cultural nationalism/separatism: The exploration of more radical views that argue for separation and reparations as a form of foreign aid (including black nationalism).[33]
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