O hear the phrase tossed around in arguments, but what is the theory?
Is there actually a well-defined theory with a specific canon or is it a vague/disputed term?
I’ll probably regret asking this lol
Critical race theory (CRT) is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to analysing how laws, social and political movements, and media shape, and are shaped by, social conceptions of race and ethnicity. CRT also considers racism to be systemic in various laws and rules, and not only based on individuals’ prejudices
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory
It’s actually real. For a long time I thought it was just a buzzword like “woke” was but it’s an actual school of thought.
Is there actually a well-defined theory with a specific canon or is it a vague/disputed term?
in the year 2023, it’s both. But mostly the latter now. There isn’t a bunch of CRT classes or anything. All they can point to 90% of the time is talking about history. Because if you talk about history, white people look like shit.(and rightly so). And white supremacists don’t like that!
People who mention CRT are saying it makes white people look bad and that upsets them.
But it is absolutely not being taught in secondary school, let alone in kindergarten.
Better get started then.
Critical Race Theory is part of Critical Theory. It comes from a normative approach to social sciences instead of positive approach (how things should be instead of just describing how things are). Recent big names in the field you may have heard of are Judith Butler, Byung-Chul Han, Foucault, and Zizek.
The tradition stems from Marx who invented/popularized normative approach to social sciences and philosophy. It is revisionism in that they brush aside many of Marx’s fundamental premises and conclusions. To be more concrete in my examples, Butler talks about gender/sexuality, Han talks about alienation under capitalism, Foucault talks about the mechanisms (capital) authority uses to control society, etc.
Although revisionist, I find their works to be interesting and helpful and a lot of their theories can be reincorporated into orthodox Marxism-Leninism without a problem imo. But we’re not mature enough to have this conversation yet.
critical race theory is when the extremely powerful unionized public school teachers tell kindergartners it’s illegal to be white
