What is critical race theory? 🤔
Critical race theory (sometimes abbreviated to CRT) is an intellectual approach to looking at U.S. society with a belief that racism is at the core of its laws and institutions.
Critical race theorists base this thinking on a few important observations:
• Race is a social construct that doesn’t have anything to do with biological differences among people, including differences in intelligence or physical ability. This became definitively clear after the Human Genome Project.
• The U.S., and all of its laws and institutions, were founded and created based on the myth of white supremacy—the assumption that lighter skin and European ancestry meant that white people were better and deserved a higher social and economic position than people of color. Because racism is embedded within our systems and institutions, codified in law, and woven into American public policy, this racial inequality is replicated and maintained over time. Thus, systemic racism shows up in nearly every facet of life for people of color.
• CRT aspires to empower voices that have been marginalized. Embracing the lived experiences of people of color through research, storytelling, and counter-storytelling—placed in historical, social and political context— is critical to scholarship that examines race and racism in society.
