“Critical race theory,” or CRT, has become a trigger term for politicians, activists and media voices, particularly on the right wing where it’s competing with “cancel culture” on the hit parade of things we are all supposed to be angry about or afraid of — or both.
But the political allure of the term is understandable, considering how often it has been appearing in the fevered narratives of conservative media and Red State politicians. Texas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Idaho, Arkansas and Arizona have either passed or are working on bills that would drop CRT or anything that looks like it from public schools curricula.
That’s a lot of agitation over an esoteric school of thought found mostly in graduate schools and law schools.
CRT has emerged gradually since the 1970s as an academic movement of civil rights scholars and activists to challenge mainstream liberal approaches to racial justice.
Among other pioneers of the CRT movement, legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw has called it an evolving practice that questions how race, as a social construct, perpetuates a caste system that relegates people of color to the bottom tiers.