Library Guides: Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Guide: The Tenets of CRT

The Tenets of Critical Race Theory

Critical Race scholarship is unified by two tenets;

The first is to understand how a regime of white supremacy and its subordination of people of color have been created and maintained in America, and, in particular, to examine the relationship between that social structure and professed ideals such as "the rule of law" and "equal protection." The second is a desire not merely to understand the vexed bond between law and racial power but to change it." (Crenshaw et al., 1995)

Daniel G. Solorzano and Tara J. Yosso (2000), rooted in the field of education, state, "at least five elements that form its basic perspectives, research methods, and pedagogy." They are; (1) the centrality and intersectionality of race and racism; (2) challenge to the dominant ideology; (3) the commitment to social justice ; (4) the importance of experiential knowledge; and (5) the use of interdisciplinary perspectives." CRT also developed subgroups such as Latino/a/x-critical (LatCrit) which will be discussed in other pages.

Five Tenets of Critical Race Theory - Sources

Kimberle Crenshaw, "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics."
Kimberle Crenshaw, "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color"
Gillborn, David, and Laurence Parker. "Intersectionality, Critical Race Theory, and the Primacy of Racism: Race, Class, Gender, and Disability in Education." Qualitative Inquiry 21, no. 3 (2015): 277-87.
Intersectionality Matters (Podcast)
Counter Stories
Podcast: We discuss race, identity, social justice and culture in a region grappling with demographic changes.

Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory by Patricia Hill Collins
ISBN: 9781478005421
Publication Date: 2019-08-23
In Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory Patricia Hill Collins offers a set of analytical tools for those wishing to develop intersectionality's capability to theorize social inequality in ways that would facilitate social change. While intersectionality helps shed light on contemporary social issues, Collins notes that it has yet to reach its full potential as a critical social theory. She contends that for intersectionality to fully realize its power, its practitioners must critically reflect on its assumptions, epistemologies, and methods. She places intersectionality in dialog with several theoretical traditions--from the Frankfurt school to black feminist thought--to sharpen its definition and foreground its singular critical purchase, thereby providing a capacious interrogation into intersectionality's potential to reshape the world.
Race, Class, and Gender by Margaret L. Andersen; Patricia Hill Collins
ISBN: 9780495006893
Publication Date: 2006-04-25
RACE, CLASS, AND, GENDER, includes many interdisciplinary readings. The author's selection of very accessible articles show how race, class, and gender shape people's experiences, and help students to see the issues in an analytic, as well as descriptive way. The book also provides conceptual grounding in understanding race, class, and gender; has a strong historical and sociological perspective; and is further strengthened by conceptual introductions by the authors. Students will find the readings engaging and accessible, but may gain the most from the introduction sections that highlight key points and relate the essential concepts. Included in the collection of readings are narratives aimed at building empathy, and articles on important social issues such as prison, affirmative action, poverty, immigration, and racism, among other topics.

Anthony E. Cook, "The Spiritual Movement towards Justice"

Words That Wound by Mari J. Matsuda; Charles R. Lawrence; Richard Delgado; Kimberle Williams Crenshaw
Call Number: KF9345 .W67 1993
ISBN: 0813384281
Publication Date: 1993-06-04
Words, like sticks and stones, can assault; they can injure; they can exclude. In this important book, four prominent legal scholars from the tradition of critical race theory draw on the experience of injury from racist hate speech to develop a first amendment interpretation that recognizes such injuries. In their critique of ?first amendment orthodoxy,? the authors argue that only a history of racism can explain why defamation, invasion of privacy, and fraud are exempt from free-speech guarantees while racist and sexist verbal assaults are not.The rising tide of verbal violence on college campuses has increased the intensity of the ?hate speech? debate. This book demonstrates how critical race theory can be brought to bear against both conservative and liberal ideology to motivate a responsible regulation of hate speech. The impact of feminist theory is also evident throughout. The authors have provided a rare and powerful example of the application of critical theory to a real-life problem.This timely and necessary book will be essential reading for those experiencing the conflicts of free-speech issues on campus'students, faculty, administrators, and legislators'as well as for scholars of jurisprudence. It will also be a valuable classroom tool for teachers in political science, sociology, law, education, ethnic studies, and women's studies.

