Critical race theory (CRT) is an approach to racial scholarship born in law schools in the 1980s that operates from the premises of pervasive racial inequality and a social constructionist (i.e. anti-essentialist) conception of race; challenges the idea that the superficially colorblind nature of the law means the law is race-neutral; and seeks to explain how landmark civil rights legislation of the 1960s failed to deliver on its promises of equality for the racial minorities it was supposed to uplift.
Amongst other things, critics of CRT have argued have that it is an anti-scientific research program, rejecting core tenets of science, such as universality and objectivity. But are these claims correct? Furthermore, to what extent have pseudoscientific claims played an instrumental role in fomenting the increasing backlash against CRT? Join CRT scholars Victor Ray and Sam Hoadley-Brill to find out more!
This event is part of a mini-series exploring questions relating to science, anti-science, and pseudoscience in our time. The series is supported by the Challenging Pseudoscience group at the Royal Institution in London with funding from the Open Society Foundations.
Victor Ray is the F. Wendell Miller Associate Professor in the Departments of Sociology and Criminology and African American Studies at the University of Iowa, and a Carr Center Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. His research applies critical race theory to classic sociological questions. His first book On Critical Race Theory: Why it Matters & Why You Should Care was recently published by Random House.
Sam Hoadley-Brill is a PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center and a research and writing fellow at the African American Policy Forum. His research interests include moral, social, and political philosophy.
Jana Bacevic is Assistant Professor at Durham University and associate fellow at Hannah Arendt Center at Bard. Her work is in social and political theory, and engages with politics and ethics of knowledge production, as well as questions of agency and reciprocity.