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Civil Rights Movement

Critical Race Theory

by Malik Simba

Critical race theory was a response to the mid-1970s conservative, reactionary attack on the achievements of the civil rights struggle and the failure of liberalism to stave off this attack, both ideologically and in public policy. This response was initially led by scholars of color such as Derrick Bell, Mari Matsuda, Charles Lawrence, and Kimberle Crenshaw, as well as white theorist Alan David Freeman.

Critical race theory argues that white racism is a hegemonic, socially and historically constructed cultural force in American society. This racism expresses itself in popular culture by believed myths, stories, legal rules, and the institutional disposition of prestige and power via the concept of whiteness. Critical race theorists use popular culture to deconstruct this hegemony (ideological, cultural, and political domination) by developing a broader, alternate reality through writing fiction and nonfiction. They also combine critical legal theory with an analysis of how law constructs race and gender and thus reveal how liberal legalism (rule of law/equal protection) advances white domination and interests at the same time that it purports to advance the civil rights of minorities and women. In fact, Bell and Freeman argue that white power is solidified by the narrow constraints of civil rights law as it has been interpreted by the courts. According to critical legal theory, too many justices in black robes, either consciously or unconsciously, subscribe to myths of white supremacy, and in this context fact-sensitive evidence makes formal equality a mask that hides how “whiteness,” both unintentional and intentional, contours legal doctrine.

Critical race theory’s major goal is to be antithetical to both liberal and conservative scholarly assumptions about neutral and objective, discursive, detached intellectual inquiry. Critical race theorists reject these values and see themselves as politicized, counterinsurgent scholars who create oppositional worldviews aimed at the liberation of all oppressed societal groups. For example, these “race crits” argue that the concept of meritocracy is fallacious—that whether discrimination is intentional or unintentional is immaterial in a society in which wealth, education, and power are distributed and affirmed by the workings of a hierarchy of white over black. By revealing, through a process called “internal critique,” the internal contradictions of the concept of meritocracy, race crits hope that this clarification will create a “crisis of logic,” or demonstrate the lack of logic in treating rich and poor alike, as both can be potentially prosecuted for violating a neutral/objective law against begging for bread in the streets.

In demonstrating the intersectional contexts of race, class, and gender, race crits seek to challenge the legitimacy of white supremacy and its most potent tactic of using the powerful ideology of “color blindness.” This idea is powerful because of its varied sources, one of which is Justice John M. Harlan’s dissent in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case (in which Harlan touted the ideal of a color-blind society) and the other being the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.’s often-quoted clarion that one should be judged by the content of one’s character and not by the color of one’s skin. Race crits argue that race consciousness is so hegemonic that to ignore what one’s optic processes immediately perceive and automatically connect to value judgments is actually to perpetuate white supremacy. The perpetuation of this myth is effected by ignoring the fact that every minority individual is forced by whiteness into a dual consciousness. The social and historical context of this duality is faced every day by blacks and other racial and ethnic minorities, such as when a person of color must decide whether to buy “flesh-colored” bandages or when he or she is recognized as the “first” black, Chicano, or female judge, lawyer, or prosecutor. The falsity of color blindness is exposed in such situations.

The development of critical race theory has experienced some major turning points: In 1980, students of color at Harvard University confronted the administration over the teaching of an alternative course on race and law; future race crits, including Lawrence, Matsuda, Crenshaw, and others, were involved in this incident. Another turning point was the rise of critical legal studies conferences and the insurgency by feminist crits and race crits within this movement by the 1986 and 1987 conferences. The 1987 conference, coordinated by a consortium of Los Angeles area law schools, was entitled “The Sounds of Silence.” The unsilenced voices of the race crits were heard in a plethora of workshops at this conference, and selected papers presented were published in a special edition of the Harvard Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Review (spring, 1987). Another major event was a critical race theory conference at Mills College in Oakland, California, 1993, where various scholars met to discuss critical race theory. Out of this conference two different volumes on critical race theory were produced: Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (1995), edited by Richard Delgado, and Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement (1995), edited by Kimberle Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda, Gary Peller, and Kendall Thomas. Delgado, along with Jean Stefancic, is the author of Critical Race Theory, 3rd ed. (New York: New York University Press, 2017). Edward Taylor contributed Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education (New York: Routledge, 2016).

Citation Types

Type

Format

MLA 9th

Simba, Malik. "Critical Race Theory." Civil Rights Movement, edited by Michael J. O’Neal, Salem Press, 2020. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=CivRight2e_0104.

APA 7th

Simba, M. (2020). Critical Race Theory. In M. J. O’Neal (Ed.), Civil Rights Movement. Salem Press.

CMOS 17th

Simba, Malik. "Critical Race Theory." Edited by Michael J. O’Neal. Civil Rights Movement. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2020. Accessed May 01, 2024. online.salempress.com.

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Civil Rights Movement

Critical Race Theory

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