Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a movement composed of varying studies and viewpoints about racial justice in America, with the goal of reaching beyond analysis to initiate social change. CRT originated in the mid-1970s when many African American lawyers, activists and legal scholars realized that advances from the Civil Rights Movement, such as the Brown v. Board of Education case which ordered desegregation for American schools and an overall awareness of African Americans’ importance to society, were no longer leading to additional significant adjustments (Delgado and Stefancic, p. 3, 2001).
Derrick Bell, who is considered the founding scholar of CRT, or “crit,” met with Alan Freeman, Richard Delgado and other nonwhite law professors in Madison, Wisconsin in 1989 to create new theories which would eliminate subtler forms of racism that were appearing after the Civil Rights Movement (Delgado and Stefancic, p. 4, 2001). A student boycott at Harvard University in 1981 partly inspired this meeting. When Bell temporarily left Harvard, African American law students requested that a nonwhite professor teach the “Race, Racism and American Law” course, but their petition was denied. The students boycotted the class and created an alternative course. Some of the students who taught and studied in the alternative course, including prolific crit Kimberlé Crenshaw, organized the 1989 workshop (Olmsted, p. 323-324, 1998).
Derrick Bell, currently a law professor at New York University (Delgado and Stefancic, p. 5, 2001), has a forty-year history as a teacher and activist for racial justice. After litigating in the Civil Rights Movement, he taught at Harvard where he was one of two African American faculty members (Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller and Thomas, p. xix, 1995).
Bell’s essays criticizing conventional civil rights discourse are considered precursors of the CRT movement. In “Serving Two Masters: Integration Ideals and Client Interests in School Desegregation Litigation,” Bell argued that civil rights advances for African Americans always coincided with changing economic conditions and European Americans’ self-interests. He stated that the NAACP had been fighting cases for racial equality for years, but the Brown v. Board of Education case succeeded in 1954 because the federal government thought it had to reward African Americans who served in World War II and the Korean War, and wanted to gain the loyalties of Third World countries who might ally with Communist governments. Later, research of memos showed what some believe to be proof that the federal government was attempting to improve its reputation for other countries through the verdict of Brown v. Board of Education (Delagdo and Stefancic, pp. 19-20, 2001).
Bell contended that school desegregation was a failure (Bell, p. 5, 1995) and that racial balance may not solve educational and societal problems. While the integration of the public schools was intended to create racial impartiality in other areas of society (Bell, p. 6, 1995), Bell said that little attention has been devoted to enhancing the education of African Americans (Bell, p. 8, 1995). Effective education, he said, should be valued over desegregation. Eliminating the problem of unequal resources in African American schools rather than eliminating racial separation would be a better way to help African Americans succeed and ensure they are not treated as subordinates to European Americans (Bell, p. 10, 1995).
In “Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest Convergence Dilemma,” Bell said that while European Americans may agree that African Americans are citizens entitled to constitutional protection against racial discrimination, few are willing to agree that racial segregation issues cannot be remedied without disrupting European Americans’ social status. The controversy over affirmative action, an instance when European Americans sometimes have to step aside for the advancement of people of color, demonstrates this point. (Bell, p. 22, 1995).
From Bell’s initial criticism to contemporary offshoots, the central ideas of CRT can seem unclear. However, most crits agree that their studies focus on how racism is ordinary and difficult to cure or address, and that the American social and legal system advances the interests of European Americans, so the majority has little reason to eradicate racism. They believe that race is a social construction because it is not fixed and does not correspond to biological fact; races are categories which society manipulates when convenient (Delgado and Stefancic, p. 7, 2001). Finally, crits agree on the power of language and that people of color should make their individual life experiences public (Olmsted, p. 325, 1998).
Many crits ascribe to materialistic viewpoints, which focus on economics, history, context and group- and self-interest instead of civil rights and ethnic studies (Delgado and Stefancic, p. 3, 2001). For example, a crit with a materialist perspective might believe that the United States perpetuates the stereotype that Mexicans are inferior to feel better about exploiting them for labor (Delgado and Stefancic, p. 17, 2001). The crit would think that the majority’s interpretation of historical events should be replaced with interpretations that reflect the experiences of the minority (Delgado and Stefancic, p. 20, 2001).
