Critical Race Theory (CRT) is an intellectual and politically committed movement in American legal scholarship that studies race, racism and power. Originating in American law schools, critical race theory has made its way into ethnic studies, political science and education, and into a range of scholarly movements outside the US. Although no set of canonical doctrines or methodologies defines CRT, the movement is loosely unified by two common areas of inquiry.

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  • Critical Race Theory (CRT) is an intellectual and politically committed movement in American legal scholarship that studies race, racism and power. Originating in American law schools, critical race theory has made its way into ethnic studies, political science and education, and into a range of scholarly movements outside the US. Although no set of canonical doctrines or methodologies defines CRT, the movement is loosely unified by two common areas of inquiry. First, CRT has analyzed the way in which white supremacy and racial power are reproduced over time, and in particular, the role that law plays in this process. Second, CRT work has investigated the possibility of transforming the relationship between law and racial power, and more broadly, the possibility of achieving racial emancipation and anti-subordination. Appearing in US law schools in the mid- to late 1980s, Critical Race Theory inherited many of its political and intellectual commitments from civil rights scholarship and Critical Legal Studies, even as the movement departed significantly from both. Scholars like Derrick Bell applauded the focus of civil rights scholarship on race, but were deeply critical of civil rights scholars' commitment to colorblindness and their focus on intentional discrimination, rather than a broader focus on the conditions of racial inequality. Likewise, scholars like Patricia Williams, KimberlĂ© Williams Crenshaw and Mari Matsuda embraced the focus on the reproduction of hierarchy in Critical Legal Studies, but criticized CLS scholars for failing to focus on racial domination and on the particular sources of racial oppression.
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  • March 2009
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  • July 2010
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  • Critical Race Theory (CRT) is an intellectual and politically committed movement in American legal scholarship that studies race, racism and power. Originating in American law schools, critical race theory has made its way into ethnic studies, political science and education, and into a range of scholarly movements outside the US. Although no set of canonical doctrines or methodologies defines CRT, the movement is loosely unified by two common areas of inquiry.
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  • Critical race theory
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