What is critical race studies?

“The critical race theory (CRT) movement is a collection of activists and scholars engaged in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power. The movement considers many of the same issues that conventional civil rights and ethnic studies discourses take up but places them in a broader perspective that includes economics, history, setting, group and self-interest, and emotions and the unconscious. Unlike traditional civil rights discourse, which stresses incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.” (Delgado and Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, 3, 2001).

What are the basic tenets?

There are five basic tenets to critical race theory:

1. Racism is ordinary, not aberrational.
2. The idea of interest convergence or material determinism.
3. The theory that race and races are social constructions.
4. How the dominant society racializes different minority groups at different times, or the theory of differential racialization.
5. The voices-of-color thesis which argues that because of their different histories and experiences, writers and scholars of color (American Indian, Asian, Black, and Latino) can communicate to their white peers matters that white people may not know.