Critical Race Theory: Context, Controversy, and Call to Action

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a set of premises developed by legal scholars decades ago to interpret America's institutions in the context of race and civil rights. The goal of this presentation is to help us better understand what exactly is CRT. It can be hard to know since there's no manifesto or mission statement.

This talk has three quite different goals: The first objective is to locate the origins of CRT, establish its core premises, describe recent controversy, and interrogate the stakes of it all; the second is to show you CRT in action - to narrate the histories of voting rights and of crime and punishment in the United States through the lens of CRT; and the third is to introduce participants to a list of practices that CRT scholars believe all of us can adopt to mitigate the worst legacies of slavery in our supposedly post-slavery world.