Critical Race Theory (CRT) is the framework to approach the systems of oppression that we live under through a legal-based institutional point of view. CRT takes race-based discrimination in the US Law system as the fundamental oppression that keeps the set of systems of discrimination intact. CRT is an extension of Critical Theory, through which race is posited as an often-overlooked element in legal discrimination. Critical Race theory takes race as a social construct (Parker and Lynn 2002), meaning that race in itself is not a biological virtue; it is a socially constructed category to ensure inequality, disempowerment, and disenfranchisement per the rules and regulations of white supremacy. CRT actively challenges the unjust ways in which the US legal system works, while denouncing the notions of liberalism and meritocracy, which as two political belief posit achievements and access to rights as an individual striving as opposed to being indicated in one’s race, gender, class, sexuality, gender identity, etc.
CRT emphasizes the importance of intersectionality, which can briefly be explained at the cross sectioning of the sets of marginalized and oppressed identities and how they play out in the experience of an individual or a group. To give a current example, the case of CeCe McDonalds, a Black transgender woman currently in jail for life after she killed a white male out of self defense. CeCe’s status as a black woman of transgender experience puts her at a status of such disempowerment that her life in the face of a white man’s transphobic and racist motivation to threaten her life gains no recognition neither by the state or the legal structures that is supposed to protect it’s citizens. Critical Race Theory therefore offers an understanding to the ways in which a person’s marginalized identities can play against her/his right to be recognized and protected under the current institutional systems we live under. CRT pushes people to be critical of one’s privilege, and actively question and challenge the state and the legal structures functioning under it.
Works Cited
Hooks, B (1990) Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics
Creswell, J.W. (2013). Qualitative inquiry & research design: choosing among the five approaches.Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/03/11/What%20Is%20Critical%20Race%20Theory
http://www.policymic.com/articles/5541/what-is-critical-race-theory
Parker, Lynn (2002) What’s Race Got to Do With It? Critical Race Theory’s Conflicts With and Connections to Qualitative Research Methodology and Epistemology Qualitative Inquiry 7-22