Critical Race Theory (CRT)
"Critical Race Theory is one of several principal modern theories used in legal education and practice since the 1970s. CRT has since been incorporated by scholars across the academy "as a conceptual construct, and methodology [to examine] the structures and systems that maintain White Supremacy's chokehold on our society."
-- Sofia Y. Leung and Jorge R. López-McKnight on Critical Race Theory, in Knowledge Justice: Disrupting Library and Information Studies through Critical Race Theory (2021), pg. 7. Access the book online.
Essential Readings
Critical Race Theory: An Introduction by
In 2001, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic published their definitive Critical Race Theory, a compact introduction to the field that explained, in straightforward language, the origins, principal themes, leading voices, and new directions of this important movement in legal thought. Since then, critical race theory has gone on to influence numerous other fields of scholarship, and the Delgado and Stefancic primer has remained an indispensible guide for students and teachers. Delgado and Stefancic have revised the book to include material on key issues such as colorblind jurisprudence, Latino-Critical scholarship, immigration, and the rollback of affirmative action. This second edition introduces readers to important new voices in fields outside of law, including education and psychology, and offers greatly expanded issues for discussion, updated readings lists, and an extensive glossary of terms.
Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780814721360Publication Date: 2011-12-01
Critical Race Theory: the key writings that formed the movement by
What is Critical Race Theory and why is it under fire from the political right? This foundational essay collection, which defines key terms and includes case studies, is the essential work to understand the intellectual movement Why did the president of the United States, in the midst of a pandemic and an economic crisis, take it upon himself to attack Critical Race Theory? Perhaps Donald Trump appreciated the power of this groundbreaking intellectual movement to change the world. In recent years, Critical Race Theory has vaulted out of the academy and into courtrooms, newsrooms, and onto the streets. And no wonder: as intersectionality theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw recently told Time magazine, "It's an approach to grappling with a history of white supremacy that rejects the belief that what's in the past is in the past, and that the laws and systems that grow from that past are detached from it." The panicked denunciations from the right notwithstanding, CRT has changed the way millions of people interpret our troubled world. Edited by its principal founders and leading theoreticians, Critical Race Theory was the first book to gather the movement's most important essays. This groundbreaking book includes contributions from scholars including Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Patricia Williams, Dorothy Roberts, Lani Guinier, Duncan Kennedy, and many others. It is essential reading in an age of acute racial injustice.
Call Number: KF4755.A75 C7 1995ISBN: 9781565842717Publication Date: 1996-05-01
Faces at the Bottom of the Well: the permanence of racism by
The noted civil rights activist uses allegory and historical example to present a radical vision of the persistence of racism in America. These essays shed light on some of the most perplexing and vexing issues of our day: affirmative action, the disparity between civil rights law and reality, the "racist outbursts” of some black leaders, the temptation toward violent retaliation, and much more.
Call Number: E185.615 .B395 1992ISBN: 9780465068173Publication Date: 1992-10-13
Sister Outsider: essays and speeches by
Presenting the essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider celebrates an influential voice in twentieth-century literature. "[Lorde's] works will be important to those truly interested in growing up sensitive, intelligent, and aware."--The New York Times In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change. Her prose is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, reflecting struggle but ultimately offering messages of hope. This commemorative edition includes a new foreword by Lorde-scholar and poet Cheryl Clarke, who celebrates the ways in which Lorde's philosophies resonate more than twenty years after they were first published. These landmark writings are, in Lorde's own words, a call to "never close our eyes to the terror, to the chaos which is Black which is creative which is female which is dark which is rejected which is messy which is . . . "
Call Number: Print & eBookISBN: 9781580911863Publication Date: 2007-08-01
The Souls of Black Folk by
In this edition of Souls of Black Folk, the original 1903 version of the W.E.B. Du Bois's classic is combined with the fullest set of annotations yet, two related essays, and numerous letters Du Bois received and wrote concerning his widely read text.
Call Number: Print & eBookISBN: 0312091141Publication Date: 1997-02-15
Teaching to Transgress: education as the practice of freedom by
These essays, by one of America's leading black intellectuals, face squarely the problems of teachers who do not want to teach, of students who do not want to learn, of racism and sexism in the classroom, and of the gift of freedom that is, for Hooks, the teacher's most important goal.
