Written by John Lounsbury
Few topics have been more in the public awareness in 2021 than Critical Race Theory (CRT). Yet few people seem to know exactly what this is. For the past four decades CRT has been an academic activity with little exposure by name to the general public. This week we have what I think is a balanced review of what this thing is that’s called CRT.
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This discussion by Ryan Chapman uses excerpts from five leading books on Critical Race Theory to create a framework of descriptions. He avoids making any specific statements that are not backed by these sources. I think he is successful in furthering understanding of CRT. But not everyone does. A comment on the Lars P. Syll blog (HT for connecting me with this video) expresses one viewpoint:
I have yet to see a coherent definition of critical race theory – anywhere.
This rambling talk is no exception.
Where are the logicians?
Another commenter replies:
The video provides an excellent, concise, systematic and well documented DESCRIPTION, not a definition.
Ryan Chapman is the creator of political videos. Understanding him may best be acheived by reading his Patreon page. Some excerpts:
I went to college with the goal of becoming a college professor, probably in English, but with an enthusiasm for political theory. A favorite hobby of mine was to bring friends together with differing political opinions, and to peacefully hash them out over a bottle of wine (or more realistically a box of wine).
I ended up going in a different direction with my career, unrelated to politics or education. I kept with that until around 2016, when I started developing a sinking sensation that we shouldn’t take the world around us for granted, and that quite a lot of things I thought were going well actually weren’t, or were at least meaningfully compromised.
I saw a couple major problems that aligned with my interests. One was a lack of political education. I saw an abundance of political pundits, who essentially were trying to tell people what to think, and I saw a lack of political educators, who would normally provide people the tools to think for themselves. Worse, I saw many people posturing themselves as educators, who were, in effect, acting as pundits. I believed that the problem extended beyond platforms like Youtube, and went to some extent into the education system itself. Basically as the world was becoming more complex, people were decreasingly equipped to understand it, and the people whose job it was to professionally facilitate that understanding weren’t doing it.
I looked at possible platforms and career paths, and saw my three choices as: trying to work within the college system, trying to work for a media outlet, or going it alone and uploading to Youtube. I figured Youtube would likely give me the most freedom to say what I thought needed saying, and would also give me access to the biggest potential audience.
I feel a responsibility to bring a similar academic rigor that I’d bring to a college lecture. That means understanding the major angles and opinions held on a subject, while also understanding the general political history behind a subject, and being able to condense the material down to simple explanations before I publicly talk about it. A lot of it is also fact-checking and grounding quotes and claims in primary sources.
Ryan has 11,200 followers on YouTube.
There is an outline of the video and list of sources on YouTube:
0:00 Intro
01:15 Integration And Color-blindness
03:43 Race-Consciousness
05:22 Deconstruction And Reconstruction
06:41 What Critical Race Theory Is About
07:20 Academia
10:23 What Evidence Do They Use?
12:38 Redefining Racism
13:40 Critical Race Theorists Analyze America
14:39 Whiteness Is Subjective
16:01 CRT’s Vision For The Future
18:42 Marxism
20:40 Outro
Sources:
Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed The Movement – Edited by Kimberle Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda, Gary Peller, Kendall Thomas
How To Be An Antiracist – Ibram X. Kendi
Critical Race Theory: An Introduction – Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic
Words That Wound – Mari J. Matsuda, Charles R. Lawrence III, Richard Delgado, Kimberle Crenshaw
White Fragility – Robin DiAngelo
Traditional And Critical Theory – Max Horkheimer
Cornell Law’s CLT listing (precursor to critical race theory) that includes Max Horkheimer as an influence: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/criti…
Ibram X. Kendi’s Politico article advocating for a Department of Anti-racism: https://www.politico.com/interactives…
This video is 21 and a half minutes long and is well paced for viewers to absorb much of the material in the first viewing.
Source: YouTube
Caption graphic photo credit: Clip from photo by Alexander Suhorucov from Pexels. Full image:
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