Bernal, Dolores Delgado. "Critical Race Theory, Latino Critical Theory, and Critical Raced-Gendered Epistemologies: Recognizing Students of Color as Holders and Creators of Knowledge." Qualitative Inquiry 8, no. 1 (2002): 105-26.
For too long, the histories, experiences, cultures, and languages of students of color have been devalued, misinterpreted, or omitted within formal educational settings. In this article, the author uses critical race theory (CRT) and Latina/Latino critical theory (LatCrit) to demonstrate how critical raced-gendered epistemologies recognize students of color as holders and creators of knowledge. In doing so, she discusses how CRT and LatCrit provide an appropriate lens for qualitative research in the field of education. She then compares and contrasts the experiences of Chicana/Chicano students through a Eurocentric and a critical raced-gendered epistemological perspective and demonstrates that each perspective holds vastly different views of what counts as knowledge, specifically regarding language, culture, and commitment to communities. She then offers implications of critical raced-gendered epistemologies for both research and practice and concludes by discussing some of the critiques of the use of these epistemologies in educational research.
Solórzano, Daniel G, and Tara J Yosso. "Critical Race Methodology: Counter-Storytelling as an Analytical Framework for Education Research." Qualitative Inquiry 8, no. 1 (2002): 23-44.
This article addresses how critical race theory can inform a critical race methodology in education. The authors challenge the intercentricity of racism with other forms of subordination and exposes deficit-informed research that silences and distorts epistemologies of people of color. Although social scientists tell stories under the guise of “objective” research, these stories actually uphold deficit, racialized notions about people of color. For the authors, a critical race methodology provides a tool to “counter” deficit storytelling. Specifically, a critical race methodology offers space to conduct and present research grounded in the experiences and knowledge of people of color. As they describe how they compose counter-stories, the authors discuss how the stories can be used as theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical tools to challenge racism, sexism, and classism and work toward social justice.
Richard Delgado, "Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative"

Borderlands/la Frontera, Third Edition by Gloria Anzaldúa
ISBN: 9781879960749
Publication Date: 2007-06-01
Cultural Writing. Essays. Latino/Latina Studies. Rooted in Gloria Anzaldua's experience as a Chicana, a lesbian, an activist, and a writer, the groundbreaking essays and poems in this volume profoundly challenged how we think about identity. BORDERLANDS/LA FRONTERA remapped our understanding of what a "border" is, seeing it not as a simple divide between here and there, us and them, but as a psychic, social, and cultural terrain that we inhabit, and that inhabits all of us. This twentieth-anniversary edition features new commentaries from prominent activists, artists, and teachers on the legacy of Gloria Anzaldua's visionary work.
The Rodrigo Chronicles by Richard Delgado
ISBN: 0814718639
Publication Date: 1995-04-01
Richard Delgado is one of the most evocative and forceful voices writing on the subject of race and law in America today. The New York Times has described him as a pioneer of critical race theory, the bold and provocative movement that, according to the Times "will be influencing the practice of law for years to come. " In The Rodrigo Chronicles, Delgado, adopting his trademark storytelling approach, casts aside the dense, dry language so commonly associated with legal writing and offers up a series of incisive and compelling conversations about race in America. Rodrigo, a brash and brilliant African-American law graduate has been living in Italy and has just arrived in the office of a professor when we meet him. Through the course of the book, the professor and he discuss the American racial scene, touching on such issues as the role of minorities in an age of global markets and competition, the black left, the rise of the black right, black crime, feminism, law reform, and the economics of racial discrimination. Expanding on one of the central themes of the critical race movement, namely that the law has an overwhelmingly white voice, Delgado here presents a radical and stunning thesis: it is not black, but white, crime that poses the most significant problem in modern American life.

Richard Delgado, "Imperial Scholar: Reflections On a Review of Civil Rights Literature"