Critical Race Theory

History

CRT originated in the United States in the field of law during the mid-1970s, growing out of and responding to critical legal studies (CLS), which at the time was an emerging movement of legal scholarship that rejected the notion that legal matters were neutral and could be interpreted objectively. Influenced by postmodernism, CLS advocates argue that politics and social situations influence U.S. jurisprudence. Legal scholars Derrick Bell, Alan Freeman, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Richard Delgado, and Mari Matsuda, among others, responded that race and racism also play significant roles in U.S. law, influencing laws as well as those who interpret them. The U.S. civil rights movement and the nationalist movements advanced by Malcolm X and the Black Panthers also influenced the creation of CRT. Bell, Crenshaw, and Freeman (considered the founders of CRT), among others, believed that the progress made during the 1960s toward civil rights was already stalling by the mid-1970s. Thus, CRT was created to focus specifically on racial inequality in all aspects of U.S. jurisprudence and to actively work toward dismantling racism in the law.

In 1995, Gloria Ladson-Billings and William Tate introduced education scholars to CRT in their article in Teachers College Record, “Toward a Critical Race Theory of Education.” In this article, they argued that CRT can explain racial inequity in school achievement by focusing on race and racism as influential entities in all aspects of U.S. society and schooling. Some scholars in education now frequently address the influence of racism on the historical constructions and purposes of school and schooling as well as on teachers, administrators, and student achievement. Like CRT scholars in the area of law, Ladson-Billings and Tate suggested that the “business as usual” of racial inequality in education will not be resolved [Page 164]until it is addressed pointedly. CRT has also been adopted into the social sciences literature and can be found as a theoretical and analytical tool in very diverse fields of study.

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