Call Number: Print & eBookISBN: 0415908078Publication Date: 1994-09-14
Books from the Collection
The Color of Law: a forgotten history of how our government segregated America by
In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America's cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation?that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation?the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments?that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day. Through extraordinary revelations and extensive research that Ta-Nehisi Coates has lauded as "brilliant" (The Atlantic), Rothstein comes to chronicle nothing less than an untold story that begins in the 1920s, showing how this process of de jure segregation began with explicit racial zoning, as millions of African Americans moved in a great historical migration from the south to the north. As Jane Jacobs established in her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, it was the deeply flawed urban planning of the 1950s that created many of the impoverished neighborhoods we know. Now, Rothstein expands our understanding of this history, showing how government policies led to the creation of officially segregated public housing and the demolition of previously integrated neighborhoods. While urban areas rapidly deteriorated, the great American suburbanization of the post?World War II years was spurred on by federal subsidies for builders on the condition that no homes be sold to African Americans. Finally, Rothstein shows how police and prosecutors brutally upheld these standards by supporting violent resistance to black families in white neighborhoods. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited future discrimination but did nothing to reverse residential patterns that had become deeply embedded. Yet recent outbursts of violence in cities like Baltimore, Ferguson, and Minneapolis show us precisely how the legacy of these earlier eras contributes to persistent racial unrest. ?The American landscape will never look the same to readers of this important book? (Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund), as Rothstein's invaluable examination shows that only by relearning this history can we finally pave the way for the nation to remedy its unconstitutional past.
Call Number: E185.61 .R8185 2017ISBN: 9781631492853Publication Date: 2017-05-02
A Critical Black Pedagogy Reader: The Brothers Speak by
A Critical Black Pedagogy Reader: The Brothers Speak entails essays and speeches from leading Black men who offered critiques of Black education. This volume demonstrates that Black men have clapped back at the educational structures that have attempted to domesticate Black peoples. The book introduces Critical Black Pedagogy as an approach to addressing issues of equity, diversity, and social justice in education.
Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781475848205Publication Date: 2019-10-15
Critical Race Feminism, Second Edition by
Now in its second edition, the acclaimed anthology Critical Race Feminism presents over 40 readings on the legal status of women of color by leading authors and scholars such as Anita Hill, Lani Guinier, Kathleen Neal Cleaver, and Angela Harris. This second edition features 25 new essays and a new introduction by Adrien Katherine Wing. Critical Race Feminism gives voice to African American, Latina, Asian, Native American, and Arab women, both heterosexual and lesbian. Both a forceful statement and a platform for change, the anthology addresses an ambitious range of subjects, from life in the workplace and motherhood to sexual harassment, domestic violence, and other criminal justice issues. Extending beyond national borders, the volume tackles global issues such as the rights of Muslim women, immigration, multiculturalism, and global capitalism. Revealing how the historical experiences and contemporary realities of women of color are profoundly influenced by a legacy of racism and sexism that is neither linear nor logical, Critical Race Feminism serves up a panoramic perspective, illustrating how women of color can find strength in the face of oppression.
Call Number: HQ1154 .C75 2003ISBN: 9780814793930Publication Date: 2003-10-01
DisCrit: disability studies and critical race theory in education by
In this groundbreaking volume, scholars examine the achievement/opportunity gaps from both historical and contemporary perspectives, as well as the overrepresentation of minority students in special education and the school-to-prison pipeline. Chapters also address school reform and the impact on students based on race, class, and dis/ability and the capacity of law and policy to include (and exclude).
Call Number: LC4031 .D57 2016ISBN: 9780807756676Publication Date: 2016-01-30
A Wider Type of Freedom: how struggles for racial justice liberate everyone by
A sweeping history of transformative, radical, and abolitionist movements in the United States that places the struggle for racial justice at the center of universal liberation. In Where Do We Go From Here? (1967), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., described racism as "a philosophy based on a contempt for life," a totalizing social theory that could only be confronted with an equally massive response, by "restructuring the whole of American society." A Wider Type of Freedom provides a survey of the truly transformative visions of racial justice in the United States, an often-hidden history that has produced conceptions of freedom and interdependence never envisioned in the nation's dominant political framework. A Wider Type of Freedom brings together stories of the social movements, intellectuals, artists, and cultural formations that have centered racial justice and the abolition of white supremacy as the foundation for a universal liberation. Daniel Martinez HoSang taps into moments across time and place to reveal the longstanding drive toward a vision of universal emancipation. From the nineteenth century's abolition democracy and the struggle to end forced sterilizations, to the twentieth century's domestic worker organizing campaigns, to the twenty-first century's environmental justice movement, he reveals a bold, shared desire to realize the antithesis of "a philosophy based on a contempt for life," as articulated by Martin Luther King Jr. Rather than seeking "equal rights" within failed systems, these efforts generated new visions that embraced human difference, vulnerability, and interdependence as core productive facets of our collective experience.
Call Number: eBookISBN: 0520974190Publication Date: 2021-09-21
Online Resources
- Critical Race Theory (1970 - present) by Online Writing Lab at Purdue University
- Critical Race Theory Resources by Yale Law School
- Critical Race Theory Zotero Library by CRTcollective
Journals & Periodicals
- Forum Magazine -- free and delivered straight to your inbox from the African American Policy Form, founded by Critical Race Theorist, Kimberlé Crenshaw.