Crits favor the materialist perspective over the idealist perspective, which promotes diversity seminars, minority representation on television and quick remedies for racist speech (Delgado and Stefancic, p. 21, 2001). Crits associate the idealist perspective with the actions of liberals, who they believe are ineffective in eliminating racism because the idea of a color-blind Constitution will not relieve the misery of colored people, especially African Americans, which often is a result of the American legal system. Crits believe that aggressive, race-conscious efforts are necessary to provide equality (Delgado and Stefancic, p. 22, 2001).
Crit Gary Peller believes that race-consciousness is considered taboo in the United States because the boundaries for race rhetoric were set in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement and a clash between African American nationalists and integrationists. The consensus of this clash was that black nationalists appeared as racist as white supremacists, and integration would replace prejudice and discrimination with reason and neutrality (Peller, p. 127, 1995).
Crits take issue with the avoidance of race-consciousness because a color-blind interpretation of the Constitution maintains the social, economic and political advantages of European Americans (Gotanda, p. 257, 1995). Crits say that integration increases European Americans’ control over African American communities by destroying their institutions and taking their leaders to support European American interests (Peller, p. 135, 1995). Bell said that in the context of Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement, it is wrong to assume that African Americans were working for the right to associate with European Americans, rather, they were working for equal treatment in the American legal system and society (Bell, p. 21, 1995).
CRT can seem startling and alienating to people who have been taught that the Civil Rights Movement was victorious in granting rights to African Americans and eliminating racism thus, race is no longer a major issue in the United States. Crits are distrustful of liberals, who they believe want to appear as friends of nonwhites, but in reality support causes that will further their own interests and abandon them without making pervasive changes. They think this abandonment leads to conservatives increasing resistance to the rights of nonwhites (Delgado and Stefancic, p. 24, 2001).
Although there now exists a Critical White Studies branch of CRT, which examines the construction of what people and characterizes are considered of the ‘white’ race (Delgado and Stefancic, p. 75, 2001), CRT may drive away prospective European American scholars who perceive the movement as too radical to be taken seriously, too estranging of European Americans, or stepping too far from the supposed progress of integration. Crits can appear to ascribe to a relativistic view that each race is a culture with its own set of values and judgments which should be treated equally, but not forced to conform to a standard of another race. Most intercultural communication scholars do not support this view and instead believe that different cultures should have some common ethics for better interaction.
Additionally, although CRT has branches with spotlights on the experiences of Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, the movement tends to focus on the relations of European Americans and African Americans. Crits acknowledge that race is a social construction, but their most prominent writings make minimal references to Americans who have no avowal to one race’s culture and for whom race is a sensitive reality that scholarly definitions cannot remedy. The black-white binary of numerous CRT essays excludes many potential American scholars and activists who may not see how the movement pertains to them.
The unspecific tenets of CRT could also hinder further scholarship and political and societal recognition. The various directions of critique and CRT’s centrality in legal studies seem to prevent cohesiveness of the movement and its prominence in different levels of American life. It can be argued that crits themselves are disorganized in what values they want to emphasize. Bell believes that nonwhites should not try to fit into a flawed economic and political system. Token representation, competition for high income and the lure of influence are not worth the injustices (Delgado and Stefancic, p. 62, 2001). However, Bell and many other crits, though their attempts to alter the systems should be noted, hold prestigious positions at universities where European Americans are the majority.
The CRT movement could gain more power and subsequently progress in eliminating racial injustices if its purposes were more solidified. Making the theory more accessible to collegiate studies beyond law will increase scholarship that will make it comprehensible to broader ranges of people. Crits can ensure greater acceptance of CRT by giving speeches at universities, initiating CRT scholarship grants and working to establish courses that explore the movement and urge action. Their efforts should not dilute the theory or reduce it to another integration movement, but they should offer deeper explanations of CRT’s purposes. Rather than increasing European American opposition, crits should detail the problems of European American hegemony and why the results of the Civil Rights Movement are unsatisfactory.
Crits should conduct research about how to bring CRT principles into American public schools. This might include studying classes in which the teacher introduces more of Malcolm X’s rhetoric into lessons about the Civil Rights Movement and holds race-conscious discussions that delve into subjects previously deemed inflammatory. The researchers could analyze the major prejudices that surfaced in the discussions, the tenets of CRT which were not addressed and the reactions of the students, then determine what changes need to be made to improve the reception of the movement.
Since the 1970s, crits have brought fresh interpretations of racially charged events to collegiate scholarship, but the movement remains largely undefined and unknown to the public. With additional efforts to increase awareness of CRT and study the public’s understanding of the movement, crits will be more likely to reach their goal of changing racial justice in the United States instead of merely observing it.
